community organizer

Getting Real With a Community Organizer

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

Tyrone D. Washington/LA Mayor\'s Office

General Jeff with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (Tyrone D. Washington/LA Mayor's Office)

On a corner deep in the heart of Skid Row during a hot, sunny afternoon, there are a couple dozen people milling around the entrance to the Midnight Mission, one of the homeless shelters and recovery facilities in the neighborhood. One man is selling cigarettes. Another man, in a dingy white Panama hat and white loafers sits in a lawn chair, listening to his boom box. Just down the street sits the Central Division Police Station. It looks like a fortress.

Beyond law enforcement, this is not a neighborhood that gets a lot of attention. The man I am meeting, who asked to be identified as General Jeff, is a community organizer, a job that was recently vilified and mocked by Gov. Sarah Palin and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani last week at the Republican National Convention.

Jeff is a c.o. for what is perhaps the least organized community in the country. And it’s quite large. According to the 2000 Census, there are approximately 17,000 residents in Central City East. (For the record, that is approximately three times as big as Wasilla when Palin was elected). There are 3.7 million people in the City of Los Angeles—and only one mayor.

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Wednesday RNC Hangover: Palin Responses Come Fast & Furious

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

Almost immediately after the venom-spewing session that was Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention wrapped, an email came across from David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager.  Here’s an excerpt:

Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack’s experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed.

Let’s clarify something for them right now.

Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.

And it’s no surprise that, after eight years of George Bush, millions of people have found that by coming together in their local communities they can change the course of history. That promise is what our campaign has been about from the beginning.

Throughout our history, ordinary people have made good on America’s promise by organizing for change from the bottom up. Community organizing is the foundation of the civil rights movement, the women’s suffrage movement, labor rights, and the 40-hour workweek. And it’s happening today in church basements and community centers and living rooms across America.

This seems to be just the window the Obama campaign is looking for to really hammer home the “McCain and the Republicans are out of touch” message. Not only was there thinly veiled sneering at the term “community organizer” as any sort of legit leadership experience by Guiliani and Palin, the audience was eating it up as well.

While the MSM has been overflowing with general praise for her performance, the blogosphere was quick to react.  Marc Cooper’s sarcasm-laden response to Palin’s speech can be found here.  P+P’s own Tricia Romano offers her take on Palin and everyone else here.  And the website SameFacts has done its own analysis of Palin’s speech vs. “reality” here.

Perhaps most poignant, however, is the comment that was left on Ms. Romano’s piece by “karimah,” an impassioned former community organizer:

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