THE SARAH PALIN BACKLASH IS ON: Community organizers are livid

*Numerous lines in Gov. Sarah Palin's speech at the GOP convention Wednesday night have been exposed as lies by various media outlets. But one of her quips struck a nerve that has galvanized grassroots organizations across the country to respond en masse.


During the convention on Wednesday, the former mayor of Wasilla (population 7,000) took a jab at Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama with the line: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.”


Her sentiments were reinforced in two earlier speeches on the convention floor Wednesday in St. Paul.


• Former Governor George Pataki said: “[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.”

• Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said: “On the other hand, you have a resume from a gifted man with an Ivy League education. He worked as a community organizer. What? [Laughter]…I said, OK, OK, maybe this is the first problem on the resume.”


In the wee hours of the following morning, Obama's campaign sent an e-mail to supporters objecting – among other things – to the attacks against community organizers. It read:

Let's clarify something for them right now.


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


And it's no surprise that, after eight years of George Bush, millions of people have found that by coming together in their local communities they can change the course of history. That promise is what our campaign has been about from the beginning.


Throughout our history, ordinary people have made good on America's promise by organizing for change from the bottom up. Community organizing is the foundation of the civil rights movement, the women's suffrage movement, labor rights, and the 40-hour workweek. And it's happening today in church basements and community centers and living rooms across America.


Also on Thursday, a coalition of community organizers across the country launched the Web site OrganizersFightBack. (http://organizersfightback.wordpress.com) to demand an apology from Gov. Palin and to "defend their work organizing Americans who have been left behind by unemployment, lack of health insurance and the national housing crisis."


• “Community organizers work in neighborhoods that have been hit hardest by the failing economy,” said John Raskin, founder of Community Organizers of America and a community organizer on the West Side of Manhattan. “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. 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.”

• David Gonzalez of the New York Times has posted a column, Bronx Organizers React to G.O.P. Punchlines, featuring the work of two past local community organizers still active in the neighborhoods.

• Also, this entry on the Huffington Post features the Center for Community Change's official response to the remarks.