Community Organizing Ain't No Picnic Johnny

With all due respect to all of us with memberships in PTA (and maybe some who have been on City Councils and Mayors) but working as a community organizer in a depressed community with shut down factories ain't really a picnic. Working as a community organizer means doing all the nitty gritty work that elected officials need to be doing but without an official mandate and therefore no resources to support that work with. Organizing a community means going to the people who need help without waiting for them in air conditioned City Council meetings.

Here is the quote from Associated Press:

Responding to a question after his hurricane-related remarks, McCain made a ringing defense of Palin, who Democrats argue has less experience than their presidential candidate, Barack Obama.

“I think Sen. Obama, if they want to go down that route, in all candor, she has far, far more experience than Sen. Obama does,” McCain said.

He cited Palin’s stint as governor of a “state that produces 20 percent of America’s energy” as well as her previous membership in the PTA and her time spent on the city council and in the mayor’s office in Wasilla, a town of 7,000 people outside Anchorage.

By contrast, he said Obama “was a community organizer when she was in elected office. He was in the state Senate and voted 130 times present. He never took on his party on anything. She took on a party and the old bulls and the old boy network and she succeeded.”