Poop Shute

This is a reposting of a very eloquent and thoughtful piece about the smear tactics of John McCain. I am posting it here with the author's permission.

"What is a Community Organizer?

I am watching the 9/11 forum, and John McCain has just stated his belief that the important people in this country are the people who work in their community to improve this nation, which he calls "grassroots" organizers - people who do not go to the government for help, but look to fix community problems at the local level. This came after he dodged a question about his running mate's mocking Barack Obama as a "community organizer".

So what is a community organizer? In short, it is the Republican ideal. McCain's words echo Ronald Reagan's joke that the nine worst words are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Yet, I have to ask, isn't the community organizer the essence of the Republican social platform?

I grew up in a conservative household. Starting at fifteen, I read, The Way Things Ought to Be, and See I Told You So by Rush Limbaugh. On road trips, my family listened to Rush on the radio, and the main thrust of his argument regarding our communities was, "Don't get the government involved. Let the people in the community solve the problems of their town."

And then came the governor of Alaska mocking Senator Obama's work in the Chicago community. She seemed to demean his efforts to improve his community at a grassroots level. In doing so she has relegated the term of community organizer to a pejorative; it smacks of union organizer, which smacks of socialism.

But community organizers impact us everyday. They are the people who find volunteers at soup kitchens; find volunteers for after school reading programs; find volunteers to check on the elderly during spells of severe weather; find volunteers to man homeless shelters when the weather drops to arctic temperatures. They are the people who set up programs for laborers who are laid off, and the community organizers help train, educate, and place the displaced in new jobs. They are PTA mothers, den mothers, soccer moms, NASCAR moms, and hockey moms. They are people, like my mother, a church organist, who finds volunteers to stage potlucks and put together care packages for college students at Wright State University in Ohio. They are the young girls on my street, who saw drivers speeding through our neighborhood at 45 MPH; and these young ladies went door-to-door to collect signatures to have speed bumps built on the street to protect their friends. The speed bumps are there today.

In answer to the many people I have heard in coffee shops, the mall, the street, blogs, and polling groups on NPR: a community organizer is someone who gets things done that actually effect your day-to-day life. It is a person who transcends party dogma and accomplishes tangible results, often on shoestring budgets, without benefit of promised compensation - only the humble peace of an altruistic spirit."

~Luke Krueger