In the following 5 diaries I detail what I believe a grassroots organization needs to do to be successful. In this diary I try to explain why I believe what follows.
I have the first 4 on the web. The site is minimalist. Oh well.
http://www.liemail.com/BambooGrassroots.html
I am doorbelling my precinct today, Memorial Day 2005, and I want my neighbors to know where I stand on supporting the Dem party with time and money, since I am their pco.
The last 2 diaries / web pages are NOT completed yet. One will explain why I criticize Dems, and the other will have some of the tales of woe from campaigns of the last 20 / 30 years.
rmm.
Winning political campaigns need winning messages, great messengers, and effective organization to deliver the strategy and tactics. For Democrats to be effective in their grassroots organizations, they need to recognize that organizing Democrats is like organizing cats. Being like cats can be our strength, and it is our weakness.
It is our weakness when we try to create top down pyramid organizations which ape the Republican Party big business model. Over time, democrats don't respond well to being ordered around. Bill Bradley wrote an excellent analysis of Democrat Party problems, "A Party Inverted", on 30 March 2005 in the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/opinion/30bradley.html? At the end, he said we need to start building our own pyramid.
While I like Bradley, I think the independent streak of Democrats requires that we build many pyramids, and that they are made of bamboo: strong, resilient, fast to put up, fast to take down, fast to move, and with an open structure so everyone can see what is going on.
Bamboo pyramids are open organizations where citizens can participate in the political community when they want and how they want, and one key to being open is that the organizations are unencumbered by information black holes. I
believe the suggestions in the following 3 web pages will help prevent information black holes.
My ideas of what is necessary are based on over 30 years of watching politics, from Kent State, to Nixon not being a crook, to oposition 13 in 1978 to its twin in Massachusetts of Prop 2 ½, to Raygun, to the Dems losing the Senate in 1986, to Dukakis blowing a huge lead after Labor Day 1988, to Clinton beating a war President, to the right killing Hillary Care, to the stasis of the 90's, to Gore, Dean, and Kerry. Sometimes I have been a grunt in assorted campaigns, I have never been a big wig.
I have watched so many Democrat election debacles. Plenty of credit belongs to the message wizards Ailes, Atewater and Roves, and plenty of blame belongs to Democrat last minute command and control inept "grassroots" campaigns.