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Originally Posted by a.e.B.O.T.
Jane Addams, César Chávez, Samuel Gompers, Martin Luther King, Jr., John L. Lewis, and Paul Wellstone were ALL community Organizers according to wikipedia. Its loosely defined, but it is about awareness and getting community and civil rights in to action. The best example is MLK, his whole work as we know it through our generic education on Civil Rights is essentially "community organizing." Of course, community organizers can fall on altering sides of standard morals and ethics.
I think the disrespect to the position as a generality presented at the RNC was ridiculous and unfair. Their work can be greatly compared to politicians and definitely associate themselves with local and national politics.
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Do conservatives ever describe themselves as "community organizers," even if the label fits the job they do? I suspect that the RNC is disrespecting the terminology more than the actual work.
And maybe it's helpful to remember that the context, at least for Palin, was responding to people who wanted to minimize the work involved in being a small town mayor. And from that perspective her barb wasn't far off.
All the folks you name in your post were leaders who worked on behalf of a cause(s), but they were leaders who got to shape and define any responsibilities they took on, as opposed the the well defined responsibilities and accountability of being a mayor.