Power to the Community Organizers!

#236, October 23, 2008

Do you have a favorite Palinism, defined (by me) as a word or phrase or sentence fragment uttered by our soon-to-be-forgotten Republican Vice-Presidential candidate? Apologies, die-hard Republicans, I think Ms. P will be remembered as the last cough in the McCain candidacy’s coffin. I just read an editorial from the largest paper in the reddest of red states, the Salt Lake City Tribune. What tipped the Trib in favor of Obama? McCain’s choice of running mates. I’d feel sorry for out-of-her-league Sarah but for her relentless idiotic attacks on irrelevant fragments of Obama’s history. Her stump speeches are feeding fear of the “other”, the ugliest aspect of the human psyche. Who wants this?

My favorite Palinism is not her lame claim to foreign policy experience, or the Katie Couric interview “sentence to nowhere”. No, it was scripted, part of her acceptance speech at the RNC: the sarcastic comment about Obama’s history as a “community organizer”. A community organizer, we are invited to wonder… what is that, anyway? Someone who passes out the sheet music at Kumbayah sing-alongs? A socialist? A*communist*…?

Maybe that “community organizer” slur bothered me because I am the parent of a community organizer for a land preservation non-profit in Utah. She’s building alliances between environmentalists and the native rural folks whose ranching way of life is threatened illegal ORV use and the drilling, mining, and timbering that often follow-- fighting for the preservation of human communities and the natural communities on which they depend. (This daughter emailed me a picture of a button: “Attention Sarah Palin: Jesus Christ was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor.”)

Look, if you want to know what an Obama-style community organizer does, read Obama’s biography, “Dreams From My Father.” You may be surprised, as I was, by the depth of his insight about traditional community values like self reliance, and how they have been consistently undermined by colonialism, communist and capitalist alike. It makes you think… most people in foreign countries who protest US policies probably don’t “hate America” any more then the American middle class victims of the current financial meltdown, any more than the union members who battled the hired goons of the Robber Barons a century ago.

Obama’s work in Chicago was with and on behalf of black people who didn’t have a lot – of jobs, health care, decent housing, and, especially, the political power to do anything about it. Whether you consider them oppressed or just victims of their own shattered culture, they needed someone to transform the energy of their frustration and anger into positive action. Obama, and countless others like him all over the world, paid and unpaid, have brought people together to solve their problems. And often it means taking on a status quo which profits from their exploitation.

And that’s what galls me the most about Palin’s dissing of community organizers: it stinks of patriarchy, putting supreme value on an unquestioning obedience to the King, the Cardinal, or the CEO. America was born of a rejection of patriarchy; Jefferson and his colleagues made it clear that it’s our democratic duty to question authority, and cast it aside should it become corrupt. In these days, it’s not enough to vote twice every two years. Greed and ignorance have deep roots in every corner of our society, and they rely on apathy and denial to keep them nourished (e.g. think how corporate lobbyists have written the Bush administration’s toxic energy policy year after year.) The job of the community organizer is to dispel apathy and denial with inspiration and hope, and, where necessary, use people-power to push back the money power that sustains a parasitic authority. That means getting your neighbors to put time into grassroots politics and volunteer community service.

Yes, it’s a mess out there, but don’t lose hope. Start where you are, here and now. Last Friday, at the wonderful Sesquicentennial time capsule event at the Petaluma Museum, I was immersed among the people of my Community. That night, I dreamed I saw the earth from space, and a vast and horrible hurricane covered half the planet. But there, safe in the cyclone’s calm eye, was my home town.