Community Organizing is the One Thing We ALL Can Support
Posted by ajlovesya on September 8, 2008
While I couldnt care less about Palin, Guiliani, or McCain, their comments regarding Obama’s experience as a community organizer got my fellow nonprofit employees fuming.
Aside from the fact that they will praise each other for their community involvement, (thus making their insults at Obama blatantly hypocritical) I have always assumed that the act of people taking their lives into their own hands and strengthening their neighborhoods was the one thing people across the political spectrum could agree on.
In fact community members and community organizers are the few people who tend to draw on public and private resources, disdaining dependence while demanding acknowledgment for their own activism and agency.
Community organizers are diverse, embodied by pastors who do what they can to feed those in need, to teachers who go out of their way to get parents involved in their children’s education, to tenants casting aside their fears and demanding fair treatment from their landlords. Community organizers and community members are the bedrock of this country.
I realize that their comments were merely cheap shots at Obama, but unfortunately those comments attack an identity that so many people –moved by frustration, injustice, or a genuine love of their neighborhood –take on with limited resources and experiences. At its core it reveals a disconnect from communities across the country and a disregard for how this country evolved in the first place.
However, what I do like about these comments is that they often require people to think about what community organizing means, what it looks like, and what it entails. These comments prompt reflection and hopefully will motivate people to support community organizing rather than tossing it around like an insult and dirty word.
