Community Organizers demand an apology from Sarah Palin

[bijou]

Community Organizers Victimized by Palin
Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 10:21:23 am PST

Community organizers demand an apology from Sarah Palin.

Heh. Good luck with that.

hat tip to little green footballs

Community Organizers Fight Back
September 4, 2008 · 49 Comments
Organizers demand apology from Alaska governor, say “we’re working to clean up your mess!”

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.

...more...

call the waambulance

[jtyangel]

 

So the people in the 'know a lot of local people, make a lot of local noise' club are mad.




 

[bijou]

So the people in the 'know a lot of local people, make a lot of local noise' club are mad.




 

They are raging and if their demands aren't met they'll organise something. 

[Chris_]

So the people in the 'know a lot of local people, make a lot of local noise' club are mad.




 

I can see where it would be a demanding job.......corralling a bunch of "welfare pimps" would be akin to herding cats........

doc

[Flame]

OK. seriously.  I've seen the joking posts about what Community Organizers do, but can anyone give me a real description?

Sounds like 99% of them would be democrats, anyway, am I right?

[bijou]

OK. seriously.  I've seen the joking posts about what Community Organizers do, but can anyone give me a real description?

Sounds like 99% of them would be democrats, anyway, am I right?

Community Organizing in the Eighties:

Toward a Post-Alinsky Agenda



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

John Kretzmann


The legacy of community-organizing giant Saul Alinsky has been central to the continuing emergence of a diverse "neighborhood movement" since the 1940s. While skilled and inventive organizers have seldom regarded Alinsky's approaches as divinely inspired, many have continued to work in communities as if the master's most basic assumptions about the nature of neighborhoods and the logic of organizing strategies were more or less immutable.

Reflecting on the actual experience of activist neighborhood organizations in recent years, we want to suggest, first, that the structure of poor and working-class urban neighborhoods has changed since Alinsky first began organizing in Chicago's Back of the Yards nearly fifty years ago; and, second, that given these changes in neighborhoods, a number of the classic Alinsky strategies and tactics are in need of critical revision (which, of course, many good organizers already know).

For Alinsky and his disciples, the city was reducible to two basic units: the neighborhood and the "enemy" outside the neighborhood. Poor and working-class neighborhoods continually suffered because external decision-makers controlled the internal distribution of services and goods. Foreshadowing more recent analyses of neighborhoods as units of "collective consumption," Alinsky's approach essentially argued for the building of the first modern consumer organizations in this case, defined by geography.

Two farther assumptions about the nature of neighborhoods and their "enemies" or "targets" shaped the basic Alinsky strategy. First, the neighborhood contained within it a number of vital organizations, even though they were not "organized" to act as a unit. Four basic kinds of associations were particularly important churches, ethnic groups, political organizations, and labor unions. The organizer's task was to forge a coalition of leaders from these groups. Their constituencies would then follow as the "organization of organizations" model took shape. Because of this existing pattern of associations, organizers could concentrate on pulling together their leaders, a very small percentage of the neighborhood's residents, and could plausibly claim representative community status for their new neighborhood group.

...more...

http://www.vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/postalinsky.html

As I said elsewhere, community organizer = socialist busybody.

[Splashdown]

I'm thinking she wasn't getting the "community organizer" vote anyway. 

[Lord Undies]

What good does a demanded apology do? 

If an offensive person thinks he needs to apologizes, that's great, and good feelings abound.  An apology issued in response to a demand has no sincerity behind it, so what is the point?  But lefty/liberal types are always "demanding" an apology anyway.

Of course, we know it isn't about smoothing over hard feelings.  An apology shows weakness, and the weak can be attacked.  That's why the lefty/liberal types always "demand" an apology.

[JohnnyReb]

Saul Alinsky ---isn't that the communist professor that turned Hillary from being a Goldwater supporting college co-ed to a bitter Marxist bitch?

[bijou]

Saul Alinsky ---isn't that the communist professor that turned Hillary from being a Goldwater supporting college co-ed to a bitter Marxist bitch?

That's the one.

[Lauri]

Saul Alinsky ---isn't that the communist professor that turned Hillary from being a Goldwater supporting college co-ed to a bitter Marxist bitch?

yep, and isnt he also the guy that Barry Obama thanked in the forward to one of his books? Rush read it aloud the other day.

I would imagine most of the 60s agitators, woops, Community Organisers, are born of Alinsky and populate the Northeast or at least congregate there now..

[CG6468]

The offended "community organizers" can ES&D.

[Chris_]

:whatever: :whatever: :whatever:

So the people in the 'know a lot of local people, make a lot of local noise' club are mad.




 :bawl: :whatever:

They are raging and if their demands aren't met they'll organise something.  :rotf:

Maybe they can get those anarchists organized...

[Jim]

I think these guys miss the point.  If the communities are so screwed up, maybe its the residents who did it. 

[Chris_]

I think these guys miss the point.  If the communities are so screwed up, maybe its the residents who did it. 

I can't help but think of the Philosophers Guild -- "WE MUST HAVE AREAS OF COMPLETE UNCERTAINTY!"

[Chris_]

What good does a demanded apology do? 

If an offensive person thinks he needs to apologizes, that's great, and good feelings abound.  An apology issued in response to a demand has no sincerity behind it, so what is the point?  But lefty/liberal types are always "demanding" an apology anyway.

Of course, we know it isn't about smoothing over hard feelings.  An apology shows weakness, and the weak can be attacked.  That's why the lefty/liberal types always "demand" an apology.

It's a mix between the middle eastern (Islamic) need for symbolism and the liberal (Democrat) "It's all about feeeeewings" mantra.