OpEd: Community organizers among us

(wallacejnichols.org)

Peaceful marches, sit-ins, walk-outs, boycotts, get-out-the vote drives, public hearings, whistle-blowing and strikes are responsible for many of the rights and freedoms we hold near and dear here in the United States of America.

Our air and water are cleaner, our food safer and our society more just thanks to countless, nameless community organizers.

Chances are that one of your neighbors is directly responsible for some attribute of your community that makes it more livable, whether it’s the lack of oil wells in your backyard, a new stoplight at a dangerous intersection, a cleaner lake, safer streets, a church youth program, or hot meals for the hungriest people.

Yet disparaging community organizers seemed to be the thing to do last week at the Republican National Convention. Not because community organizers have done something wrong, but simply because Barack Obama was a community organizer for three years as a young man back in South Chicago, helping unemployed people find jobs.

Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin said, "A small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except you have actual responsibilities".

Rudy Giuliani used “community organizer” as the punch line in his attack-dog speech to the RNC delegates.

I guess the point they were trying to make was that organizing a community and solving local problems just doesn’t compare to being a 9-11 mayor, a POW or a small town hockey mom.

I’ll grant them that.

They are very different activities.

The reasons Palin and Giuliani’s attacks slipped by people as being acceptable, even funny, are probably because the noble American tradition of community organizing is one the mass media largely ignores.

But that’s about to change.

Read more here:

http://tinyurl.com/678oe6

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