GOP Mocks Public Service

By Peter Dreier and John Atlas

For the first time in American history, a major political party devoted a substantial portion of its national convention to attacking grassroots organizing.

Speaking Wednesday at the Republican National Convention, former New York Governor George Pataki sneered, "[Barack Obama] was a community organizer. What in God's name is a community organizer? I don't even know if that's a job."

Then former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani delivered his own snickering hit job. "He worked as a community organizer. What? Maybe this is the first problem on the résumé," mocked Giuliani." Then he said, "This is not a personal attack. It's a statement of fact. Barack Obama has never led anything. Nothing. Nada."

A few minutes later, in her acceptance speech for the GOP vice presidential nomination, Sarah Palin declared, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities."

The party of Ronald Reagan was touting government experience over civic engagement.

Story continues below

advertisement

At a convention whose theme was "service," GOP leaders ridiculed organizing, a vital kind of public service that involves leadership, tough decisions, and taking responsibility for the well-being of people often ignored by government.

But the controversy surrounding these snide remarks may have backfired. Within hours, Obama sent an e-mail to his supporters, challenging the Republicans who "mocked, dismissed, and actually laughed out loud at Americans who engage in community service and organizing" and soliciting funds for his campaign. His campaign manager David Plouffe sent another fundraising e-mail, saying, "Let's clarify something for them right now. Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies."

Palin, Giuliani and Pataki denigrated not only the tens of thousands of community organizers who help everyday citizens to participate in shaping their society and the millions of Americans who volunteer as community activists but also a long American tradition of collective self-help that goes back to the Boston Tea Party.

Visiting the United States in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville observed in his Democracy in America, how impressed he was by the outpouring of local voluntary organizations that brought Americans together to solve problems, provide a sense of community and public purpose and tame the hyper-individualism that Tocqueville considered a threat to democracy. In the same speech in which Palin ridiculed Obama's organizing work, she touted her own experiences as a PTA volunteer and "hockey mom"--the very kinds of activities that Tocqueville praised and that community organizers support.

The Republicans' nasty attacks on grassroots organizing reflect another longstanding tradition in American politics--the conservative elite's fear of "the people." Some of the founding fathers worried that ordinary people--people without property, indentured servants, slaves, women and others--might challenge the economic and political status quo. In The Federalist Papers and other documents, they debated how to restrain the masses from gaining too much influence. To maintain their privilege, the elite denied them the vote, limited their ability to protest, censored their publications, threw them in jail and ridiculed their ideas to expand democracy.

But grassroots activists wouldn't give up. Every fight for social reform since colonial times--including battles to abolish slavery, promote workers' rights, fix up slum housing, strengthen civil rights, clean up the environment, expand women's rights and protect consumers--has reflected elements of that self-help tradition.

Modern community organizing, an important strand of grassroots activism, began with Jane Addams, who founded Hull House in Chicago in the late 1800s and inspired the settlement house movement. These activists--upper-class philanthropists, middle-class reformers and working-class radicals--organized immigrants to clean up sweatshops and tenement slums, improve sanitation and public health and battle against child labor and crime.

In the 1930s, another Chicagoan, Saul Alinsky, sought to organize residents the way unions organized workers. Drawing on existing groups--particularly churches, block clubs, sports leagues, and unions--he formed the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council to get the city to improve services to a working-class neighborhood adjacent to meatpacking factories.

A half-century later, in 1985, 23-year-old Barack Obama moved to Chicago to work for the Developing Communities Project, a coalition of churches on the city's South Side. His job was to help empower residents to win improved playgrounds, after-school programs, job training, housing, and other concerns affecting a neighborhood hurt by large-scale layoffs from the nearby steel mills and neglect by banks, retail stores and the local government. He knocked on doors and talked to people in their kitchens, living rooms and churches about the problems they faced and why they needed to get involved to improve their communities.

Obama often refers to the valuable lessons he learned working "in the streets" of Chicago. "I've won some good fights and I've also lost some fights," he said in a speech during the primary season, "because good intentions are not enough, when not fortified with political will and
political power."

There are at least 20,000 paid organizers in the United States, according to Walter Davis, executive director of the National Organizers Alliance. They work for community groups, environmental organizations, unions, women's and civil rights groups, tenants organizations, churches and school reform efforts--touching the lives of millions of Americans every day. They work long hours, usually for low pay. Organizers identify people with leadership potential, recruit and train them and help them build grassroots organizations that can win victories that improve their communities and workplaces.

They force cities to put up stop signs at dangerous intersections, organize crime-watch groups and make sure their churches or synagogues shelter the homeless. They force slumlords to fix up their properties, challenge banks to end mortgage discrimination and predatory lending, improve conditions in local parks and playgrounds, increase funding for public schools, clean up toxic sites, stop police harassment and open community health clinics. They even help parents organize hockey and soccer leagues and get local governments to let them use municipal fields and rinks.

As mayor of New York, Giuliani had many confrontations with community organizations. One was East Brooklyn Congregations (EBC), an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation network of community groups. In the 1990s, EBC, comprised primarily of religious congregations and their working-class members, pressured Giuliani to provide city-owned land so the group could expand its nonprofit Nehemiah housing development of affordable single-family homes.

Giuliani agreed to provide a large swath of vacant public land in a neglected part of Brooklyn. At the groundbreaking ceremony for the Nehemiah homes (depicted in the documentary film The Democratic Promise) Giuliani, surrounded by hundreds of EBC activists, lavished praise on the group. "Most of the political establishment in this city opposed them [and] tried to undercut them," he said. Then he lauded EBC because "they do not pay homage to political figures.... They require you to answer their questions. They remind you that you are a public servant."

Giuliani has since forgotten those words of praise, but he was correct. Community organizers make democracy work by mobilizing people to inject long-ignored issues onto the public agenda and hold politicians accountable. They help give people the confidence they need to use the tools of democracy. In a society where wealth and income is concentrated in a few hands, grassroots organizations make it possible for ordinary Americans to find their civic voice and exercise influence in politics.

Our democracy works best when people come together to solve problems, not simply by voting every few years but also by participating in a wide array of voluntary organizations--the "civil society" that serves as a mediator between the power of business and money and the authority of government. Politicians need to listen to people's problems, help them forge solutions, and give voice to their hopes, rather than stoke people's fears and prejudices.

At critical moments, Presidents have embraced activist movements and helped propel them forward.

To win the right to vote, the suffragists combined decades of dramatic protest marches and hunger strikes with lobbying and appeals to the consciences of legislators--some of them the husbands and fathers of the protestors. Woodrow Wilson, no friend of feminism, reluctantly changed his position and supported women's suffrage.

During the Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized that his ability to push New Deal legislation through Congress depended on pressure generated by organizers. He once told a group of activists who sought his support for legislation, "You've convinced me. Now go out and make me do it."

Lyndon B. Johnson, initially unsympathetic to the civil rights movement, later recognized that the nation's mood was changing because of the willingness of activists to put their bodies on the line against fists and fire hoses, along with their efforts to register voters against overwhelming opposition. That activism transformed Johnson from a reluctant advocate to a powerful ally.

To win significant reforms, organizers and politicians need each other. Voter drives, boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience and mass marches help inject new issues on the agenda, dramatize grievances, generate media attention and get people thinking about things they hadn't
thought about before.

Today, we need grassroots organizing more than ever.

"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," said John Raskin, a community organizer in New York. "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."

Now comes Obama, a one-time community organizer, who consistently reminds Americans of the importance of community activism. If he's elected President, he will have to find a balance between working inside the Beltway and encouraging Americans to organize and mobilize. He understands that his ability to reform healthcare, tackle global warming and restore job security and decent wages will depend, in large measure, on whether he can use his bully pulpit to mobilize public opinion and encourage Americans to battle powerful corporate interests and members of Congress who resist change.

Republicans thought they were being smart mocking community organizing. But what they didn't understand is that their smug comments weren't simply an attack on Barack Obama but on the entire grassroots chain of change that has, for over 200 years, made America a more democratic and humane country.

----
This piece appeared originally in The Nation.

Peter Dreier is professor of politics and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy program at Occidental College. He is co-author of The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City (University of California Press, 2005) and Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century (2nd edition, University Press of Kansas, 2005) and co-editor of Up Against the Sprawl.

John Atlas is president of the National Housing Institute.

Comments

[pointus]

One horrific thing that happened this morning is that Biden trotted out on one of the Sunday talk shows, agreeing with Brokaw that Palin's smarmy attack on community organizers was "a good line."
If only Dennis Kucinich were 6 ft. tall & looked like a movie star....

[Tane]

I'm with Bill Maher, it was maddening to watch these contemptuous people laughing out loud while mocking the Democrats " that they have the nerve to laugh on national television after spending the last eight years running our country into the ground was infuriating.

[TariTam]

Does anyone smell fascism in the air? Ridiculing the dignity of human and civil rights, social justice and civil liberties and those who fight to preserve them (i.e., community organizers) is usually a telltale sign.

I don't hate the Republican Party. Wonderful leaders have come from the Grand Old Party. What is currently masquerading as "Republican" is in effect a powerful cabal of corporatists, statists and fanatical evangelicals.

People of goodwill must crusade to make the electorate pay attention to what really is at stake and not take the invectives by the current Republican standard bearers to heart. Every attack emboldens and makes people of goodwill stronger.

I never took Hillary seriously when she complained about the big bad "vast right wing conspiracy." But she was right -- I was too blind and too young and naive to understand.

[geobushono]

you're right on track...............in a couple years you'll come to recognize all republicans as people with horrible values.
Next on your path will come the realization that WE are the dangerous warmongering nation that our schoolbooks warned us about.

[hypnotoad72]

What is a job? I've heard of radio morning show disc jockeys telling people to get a real job in a really whiny tone of voice... and get paid big-a$$ money for it too.

I also know of lawyers, same political party as those morning show nimrods, who think sitting in front of a microphone whining about current events isn't a job either.

[fj1200]

It's ot that Republicans are "mocking" public service. It is that they are laughing at Obama claiming he was doing anything for the community at all beyond working for the racist organization ACORN fraudulently adding dead people to the democrap voter rolls and padding his future with the dem party. When you call THAT "community service" it's too much of a stretch for even the most skilled liar. Yever wonder why Barry can not be any more specific about what he did beyond "community organizer"?

[Fabienne]

If you call ACORN racist, I suspect that pretty much defines you as a racist. Meanwhile, who's Barry? You do know Goldwater is dead, don't you?

[geobushono]

Obama was one of the 'thousand points of light ' that the repugs used to sell as the highest virtue

"I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good. We will work hand in hand, encouraging, sometimes leading, sometimes being led, rewarding. We will work on this in the White House, in the Cabinet agencies. I will go to the people and the programs that are the brighter points of light, and I will ask every member of my government to become involved. The old ideas are new again because they are not old, they are timeless: duty, sacrifice, commitment, and a patriotism that finds its expression in taking part and pitching in. "
-President George Bush-The Elder
INAUGURAL ADDRESS / jAN 20, 1989

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/bush.htm

[idest]

No, I don't wonder about that. Probably because I take time to read the articles before commenting on them, to avoid looking like an ignoramus. Let me reprint for you what Obama did as a community organizer:

"His job was to help empower residents to win improved playgrounds, after-school programs, job training, housing, and other concerns affecting a neighborhood hurt by large-scale layoffs from the nearby steel mills and neglect by banks, retail stores and the local government. He knocked on doors and talked to people in their kitchens, living rooms and churches about the problems they faced and why they needed to get involved to improve their communities."

[bwilder]

Thanks so much for writing this piece. Watching the speeches this week was painful for
me and hearing Giuliani and then Palin mock community service were jaw-dropping moments.
I wanted to change the channel but feel it's my civic duty as a voter to listen to all sides and
arm myself with accurate info. Of course very little said in St.Paul was accurate. I'm using
the lies and mean-spirited rhetoric to make the case for candidates Obama and Biden.

The GOP literally bit the hands that feed them this week and while they may have picked
up some zealot votes from the religious right, they lost many more of the seeing voters they
should have been targeting. It just proves how ignorant and out of touch they really are.

Donate. Volunteer. Vote
www.Obama08.com

[mgloraine]

Since so many big-name Republicans saw fit to deride community organizers in such a prominent public setting, the implication is that they do not need to employ or support any community organizers working on their own behalf. The natural affiliation of church groups to community organizing would suggest that the RNC chucklefest was probably a slap in the face to the religious right and their supposedly grass-roots, populist base. At any rate, they are certainly not encouraging a new wave of community organizers to take up the Republican banner and go knocking on doors. What for? So party bosses can make snide remarks to the world about how their efforts amount to "Nothing. Nada."?

It may be that they have abandoned the notion of competing with others at community organizing. It is probably more efficient for them to oppose community organizers with suppression tactics (like DoJ's targeted roll purges and voter caging), phony lawsuits and similar countermeasures. It makes sense that the "bullies of the block" can't out-perform community organizers doing good work for others. Building things is difficult, costly, and time-consuming. So they resort to the standard tactics of bullies everywhere: if they can't take what you've got and keep it for themselves, then they'll settle for wrecking it so that no one can have it. Tearing things down is a lot easier, cheaper, and faster.

[newpantaloons]

This is an excellent answer to the snide, sarcastic, shrill and uncalled for attacks on community organizers in this nation. Please, please do not let this issue die. I am beginning to hate all Republicans with the power of a thousand white-hot suns! What a nasty, corrupt bunch of people they have turned into. All this talk about 'values' and 'morals' are just a cover-up for being a cadre of greedy, fascist b*stards! Shame! Shame on them all!

All community organizations in this country need to answer these attacks with truth and compassion. But, of course the Republicans wouldn't understand that, now would they?

[tompoe]

Actually, there are several hundreds of thousands of community organizers in our country. Add in all those who actively help their neighbors by advocating their support and encouragement, and we're talking about millions of community organizers that truly were spit on by the Republicans at their convention. Community organizers look exactly like the persons one sees attending a protest march. Community organizers look exactly like the persons that would attend a protest march, if they could. In our country, the need to keep a job that lets them survive from paycheck to paycheck prohibits community organizers from overtly demonstrating their skills. The next time you see a Republican, let them know how you feel about spit.

[jessica23667]

This essay is spot on. I hope the MSM picks up on this story. Anyone who has ever participated in community service should be livid. To hear the GOP mock someone helping out the community and standing up for the little guy is not only an out of line attack against Obama but insults all community organizers and volunteers throughout the country.

[hypnotoad72]

Or even America, as a whole.

[realpolitic]

The modern day Republican is so confused and has little but contempt for ordinary Americans. Many at the Republican convention held signs saying "serivce". Then the speakers spent the evening condemning Obama's service and the work done by community organizations. Many of the rubes at the RNC do not realize that in a large city a community organizztion is one of the only means to affect change at City Hall and get better services. Republicans can not mock ordinary people and grass roots organizations and then claim they want change. The only change they want is the status quo and more tax breaks for the wealthy. Watching them is like going to the museum to look at the dinosaurs.

[HBeachbum]

Ms. Palin no more made fun of all community organizers that the Left has of all small town mayors. Both sides each are pointing at one individual ... not the entire group.

[idest]

Excuse me, could you stop peddling your GOP lies on this website? Provide one quote where any major political figure on the left said that small town mayors have no responsibilities.

[apoyo]

Isn't the Red Cross community organizing?

Maybe the GOP's form of community service is throwing a dollar by a homeless person.

[Veggee]

What the heck were they thinking? They want to replace hope with sarcasm. They are running a tex book terrible campaign. But they still enjoy a great deal of support. Why? Now they want to make the election about personality rather than issues, and they are brave enough to say that? What the H is that about? I work with a lot of intelligent people who make sound reasoned judgements, but when it comes to politics they endorse illogical sarcastic and inaccurate characterizations. We need a change, and we must make it happen.

[Dynamohum]

Yes and at the RNC they made it a point during primetime and after the republican minions forced the issue that not since "Lyndon Johnson" had a sitting President not attended their convention, like Bush did this time. Was that a subconscious or blatently conscious attempt to obsolve them of the responsbility and accountability of their actions as a party?