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.
In Zerobama’s case, “community organizer” is a euphemism for communist activist, working for the communist front organization, ACORN.
If someone paid by an outside source came into my home and tried to “organize me” I would hate it. I’d feel patronized and controlled by a force that surely had its own interests at heart. He was PAID by an OUTSIDE SOURCE to go in and “help people.”
Not a thug. Don’t exaggerate. A door-knocking minion most of the time and maybe a bagman once in a blue moon. Thugs have to inspire fear and you know darn well that ain’t Barry O. They have alpha dudes for that sort of thing.
The actual SNEER was from the OBAMA camp about Palin being a small town mayor. She responded to this SNEER with good humor backed by a good point!
THE PRESS SHOULD SHOVE THIS REVISIONIST HISTORY UP THEIR *$**#& ASS! I AM SO BEYOND SICK OF THIS *#*&#!
The republicans are NOT dISSING COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS,THE RATS started it when they demeaned Palins mayor job.They are stating that b.o.has less on job training than she.
What is the importance of the ACORN angle? ACORN is the most corrupt, most convicted, "public service" organization in the history of the United States. Just Google ACORN together with "vote fraud" and you'll see the story.
This Chicago reporter is deliberately tap-dancing around this critical issue.
Congressman Billybob
Tenth in the ten-part series, "The Owner's Manual (Part 10) -- The Remaining Amendments"
This is a bad thing?
Nope.
It is a very smart thing to do if it is your intention to build a political power base in a particular district.
It is just as smart as attending the local, hate-mongering, race-baiting church for twenty years in order to build and maintain a political power base in that particular district.
“Community organizers,” especially in places like Chicago, are grifters who shake down the government for “grants” and funnel the money back to the political players who keep the hood at the correct agitation setting.
The folks they want to help often don't trust them.And for good reason, because they are snakes, either working for class action lawyers trying to shake down landlords or the city, or for left-wing activists trying to use the poor as pawns to advance a radical political agenda that has nothing to do with helping anyone other than the real powers behind them.
LLS
Heaven forfend, sneering? SNEERING???
What is this world coming to. Poor Barry!
I’m sure most community organizers are great people, do great things and they make a difference.
But it doesn’t make them qualified to be POTUS.
They were attacking Palin as unqualified due to her tenure as a mayor while they had previously propped up Obama’s experience as a “community organizer.” What is it they expect?
Let me ask a simple question. Does anyone think this is enough experience to be president? LOL
Those are good, but SimplyHired.com is a real job bank. It consolidates the listings of multiple job sites, and crawls company career postings too. Try it!
Bingo...The article misses that obvious point. The messiah holds out his time as a community orgainizer as part of his resume, when being a failure is being a failure, no matter the job. He was also a failure as Chairman of Board of Annenberg Challenge, which blew 110 million $ without acheiving anything for the poor Chicago kids he was supposed to help.
Being a failure in two positions you held is relevent to what a failure he would be as POTUS. I am all for community orgainizers, but if you fail at it, so what?
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