(Cross-posted on my blog,
Planting Liberally)
If you live in a major metropolitan area, chances are that there's a large transient population - students, young professionals, living-out-of-a-hotel consultants, etc. This population is a significant challenge to local political organizations: they're not likely to be interested in local politics, they're probably too busy getting settled to get involved in politics, and even if they do join your group, they're likely to leave town in the not-too-distant future.
Local political groups and affiliated organizations can turn this challenge into an opportunity by writing guides to their city from a liberal perspective. Such a guide will not only welcome newcomers to the city, but will have many tangible benefits for the groups who put it together.
Much more below the flip!
A guide to your city is a simple booklet with helpful resources for people who are moving to your city or have recently arrived. It should list:
- How to find an apartment
- Basic information about transportation
- Good places to shop and get food (be sure to highlight local liberal businesses, including independent bookstores and coffeeshops, co-op grocery stores, etc.)
- Information about the local religious scene, especially including liberal churches which are welcoming and inclusive
- Information about the local liberal scene, including pointers to your local Drinking Liberally and DFA groups
- Local websites, blogs, newspapers, TV or radio stations that newcomers may find helpful or simply entertaining - including, of course, any such media which has a liberal slant
- Information about how to register to vote, and how to get involved in the local Democratic party
Of course, this list is just a starting point. It may be necessary to modify it on a case by case basis.
The main goal of these guides is to help newcomers to your city get settled as easily as possible, and to make them feel welcome. An important secondary goal is to help newcomers get settled into the liberal scene, defined broadly - help them find liberal media, liberal stores, liberal religious congregations, and of course, liberal political groups.
Publishing a liberal guide will have some real benefits for your group:
- You will have an easier time recruiting newcomers to the city, to make up for the inevitable fact that some members of your group will leave your city
- You may be able to sell ad space to liberal businesses, and use the guide as a fundraising mechanism
- The guide will facilitate outreach and communications with other naturally allied groups in your area
- Some of your less active members may find this kind of project fun, and it will open up volunteer opportunities for them that don't involve sitting in a meeting; and it will tap graphic design, web, and writing skills
- It will be easier to motivate newcomers to your city to go to the polls and vote, come election time
- You will get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that you are making your city a more inviting place
There are more amorphous benefits to be had as well: you will bring more people into the liberal movement, by making liberalism an attractive lifestyle, building on the efforts of Drinking Liberally; you will also make liberalism a more viable business model, by driving more revenue to businesses who choose to prioritize liberal values (such as unionization, environmental consciousness, etc.); you'll increase attendance at liberal religious groups and reader/viewership for liberal media; and you will increase cohesion among liberals in your city, as a community forms around the media, religious congregations, and businesses you choose to highlight.
A substantially important element of this work is that it targets young people predominantly, with an eye towards bringing youth into the liberal movement and keeping them involved. In large part turned off by the traditionalist religious right, young people today are more liberal then the rest of the country by leaps and bounds. Accoring to a Spring 2006 survey by the Harvard Institute of Politics, 57% of college students identify as liberals, while 31% identify as conservatives. Among the general population, those numbers are 21% and 33% respectively.
Political scientists believe that a person's ideology and voting patterns do not change much after a person turns 30. So if we can "freeze" the liberal identification advantage among today's college students for 10 years, we will have scored a major, major victory in making our society more liberal. The development of liberal guides is one way to cement the advantage we currently hold among this generation - as recent college graduates move about the country and settle down in new cities, they will find it easier to remain liberal because the people welcoming them to the city are liberal.
If you are thinking it's a good idea to put these guides online, you're absolutely right. Fortunately, there's an open source software package, OpenGuides, which helps you put together exactly such a website. I haven't yet tried it, but it's worth taking a look.
Where I live (Cambridge, MA) we are working on an effort to put together "The Liberal's Guide to Cambridge". Our plan is to release it in September of this year, to coincide with the time of year when many new students come to the Boston area to study. Once the guide is ready to go, we'll pull together a coalition of grad student groups, DFA groups, Drinking Liberally, and who knows who else, for a launch party. I'll report back on the results.
In the meantime, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, or know of similar efforts in other places, I'd love to hear them!