By REY FLORES
Many years ago, when I was a community organizer in Chicago, I cut my teeth with some of the most effective left-wing organizers as part of the politically influential Grassroots Collaborative. This group included ACORN, SEIU, American Friends Service Committee, and Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR).
Before I alarm you any further, let me just clear the air here. I certainly did not subscribe to their politics and I took a lot of abuse simply for being Catholic and pro-life, but I believed in the human dignity of the poor and disenfranchised people these organizations were claiming to be fighting for.
I soon realized that the community organizers and unions weren’t really interested in helping people, but rather were interested in using them for their own political agendas and gains and their own respective organization’s long-term sustainability.
Our targets were usually private businesses that we accused of denying living wages to many of our collaborative community and union members, or we would go after government officials at all levels that were not cooperating with the collaborative’s own self-serving agenda.
Say what you will about these folks, I will say one thing about them: No matter what, these organizations always united when they needed to be and they won battles effectively. These organizations were willing and capable of overlooking petty differences, grudges, personal political poppycock, and egomaniacal personalities that were destructive to our collective agenda.
Some of the organizational leaders were often not on speaking terms throughout the calendar year, but when it came time for the collaborative to unite as one against a common enemy, that’s when all the nonsense was set aside and the group as a whole got down to business.
It was no accident that Barack Obama ended up as a two-term president — it’s because the left knows how to organize effectively and successfully.
This is something that I don’t see in the pro-life movement, and that is absolutely sad. If we could only organize ourselves in a truly united effort like the pro-aborts do, we’d have the culture of death beat, hands down.
We have a huge enemy in the form of Planned Parenthood, not to mention NARAL and now Obamacare too. There’s plenty of fight to go around and plenty of arrows to shoot, but not at each other.
The pro-life movement in America is almost like a circling of the wagons, the wagons being the abortion industry with the pro-lifers encircling it. The problem is that when we are aiming and shooting our arrows, some folks are deliberately shooting arrows across, past the enemy, and directly hitting other pro-lifers on the opposite end of the circle.
I’m not going to name names or sugarcoat this in any way, but if people in the pro-life movement were to stop being cliquish and quit playing these divisive, high school-like popularity games, we might actually have a shot at shutting Planned Parenthood down for good.
Instead, we have certain pro-life organizations that will not have anything to do with other certain groups for reasons unknown or because of personality differences and seemingly over-inflated egos.
It is one thing to have differences about no exceptions, contraception, theology, or even homosexuality from one organization to another, but the differences I am talking about are petty. They have more to do with who is more popular, or who gets their face out more in public. Then there are those who monopolize certain national pro-life events to the benefit of a few select organizations while deliberately excluding others.
It’s pathetic and what’s worse is that babies continue to die, the elderly and sick continue to be euthanized, and our youth continue to be poisoned with contraceptives and robbed of their souls in their very own schools.
Again, don’t misunderstand what I am saying here. Most people in the pro-life movement are terrific and strong pro-life trailblazers and leaders that I admire greatly. Some I consider as good friends, but it’s a few individuals and organizations that continue to fuel the fires of division. Those folks know who they are.
Some of you may say that a column like this only serves to divide us further, but I think that everyone of us needs to take a step back and remember who and what we are fighting for.
While we bicker and quarrel, Planned Parenthood lives to see another day, laughing all the way to the bank, leaving bloody footprints all over our collective back. How many more days, weeks, months or years are we going to allow our selfishness and egos to let the pro-aborts win?
I have bitten my tongue and resisted writing this column for a while now, but I’ve seen some ugly things recently and I cannot remain silent any longer. The passive aggressiveness is almost intolerable and it will hold us back from real victories.
Fighting the culture of death is difficult enough. I pray that we can all find new ways to work together and collaborate. Don’t be a pro-life “celebrity”; the world doesn’t need any more celebrities. This is a war and what we need are selfless, ego-free soldiers for life.
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(Rey Flores is a Catholic writer and speaker. Contact Rey Flores at reyfloresusa@gmail.com. The opinions in this column are Mr. Flores’ alone and do not represent any organization.)
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