By Tim Starks, CQ Staff

Their target may have been Democratic nominee Barack Obama , but the cry of protest today about the swipes that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani took at Obama’s resume came from people saying they spoke for community organizers.

Palin had sought in her Wednesday night speech to turn the tables on those who questioned the job experience that came with heading the town of Wasilla, Alaska, population 7,000, by saying: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.

Guiliani had noted, in his keynote, that Obama “worked as a community organizer. What? He worked -- I said -- I said, OK, OK, maybe this is the first problem on the resume.”

Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change, an organization that, according to a news release, “builds the field of community organizing with hundreds of local organizations nationwide,” was just one person who leaped to the profession’s defense.

“When Sarah Palin demeaned community organizing, she didn’t attack another candidate. She attacked an American tradition – one that has helped everyday Americans engage with the political process and make a difference in their lives and the lives of their neighbors,” Bhargava said in a prepared statement.

“All across the country, in every state and every community, there are community organizers helping people find shared solutions to the shared problems they face.”

There also was a Web site that launched to protest the GOP remarks. On Community Organizers Fight Back, John Raskin, an organizer with Housing Conservation Coordinators, a group on Manhattan’s west side, wrote, “The last thing we need is for Republican officials to mock us on television when we’re trying to rebuild the neighborhoods they have destroyed.

The Obama campaign pushed back as well. In an e-mail message to supporters soliciting donations, David Plouffe said the attack on community organizers “insulted the very idea that ordinary people have a role to play in our political process.” He defended Obama’s work on the South Side of Chicago helping people who lost their jobs.