« What the white man means when he says "Ghetto" | Main | Good question » When did "community organizing" become communism?04 Sep 2008 12:00 pm
I agree with a lot of the commenters in the speech thread. I don't quite get this. It's something Obama did, like, fifteen years ago. Why is it considered this un-American abomination? Isn't electoral politics, essentially, just "community organizing?" Is the basic idea at work here whatever you opponent does is alien, and whatever you do is proper? What are we going to go after next? Is eating at McDonanald's five days a week "American?" Is having your kids play soccer, French? I'd love a list of practices that automatically make your American citizenship suspect. Or is it simply anything Democrats do? Where does this go? "Only merlot-sipping Democrats actually inhale oxygen. Real Americans hold their breath until they turn blue and pass out..."
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Welcome to the next theater in the culture war. Hello to all that, indeed.
The latest dog whistle for racists.
I was puzzled by the attack on "community organizing" in the speech as well. I think they attack it because it sounds ambiguous, unlike Mayor, which you can say, "runs a town" (of less than 9,000). It's a position that, at its best, requires being more in touch with people's needs and wants better than most political positions; however, since it is contingent upon the needs of individual communities, it's a position that requires nuance and depth to understand. A friend of mine who organizes out in California often tells a story about how when he first started organizing he went into the community and when he spoke with people the first thing the majority of them mentioned was a desire for sidewalks. "Sidewalks" sounds unimpressive, but they helped transorm a community in which most people walked to work. Sidewalks have since led to other issues. Thus, the term "community organizer" becomes hard to pinpoint even though it requires understanding the needs of groups of people in a much more intimate way than most government positions allow.
Ta-Nehisi - A reminder. This is classic Rove. The base is most excited when they are at war...and I don't mean the war on terror. They get most excited for the war on liberals. Questions about actual governance, policy, political nuance...this kind of stuff puts their people to sleep. You can expect more of the same, non-stop, for the next two months. I suggest we don't try to re-dissect this stuff and just focus on the issues at hand. You got "Bomb, bomb Iran" and "The Iraq war was God's Will" on the Republican ticket.
The Republican party MO this year seem to be to simply go for punchlines and clap each other on the back for delivering clever zingers.
Watching this whole convention, I feel like I'm watching some alien humanoids in an aquarium, who have no relation to the world I live in, celebrating God knows what.
I mean, no attempt to account for the last 8 years? None? They're talking as if Democrats have been running things for 8 years. Someone needs to inform them that they're the incumbent party.
VERY well said Chris,
I couldn't agree more. I think this all serves a secondary Rovian tactic which is to get the other side all twisted up trying to defend or counter while they cruise to an election. Remember how in 2004 we didn't find out until the first wednesday in November what the election was really 'about'? THAT was Rove's rope a dope. Not this time...not this time.
Is the basic idea at work here whatever you opponent does is alien, and whatever you do is proper?
Yes.
I'd love a list of practices that automatically make your American citizenship suspect.
Speaking a foreign language, though square one Mexican is acceptable if you live in a southern border state.
Praising anything whatsoever from Europe. Or any foreign country, really, except possibly Israel.
Associating with a secessionist party
Consuming wine, arugula, or quiche.
Drinking Starbucks coffee if engaged in by Democrats.
As Chris says, this election the Republicans are doubling down on culture wars and compelling personal narrative. Issues? What is this party platform of which you speak? Let me tell you what, for 5 1/2 years John McCain didn't have a platform, or even a chair. It'd be a good idea for Dems not to cooperate with this framing of the election--you can win with issues, so fight on issues (albeit punchily framed ones). Don't get into whose personal narrative is compellingerer.
As a Canadian, I'd just like to point out that hockey is sort of *our* thing, which makes it rather foreign if you aren't Canadian...
Or is it simply anything Democrats do?
Yes.
I'll give the Obama detractors the benefit of the doubt and provide a generous interpretation of their (like Giuliani's) mockery of community organizing.
From a conservative point of view, the community is commonly thought of as small, local, the place where one grows up. Its not the only community, but its just one's own, and fits into a patchwork of thousands of other communities in the US.
These communities don't need an organizer or need to be organized. They're a given, and they have a history behind them which bolsters its identity (some of it based on exclusion/inclusion of newcomers & "oldcomers" like blacks). They're the result of private networks (families or individuals) joining together, and all of this is done over long stretches of time.
Communities need only political representation, like a township warden, or mayor or maybe a State Rep.
Nobody is a "community organizer" since everybody who's in the community does some part - but not all - of organizing the community's life: organizing the little league baseball, the Mainline/Evangelical/Catholic annual fair, PTA, etc...
Basically, the different parts (individuals, families, associations) of the community do the organizing. Not one person only.
Thus for a someone to say "I was a community organizer" is a laughable pretention for a conservative. (Did Obama ever say that anyway? Doubt it)
In my opinion, the community organizing line wasn't derided for "unAmerican-ness" but rather for its perceived ludicrous redundancy.
varneer is absoultely correct.
always remember that republicans are geniuses with this type of stuff. they don't make this kind of attack without some sort of nefarious reason.
it is code for organizing the jigaboos. (excuse my flippant reference, but i think the term just fits.)
community=black community.
organizer=riling up the natives.
there is certainly a whiff of rove to this, but i think it harkens back to '68 and sprio agnew and richard nixon and the law and order theme that they exploited all the way to the white house.
"When did "community organizing" become communism?"
When the Democratic nominee for President did it, and the Republican nominee didn't, of course. Just like the time that caring for environment became anti-American. Gore cared, Bush didn't, so off to Berkeley with you. Of course now that McCain actually embraces at least a little bit of environmental concerns, Teddy Roosevelt's face is plastered all over the convention. You are now free to care about the wilderness, citizen!
If McCain had never gone bowling, they'd try to tar that as elitist or un-American, too.
Doubling down...precisely. What I just emailed to a buddy: "just saying “change” doesn’t mean much when you just doubled down on everything that Bush/Cheney stand for last night"
I'm confused, weren't they community organizers on Monday? Or was that just the service placards they held above their heads?
If Americans fall for this crap again, it may be too late for a correction. Don't fall for the old okey doke.
Be well, CF
I'd love a list of practices that automatically make your American citizenship suspect. Or is it simply anything Democrats do
I think you know the answer.
And it is not things that Democrats do, it at least includes anything that white people don't regularly do.
I don't think they were saying "community organizing" was foreign or leftist, they were mocking it because it sounds made up and unimpressive. That may have been a decent tactic a few weeks ago, but the Democrats did a pretty good job at their convention of explaining what Obama did as a community organizer, so this just sounded like they were mocking him for the sake of mocking him. Palin would've been better off copying Rudy's criticism of Obama's "present" votes.
My question is, why doesn't the press say he worked for a PIRG. It's a well known national organization, that people can easily look into and see what kind of stuff they do. Community organizer is an utterly meaningless phrase, or rather, like change, something people simply attach their own meaning to.
Well, look, the (not usually correct) sense she's trying to tap is the (unfair but not always so) sense that the "community organizer" is somebody who well, sort of doesn't really have a "real" job or _do_ anything.
Living in Berkeley, year after year, I'd vote in the local elections. And under every candidate's name in the pre-election descriptive flyer was a little decription of his current job: "Landlord," "Teacher," "Assemblyman," whatever. And I remember in 2002 one of my coworkers -- one of those guys who's pretty liberal anywhere in the country except Berkeley and Cambridge, where he'd lived his whole adult life (much like me, I suppose) coming in and saying, "Didja see the Green slate? They all have jobs!" And it was true. That year all of the Green candidates pretty much had a job title there. Most every other year, that line always said, "Activist." So I voted solid Green that year just to do my bit to sort of encourage them to keep on nominating people who could, y'know, hold down a 9-to-5 job, buy a suit, comb their hair, that kind of thing. And that's what they're hitting on when they hit "community organizer," which I could easily see filling in for "Activist."
Not that that's would be a sensible characterization of HLS grad Barack Obama: I'm just sayin', that's what it is.
Community organising means registering black people to vote, and because ig'nant negroes automatically vote democrat (I'm assuming malt liquor is handed out at union meetings or something) that's practically cheating!
On an unrelated note I'd like to present a lifetime achievement award for legitimizing overt statements of what even the GOP would only imply to Hillary Rodham Clinton for her work in the 2008 primary.
‘When did "community organizing" become communism?’
The ‘communist’ label is toxic in our society, but I humbly suggest that it is misguided for progressives to reinforce the toxicity.
If the discussion is about communism, particularly the former USSR under Stalin, it’s fair to raise repression, blunders, etc. But since repression and blunders are not unique to communism, using ‘communist’ as a shorthand for these bad things is gratuitous, and undermines communism’s positive goals - equality, public welfare, universal rights - goals which are opposed by capitalism, nationalism and the major religions.
Liberals shouldn’t bash communists for the same reason that Vichy democrats shouldn’t bash liberals: the right wing is never placated, but progressive objectives are jeopardized.
Isn't it actually code for, "He gave drugs to black folk"?
T-N C,
Community organizing isn't communism, but the sort of community organizing Obama did has its roots in the leftist street agitation pioneered by Saul Alinsky: you go in, get the community riled up about something, and then channel their anger and perceived self-interest into helping you achieve a goal you have in mind.
Think of how odd that must sound to the residents of a small town like Palin's. Community organizing implies a failure of community self-reliance as well as a failure of politics: if the members of the Chicago community Obama organized couldn't solve their problems themselves, then why weren't their elected representatives able to solve it? When Sarah Palin wanted to see changes in her community, she didn't rely on an outside community organizer like Obama, she joined the PTA, and then ran for city council, etc.
Don't forget -- it was just a couple of months ago that Fox News was referring to it as "street organizing." This was also about the time that they were asking about the "terrorist fist jab," and the blogs were all a-twitter with rumors of the "whitey" tape. (Thanks again for that, Larry.)
"Community organizing" as the GOP is using it now is a dog-whistle meant to fan the perception that Barack and Michelle are angry Black radicals, just like the New Yorker said they were.
The only really surprising thing about the speeches last night is that they didn't mention Reverend Wright or Bill Ayers. (Or did I miss that part?)
Ack! T-N, my comment got eaten again.
I wanted you to react to Roland Martin on CNN. Dude is pissed.
Both billmon and booman think it was a swipe at black people, and I think that's where Martin is coming from as well.
I've been ranting about this all morning. Republicans have been talking for years about how individuals and communities need to take responsibility for themselves. So what does Obama do? He gets together (organizes) a bunch of people in a community to help them make things better. The south side of Chicago was not exactly pretty in the late 80s/early 90s - high crime rates, high unemployment after the industrial jobs left, etc. But the community came together and helped turn things around, just like Republicans encouraged them to do for years.
This is nearly as bad as the Republican flip-flop on teen pregnancy. Wasn't that like the worst thing in the world a teen could do (other than, possibly, having an abortion)? Yet, suddenly it's the best thing you could do.
Seriously - is it opposite day? Did I wake up in Bizarro world?
I've noted the repeated slams on "community organizing" for a month or so now. One particularly clever commenter stated that he was terrified of Obama because he was an "Alinskyite." This is interesting, since I had no idea Saul Alinsky and "Reveille" or "Rules for Radicals" were so frigging terrifying to the Right. I mean, seriously, was Alinsky all that radical? He honed his methods in the Roosevelt administration, for crying out loud. He was interested in change, not revolution.
It's not communism. It's race. Look at Lee Atwater's famous lines about how you say the N-word without saying the N-word.
Then look at the points in the speeches -- especially Rudy's -- where he says it. The crowd reacts like they've been able to call Obama a N-word and get away with it, teehee.
community organizer=socialism=power to the powerless=the poor=the servant class=the slave class=the alternate fantasy where the republican zealoids have their mansions.
america is based upon a profound contradiction: darwinian capitalism and democracy. the current republican party represents the former, the democrats, the later. someday, democracy will trump darwinian capitalism, and we can live happily ever after.
adin
Isn't running the PTA fundamentally a form of community organizing?
I think the Lee Atwater comment earlier on was spot-on.
I work as a community organizer in rural communities. The whole purpose is to work together to build community power to address issues facing the community. Organizing isn't only an urban thing. Most of the community leaders I work with are lifelong Republicans, and they acknowledge that organizing works.
The powerful Republican turn out the vote efforts in 2004 were nothing more than community organizing. It's simply pulling groups of people together who have similar interests who aren't working together yet in order to work for the change/policy/outcome the people desire. Organizing is the foundation of strong electoral politics. Obama's strength is in organizing, which he rode to the Democratic nomination, hence the Rovian attack on his strength.
"Isn't running the PTA fundamentally a form of community organizing?"
You're missing the key difference. The PTA is an organic form of community organizing; it's a sign that the community can organize itself in a traditional way. Obama's constituents/clients when he was a community organizer were apparently unable to organize themselves -- that's why they need him, an outsider, to organize them. The idea that a small town like Palin's would need some Ivy-educated outsider to come in and organize them to improve their own community sounds crazy to people like Palin.
Fred,
Please define "organic" and "traditional" in this context. Also, please tell us how it's true that Obama's constituents weren't able to organize themselves without him. The fact he was an organizer doesn't mean he was, necessarily, the first or only organizer. Also, "outsider" (like "organic" and "traditional") is squishy and relative. By then, Obama, himself, was living on the South Side. Thus you could make a case that he was very much an "insider."
it's code for "race-based inner-city machine politics". what most republicans probably have in mind: al sharpton. slightly more specific or sophisticated: village voice type politics, for those of you here in new york, the sort of dudes you hear on 99.5 FM talking about 'The People's Republic of Brooklyn' or perhaps the sort of city political machinations depicted in "The Wire".
keep in mind that a lot of GOP-speak is in code, partially because many of their sentiments are not considered appropriate to utter in public. right or wrong, that is probably largely to do with political correctness, something republican "Conservatives" (sorry i dont think they are really conservative) as well as actual conservatives get incensed about and rally around - it's part of why the culture war stuff excites them so much. of course, it isn't merely political correctness but simply politeness to be unable to publicly express some of the more bileous feelings on the right towards the "Left". this goes towards their bashing of what we here in the northeast, we supposedly anti-American, sneering, latte-sipping, limousine Liberals, must think of 'their' side of this somewhat imagined cultural divide.
also - the operative word in that code-phrase is "organizing", as in unionizing, as in - here you make the leap - Communist infiltration. It only works on a subconscious (not intellectual) level, not least because a lot of the people they're aiming to win over with this culture war / identity politics stuff are (or aspire to be) union members. And red meat for the Wall St. 'free-market' wing of the party, which i think has never felt comfortable with the overt GOP religiousity, but has a deep hatred for unions, which they see as being overly powerful and corrupt and over-paid and untrustworthy. (here in NYC unions are extremely powerful.)
"outsider" is meant to dredge up the image of the old racist politician's bogeyman, the "outside agitator" who came into towns and cities and riled up the black folks.
according to the script, without this "outside agitator" the colored folk in those towns and cities would have been just fine with their life and the oppression they dealt with routinely.
I like this. Let the RNC in the sanctity of their half-empty Xcel center flail away. Let them throw out soundbites and one-liners. Have them charge and unleash the judo.
This is exactly what Obama did at the convention last week, and while the chicken littles dont like the strategy, it works. Kerry just didn't have the sense of timing, fortitude or organization to pull it off.
T-N C.,
By "organic" and "traditional" in this context I refer to organizations that most towns have: PTAs, city councils, etc.
"The fact he was an organizer doesn't mean he was, necessarily, the first or only organizer."
This is true, in theory, but what are the facts? Was asbestos considered the number one issue (above crime, school quality, etc.) in that community before he got there? Why weren't the organic community groups -- the city council, the neighborhood improvement groups, etc. effective in dealing with it?
joel,
can you please point to an election when that strategy worked?
Back in the day, when the split in the Democratic party happened and folks left to become Republicans (again reference Spiro Agnew's speeches), "community organizers" were "communists" in their minds. Agitators, outside agitators, educated outside agitators who would stir up the neighborhood population to advance their own cause - not necessarily the neighborhood's cause. This is the frame of reference for the 50 yr old+ generation of GOPers and those that follow their leads.
So when you ask, when did they become communists, well it was many years ago - at least in the minds of current GOPers and plays well with the Reagan Dems today (by the way, after 30-40 years of voting with the GOP, shouldn't they just be GOPers?).
I remember when Obama (and others) came to my old neighborhood to address the issues of people who were without steel mill work. My dad & uncles worked at the mills for 40+ years so they were near retirement but the next generation was really hard hit. The city did little to address the unemployment problem and Harold Washington's efforts were blocked by Council Wars (led by Ald. Vrdolyak - ironically alderman of our area). The organizers were tarred as "lefties" by the old guard and dismissed just as Palin did last night.
As to your soccer question, I grew up in a tradition of playing/enjoying soccer in the '60s & '70s when soccer was deemed as a sport for foreigners & "sissies". All the ethnics groups on the southeast side of Chicago had their teams/leagues but soccer was dismissed as a foreign sport. Even now, with all the youth involvement, soccer still is not considered a sport on the same footing in the USA as baseball, American football, or basketball.
I think it was a subtle distinction that Palin was embraced as a hockey mom (a rough and tumble sport for hard nosed kids) as opposed to a soccer mom (a foreign sport with that AYSO ethos of nobody keeps score, everybody wins). Even as McKingford points out that hockey is Canada's sport, it still is looked upon as more American than soccer is.
Palin/McCain won't be campaigning with Thierry Henry but I'm sure they'll be looking for NHL stars to join their team.
"outsider" is meant to dredge up the image of the old racist politician's bogeyman, the "outside agitator" who came into towns and cities and riled up the black folks.
You know, for some reason that language and that context rings a bell for me... I've heard it somewhere...
Ah, yes. There it is.
Got "agitated" and "black," but not "riled." Just missed the bullshit bingo trifecta.
I've heard Obama's plan for a national youth workers' core (something along those lines) referred to as "Stalinist" by supposedly reputable sources (I think it was Kristol). Should we really be surprised?
Hockey? American? I thought it was for Canadians.
Sanjay has it right.
"Community organizer", like "activist", is a vague term that covers a lot of activities, from the very efficient and admirable (registering thousands of new voters) to the very clueless-I-get-my-politics-from-RATM-liner-note-is-it-420-yet kind of way.
She was jabbing back at four days of people critiquing her being a mayor of a small Alaskan town by contrasting it with something on Barack Obama's resume that's a pretty vague and amorphous job.
And really, have none of you been stopped by someone from one of the PIRGs as you try to leave a Trader Joes? All I can do not to swat them with my (reusable! not plastic!) bag.
frankie d -
"outside agitator". You hit the nail on the head with that one I think.
LOL at the folks here who are pretending to believe that Sarah Palin wrote her own speech. Get real.
And yes, I am quite sure I've never been stopped by someone from a PIRG while leaving Trader Joes's. Or Jewel, Dominick's, Whole Foods or Walgreens, for that matter.
someone who agitated to get tax payer money given to his poor, black constituents.
Should've been a lobbyist instead-- then Palin could have hired him to bring in the pork..
It's interesting to note what total incoherence Fred's invocation of the traditional and organic is. PTAs didn't always exist - at some point in the past, PTAs were new organizations - and thus not traditional or organic, but in fact radical changes ( earlier in time , no PTA; later in time, PTA - a radical difference). Thus, the founders of the new radical PTA were community organizers. Second, there's nothing organic about many or even all of the "organic" organizations that are supposedly the hallmark of Fred's ancient conservative village. Almost all of the institutions in Fred's imaginary peasant village are rational imitations of institutions found in other towns or places. I.E., the supposedly conservative villagers facing some problem or difficulty, examined the institutions of their neighbors or other communities. Then, using their reason, they decided upon courses that seemed best to achieve potential solutions. Note that they made NO decisions based upon tradition (which WASN'T addressing the problem) or upon the
"organic" nature of the proposed solution.
I think that it is to associate Obama with people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Old-school civil rights activists who have fallen out of favor.
And, well, there is maybe a grain of truth in associating "community organizing" with Marxism.
I know this because I actually looked it up. While not all community organizers are Marxists or quasi-Marxists, some of the seminal papers on community organizing seem to have been written by people who were well steeped in its influence.
Tim, you looked it up? That's funny - was the article written by someone who wanted you to think a certain way?