Sunday, September 21, 2008
Don't diminish the 1,000 points of light
From the RoundTable blog
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William Ferguson
Ferguson is retired and lives in Roanoke County. He works as a point of light with Meals on Wheels and Virginia Organizing Project.
When we think of community organizers we might think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but we don't have to look back in history to a great man. Community organizers are all around us. President George Herbert Walker Bush spoke to us about "1,000 points of light" -- volunteers and organizers in communities who worked to make our nation great.
We can think of former first lady Barbara Bush, who has been a champion of Literacy Volunteers. Sen. Elizabeth Dole headed the Red Cross, and Cindy McCain has worked with Smile Train, an organization that funds surgeries for children with cleft palates. Focus in a little closer to home and you will find volunteers to the rescue squad, fire department, Habitat for Humanity, Meals on Wheels, local churches who organized work groups to go to the Gulf after Hurricane Katrina. The list can go on. Folks like you and me, who spend a little of our time helping out those less fortunate.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, vice presidential running mate to Sen. John McCain, paid no heed to the deeds of millions of organizers and volunteers on Sept. 3, when she gave her acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention.
She said, "I guess a small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer except that you have actual responsibilities." Palin must hold those who do work that Christ commanded us to do in very low regard. When you work in a soup kitchen to feed your neighbor, that is responsibility; when you collect school supplies for children who do not have funds for their supplies that is responsibility; when you nail a shingle on a house for a family who needs a home to take them out of substandard housing, that is responsibility; when you donate to your local fire and emergency services, that is responsibility; and when you volunteer to serve your country that is responsibility.
What has Palin done for the least of these? OK, to be fair she has been a hockey mom. She has visited with the Alaska troops who have been fighting in Iraq. She has been a mayor of a small town, where she asked about how to get books banned from the local library. She is governor to a state that has a population that is less than the city of Columbus, Ohio. She claims to have fought earmarks for "a bridge to nowhere." According to Politifact.com , Congress had "washed its hands" of the bridge project before Palin stepped in to say "thanks, but no thanks." Alaska did get to keep the money to put into other state projects.
The question is asked, why concern ourselves over the vice president anyway? The concern should be McCain is 72 years old, and he is a four time cancer survivor. Should the person who is a heartbeat away from the presidency actually dismiss and mock those of us who are out on the front lines in our community trying to make change in our country?
The future of this country should not be in the hands of someone who sneers down on us and offers nothing more than the tired rhetoric and negativity of the past eight years. We the people who serve our communities are responsible people, and we deserve better. We deserve responsible solutions.
Sen. Barack Obama, from Chicago, Ill. (with a population of approximately 2.8 million) who Palin chose to snub has been, as she states, a community organizer in South Chicago. He worked to assist residents of a public housing project to learn job skills after the closing of steel mills. That took responsibility. As senator, he has worked with McCain on S3071 The Strengthening, Transparency, and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008. This is a bipartisan effort to report on earmark spending and assess the quality of work performed on federal projects. That takes responsibility.
As president, Obama will use his experience as a community organizer to enable us as citizens to pull ourselves out of economic recession, improve our schools, expand health care and find solutions to the energy crisis.
