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Every time Mitt Romney speaks with contempt about community organizers, it sounds the same as someone running their fingernails across a black board to the thousands of community organizers throughout the nation. That must be because Mitt Romney doesn't understand what they do. He doesn't understand that he benefited from many, many people in Utah who were his forerunners in the Olympic movement. Romney must not realize that he, himself, was a community organizer.
Some people in Utah started organizing for the Olympics in 1929. There were many who worked to raise interest in the state, and money for this effort. The organizing to bring the Winter Olympics to Utah was ongoing until 1995. Then a bunch of community organizers on the committee stood and cheered. Through their coordinated efforts, often at their own expense, the 2002 Olympics were awarded to Utah. This was achieved because they had the community support and a plan in place for the Olympic venue. Mitt Romney came in on the end of this effort. He took advantage of all this work, and now he is denouncing community organizing as less than a real job. Shame on him!
Community organizers are usually activist with a special interest they are trying to accomplish as a community goal. Often this is on their own, using their own money and resources to develop. When it becomes large enough, they then do fund raisers, apply for grants to the local, state, and federal government. At this point the organizer has to have many skills. They have to keep books, be the secretary, fill out forms, console volunteers, do the work of eight or ten employees in a normal business. It is a 25 hour 8 day a week job, scrounged into a 24 hour 7 day week. This is not an easy job, but it is very real.
Community organizers have cleaned up streams, rivers, lakes, and are working on the ocean. They make sure that we have clean air to breathe, start recycling centers, recreation programs, see that we have parks, stump for Global warming, aka Al Gore. Other community organizers have developed programs to care for our disabled and elderly. The list goes on and on. These people have added greatly to what our country is. It is disconcerting to many of us organizers that so often this job is degraded by those who are sometimes jealous, and sometimes just don't understand. Let's identify some of the great community organizers of the past.
For instance, who was the community organizer who sat in the Potomac River with a bunch of his rag tag volunteers until he could defeat the British? It was President George Washington. Who wrote letters, newspaper articles, contacted and organized everyone he could to attend a convention in Philadelphia? Of course, this was Ben Franklin. What about the contemporary organizer who gave his life for the cause? The great Martin Luther King. What about all the women who have contributed and still contribute thousands of hours, money and effort caring for social causes in the USA.
Mitt Romney became a community organizer when he took over the position as CEO. Most organizers who run a program are known as Executive Directors. He became a CEO because the Olympic committee was already an established program and CEO is more understood as a job description than Executive Director. Yet, he organized never the less. The 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City was a community effort. There were 26,000 volunteers. Mitt Romney broke the record for private money raised and donated to the Olympics through his efforts. He oversaw 700 employees, making this one of the largest community organizations in the nation. He contributed one million to the cause, and donated his salary and severance payments of $1.4 million to charity. No one wants to take away from his accomplishments as a community organizer. Yet, it is distressing that he views President Obama's efforts with disdain. President Obama was in a very different and possibly more difficult situation. Obama was working with the one of the most difficult positions that black people face. They were out of work with inadequate training for any other job. Motivating people in this situation is notoriously a very difficult job, with little to no recognition because achievement is so subjective.
Romney benefited from those who had already done the most difficult work. He stepped into the top position with the money and cause already established. He took a position where accomplishments are easily spotted because they are more objective. He didn't do the grunt work, which is exceedingly more difficult to measure, as President Obama was doing. Therefore to scorn President Obama's efforts is being less than the gentlemen and man he is trying to portray.
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