I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Sarah Palin may have shown last night that she was chosen as Vice Presidential running mate to John McCain primarily for her penchant for mockery. Because next to personal descriptions of herself and her family, that’s what she did in her address to the Republican National Convention, with a light dose of policy here and there.
I could write off most of it as just a bunch of politicking without much substance, and get a kick out of her obvious ability to deliver a line. But then she got to her mockery of community organizing, and I all of a sudden realized I actually was finding out something about Sarah Palin.
Community organizing, at its most basic level, is about bringing ordinary people together so that they can have more power to make their voices heard. Heard by decision makers, that is.
Palin, through her disparagement, is telling us that she’s been the kind of elected official who ignores or even opposes the work of grassroots community groups. Because I simply refuse to believe there are no community organizers in Alaska.
Which means that she would most likely have ignored or opposed the work of those who were in the trenches of community organizing work leading to some of the United States most seminal social change movements.
Does Sarah Palin think that African American’s got rid of brutal Jim Crow laws because all of a sudden white people had a light bulb go on?
Does she think the eight hour work day came into being because employers all of a sudden felt guilty?
Does she really think she gets to vote, as a white woman, because white men all of a sudden thought it was only fair?
And what about the everyday efforts that happen in communities across America today to make our communities a better place? Such as neighborhoods fighting to clean up toxic waste sites in their back yards? Or efforts to expand health care to low-income people? Or to end domestic violence? Or efforts to shift our country to a greener future through creating renewable energy sources?
All of these efforts depend on a lot of people, mainly anonymous people when it comes to the history books, who spend countless hours organizing their communities. They’re community organizers.
And John McCain would have us believe a person who doesn’t value this community work is a good elected official? That such a person could be President?
From the beginning of his campaign, Barack Obama has highlighted his time spent as a community organizer prominently. He could instead highlight his background as president of the Harvard Law Review and as a professor of constitutional law. But he doesn’t. I like to think this is because he’s most proud of his background as an organizer. It’s most certainly something that makes me respect him.
Sarah Palin, plus Rudy Guiliani and the rest of that gleeful Republican crowd joining in the mockery last night, might want to examine their own history and look around their own communities a little more closely before parading their ignorance for the entire world to see.
