It’s About Making Babies!

Community Organizers – An apples and oranges brouhaha.

Barack Obama’s resume is somewhat brief, in matters of leadership. One of the prominent positions is ‘Community Organizer’. Democrats went out of their way to point out how Sarah Palin’s stint of mayor was in a small community, Wasilla had a population of 9,000 or so at the time.

Alaska Governor Palin and now Vice Presidential Candidate Palin got some great media coveraged during her acceptance speech when she potted a barb at Presidential Candidate Obama -

The difference between a small town mayor and a community organizer is that I had actual responsibilities.

I can see this both ways. Community organizers are responsible to the people that hire them, and to those they are required to help. A small town mayor is legally responsible for certain things. A community organizer could get fired. A small town mayor could go to jail, for failing to meet responsibilities in an extraordinary fashion. A community organizer could botch the hope of a family. A small town mayor could cost 9,000 people opportunities or problems.

Tam at View From The Porch pointed to an article about an organization of community organizers protesting about their job being belittled, Community Organizers Fight Back.

What I see is that this organization is idealogically part of the Democratic liberal agenda.

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.

“I have ‘actual responsibilities,’” said Jacqueline del Valle, a community organizer in the Bronx. “If Mayor Giuliani and President Bush cared more about working people instead of just people who can hire high-powered lobbyists, maybe I wouldn’t have so much responsibility. Maybe working people would have an easier time in America today. But that’s not our reality, and they don’t have to mock us while we’re trying to clean up their mess.”

I figure the Republicans deserve an apology from Sen. Obama for belittling small town mayors – an often thankless job with direct responsibility to a community, to state and federal regulators, community organizations and infrastructure.

From the OrganizersFightBack inaugural press release:

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.

This is a social services coordinator; a vital task. But social service coordinator, community organizers, have to be sympathetic to the people that want to keep businesses in business, and providing jobs to the community. Punish employers, intimidate them, consider them the enemy – and you make them think of closing down or moving – and depriving the community of even more jobs.

Those that focus on growing and maintaining the economy focus on productivity, on improving the business and industrial environment. They don’t disparage social services, and care for the needy (unless they are being attacked for enabling employers to provide jobs).

Caring for the hungry doesn’t produce income, nor provide jobs. Growing businesses, managing amount of regulation, retaining profits, protecting business from opportunistic lawsuits takes a different focus. But income for a corporation always generates jobs, and jobs are the single most effective way to feed and clothe and house a family and community.

These two focuses *need* each other. Those growing the economy need to know that the needy are being cared for. Those caring for the needy and those in need have to know that business is sustaining the community infrastructure, that people with jobs have opportunities to advance, and security that their job will continue.

In this current round of spite, Sen. Obama and senior Democrats flung the first stones. This is called partisanship, and is divisive. A candidate has to be able to say, “Look at me. I am a better choice than my opponent. Here is why.” This is the nature of elections – one candidate gets picked, voters divide from a community, for the moment, into those that vote for Obama, those that vote for McCain (remember him?), and those that express other choices. In order to elect a President, this has to happen. In order for our nation to grow and stand strong, though, we need to be able to stand together and hear the election results, and each of us believe that we chose well.

But when we believe we chose well, we can’t afford to resent those that voted against “our” candidate. And that is what is *wrong* about negative campaigning. When supporters dwell on the opponent’s faults – especially when the ‘fault’ is invented or unfairly disparaged – instead of their preferred candidates’ advantages, what remains is fear and loathing.

So I would certainly support an apology from Governor Palin to community organizers. I am sure that she meant only to point out the unfairness of Senator Obama’s disparagement for Governor Palin having been mayor of Wasilla, AK. Making fun of another’s honorable work is never right.

In return, I would support an apology from Senator Obama for disparaging something completely outside his own experience – small towns, business, industry, and agriculture. It is good that we have a candidate with experience of the inner city. But the President has to lead *all* Americans. And even though the connection is indirect, when farming or business suffers, the inner city suffers. The reverse isn’t nearly as direct a connection. And, yes, I understand that community organizers work at all levels, in all communities, that there are people in need everywhere. The services that community organizers coordinate are provided, not produced. CO’s are dependent on a stable economy, robust business environment, healthy agriculture, etc.

We need a balance. We need each other.