clipped from: www.time-blog.com   

What a Community Organizer Does


In her acceptance speech, Ms. Palin said, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities."  Community organizing is at the heart of Catholic Social Teaching to end poverty and promote social justice.  

So here is what Giuliani and Palin didn't know: Obama was working for a group of churches that were concerned about their parishioners, many of whom had been laid off when the steel mills closed on the south side of Chicago. They hired Obama to help those stunned people recover and get the services they needed--job training, help with housing and so forth--from the local government. It was, dare I say it, the Lord's work--the sort of mission Jesus preached (as opposed to the war in Iraq, which Palin described as a "task from God.")


They were making fun of a young man's decision "to serve a cause greater than himself," in the words of John McCain.