News & Sanger Sightings > 2009
Sanger Hearings
As some of you may have read on our website and seen elsewhere, Sanger was vilified in Congressional hearings on April 22, 2009 during the testimony of Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton on foreign policy priorities in the Obama Administration. After Clinton called Sanger “transformational” when accepting Planned Parenthood's Maggie Award in March 2009, Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ) lectured Secretary Clinton on what he believed to be Sanger’s real motives. "With all due respect, Madam Secretary,” Smith began, “Sanger's legacy was indeed transformational, but not for the better if one happens to be poor, disenfranchised, weak, disabled, a person of color, an unborn child, or among the many so-called undesirables Sanger would exclude and exterminate from the human race.” He then went on to take quotations out of context from some of Sanger’s writings and indict her as a racist who bears responsibility for millions of abortion deaths. In turning his attention back to the issue at hand, he ended by asking: “So as part of Sanger's work that remains undone, my question: is the Obama administration seeking in any way to weaken or overturn pro- life laws and policies in African and Latin American countries . . .?” Clinton responded: “We, obviously, have a profound disagreement. . . .We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women's health and reproductive health includes access to abortion, that I believe should be safe, legal and rare. I've spent a lot of my time trying to bring down the rate of abortions and it has been my experience that good family planning and good medical care brings down the rate of abortion.” She added: “So we disagree, and we are now an administration that will protect the rights of women, including their rights to reproductive health care.”
Editor Esther Katz wrote to Secretary Clinton, “ I very much appreciated the statements that you made regarding Margaret Sanger at the annual Planned Parenthood Federation of America meeting, as well as your strong defense of her goals, made in Congress that other day. While your point about the evils and virtues that existed in both Thomas Jefferson and Margaret Sanger was well taken, I do fear that the analogy is not quite apt in this case. There are certainly some things to deplore in Sanger’s life and beliefs, but among them are not the statements attributed to her by Representatives Smith and Fortenberry. Margaret Sanger may have been a eugenicist, but she was not a racist and did not seek to exterminate the poor and weak, and she made no remarks suggesting otherwise. No serious historian would credit these accusations as fact.”
For the complete transcript and a link to the video of the hearings, see below.
posted Oct. 2010
Babies on Layaway
As Margaret Sanger learned during the Great Depression, economic troubles can be a boon to birth control. In “No Way, Baby,” a May 15, 2009 article for Reuters.com, writer Lauren Sandler wonders if market forces are the “ultimate contraceptive.” Sandler writes that when profits drop, “so do pregnancies,” noting that several birth control methods have seen jumps in sales of between 10 and 40 percent. “The tanking economy has delivered an awakening that Planned Parenthood message consultants, sex ed teachers, and confidants have tried to convince women of since Margaret Sanger reimagined our sexual territory: that the choice to have a child is probably the most serious, not to mention one of the most costly, you'll ever make.”
posted Oct. 2010
No Gods, No Food in the Cabins
A Scripps Howard News Service story appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times and other papers (July 18, 2009) about Camp Quest, in Nevada City, CA, an atheist camp for kids, where “49 children from across the western United States experience traditional pastimes – but with a secular twist.
Atheist campers play games such as Evolution, another in which they are asked to prove something invisible doesn't exist, and before meals, they learn about freethinking heroes such as Margaret Sanger and Isaac Asimov.” Camp director Chris Lindstrom told a reporter, "It's important for them to have a place to learn how to investigate the world and to not accept what they hear. Plus the kids enjoy meeting other kids from similar families.”
posted Oct. 2010
Keeping It Pure and Simple
The columnist Ellen Goodman wrote in her syndicated column on May 14, 2009 (Boston Globe) about how conservatives are steadily pushing pro-choice supporters out of the Republican party, suggesting that “‘abortion rights conservative’ sounds like an oxymoron.” “As if Republicans weren’t having enough trouble with defectors, they’ve gone on a purge,” and she cites Colin Powell, Arlen Specter and David Souter as three of the most recent notable Republicans to be pushed away by the far right. What do they have in common? “They are all supporters of a woman’s right to choose.” It wasn’t always like this, she continues, “Not long ago, we had pro-choicers like Barry Goldwater. Or Ronald Reagan, Act One. The Northeast was once home turf to abortion rights. Republican women from Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger to Barbara Bush. Now we’re down to two female Republican senators from Maine.” It’s a bit of a stretch to call Sanger an abortion rights proponent; she never publically endorsed legalized abortion. But she did favor Republicans when it came to which party was most likely to help the birth control cause. (See “Republicans Ascendant!”),
posted Oct. 2010
Republicans Ascendant!
From the Mainichi Press, November 6, 1952:
Osaka, Nov. 5. – Mrs. Margaret Sanger could hardly conceal her joy over the news that the Republican’s return to the White House has become a cinch Wednesday afternoon in Osaka.
As she stepped down from the platform of the Mainichi Kaikan Hall where she spoke to some 2,000 audience, the renowned birth control leader was informed by the Mainichi of Ike’s decisive victory.
Grasping the hands of Mrs. Charles E. Brush who was beside her. Mrs. Sanger said she had cast her absentee vote for Eisenhower before leaving the States for Japan.
“I am too excited to make any comment right now,” said the jubilant lecturer, adding, “The dark days under Democratic administration has finally come to an end. The Catholics have been hard on our campaign, and the majority of them are Democrats.”
She then expressed her conviction that Ike’s victory would mean a new age of hope and prosperity to the United States.
Margaret Sanger Attacked at Congressional Hearing, April 22, 2009
During the testimony of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on "New Beginnings: Foreign Policy Priorities in the Obama Administration," representatives brought Margaret Sanger into discussions about the role of family planning and reproductive health in foreign policy. Noting that Clinton had recently accepted Planned Parenthood's Maggie Award, named for Margaret Sanger, Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ) attacked Margaret Sanger using her own words.
While the Margaret Sanger Project respects the right of any person to voice opinions on reproductive choice, we believe it is wrong and purposely misleading to misquote Sanger’s statements and writings or misrepresent her intent by taking short passages out of the context of its source and out of historical context. A number of groups opposed to reproductive choice have posted quotations attributed to Sanger which are then copied and passed on by others and used in letters to the editor, editorials, web blogs, even published books and now Congressional hearings. While it is outside the Project's mission to try to correct every misuse of Sanger's words or misinterpretation of her intentions, we felt compelled to address the issue in this instance because these statements were made in Congress.
Our efforts to make Sanger's words available in microfilm, book and digital format should reduce the frequency of this problem, as it will give both sides in the debate access to complete and accurate original source material.
Excerpted Remarks of Representative Christopher Smith (R-of NJ)
"With all due respect, Madam Secretary, Sanger's legacy was indeed transformational, but not for the better if one happens to be poor, disenfranchised, weak, disabled, a person of color, an unborn child, or among the many so-called undesirables Sanger would exclude and exterminate from the human race.
Sanger's prolific writings dripped with contempt for those she considers to be unfit to live. I've actually read many of Sanger's articles and her books. Sanger was an unapologetic eugenicist and racist, who said, and I quote, 'The most merciful thing a family does for one of its infant members is to kill it.'"
This line comes from Sanger's Woman and the New Race (1920), p. 63, part of a chapter that addresses the prevalence of large families and the fact that 300,000 infants died each year, 90% of which were "due directly or indirectly to malnutrition, to other diseased conditions related to poverty, or to excessive childbearing by the mother." Providing statistical evidence that the larger the family the higher the infant mortality levels, Sanger wrote the remark quoted above. She says nothing about race, the weak, disabled or the disenfranchised. Instead she followed the quoted lines with: "The same factors which create the terrible infant mortality rate, and which swells the death rate of children between ages one and five, operate even more extensively to lower the health rate of the surviving members. Moreover the overcrowded homes of large families reared in poverty further contribute to this condition. Lack of medical attention is still another factor, so that the child who must struggle for health in competition with other members of a closely packed family has still great difficulties to meet after its poor constitition and malnutrition have been accounted for." |
Rep. Smith continued:
"She [Sanger] also said, on another occasion, quote, 'Eugenics is the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.'"
This quote has been excerpted from a longer sentence which reads in its entirety: " Today Eugenics is suggested by the most diverse minds as the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems." For Sanger, eugenics was a genetic tool for strengthening the human race by building stronger human beings, not by eliminating any particular group. For a nuanced treatment of the eugenics movement, see Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, and for Sanger's place in it, see: The Sanger-Hitler Equation, one of our newsletter articles. Click here for the entire article. An annotated version of this article is available in The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume I The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928. |
Rep. Smith continued:
"In her book, "The Pivot of Civilization," Sanger devoted an entire chapter, which she entitled "The Cruelty of Charity," to explaining a shockingly inhumane case for the systematic denial of prenatal and maternal health care for poor pregnant women.
'Such benevolence is not merely superficial and nearsighted,' Sanger wrote, it, 'conceals a stupid cruelty and leads to a 'deterioration in the human stock' and the perpetuation of "defectives, delinquents and dependents.'"
In Pivot of Civilization (1923), Sanger described her opposition to thoughtless charity that ignores the needs and rights of women, the full paragraph reads: "Such "benevolence" is not merely superficial and near-sighted. It conceals a stupid cruelty, because it is not courageous enough to face unpleasant facts. Aside from the question of the unfitness of many women to become mothers, aside from the very definite deterioration in the human stock that such programs would inevitably hasten, we may question its value even to the normal though unfortunate mother. For it is never the intention of such philanthropy to give the poor over-burdened and often undernourished mother of the slum the opportunity to make the choice herself, to decide whether she wishes time after to time to bring children into the world. It merely says "Increase and multiply: We are prepared to help you do this." Whereas the great majority of mothers realize the grave responsibility they face in keeping alive and rearing the children they have already brought into the world, the maternity center would teach them how to have more. The poor woman is taught how to have her seventh child, when what she wants to know is how to avoid bringing into the world her eighth." Several paragraphs summarizing views on the impact of charity on the poor follow before the rest of Rep. Smith's quote appears: " This rapid survey is enough, I hope, to indicate the manifold inadequacies inherent in present policies of philanthropy and charity. The most serious charge that can be brought against modern "benevolence" is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression. Philanthropy is a gesture characteristic of modern business lavishing upon the unfit the profits extorted from the community at large. Looked at impartially, this compensatory generosity is in its final effect probably more dangerous, more dysgenic, more blighting than the initial practice of profiteering and the social injustice which makes some too rich and others too poor." Click here for Pivot of Civilization. |
Rep. Smith continued:
"So it is extraordinarily difficult how anyone could be in awe of Margaret Sanger, a person who made no secret whatsoever of views that were antithetical to protecting fundamental human rights of the weakest and the most vulnerable and to suggest that her work remains undone around the world.
As I think you know, in 2000 alone, Planned Parenthood killed over 305,000 children by abortion in the United States alone, and millions more worldwide.
So as part of Sanger's work that remains undone, my question: is the Obama administration seeking in any way to weaken or overturn pro- life laws and policies in African and Latin American countries, either directly or through multilateral organizations, including and especially the United Nations, African Union, or the OAS, or by way of funding NGOs like Planned Parenthood?
And secondly, and so we can have total transparency, you know, as a former lawmaker, we always have definition pages when we write legislation, definitions do matter. Does the United States' definition of the term "reproductive health" or "reproductive services" or "reproductive rights" include abortion?
I yield to the distinguished gentlelady."
SEC. CLINTON:
"Congressman, I deeply respect your passionate concern and views which you have championed and advocated for over the course of your public career.
We, obviously, have a profound disagreement. When I think about the suffering that I have seen of women around the world, I've been in hospitals in Brazil where half the women were enthusiastically and joyfully greeting new babies and the other half were fighting for their lives against botched abortions.
I've been in African countries where 12 and 13-year-old girls are bearing children. I have been in Asian countries where the denial of family planning consigns women to lives of oppression and hardship.
So we have a very fundamental disagreement and it is my strongly held view that you are entitled to advocate and everyone who agrees with you should be free to do so anywhere in the world, and so are we.
We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women's health and reproductive health includes access to abortion, that I believe should be safe, legal and rare.
I've spent a lot of my time trying to bring down the rate of abortions and it has been my experience that good family planning and good medical care brings down the rate of abortion.
Keeping women and men in ignorance and denied the access to services actually increases the rate of abortion.
During my time as first lady, I helped to create the campaign against teenage pregnancy and while we were working to provide good information, access to contraception, and decision-making that would enable young women to protect themselves and say no, the rate of teen pregnancy went down.
I'm sad to report that after an administration of eight years that undid so much of the good work, the rate of teenage pregnancy is going up.
So we disagree and we are now an administration that will protect the rights of women, including their rights to reproductive health care."
To watch the complete hearings (3 hours 49 minutes):
To search for and see the discussions of Sanger, visit C-Span's Video Library.
posted April 2010
Clinton Given Sanger Award
On March 27, PPFA presented its highest honor, the Margaret Sanger Award, to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for her “unwavering support of women’s health and rights throughout her public service career. ” Accepting the award at the PPFA national conference in Houston, Secretary Clinton spoke of Sanger’s important role in history and her admiration of Sanger’s accomplishments:
“Now, I have to tell you that it was a great privilege when I was told that I would receive this award. I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision. Another of my great friends, Ellen Chesler, is here, who wrote a magnificent biography of Margaret Sanger called Woman of Valor. And when I think about what she did all those years ago in Brooklyn, taking on archetypes, taking on attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions, I am really in awe of her.
And there are a lot of lessons that we can learn from her life and from the cause she launched and fought for and sacrificed so bravely. One in particular, though, has always stood out for me almost a hundred years later. It’s the lesson that women’s empowerment is always, always about more than bettering the lives of individual women. It is part of a movement. It’s about economic and political progress for all women and girls. It’s about making sure that every woman and girl everywhere has the opportunities that she deserves to fulfill her potential, a potential as a mother, as a worker, as a human being. . . .
The 20th century reproductive rights movement, really embodied in the life and leadership of Margaret Sanger, was one of the most transformational in the entire history of the human race. It has changed the lives of tens of millions of women. It has changed attitudes and perceptions about women and our roles in society. It ushered in demographic and social changes that have brought us closer to gender equality than at any time.
Yet we know that Margaret Sanger’s work here in the United States and certainly across our globe is not done. Here at home, there are still too many women who are denied their rights because of income, because of opposition, because of attitudes that they harbor. But around the world, too many women are denied even the opportunity to know about how to plan and space their families. They’re denied the power to do anything about the most intimate of decisions.
And the derivative inequities that result from all of that are evident in the fact that women and girls are still the majority of the world’s poor, unschooled, unhealthy, and underfed. This is and has been for many years a matter of personal and professional importance to me, and I want to assure you that reproductive rights and the umbrella issue of women’s rights and empowerment will be a key to the foreign policy of this Administration.” (For a complete transcript and video of the speech, go to: www.plannedparenthood.org/issues-action/other/standard-24061.htm)
posted Apr. 2010
The Church of Sexual Liberation
In a March 23 article (“Cult of the Condom”) supporting Pope Benedict XVI’s recent reiteration of the Catholic Church's opposition to condom use as a means to combat AIDS in Africa, Jeffery Kuhner of the conservative Washington Times blames contraception for creating “a sex-obsessed, promiscuous culture” that led to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases. He claims that the Vatican is “the last line of resistance” in a battle between Christianity and “the new quasi-religion of sexual liberation.” He writes, “For leftist revolutionaries, the pill and the condom have served as the hammer and sickle of cultural Marxism. ‘Birth control appeals to the advanced radical because it is calculated to undermine the authority of the Christian churches,’ said Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. ‘I look forward to seeing humanity free someday of the tyranny of Christianity no less than capitalism.’” Sanger certainly made some similar statements during her anarchist days in the 1910s when she first launched the movement, but we can’t find this one. Like a number of other purported Sanger quotations, this one has gone viral on the web, popping up on anti-abortion sites and in conservative Christian newsletters.
posted Apr. 2010
Commission on the Status of Women
MSPP Advisory board member Ellen Chesler was appointed a delegate to the fifty-third session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, which took place from March 2-13 at the UN General Assembly building in New York. The “priority theme” was the “equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including caregiving in the context of HIV/AIDS,” though the Commission addressed many other issues. Chesler’s connection to Sanger prompted criticism from anti-abortion groups. A visiting student from Christendom College said, “It’s very bleak. The new US delegation appointed by President Obama is a Margaret Sanger biographer. They are really pushing their agenda down the throat of other nations.” (Catholic PRWire, Mar. 20, 2009 [www.catholic.org/prwire/headline.php?ID=6310]; see also, Samantha Singson “At UN Obama Reps Push for ‘Sexual and Reproductive Health,’” C-FAM, Mar. 12, 2009. )
posted Apr. 2010
Jewish Women, Birth Control and Sanger
Dr. Melissa Klapper, professor of history at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey spoke on “Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace” on February 25 at the Toby and Herbert Stolzer Endowed Program sponsored by Rutgers University’s Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life. As reported in the New Jersey Jewish News on March 3, Klapper discussed the important contributions of Jewish American women who “rarely allowed themselves to be chased away from causes they believed in and worked hard for.” Klapper pointed out that “immigrant Jewish women flocked to Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s clinic when it opened in 1916 in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, and Sanger found many allies in the Jewish community.” “Birth control clinics offered opportunities to Jewish patients, but even more opportunities for Jewish women doctors,” said Klapper, who noted the example of Hannah Mayer Stone, the director of Sanger’s Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in New York. “At a time when anti-Semitism restricted American Jewish doctors’ abilities to secure medical residencies and positions and the Jewish hospitals reserved the bulk of their staff jobs for men, Jewish women doctors turned to birth control clinics as places where they could practice medicine, conduct research, and contribute to a cause they virtually all believed in.”
posted Apr. 2010
Birth Control Papers Opened at Harvard
The Center for the History of Medicine at the Countway Library of Medicine invites you to attend a symposium celebrating the opening of the John C.
Rock Papers:
"Conceiving the Pill: Modern Contraception in Historical Perspective"
Minot Room, Countway Library
March 26, 2009, 2 - 5 pm
Reception to follow
This program will place the history of contraceptive technology over the
past half-century in its social, pharmaceutical and global health
contexts.
Panel speakers include:
* Margaret Marsh, PhD, Interim Chancellor and Distinguished Professor of
History, Rutgers University-Camden: "The Fertility Doctor Meets the Pill"
* Wanda Ronner, M.D., Clinical Associate Professor of Obstetrics and
Gynecology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine: "The Era of the
Pill Begins"
* Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, PhD, Professor, Vice Chair and Director of
Graduate Studies, History of Health Sciences Program, Department of
Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine, University of California, San
Francisco: "From Breakthrough to Bust: The Brief Life of Norplant, the
Contraceptive Implant"
* George Zeidenstein, Visiting Distinguished Fellow, Center for Population
and Development Studies, Harvard School of Public Health: "Family Planning
and Reproductive Health in Global Perspective"
The program is open to all, but space is limited. RSVP to
ARM@hms.harvard.edu Additional information and a downloadable flyer for
posting are available at:
https://www.countway.harvard.edu/lenya/countway/live/menuNavigation/historicalResources/chmPrograms/eventsList.html
Exhibits on display:
"Conceiving the Pill: Highlights from the Reproductive Health Collections"
Countway Library, first floor
March 26, 2009 - September 30, 2009
The exhibit will feature the newly opened manuscripts collections of John
C. Rock, the co-creator of the contraceptive pill, and Arthur T. Hertig
and will draw on the papers of contributing scientists, physicians, and
activists involved in reproductive health. The exhibit will include
ephemera, photographs, correspondence, and artifacts from these
collections.
"Modeling Reproduction: the Teaching Models of Robert Latou Dickinson"
Countway Library, second floor
March 26, 2009 - September 30, 2009
Robert L. Dickinson, an early birth control pioneer, developed a renowned
collection of reproduction models as part of his campaign to broaden the
understanding and acceptance of human sexuality. In addition to models,
the exhibit will include correspondence, ephemera, and photographs from
the Dickinson papers.
For more information about the Center, its programs, and holdings, see:
http://www.countway.harvard.edu/chom (3/5/09)
posted: February 2009
All Too Human
In his new book, More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want (Island Press, Washington, DC, 2008), Robert Engelman (no relation to MSPP associate editor) provides a timely and intelligent historical perspective on population growth and elaborates on Sanger’s life-long argument that women, if given access to effective birth control and the freedom to use it, will make the best childbearing decisions for themselves and society. As part of a short and insightful discussion of Sanger’s life and achievements, Engelman rejects accusations that Sanger was a racist, and he includes a reasoned response to the ongoing attacks on Sanger for her ties to eugenics: “A rebel in so many ways, Sanger disappoints her admirers today not for racial prejudice but for the conviction that differential genetic endowments threatened progress and justified reproductive coercion. Sanger was overawed by the scientists of her day, and eugenics was seen – inaccurately – as an outgrowth of evolutionary biology. A heroine of reproductive rights, Sanger was nonetheless all too human and all too much a person of her time. Heroes and heroines usually are.” (p. 193)
Margaret Sanger: Solid as Barack
Sanger’s name has cropped up in several right wing blogs that attacked Barack Obama for his support of a woman’s right to choose. For instance, on Aug. 24, 2008 in Human Events Online (www. humanevents.com), Senator Obama was condemned for opposing the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, legislation that would require hospitals to care for infants who survive an abortion. Obama, who viewed this as an anti-abortion rights law, recognized that doctors already have a legal and ethical obligation to preserve life in the rare instance when a baby survives an abortion procedure. Nevertheless, the columnist warned “somewhere in hell, Margaret Sanger is filling out her absentee ballot.” Similar attacks on Sanger and Obama appear in a YouTube video that links them to a plot to eradicate the black race through abortion (www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI67MuPwsX0), and yet another piece on black genocide. (www.thereyesreport.org/2008/04/margaret-sanger)
posted: February 2009
Women of our Time
A new exhibition, “Women of our Time,” at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, brings together photographic portraits of American women who made their mark on the 20th Century. The exhibit, taken from photos in the museum’s own collection, is "a real panoply of women's identity, struggles and achievements in the 20th century," according to museum director Martin Sullivan. Included among the 90 images are portraits of Helen Keller, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ella Fitzgerald, Julia Child, Marilyn Monroe, Althea Gibson and, of course, Margaret Sanger. The exhibition is an expanded version of one that toured the country in 2002-2005. It opened in October and runs through February 1, 2009. (Agence France-Presse, Oct. 9, 2008.)
posted: February 2009
Forget the Quivering Aspic
Award-winning New York Times reporter, Edith Evans Asbury, died on October 30th in Greenwich Village at age 98. Asbury was a pioneering woman journalist, who worked at the Times from 1952-81. Asbury built a reputation for taking on hard news stories in an era when most women reporters covered society functions or wrote women’s page fare. Asbury "made it clear from the start," writes Margalit Fox, "that covering quivering aspic was not for her." In 1958 Asbury cover edthe debate over New York City’s unwritten ban on contraceptive counseling in public hospitals. She detailed the controversy dragged for months in sixteen stories, including an phone interview with Sanger on her 79th birthday (reported as only her 71st in the paper!). Sanger called for younger activists to step up to the fight instead of leaving it “to those of us who have been fighting all these years.” She professed herself “amazed, that New York City, where I founded the first birth control clinic in the country is still so backward.” and called its birth control policy "disgraceful." (New York Times, Oct. 31, 2008 and Sept. 14, 1958.)
posted: February 2009
Paling Around with Organizers
Catherine Denial wrote to the Galesburg, IL Register-Mail on Sept. 5, 2008 to complain about Sarah Palin’s dismissal of community organizers in her convention speech. “Sarah Palin seems to be under he impression that community organizers do little, and achieve even less. How misinformed. Community organizers have historically been at the leading edge of change, not only in the Unites States, but around the world. Some of the most prominent community organizers who come to mind include Jane Addams, Saul Alinsky, Tily Black Bear, César Chávez, Dorothy Day, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Margaret Sanger, Ida B. Wells, Paul Wellstone, and yes, Barack Obama.”
posted: February 2009
Revised: May 5, 2010