You Need a Weatherman To Tell Which Way Obama Will Go

Townhall.com::You Need a Weatherman To Tell Which Way Obama Will Go::By Mary Grabar

When I heard that a major part of Barack Obama?s resume included a stint as a ?community organizer,? I asked myself what the term meant.

It?s sort of like ?activist.?

I had always wondered what the job description for ?activist? was. How do you apply? Where do you apply? It was unlike any of the jobs I had had, whether it was pouring beers, serving fish fries, cleaning toilets, pruning in snow-filled vineyards, or marking grammatical errors on freshman essays. The people I had grown up with worked with blow torches, trowels, and brooms, or stooped over sewing machines all day. If you made it, you were a secretary or supervisor at Kodak. If you were really ambitious you went to the community college or state university and became a nurse or an engineer. You could ask your cousin to put in a good word for you with the supervisor at Kodak or General Motors, but whom would you ask to become an ?activist? or ?community organizer??

I imagine if someone like Barack Obama had come to Beach Street in Rochester, New York, in the 1960s where my neighbors relaxed on their lawn chairs on front porches and stoops after a hard day in the factory, and said, ?Hi, my name is Barry Obama, and I am a community organizer,? the unanimous response would have been, ?A what??