oh. hell. no.

[likeawoman]

(hattip to ramaba, even though I watched the speech and got the e-mail, her post inspired me to post as well and hattip to unusualmusic for the awesome macro to ice the cake)



from an Obama campaign response to GOP convention speeches by 9iu11ani and Palin:

"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.

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.

Meanwhile, we still haven't gotten a single idea during the entire Republican convention about the economy and how to lift a middle class so harmed by the Bush-McCain policies."

my thoughts, as spewed all over ramaba's journal because she was the first unfortunate soul on my f-list to blog about it and, clearly, I was still pissed from last night:

funny how republicans are all too happy to rely on community organizers to do all the work that they think is not the government's job, and then mock them for doing said work as though it doesn't matter.

newsflash, you rich, smug, heartless assholes, if you don't have tax funded programs and you don't have community organizations, what you do have is poor people dying in the streets, children going without their most basic needs and a delightfully Dickensian hell to live in.

and I don't know a single community organizer that doesn't work at least 60 hours a week, at all times of day and week, for a hell of a lot less pay than they'd be making exploiting their degrees in the private sector. community organizers are what politicians are supposed to be: public servants with a strong sense of sacrifice for the greater good.

I wish I could kick Sarah Palin in her shins. Obama's community organization experience is one of the strongest things in his favor, as far as I'm concerned. it shows a dedication, a restrained ambition, a focus, that you don't typically see in the trust funded, over groomed, running since birth assholes that we typically get to choose from.

I just really don't think it's cute or funny to openly mock the people who fill the gaps that these assholes create. what I do think is that it, again, at a time when I'm guessing the demand for community organizations will be growing significantly, highlights how completely out of touch, pampered and generally apathetic to the needs of us plebes, this party is. they think it's funny that we organize. they think it's a game. they think there are no responsibilities that community organizers are held to, nevermind that an overwhelming sense of responsibility, to humanity, is, in my experience, what makes a community organizer to begin with. it is organizers that hold a community together when the government and the corporations have thrown up their hands and moved on to greener pastures. it is organizers who actually do the work, while politicians simply point to the failings and roll on to the next campaign talking point.

I cannot say how mad it makes me to hear these assholes, these "we should be able to depend on private charity and religious charity (as long as it's not being run by some commie priest) to support the needy among us" assholes, impugn the people who keep the country from falling apart completely. they should feel lucky; I can't imagine what this country would be like if people didn't have healthy community outlets into which they can channel their dissatisfaction, need, and frustration.

I'm not saying that organizers are saints, or that there aren't issues that need to be addressed, but outright mockery of the only thing that I can see keeping this country from collapsing altogether is completely and totally out of line and just demostrates, once again, how completely out of touch with this country the GOP really is.