I'm not really a blogger, you know. Oh, sure, I've been writing diaries here for three years. I read and comment here and elsewhere. But I'm an organizer first and foremost. That means I spend a lot more time cleaning up the mess, and a lot less time expressing my opinion about how other folks are holding their mops.
And it's no accident that I feel powerful, instead of helpless. It's why I am not angry or depressed all the time. When you are participating, instead of observing, it fundamentally changes how you experience the debate.
But don't take my word for it. Take Baratunde's:
Don't blog about it, don't tweet about it, just try to BE about it.
Baratunde Thurston just posted a great video about his experience phonebanking for the healthcare bill.
Watch for yourself.
Here's some excerpts I took down while I watched it:
Last night I did something I haven't done in a long while in politics . . . I did SOMETHING. I didn't blog something, I didn't think something, I didn't watch something, I didn't tweet something.
I got up off my ass, and I DID something.
I volunteered to make phone calls to citizens to call their Senators to encourage the Senate to pass this healthcare reform.
He was talking about going to an Organizing for America phonebank (I have it on good authority it was the one put on by some OFA organizers in Brooklyn). If you have been following posts by casperr and mindoca here, you know that the New York folks are phonebanking up a storm and have been for months. Volunteers across the country have been out talking to real people, offline, and motivating them to speak up and tell Congress to pass healthcare and to get it right.
But this isn't just about what OFA is doing on healthcare. It's about what happens when we stop worrying about losing and start working so we can win. Baratunde talks about how just a couple of hours of phonebanking changed how he felt about the process:
I can't tell you the relief of actually getting up, getting out there and DOING something versus watching things happen and getting angry about them.
It's always been true for me. The more I am out doing the work, the less I get caught up in the sound and fury that blows through the netroots, the more I feel hopeful and empowered.
Blogging for me was never an end in itself. It has always been wrapped up in the story of the organizing work - a way for me to talk about it and hopefully inspire others.
And the election? For me it was never about some laundry list of policies that added up to "change." It was about giving everyday Americans a voice in our government. It was about motivating a true participatory democracy. Literally millions of Americans have volunteered or taken action on this legislation, with OFA, through HCAN, the unions, and many other organizations. That is monumental change.
Almost two years ago, on the eve of the Iowa primary, I wrote three diaries with three key reasons I supported the Obama campaign. One of them was the chance to get Americans to be political participants, not just observers:
For Obama, we are not passive beneficiaries of policy. He will make the Washington policymaking space more open to our involvement than it has every been, but it will be up to us to come in and fight for the change we want. If we don't step up to the plate, he won't impose something on our behalf. Because he knows that kind of top-down approach is doomed to failure.
When Barack Obama talks about "change we can believe in" he means this active engagement with the world. He means that we can make it happen.
Baratunde said something very similar in his video:
A lot of people have their heads hanging low . . . "this isn't the change I voted for." Well one of the things I voted for was to participate.
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This wasn't just about outsourcing the job of democracy to some dude in Washington, it was about investing myself in the process and investing ourselves in that process.
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It's not all on him [President Obama].
Don't blog about it, don't tweet about it, just try to BE about it.
What Baratunde said.
Click here to sign up to volunteer with OFA , or click here to find a phonebank near you.
I am volunteering with Organizing for America in California. When I write here I speak for myself and not for the organization in any way. My diaries, and all the words in them, are my own.