Watching the first woman in American history accept her party’s nomination for Vice President should have been an exciting moment for myself and the women of this country. Though I can’t speak for the women of the country, I can speak for myself. I was not excited, I was not moved, and instead I was shocked and actually deeply offended by the comments made that evening that belittled community organizing.

When I started out in this line of work in a professional capacity, I worked on the Southwest Side of Chicago. It was 2004 and I was an ORGANIZER on the “New American Vote 04″ campaign. This experience changed my life and I have been an ORGANIZER ever since. Even when I worked for a Congressman, or now as a State Director, I was an ORGANIZER.

To “organize” is to be on the ground, it is seven-days-a-week, it is 10-15 hours a day, talking to people who are rarely or never engaged in our political process. To watch a convention center full of people (everyday people as they stated several times) literally laugh at talk of community organizing, only showed me that the those laughing were clearly out of touch with the needs of our nation.

Organizers are people who get paid very little, they don’t get any sleep and they don’t get any praise. That is the point of organizing, we are not the ones on the microphone at rallies, we are the ones who bring community people to the forefront to speak about the issues that are affecting them, to teach them to hold their leaders accountable and to make clear what is happening on the ground. Why would you get a law degree from Harvard and then spend your time working on the streets of Chicago? I’ll tell you why, because this work in not just important, it is necessary.

We here at the PA League of Young Voters are on the ground in Westmoreland, Washington, Beaver and Allegheny counties every single day. Every day we talk with people that have suffered extreme job loss; people who are qualified to go to college but cannot afford to go; people who are every day Americans who don’t want a hand out, they just want the opportunity for their life to reflect the American dream that their parents and grandparents had. Some might call it a sacrifice, but we call it our life. We feel a duty, an obligation, and a drive to make our communities better for everyone.

The Vice Presidential Nominee talked about reform, talked about being a maverick, but it is the Community Organizers who spend every day standing up to “leaders” who have no idea or simply just don’t care what’s happening to the communities they represent. Elected officials are hired by us, the citizens of this country. Elected officials work for us, not the other way around. Organizers bring that to the forefront of the community.

As a woman executive, a woman who got into the organizing game at a young age and has seen what a bad government, Democrat or Republican, can do, I ask: please do not pander to me. As I stated before, you have offended me and I think I could safely say, you have offended the good people of this country that have worked to make it a stronger America. Organizers have always put the country first. We just think that this country is made up of people, not political parties.