It has already been touched on before that Palin offended many different groups of people last night in her speech. Specifically, she belittled Obama by saying that he was a community organizer, as to elevate her standing as a Mayor of a small exurban town in Alaska. The attempt got a good round of applause from the delgates but outside of the hall people were shocked at what they heard.
One of those groups in her target area was obviously community organizers themselves, men and women that work hard in their communities to make them better places to live and work in. Well rather than let Palin attack and sit down, organizers are beginning to do what they do best, organize....against Palin.
From Organizers Fight Back:
Community organizers across America, taken aback by a series of attacks from Republican leaders at the GOP convention in St. Paul, came together today to defend their work organizing Americans who have been left behind by unemployment, lack of health insurance and the national housing crisis. The organizers demanded an apology from Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for her statement that community organizers have no “actual responsibilities” and launched a web site, http://organizersfightback.wordpress.com, to defend themselves against Republican attacks.
“Community organizers work in neighborhoods that have been hit hardest by the failing economy,” said John Raskin, founder of Community Organizers of America and a community organizer on the West Side of Manhattan. “The last thing we need is for Republican officials to mock us on television when we’re trying to rebuild the neighborhoods they have destroyed. Maybe if everyone had more houses than they can count, we wouldn’t need community organizers. But I work with people who are getting evicted from their only home. If John McCain and the Republicans understood that, maybe they wouldn’t be so quick to make fun of community organizers like me.”
Though many people are unfamiliar with community organizing, the job is both straightforward and vital: community organizers work with families who are struggling–because of low wages, poor health coverage, unaffordable housing, and other community problems–so that collectively, they can fix those problems and make government respond to their day-to-day concerns. Organizers knock on doors, attend community meetings, visit churches and synagogues and mosques, and work with unions and civic groups and block associations to help ordinary people build power and counter the influence of self-interested insiders and highly paid lobbyists at all levels of government.
Not only are organizers getting involved in this, but our main man has realized the opportunity that Palin gave not only her base, but ours as well. In the middle of last night campaign manager Plouffe sent out an email to raise money because of her senseless attacks on organizers. Republicans may mock his credentials, but the people who do this hard work and the millions of people that benefit from it do not appreciate being laughed at. And they'll show it and sock it to them two months from today....on election day.
|