G. Youngman, MBA, MPH
When former Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin attacked Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s experience as a community organizer, they unleashed a furious response from many of the nation’s organizers that could result in increased support for Obama.
“Quite frankly, and sadly, this woman who aspires to the vice presidency of the United States doesn’t respect how a lot of the real social service work in this country happens,” said Phill Wilson, founder and CEO of the Black AIDS Institute. “It’s in the small, grassroots organizations.”
“Where does she think responsibility happens in this country? It happens on the community level,” Wilson told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “All politics begins locally and it starts on the local level in communities. It’s frightening that someone who wants to be the vice president of the United States has such disdain for that work.”
Within hours of Giuliani and Palin’s speeches at the Republican National Convention last week in St. Paul, community organizations began issuing news releases accusing the GOP of denigrating the work they do on behalf of working class Americans.
“When Sarah Palin demeaned community organizing, she didn’t attack another candidate. She attacked an American tradition — one that has helped everyday Americans engage with the political process and make a difference in their lives and the lives of their neighbors,” Deepak Bhargave, executive director of the 40-year-old Center for Community Change said.
In another statement, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now expressed disappointment that the GOP chose to attack the work of community organizers for political gain.
“The fact that they marginalize our success in empowering low- and moderate-income people to improve their communities further illustrates their lack of touch with ordinary people,” ACORN President Maude Hurd said. “ Every great movement in the history of the world has community organizing.”
At the GOP convention, in front of a partisan crowd of fellow Republicans, Palin and Giuliani received cheers and laughter when they made their not-so-indirect attacks on Obama.
“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities,” Palin said in her convention speech, suggesting Obama’s experience as an organizer paled in comparison to her experience as governor.
Giuliani took a jab at Obama earlier in the evening, calling his community organizing work “the first problem of his resume.”
What neither of them reckoned, however, was that their remarks would deeply offend and anger community organizers across the country.
“Community organizing, and the people who do this work, have been the saving grace for millions of people — especially African Americans in the United States for years,” said the Rev. Susan Newman, adjunct minister of Peoples Congregational United Church of Christ, in Washington, D.C. “This is the most effective way for ordinary people to get the attention of out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.”
“It has been because of community organizing around campfires, by riverbanks, in church basements and on 30-minute lunch breaks that the foundation for great movements have been born — the civil rights movement, the women’s suffrage movement, labor rights, and the 40-hour workweek,” Newman told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “It is from the womb of community organizing that we have the NAACP, SCLC, the Children’s Defense Fund, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, NOW, and millions more.”
KeystoneProgress, an online network of community organizers, has launched a petition drive calling for the Republican Party, McCain and Palin to make a public apology for their inaccurate portrayal of community organizers, said Michael Morrill, executive director of the Pennsylvania-based organization.
“They tried to belittle the experience of Barack Obama, setting it up as if Obama’s job as a community organizer was equivalent to being governor,” Morrill told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “No one ever implied that it was. He has talked about how that experience transformed his life and the role that experience played in who he became.”
Morrill, 53, had his first assignment as a community organizer in Massachusetts at the age of 19.
Several people in responding to the online petition have shared their personal experience of being a community organizer or benefiting from the work of community organizers, Morrill said.
Still he said, “What we are finding is there are people who really don’t know what it means to be a community organizer. They think it means being a communist operative, someone who undermines their whole way of life.
But politicians — especially those like Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, and Palin, the governor of Alaska — know better because they have seen first hand the work of community organizers.
“Politicians speak negatively about community organizers so that they can manipulate people’s fears and ignorance so that they can get elected,” Morrill said.
KeystoneProgress is not affiliated with any political party or campaign but its members are passionate about helping communities and the people who live in those communities improve the quality of life, Morrill said.
This week, KeystoneProgress will present the petitions to McCain, Morrill said.
A group of community organizations has demanded an apology from Palin and launched a Web site expressing their dismay.
“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,” John Raskin, founder of Community Organizers of America and a community organizer on the West Side of Manhattan, wrote on the Web site.
In a column on CNN.com, political analyst Roland Martin said he received many emails from people angry over the disparaging comments about Obama’s community organizing work.
“It would have been perfectly fine for Giuliani and Palin to say that Obama’s community organizing days didn’t amount to enough experience to be president,” Martin wrote in his column. “But when you openly laugh and mock those hard-working Americans who are in the trenches every day, then you really don’t care about ‘Country First’ or service.”
The Black AIDS Institute’s Wilson said voters must look beyond rhetoric in deciding for whom to vote in November.
“If Governor Palin says she is going to be an advocate for special needs children, then we should look at her record as governor. And that should include, at least from where I sit, those families whose special need is they are dealing with HIV/AIDS.
“What does the governor know about HIV in Detroit, Newark and Oakland and what is her plan to end AIDS in Washington, D.C.?” Wilson asked.
Meanwhile, Rev. Newman said Giuliani and Palin’s comments attacking community organizing may have had the unintended effect of generating more support for Obama.
“Now, because of Giuliani and Palin’s speeches that denigrated Senator Obama’s work as a community organizer,” she said, “millions are even more committed to organize our community against the threat of a McCain-Palin administration.”
Palin Has No Record on Diversity or Civil RightsCommentary:
G. Youngman, MBA, MPH
There’s no record that Alaska Governor and Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin uttered anything more than the obligatory complimentary congratulations to the woman that beat her out for the Miss Alaska title in 1984. The winner was Maryline Blackburn, an African-American. A ritual congratulatory wish from Palin would have been about the only public acknowledgement to date from her in an instance, in this case a beauty contest, where Palin was confronted with the issue of diversity in the person of a competitor.
Since then, Palin’s record on race and diversity has been the blankest of blank sheets. The probes into Palin’s record on diversity and civil rights have almost exclusively focused on her views on gay rights, gay marriage and equal pay. These are crucial civil rights issues. But so are racial diversity and civil rights. The Web site OntheIssues.org gives a comprehensive look at the positions of elected officials on the major issues based on their statements, speeches, campaign materials and policy position papers. Palin has taken no position on immigration, affirmative action, job and housing discrimination, school re-segregation, police-minority community relations, and racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
The site did list two terse positions Palin took on hate crimes legislation and cultural diversity. Both give a tiny window into the would-be vice president’s thinking on diversity and civil rights. During the 2006 gubernatorial campaign, she told the Eagle Forum that she opposed expanded hate crime legislation. She branded all heinous crimes as hate crimes. This view of what constitutes a hate crime goes squarely against the wide body of law and public policy that defines a hate crime as a willful act or threat based solely on racial, gender or religious animus. By lumping common crimes, no matter how repulsive, into the hate crime category, Palin would effectively gut enforcement of federal hate crime laws.
In her gubernatorial campaign booklet in 2006, Palin gave her equally terse view of discrimination. She simply said that she and her gubernatorial running mate value cultural diversity and would provide opportunities for all Alaskans. She made no mention of affirmative action, job discrimination, and the enforcement of civil rights laws.
Palin made no mention of Alaska’s affirmative action plan. It’s been in place since 1998 and mandates that the state make special efforts to ensure that veterans, especially disabled veterans, have equal access to state jobs. Presumably, Palin backs the plan. Yet, she makes no mention on her Web site or any other place what her office has done to enforce the state’s tightly constricted affirmative action plan.
Knowing Palin’s views on race and civil rights, whatever they are, is more than just a matter political one-upmanship. If elected, her views will carry much weight when it comes to making and enforcing legal and public policies that affect minorities and women.
That’s certainly been true in her home state. Alaska’s Eskimos, Indians and Aleuts make up more than 15 percent of the state’s population. Indian activist groups there have protested discrimination and disparities in health and education, and also over their hunting and fishing rights. There is no record that Palin has spoken out on their plight.
Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama, his VP running mate Joe Biden, and Palin’s Republican running mate John McCain come from states that have diverse populations. In the Senate they have spoken out on, taken positions on, and haggled over legislation on immigration, hate crimes, affirmative action, job discrimination and education disparities. They are keenly sensitive to the importance of civil rights and diversity issues.
The same has been true even with Bush. Before his election in 2000, he promised to make cultural diversity the watchword in the GOP. That year, and in his reelection bid in 2004, he courted black conservatives and independents. He promised to boost minority business, HIV/AIDS funding, and programs for failing inner city public schools; praised the Voting Rights Act; and on occasion spoke out against racially motivated violence.
McCain and Palin, if elected, will likely have to do the same. They will also face sharp challenges on affirmative action, police misconduct, job discrimination, racial disparities in drug laws, and school funding. They will also be called on to make administrative and court appointments that reflect diversity.
Democrats, much of the media, and a big segment of the public have pounded Palin for her non-existent experience and public pronouncements on foreign policy and national security matters. But she has been absolutely expansive on these issues in comparison to her past and present mute silence about diversity and civil rights.
During her tenure as Alaska governor, Palin didn’t have to say or do much about civil rights. She does now. And we shouldn’t have to wait for her to get to the White House before she does. That’s too great a risk for the country.