Last Night, Sarah Palin Said Jane Adams Had No “Responsibilities”

McCamy Taylor

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Thu Sep-04-08 04:33 PM
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Last Night, Sarah Palin Said Jane Adams Had No “Responsibilities”

She maligned a lot of other great people, too, but Jane Adams is the first one that came to mind. The sad thing is that I am not even sure that Gov. Palin realized what she was saying. Since her higher education is limited to a bachelor degree in journalism, she may have only a limited knowledge of United States history and social reform movements. Maybe she just read the script that was handed to her.

However, since she accepted the job offer of Vice President, it was her responsibility to look it up if she did understand it. The internet is there for everyone to use, for free. It would have taken her twenty minutes to find out what a community organizer does and how the movement got its start.

On the other hand, maybe she is so steeped in far right wing Republican politics that she knew exactly what she was saying. Community organizers rely upon a proven principle which is that in order to effect real, lasting change to improve the lives of people, you must engage the people themselves in the process, from beginning to end. Those who have lived their lives under the yoke of income inequality and violence and deprivation will not be healed miraculously if their “betters” toss down (or trickle down) crumbs. They will improve their lives if they take stock in their own situation, assess their own needs, strengths, weaknesses, formulate a plan, implement it and monitor it as it succeeds. The people who work with them will only be able to assist them if they actually work with them, not far away from them, at some great distance, say from a Governor's mansion where bills are vetoed on a whim.

This type of community organization has been successful across the globe. The far right, which fears people working together more than it fears almost anything else, probably thinks of community organization as one step removed from communism.

So, maybe Sarah Palin meant to malign Jane Adams.

http://www.famous-people.info/21/Jane-Addams.html

Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 โ€“ May 21, 1935) was an American social worker, sociologist, philosopher and reformer. She was also the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and a founder of the U.S. Settlement House Movement.

Snip

In 1889 she and Ellen Gates Starr co-founded Hull House in Chicago, Illinois, one of the first settlement houses in the United States. Influenced by Toynbee Hall in the East End of London, settlement houses provided welfare for a neighborhood's poor and a center for social reform. At its height, Hull House was visited each week by around two thousand people. Its facilities included a night school for adults; kindergarten classes; clubs for older children; a public kitchen; an art gallery; a coffeehouse; a gymnasium; a girls club; a swimming pool; a book bindery; a music school; a drama group; a library; and labor-related divisions.

Hull House also served as a women's sociological institution. Addams was a friend and colleague to the early members of the Chicago School of Sociology, influencing their thought through her work in applied sociology and, in 1893, co-authoring the Hull-House Maps and Papers that came to define the interests and methodologies of the School. She worked with George H. Mead on social reform issues including women's rights, ending child-labor, and the 1910 Garment Workers' Strike in which she was a mediator. Although academic sociologists of the time defined her work as "social work", Addams did not consider herself a social worker. She combined the central concepts of symbolic interactionism with the theories of cultural feminism and pragmatism to form her sociological ideas. (Deegan, 1988)

Snip

In addition to her involvement in the American Anti-Imperialist League and the American Sociology Association, she was also a formative member of both the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1911 she helped to establish the National Foundation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers and became its first president. She was also a leader in women's suffrage and pacifist movements, and took part in the creation of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1915. In 1931 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with American educator Nicholas Murray Butler.

When she died in 1935 due to poor health, thousands of people went to see her coffin.

I would say that Jane Adams had a lot of responsibilities.

Here is something that I read today, about the Republican Convention and about settlement houses of the type Adams championed.

http://www.janeaddamsschool.org/jas/nonflash/blog.html

This sense of alienation and distance was fully on display among the demonstrators at the Republican national convention this week in St. Paul. Protestors voiced outrage at the war in Iraq, fury at the Bush administration, and anger at Republicans. Some demonstrators attacked delegates. But what struck me most was the sense of powerlessness.

A half century ago, many settings in the Twin Cities functioned as meeting grounds where people developed civic muscle—everyday power—as they developed public relationships across lines of difference. For instance, in the 1930s, 11 settlement houses joined together “to develop neighborhood forces, arouse neighborhood consciousness, to improve standards of living, incubate principles of sound morality, promote a spirit of civic righteousness, and to cooperate with other agencies in bettering living, working, and leisure-time conditions.” Settlement houses typically had staff living on site “in order to ensure that those employed understood the local community dynamics and undertook all their work from that vantage.” Professionals learned to work with neighborhood residents and new immigrants, rather than “ministering unto” them.

Gov. Palin attacked a lot of other people, like labor leaders Cesar Chavez, Mother Jones, which made her pandering for union votes seem a mite hypocritical. I guess she only approves of unions after the hard work is over and the contracts are signed. The American Patriots were community organizers. They did not levee a tax and hire mercenaries to fight the British. They assessed the strengths and weaknesses of the colonies, formed militias and went to work defending their country. The Apostles and the earliest Christian priests were community organizers. Long before there was a Church in Rome to parcel out money, small groups of people had to form their own worship communities, often in secret to avoid persecution. Many modern Churches are centers for community organization activity for a variety of endeavors, ranging from prenatal care to job skills acquisition.

I invite others at Democratic Underground to post about community organizers whose work is too valuable to be dismissed.