Community Communications

The Lefty blogs are on fire with the counterattack meme to the GOP's savaging of "community organizers" last night in St. Paul. Over at Hullabaloo, dday leads the way:

Let's see if the media will react to a Democratic hissy fit. Because there's ample opportunity. Roland Martin laid this out immediately. Community organizers, which were part of George H.W. Bush's thousand points of light, provide comfort, help save jobs, create opportunity. In a nation ripped asunder by right-wing policies, they are often the last line of defense. Leaders of this nation like Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Susan B. Anthony, even Thomas Paine and Sam Adams, were community organizers. As this fellow writes today, Jesus was a community organizer and Pilate was a governor.

In the largely white confines of the Republican National Convention, the phrase is a slur, like "ghetto hustler," but lots and lots of people today derive great benefit from community groups, including church groups, and the help they provide ordinary people. Most Americans live in metropolitan areas and actually have experienced the value of community organizing in their lives. Think bake sale.

The Obama campaign is going to try and ramp this up, they've already done so in an email to supporters:

I wasn't planning on sending you something tonight. But if you saw what I saw from the Republican convention, you know that it demands a response.

I saw John McCain's attack squad of negative, cynical politicians. They lied about Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and they attacked you for being a part of this campaign.

But worst of all -- and this deserves to be noted -- they insulted the very idea that ordinary people have a role to play in our political process.

You know that despite what John McCain and his attack squad say, everyday people have the power to build something extraordinary when we come together. Make a donation of $5 or more right now to remind them.

Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed.

Let's clarify something for them right now.

Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.

Absolutely.
In summation:

1. Community organizer is being used as a pejorative for "black hustler".
2. The GOP has ruined communities with job losses, infrastructure cuts, and endless wars and don't want to spend the money to help them.
3. Having people take pride and improve their communities without government help would seem to be something the GOP would be happy to encourage, but no.
   
4. The Democrats can now take a long tradition of community activism and beat the crap out of the GOP with it.

In other words, it's time to get to work. The GOP made some fatal errors last night, and it's time to strike back. As I've seen repeated today, The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King was a community organizer of the first order, and look what he was able to achieve.

So let's get organized.