The Hot Sheet

Standing up for Community Organizers

Watching the first woman in American history accept her party’s nomination for Vice President should have been an exciting moment for the women of America. While I cannot speak for every American woman, I can report that I was not excited, I was not moved, I was shocked and I was deeply offended by the comments that belittled community organizing.

When I started out in politics and public service, I worked on the Southwest Side of Chicago. It was 2004 and I was an ORGANIZER on the “New American Vote 04″ campaign. This experience changed my life and I have been an ORGANIZER ever since. Whether working for a Congressman, or serving as a State Director I am at heart an ORGANIZER.

To “organize” is to be on the ground, it is seven-days-a-week, it is 10-15 hours a day, talking to people who are rarely or never engaged in our political process. To watch a convention center full of “everyday people” literally laugh when they brought up community organizing illustrates how clearly out of touch those people are.

Organizers are people who get paid very little, they don’t get any sleep and they don’t get any praise. Organizing is public service. It is offering one’s life to one’s community. We are not “leaders” of the community, instead we commit to helping communities lead themselves. We bring communities together to speak publicly about the issues affecting them and to hold their leaders accountable. We help communities bring to light injustice, inequality, or whatever their collective concerns are. Our social lives and “free” time often ends up intertwined with our community service because that’s just the way it works. Why would you get a law degree from Harvard and then spend your time working on the streets of Chicago? Why? Because this work in not just important, it is necessary.

We here at the PA League of Young Voters are on the ground in Westmoreland, Washington, Beaver and Allegheny counties every single day. Every day we talk with people that have suffered extreme job loss; people who are qualified to go to college but cannot afford to go; people who are every day Americans who don’t want a hand out, they just want the opportunity for their life to reflect the American dream that their parents and grandparents had. Some might call it a sacrifice, but we call it our life. We feel a duty, an obligation, and a drive to make our communities better for everyone.

The Vice Presidential Nominee talked about reform, talked about being a maverick, but it is the Community Organizers who spend every day standing up to “leaders” who have no idea or simply just don’t care what’s happening to the communities they represent. Elected officials are hired by us, the citizens of this country. Elected officials work for us, not the other way around. Organizers bring that to the forefront of the community.

As a woman executive, a woman who got into the organizing game at a young age and has seen what a bad government, Democrat or Republican, can do, I ask: please do not pander to me. As I stated before, you have offended me and I think I could safely say, you have offended the good people of this country that have worked to make it a stronger America. Organizers have always put the country first. We just think that this country is made up of people, not political parties.

-Liz Rincon