GOP Attacks on Community Organizers Provoke Media Backlash

By: Peter Dreier and David Moberg When Republican leaders at their St. Paul convention belittled Senator Barack Obama's early work as a community organizer, they probably expected a modest push back on behalf of organizers, not a figurative fish in the face from a wildlife journalist.

But in a column on Sept. 14, titled "Community Organizing Changed Fishery," John Corrigan, the fishing writer for the Concord Monitor, explained that "anybody who has caught a fish at Sewalls Falls over the last two decades has witnessed the value of community organizing. Without the efforts of members of Trout Unlimited (TU), the New Hampshire Wildlife Federation and other grassroots recreational and conservation organizations, one of Concord's most prized assets would be a flatwater reservoir backed up behind a hydroelectric dam."

Fisher's essay was one of many columns, articles, blog comments, editorials, letters-to-the-editor and other reactions to the Republican Party's attack on community organizing.

At the St. Paul confab, former New York Gov. George Pataki had sneered, "[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 New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani mocked, "He worked as a community organizer. What? Maybe this is the first problem on the r?sum?." In her speech accepting the VP nomination, Gov. Sarah Palin said, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities."

The following Sunday (September 14), on "Meet the Press," Giuliani added to the attack by claiming - wrongly - that "the group that recruited [Obama] was a Saul Alinsky group that has all kinds of questions with regard to their outlook on the economy, their outlook on capitalism." Giuliani then tried to link Obama to what he called "a very core Saul Alinsky kind of almost socialist notion that [government] should be used for redistribution of wealth." (Note: Many consider Alinsky a founder of modern community organizing. The group that recruited Obama , the Developing Communities Project on Chicago's south side, was not affiliated with the Alinsky-founded Industrial Areas Foundation, but with the Gamaliel Foundation, a network of church-based groups).

The Republicans had expected that their orchestrated attack on Barack Obama's community organizing efforts in Chicago would link the Democratic candidate in Americans' minds with inner cities, the poor, racial minorities, troublemakers and radicals. At the same time, they wanted to demean -- and portray as strange and exotic -- Obama's decision to work on behalf of American working families facing tough times, a choice at odds with the GOP portrayal of Obama as part of an elite insensitive to the concerns of most voters.

But, unwittingly, the attacks have helped to introduce Americans to the relatively invisible work of the organizers who get paid to help millions of people improve their families and communities through grassroots activism.

The nasty remarks at the convention triggered a blizzard of newspaper articles and editorials, radio talk show discussions, emails and blogosphere commentary. Since then, stories about and columns by community organizers have multiplied--describing, explaining, defending and criticizing what organizers do and the role of community organizing in American life. Activists with various community organizing networks -- including the Center for Community Change (http://www.communitychange.org), DART (http://www.thedartcenter.org), PICO (http://www.piconetwork.org), and ACORN (http://www.acorn.org) -- issued statements explaining the importance of community organizing, reminding Giuliani that he was often the target of organizing groups, and chastising Palin, a former PTA volunteer, for denigrating the millions of community volunteers in urban, rural and suburban areas of the country.

So, thanks to the Republicans, for the first time in memory, America is having a national conversation about community organizing

Among the many reactions was an op-ed column by Deepak Bhargava (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/opinion/14bhargava.html), head of the Center for Community Change, that appeared in the September 13 edition of The New York Times under the headline "Organizing Principles." Bhargava focused on the work of Hugh Espey, an organizer with Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. Bhargava wrote: "On a typical day, he might help low-income residents of Des Moines organize to keep a neighborhood grocery store open or work with family farmers to persuade a state agency to deny a permit for a proposed factory farm, or meet with Mexican families in Marshalltown about ways to advance immigration reform. He brings various constituencies together to find common ground, build relationships and support each others causes."

Other organizers and their supporters have recently contributed op-ed columns in papers across the country.

These included Boston organizer Lew Finfer in Newsday, Seattle Urban League CEO James Kelly and organizer Tony Lee in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Syracuse organizer Andres Dae Keun Kwon in the Syracuse Post-Standard, Little Rock organizer Bill Kopsky in the Arkansas Times, University of Minnesota professor and activist Harry Boyte in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, labor lawyer and writer Tom Geoghegan, ("Hey Sarah - Organize This") at Slate.com; Savannah writer Geveryl Robinson in the Savannah Morning News; activist Kathy Olguin in the San Bernadino Sun, El Paso attorney Ouisa D. Davis in the El Paso Times, San Diego activists Danyrea Hassan-Hall and Rosa Gutierrez in the Union Tribune, Texas union activist Ed Sills in the Houston Chronicle, and Michael Rosenfeld in the Desert Sun in Palm Springs, California.

Regular newspaper columnists from around the nation weighed in, too, from USA Today to the Colorado Springs Gazette.

The Republican remarks so offended Time magazine columnist Joe Klein, author of several books on American politics, that he penned "What a Community Organizer Does" on Sept. 4, which generated hundreds of reader comments.

Conservative writers and publications defended the GOP chorus. Michael Barone wrote a column "Why Should Palin and Voters Be Reverent Toward Obama's Community Organizing?" for the September 8 issue of U.S. News & World Report. The Weekly Standard's Dean Barnett wrote on September 5, that "the community organizer barb isn't aimed at the vast population of hard-working and dedicated community organizers who are bravely organizing communities even as we speak. The barbs are aimed at Barack Obama himself." The National Review's Bryan York devoted his September 8 column to the question "What Did Obama Do as a Community Organizer? And is it Really a Qualification to be President?"

To help readers understand the controversy, many publications interviewed organizers and their critics. Newsweek, for example, published an interview with Jerry Kellman, who recruited Obama to his organizing job in Chicago in the early 1980s. The piece, called "Service Changes People's Character, " ran on September 5. New York Times reporter David Gonazales interviewed organizers for an article ("Bronx Organizers React to G.O.P. Punch Lines") on September 4.

Several newspapers published editorials chastising the Republicans for their mocking attacks on community organizing. Among them was the Boston Globe ("Urban Organizer, Ha Ha Ha!," September 7) and the Las Vegas Sun ("Heart of a Country," September 12), which reminded readers that "community organizers give of themselves every day to improve peoples lives."

These and many other columns, articles and editorials--as well as many radio and TV stories--sparked thousands of letters to the editor and blog comments. It also encouraged many to open their wallets.

Within hours of the convention attacks, Obama released a statement and a fund-raising appeal, challenging the Republicans who "mocked, dismissed, and actually laughed out loud at Americans who engage in community service and organizing." 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." Following the GOP convention, contributions to the Obama campaign spiraled.

The storm of articles, columns and protest forced John McCain to backpedal -- but only after his GOP colleagues had already launched their grenades "Of course I respect community organizers," McCain, said at a forum at Columbia University on September 11, in response to a question about whether he agreed with the attacks on organizers at the convention. "Of course I respect people who serve their communities. Senator Obama's service in that area is outstanding."

COMING NEXT: PART II?Community Organizing, Past and Present

Peter Dreier teaches political science, and directs the Urban & Environmental Policy program, at Occidental College in Los Angeles. David Moberg is senior editor at In These Times.