Showing posts with label Community Organizer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Community Organizer. Show all posts

Friday, September 12, 2008

Mindless Moronic Mocking Mastodons

From Why do Republicans mock "community organizer" role? by Michael Landauer:

I really don't understand the mocking of Obama for being a community organizer as a young man.

Giuliani last night: "On the other hand, you have a resume from a gifted man with an Ivy League education. He worked as a community organizer. What? He worked -- I said -- I said, OK, OK, maybe this is the first problem on the resume."

Palin last night: I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities.

Now, the truth is that, starting at age 23, Obama ran a faith-based charity called the Developing Communities Project.

It was made up of eight Catholic parishes when he got there and had one staff member. He was its director, meaning he was in charge. He made decisions about it, including staffing, budgets, etc. And when he left in 1988 to go to law school, he had grown its budget from $70,000 to $400,000, its staff from 1 to 13 people. More important, he created a job training program for this community and a college prep tutoring program.
Read the rest here.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Conservative Compassion Hits Community Organizers

From GOP Mocks Public Service by Peter Dreier & John Atlas:

"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."
From Commentary: GOP shouldn't knock community organizers by Roland Martin:
At a time when Americans are losing their homes to foreclosure, folks are trying to get by after layoffs, people are struggling with lack of healthcare, and we're facing pressing environmental issues, it's ludicrous to slam the little man and woman who isn't asking the government for handouts, but is doing what they can to make their neighborhood and city better.
From GOP Thinks Organizing In Your Community Is Worthless by Christy Hardin Smith:
Lost your job and you need a hand with the utility bills or some food from the local church pantry? Suck it up, America, because the folks who used to extend a hand to those in need don't count in Republican land. That "do unto others" crap has to stop, and Jesus was clearly just a rabble-rousing, do-gooder. Loaves, fishes, feeding the multitudes? Hogwash.

Your neighborhood watch program, to help supplement the police force whose budget keeps getting cut under the Bush Administration? Well, you don't deserve a safe neighborhood and your efforts are useless anyway.

Cleaning up a local riverbed or a walking trail with your kid's scout troop? Republicans think you are a loser.

Working with a job training or literacy program to help folks move from welfare to work? Republicans think your efforts deserve ridicule. Promoting a spay and neuter program at your local animal shelter? Republicans are laughing at you. Volunteer at your church pantry to help the least of these? Republicans are mocking you.

Country first? Only if you live in Republican country where they come first and the rest of us should take whatever they choose to trickle down on us.