community organizers- a letter to the editor

martha burzynski
http://flickr.com/photos/marthaburzynski/473666957/

September 5, 2008

Open Letter to Governor Sarah Palin and Mayor Rudy Giuliani,

In an apparent effort to generate a few laughs at Senator Obama’s expense, you chose to disparage a large and honorable group of working citizens. With this low-rate amusement, you brought the intellectual vibration of the RNC several stages lower.

Community organizers are the wheels through which marginalized people enact social change all over this country. Representing all ethnic, religious, political, and economic sectors, they work compassionately and tirelessly, usually with little or no wages, to address the needs of their communities.

But I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you are unaware of the great progress that has been made through the sweat of community organizers. Working directly with their community, they are held responsible long after they have been hired for their job. They are a grounding force, linking politicians who have become disconnected with their primary motives with the people they originally swore to serve.

Jane Addams, a Victorian woman, founded the then-revolutionary Hull House. This countries’ first settlement house continues to address the needs of the urban poor through physical fitness, art, and innovative adult education programs, uplifting the nation’s humanitarian consciousness.

In the violently segregationist 1950s southern America a young Black man organized community into the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Would you dare to publicly criticize, much less mock, Martin Luther King?

By connecting Senator Obama with these champions of our society, you have reminded all of us, thinking republicans included, of the continued need for these advocates of peace and justice. You did the Democratic party’s campaign a service in highlighting this achievement in Mr. Obama’s resume.

Governor Palin and Mayor Giuliani, you are both people gifted with eormous personal charisma, but with your ill-planned shots you showcased the mob mentality through which you are attempting to gain political power. Is this really the level of thought you want our nation be operating on?

Sincerely,

Hanan H.D. Hanna

………………………………………………………………………………………..

Personally, I wish that you would take the time to hear, as I offer respects for more than this tiniest fraction of the great needs that are filled by community organizers.

I’d mention Majora Carter – the founding organizer of Sustainable South Bronx – works to uplift the economic, environmental, and physical health needs of the people of the South Bronx. The successful evolution of this formerly reviled community has inspired sustainable self-empowerment projects towards truly renewable urban neighborhoods for other formerly disenfranchised places around our nation and the planet.

And Camille Odeh, who is a visionary Arab American woman transforming the power of the grief surrounding the severe injustices in Palestine through organizing community in Chicago. She founded the Southwest Youth Collaborative to organize and unite young African-, Latino-, and Arab-American people -and all people - in Chicago’s southwest side. In the last 17 years the hands-om educational empowerment initiatives of Ms. Odeh have literally saved the lives of hundreds of young people and their families.