On Organizing...

I've become quite disgusted at some of the cheering going on in the press this morning over the following line from Palin's speech: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities." I take the mockery of community organizing as exhibiting a gross lack of knowledge on the historical roles that community organizing has played in our country, particularly in the Black community which was for so long shut out of the traditional political power structures in America. The list of prominent community organizers in American history is long to be sure, with Martin Luther King front in center in this tradition (not to mention Saul Alinsky, whom Hillary Clinton thought was important enough to make him the topic of her undergraduate thesis). The thing I find most striking about the mockery of community organizing is that while running as a "reformer" and "Washington outsider," she's mocking a profession which in a very real sense is in concert with those labels. While the republicans are slapping themselves on the back over a clever line, I sense and hope, that this can come back to bite them in a serious way. Just asking, but aren't labor unions, of which Palin's husband is "a proud member of…," born out of the tradition of community organizing?