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Posted on 09/06/2008 8:45:26 AM PDT by bluegirl
As a community organizer in Chicago, Barack Obama didn't accomplish much.
He'd be the first to tell you that.
He got a job bank opened and brought public attention to an asbestos problem at a housing project.
He had his failures, too.
But Obama's record of accomplishment wasn't what Republicans were criticizing last week when they sneered at his time working for the city's poor from 1985 to 1988.
They lambasted the job itself.
"He worked as a community organizer," former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said in an ugly speech Wednesday night to much sneering in the convention arena.
"What?" Giuliani asked, his shark smile wide, his voice dripping scorn.
Which made us wonder what the Republicans were talking about.
Republicans insist that people should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Communities should take care of their own and not depend on big government to do the job. And the folks who do make it should give back.
We agree wholeheartedly.
But on what is the job of community organizer premised, if not those very principles?
Community organizers come into poor neighborhoods and try to get people knocked down by life back up on their feet.
They tell them where to find jobs, where to send their kids for day care, where to get drug counseling.
They show residents how they can organize to protest poor housing conditions, low pay and other inner-city woes.
When the job is done right, a community organizer helps the most powerless among us gain some small sense of power over their lives.
The job is tough.
Most community organizers work for peanuts, and they burn out fast.
The folks they want to help often don't trust them. And some people are beyond help, no matter how hard they try.
Maybe that's why the trails left behind by community organizers are so often littered with good intentions and failed plans.
Some community organizations that start out lean and mean become bloated with bureaucracy. Other groups seem to exist only to perpetuate themselves.
Too often, the nonprofits that foot the bill for many community organizations act as if their responsibility ends at writing the checks, instead of following up and assessing the effectiveness of their investments.
Like virtually any well-intentioned human endeavor, community organizing has its virtues and drawbacks.
Obama could have skipped community organizing and headed straight to an Ivy League law school -- and straight to a big-money law firm partnership and a summer home in the Hamptons.
Instead, he spent a few years of his life working with the poorest and most powerless people on the South Side of Chicago, doing his damndest to help them help themselves.
This is a bad thing?
This is something to be sneered at?
Obama embarked on his brief career as a community organizer as an idealist. He dreamed of the power for good that could be wielded if some of Chicago's black churches banded together. But he learned the reality that many ministers were loath to share their power.
He left the job, his old thinking tempered by failure, now a pragmatist who saw what it really takes to get things done.
American politics is no place for starry-eyed idealism.
But hard-earned pragmatism is more than welcome.
1) As a community organizer in Chicago, Barack Obama didn't accomplish much.
Do any community organizers ever accomplish much?
2) ... the trails left behind by community organizers are so often littered with good intentions and failed plans.
3) Some community organizations that start out lean and mean become bloated with bureaucracy.
4) Other groups seem to exist only to perpetuate themselves.
5) Too often, the nonprofits that foot the bill for many community organizations act as if their responsibility ends at writing the checks, instead of following up and assessing the effectiveness of their investments.
How can they provide answers to their own question and still be so clueless. Once again it is not the actual results that matter, but the intentions.
Well I suppose we are sneering because it is the “Messiah” himself that holds this “job” out as proof he has experience enough to be the president of this country.
No kidding -- the whole thing is a scam!
Because the sanctimonious, hate-filled Dems and media (but I repeat myself) sneer at Gov. Palin's executive experience as a small-town mayor.
How does it taste, liberals?
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I also wonder why we don’t see people who have benefitted from Obama’s community organizing lined up to tell us of his wonderful accomplishments.
Or any accomplishments, for that matter.
> Why is GOP sneering at Obama’s work as community organizer?
Because “community organizer” is a euphemism for using grant money to advance the Marxist cause.
Here’s a question for the questioner.
How did a “community organizer” and part-time “guest lecturer” at a state university compile a multi-million dollar portfolio, complete with a million-dollar mansion in one of the nation’s most upscale neighborhoods?
Obama wasn’t exactly a ball of fire as a community organizer.
Dummies don’t even know it was in reply to his sneering at her being the mayor of “Wasilly”.
Only because it has been touted as experience relative to his alleged readines to be seated in the Oval Office.
Therefore, the ever solicitous MSM seeks here to help him out where he needs it most.
In reality, Obama was there to destroy the community.
Obama's job was to disorganize the community.
There’s nothing wrong with being a community organizer, but it doesn’t qualify someone to be President.
Exactly.
Communities should take care of their own and not depend on big government to do the job. .......So we get ACORN to put the “correct people” in government to have big government do it anyways.
We’re sneering because it is nothing special. Half the people on this site have been “community organizers”, coaching Little league or doing fundraisers or volunteering at school or churches. Big deal.
Obama was a “community organizer,” Sarah was a very active PTA member. Pretty much the same thing.
In law we call what the dems did “opening the door” to this line of questioning. The dems were going wild attacking Palin’s qualifications. That resulted in a counterattack on Obama’s qualifications, or lack thereof.
Instead, he spent a few years of his life working with the poorest and most powerless people on the South Side of Chicago, doing his damndest to help them help themselves.
It's called "...getting street creds" Mr. Editor. Nothing more than a stepping stone to future self aggrandizement.
These so-called “community organizers” are nothing more than scam artists; pulling in every government grant to fill their own pockets. They, in return, give pitiful seminars to the democrat voting sheep about we need more government programs and “free” money.
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As one wag asked, what are we supposed to do... see the slums of Chicago's South side, marvel at how well organized they are, and exclaim, "Wow! Barack Obama did that?!?!?"