Sarah Palin’s remarks, during her speech at the Republican Convention, oppressed the importance of community organizers who have worked against governments and systems that have forsaken its call to advocate on a community level. As far back as I can remember community organizers were the real movers and shakers within America’s social issues when politicians refused to listen to the concerns of the people. It took ordinary folks organizing their communities to demand action from government. Where would America be without community organizers?

Without folks like Harriet Tubman who organized one group at a time starting with her family to escape slavery. She eventually organized millions of Slaves to freedom that eventually reached far into Canada. There were others like Jane Addams who was an American social worker, sociologist and reformer called “The mother of Social Work.” and Saul David Alinsky is generally considered the father of community organizing. A criminologist by training, Alinsky in the 1930s organized the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago (made famous by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle). He went on to found the Industrial Areas Foundation while organizing the Woodlawn neighborhood, which trained organizers and assisted in the founding of community organizations around the country. In Rules for Radicals (his final work, published one year before his death), he addressed the 1960s generation of radicals, outlining his views on organizing for mass power. A young Hillary Clinton was born because his movement, writing her undergraduate thesis on his work and ideas.

Another community organizer the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson Sr. who was a civil rights and political activist in the United States also became a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988.

And last but certainly not least Sarah Palin mocked the tireless efforts of the Rev. Martin Luther King who was an American Nobel Laureate, Baptist minister, and African American civil rights activist. He is one of the most significant leaders in U.S. history and in the modern history of non-violence. Dr. King started his work out of his local congregation.
She mocked my work as an HIV/AIDS organizer and a soon to be candidate for ordain Ministry with the United Church of Christ and the American Baptist. My work has always been about justice for all of God’s people.

She mocked those who have contributed to the Obama campaign because we dare to dream that a leader can rise out of communities hit by poverty and not out of communities of privilege. While I heard her attacking our lives work and our dreams, I did not hear her plan about how the economy would be saved and how help would be on the way for folks who are losing their homes. While she was attacking our dream for a better America, I did not hear her say anything about a new kind of government coming from the Republican Party. All I heard was the same old business of Washington politics that have dominated for nearly seven years. I think her speech shows how out of touch she truly is.

Sincerely T.J. Williams Chicago and a member of the Riverside Church NYC
Activist and candidate for ordain Ministry