There are some very productive things coming out about how you get people active and expand the number of committed progressives.
How do you build and expand a movement? It is one thing to have tens of millions of people who voted democratic and who are very uneasy about that the right is doing while in power. It is something very different to give these people a way to turn their unease into active political effort. I believe that we have people in the progressive movement that are attacking the issue from all different sides and taking real approaches based on what is effective.
Below the fold is a discussion and links on how a movement is created and sustained...
by people-to-people connection and by individuals becoming leaders. This is not magic, it is just some basic training and then hard work.
Of the recent articles/finds online I am most excited about the following three.
1)
Christopher Hayes has a great article about how you "Systematically expand the universe of access points to their worldview and actively recruit people into the fold."
2)
Michael Ventura has a great article about putting in time to be involved. It is a call to action.
3) Note that Democracy for America just has released a
very interesting pdf about organizing at the local level.
PERSON TO PERSON is the KEY.
Personally I find the concept of evangelizing distasteful, and I do not advocate becoming door-to-door conversion troops trying to convince strangers. However we must learn from the strengths of our enemies. It is fact that the religious right in the learned lessons from the communist's way of attracting followers. Note that the unbelievably influential Campus Crusade for Christ had people that closely studied Douglas Hyde's Dedication and Leadership, which was a close study of how communists drew out commitment and created leaders in countries where they held no political power.
So the key is not to try to persuade strangers, that is a way of attracting followers that has an unbelievable high "attrition" rate. It beats volunteers up tremendously to face rejection after rejection with disinterested strangers, the dirty secret of these kinds of actions is that what they accomplish is a public demonstration on the part of the volunteer through their public humiliation which solidifies and intensifies their commitment to the movement. I.E. if you go through the hell of being rejected you save your self-respect by believing that you have shown how committed you are to the good cause.
If the key is not to persuade strangers then what is the key? The key is to provide an example to people that are around you.
In order to create change, people don't want to meet someone that drove in from across the country to tell them how to live their life. They want listen to someone they like or trust already that lives on their street or who has a kid at their school. It is really quite simple, it just takes a little bit of explanation about how to do it. You have to get to know someone in their daily life, let them understand that you care about them, and then begin to show your commitment to the cause and why you are committed to that cause. Then you start by giving small jobs to that person and you gradually give them more and more responsibility as they become committed.
There is an interesting problem in volunteer work that you don't want to burn out your volunteers, but that if you don't give them enough to do then they drop off for lack of being inspired. One of the ways that you get past this is by communicating the big picture with them and gradually and consistently giving a little more and a little more so they grow as they volunteer.
A movement focuses on people not only geographic boundaries.
Right now we are rightfully often focusing on organizing within geographic lines which determine results of individual elections. For example we organize everyone within Congressional District 17. But it is a fact of modern America that most people have a close affinity group, people that they share similar goals and connections, that are across the city, the state or the country. Building a movement through those connections is some of the easiest to do emotionally, because people already agree about things. So instead of just thinking about organizing the precinct you get 4 people that are in four different states but who are very good friends and see eye to eye politically. You allow them to see themselves as grassroots leaders within their own geographic area but with the psychological support of their friends in other areas. This is why the net is so powerful. No need to explain why here.
The power of personal appeals to fundraising.
Months ago I was telling friends that we cannot be caught sleeping and using the following example. We are very excited right now about the energy online and the effect that progressive cooperative websites are having in putting pressure on such things as the Alberto Gonzalez confirmation and on the Social Security debate. However the Republican's are amazed at how well their get out the vote methods worked, and the key to them was a network of people that were responsible for not getting out individuals to vote but to train other people to get other voters out. Here is a
rebuttal of the Matt Bai the NYT article on the "Amway style" republican political organizing (try to find the original article online it was titled "The Multilevel Marketing of the President.") What is overlooked here is what Hayes explains in his article above, this isn't some distasteful manipulation it is the method of grassroots action. Many of the religious right that are faithfully becoming so politically active are able to evangelize their political beliefs so effectively because they have been trained for years and years to evangelize effectively their religious beliefs. "You and I believe the same things about life, since that is the case and I also give $25 a month and my time to the RNC then if you are actually like me then you will too."
So what is the example of getting caught sleeping that we must avoid? I don't stand by these numbers as rock solid just use them as a concept. Lets say Howard Dean has 600,000 DFA members and he brings 10% of them to paying monthly dues as new members to the DNC. At $15 dollars a month that is $10,000,000 addition a year to the DNC. Now the Republicans supposedly got 4 million extra evangelicals out the polls, lets say they get the similar 10% numbers to join the RNC. That is $70,000,000 more to the RNC.
Please do not focus on my numerical assumptions here. What I am trying to say is what do you think is more effective? 1) traditional fundraisers in the mail and conventional meet-the-candidates dinners or 2) personal appeals face-to-face, individual-to-individual, by people that have been trained in how to elicit ongoing change and commitment in people. You guessed it, number one is the damn letter that I just got from Carville (don't get me wrong I love Carville) in the mail from the DNC and number two is the concerted and ongoing methodology being promulgated by the RNC in this Evangelical style. Hence we read about the RNC raising significantly more than the DNC during a time of unbelievable importance for the future of the democratic party. "The RNC reported getting 464,432 individual donations from more than 423,000 donors in the first two months of the year. More than 37,000 new donors have contributed to the RNC this year and the average donation was $46.54, the RNC reported."
The RNC out raised the DNC 2-1 in the first 2 months of 2005.
We are on the right track.
Having said all of this I am very hopeful. These things take time and there are so many people on the progressive side of the aisle that are mobilized that I believe we will get there. I am very heartened by the local base that Dean is committed to supporting. We are going to get there I believe. I can tell you this, if we don't get back into power, it won't be because I didn't work my ass off. I know that many of the people here at KOS will be able to say the same thing.