First, a reminder: remember when Dewey beat Truman in '48? For most of you, no; even I wasn't even there. But that iconic picture flashing the headline is a cautionary tale to every pollster, no matter how many years later. You probably remember why, as well: the polls were conducted by phones, which tilted the results toward higher income voters' responses. The poorer you were, the less likely you were to own a phone. So the polls were wrong.
Grassroots organizers, the only kind I care about, are hardly in need of polls. What we really need are movie nights to remind us how things work historically; specifically, John Sayles' classic Matewan, which despite its less-than-commercial name is a riveting story about a young urban organizer who comes to the Kentucky coal mines and helps them work together against the bosses. Watch it; well-worth every instant of time, and every moment of sadness in the film.
There's a lot to take away, but the first, most basic: this organizer comes to the mining camps on foot. And he lives there.
My hero, Saul Alinsky wrote many years ago, "You start where people are, not where you want them to be," and that's still the best organizing advice I've ever seen. It fits as much for the physical reality as anything else.
It's easy to organize students, because the odds are the organizer comes from the same class background: well-off parents (had a car apiece and a dishwasher, in my definition of well-off) went to college, and views poverty as temporary. A significant part of that shared background is technology.
When I was in grad school, I was the only one in my year to own a VCR. (A gift from my father, who was quite unquestionably well off.) Two years later, everyone I knew owned one. It was a necessity for a scholar of rhetoric, particularly when we started getting Cultural Studies guest faculty. It took a couple more years before I started seeing them in the average home, but within five years, no one didn't own one. Except those of my siblings and their friends who had never been to college.
Every time I read a review for some cable television show, a dark part of me rears up and aims hate at the writer. Yes, this is irrational. But cable tv is on a list of tech choices for some of it, and it didn't make the cut. I'd guess 2/3 of the people in my building have cable. About 85% own air conditioners. There are maybe 10 who use computers regularly. And at best educated guess, about 10% own cell phones. Most of those are very, very low income and good at exploiting the system (which provides cell phones to those whose incomes are very low); the rest are people whose family pays for their phone.
I am probably the only one in the entire building who owns a Nook or its Kindle equivalent. It didn't have to make the cut -- my ex listened to me fantasizing about it one day and sent me one as a gift. That's one major difference between most poor people and a few of us who were in the middle class for awhile: well-off friends.
Other tech. An electronic blood pressure cuff? Unlikely. Medicare doesn't usually buy one. Electric care or scooter? That's complicated -- but most of the medicare-only recipients I know don't qualify, so they push themselves around in walkers. Yes, I know, ultimately that's healthier, but in the scheme of things, it's a mark of constant pain. Require one yourself before you start to make cheerleader motions.
Netbooks? I have never seen a netbook in the building. Even social workers don't usually have sufficient income, or work for sufficiently well-off NGOs, to own one. They're getting cheaper, so probably soon.
Laptops? I own one. It's three years old, but the people in the building who are at all interested in tech come look at it when I work in the community room. They're fascinated by it -- by the fact I can play DVD's, or even record DVDs, on it; the fact that I can talk face-to-face to people in other cities if I like, and take the pictures of those around me. They discuss how nice it would be to talk to their grandchildren like that, and to save pictures of them the way I can take a picture of the person looking over my shoulder and save it. They wish they understood how it worked -- but then, they ask how much it cost and when they find out it was hundreds of dollars, sigh and turn away. A nice luxury, yes, but not for them.
When I first moved in some years ago, I was famous as the "young one" -- the only person in the building under 60. I'm still one of very few. When the power went out, and a couple of the people on oxygen were struggling to breathe, they asked me to use the telephone in the lobby to call the power company and find out what was going on. They didn't have the power company's number, and weren't sure how to use the phone, because you had to dial something first (9).
These are not dumb people. In their lifetimes, they've moved from counting out change through complicated dances with cash registers to entering numbers and confirming messages; from counting inventory to scanning inventory; from cooking for masses of school children from scratch to organizing meals by numbered parts.
But there was little tech in their lives, and that the kind they were carefully trained to use. The idea of buying a computer and just messing around with it to see what happened is beyond their worldview. I am the unofficial IT person for the few with computers and printers, and my training is in words. I'm just willing to experiment, perhaps go online and search, and if all else fails email the two people I know who are professional IT to beg for answers. The people in the building think all of this is miraculous.
So, if you're going to try to organize the poor, go live with them awhile. Start understanding what it means not to post an invitation to a meeting online, or have a daytime meeting -- Most of them work days, and they don't get loose time off. Their lunches are generally half an hour, and if they're late, someone else gets their lunch late.
One reason no one ever seems to explore why the working poor are often Republicans is that organizing happens through their churches. The IAF was working with that, but last I heard, it mostly organizes through middle class churches, so a voting movement wouldn't come to anything.
In other words, organizing the lowest 30% now would probably need to be done exactly the same way it was done in 1948. Go to people's houses. Hang out in their after-work taverns. Stand up in their churches.
In short, talk to them. Or, if you want to get wild and crazy, listen.
It might just change an election outcome.