but not in hate, bigotry, racism, but in the democratic ideals of justice, fairness, equality, and tolerance. While many of you plan on giving up on the south, some of us are trying to build.
While many of you plan on giving up on the south, some of us are trying to build with what we have. Below is our plan to start building a real regional network. Perhaps you'd like to help or give us some feedback?
Situation in the Status Quo:
In the middle of the 20th century the Republicans used the race card in the Southern strategy to openly court a group of Democrats (who were at the time for segregation), into the Republican party. The effects of this strategy varied state by state, but it created a few distinct results.
First, racist Democrats joined the Republican Party, leaving their traditional infrastructure and voting patterns.
Second, non-racist Republicans stayed mainly intact, having been the minority in the region for almost a century, the influx of people was welcomed.
Third, not all racist Democrats switched parties, some merely held onto their party affiliation and power base, but then voted Republican in national elections.
Fourth, race was used as a wedge issue by Republicans, to isolate the Democratic Party into a minority party consisting largely of minorities.
The result of this is that the party infrastructure of the Democratic Party was torn asunder by infighting and people simply leaving.
I believe however, that this has actually given us the moral high ground, in that we are no longer the party of southern bigotry, but of equality and tolerance.
Now, many years later, we have good democratic candidates, who are severely handicapped because they completely lack infrastructural support. In my own state, after observations of elections, I have concluded that the only infrastructure available is in political families whose political experience date back for at least a generation or two.
There are of course multiple problems with the political family system:
1. Its power is localized, and ineffective at national or state levels.
2. There is no clear action of succession, in other words, if some sort of tragedy would happen, the state party would have little power to recoup or place another individual in for an election and maintain organization
3. Helping oneself and close relatives takes priority over donating money to and fostering statewide infrastructure.
4. The entire situation is detrimental to democracy and grass-roots activism in general.
This was merely an example of what I have noticed in my own state, each southern state is sure to have its own individual problems, but regardless, there is a solution which leads me to propose the following goal:
We must create and develop state and regional party infrastructure using grassroots/net-roots activism and support. Our southern democratic political system is quite frankly out of date, and we need to do our best to bring our region up to speed. In addition, many who are outside of our region, do not understand many of the cultural/political phenomena present here, and even as we speak are willing to literally write off the south.
If we want to defeat the Republicans, we must do so in every state, and in every county. WE CAN NOT ALLOW the south to be a bastion for a national Republican resurgence.
In order to do this, we must have organization and set goals, thus to begin with we need to foster an online environment reflective of these goals.
I have already personally paid for a domain name and server package, it is the least I can do for the future of my party.
Right now, we must build our community, our website.
This is Phase 1, with each phase consisting of building our community, supporting the party, and bridging the gap on a state, regional, and eventually national level.
Phase 1 is a developmental stage where we lay the groundwork for 08 and the other years to come.
So are you wondering what you can do?
Let me begin the outline then.
Our current status is that our community is being built. I refuse to go fully public with our website until it has been built with significant content. I have prior experience in website development, and it is difficult to market a blank page, thus we have to begin with building our community.
Here is where everyone can help!
Building our community:
State and Regional:
First we need a list of links to blogs and other personal political websites in a state by state manner.
Advantage:
With this database we would have cohesiveness within each state as well as a means for each state to quickly check up on other states.
National:
Contact national blogs, such as dailykos, mydd, crooksandliars, huffingtonpost, etc, and let them know what is going on in our region, as well as helping those communities better understand southern politics from those who have experienced it first hand.
Advantage:
This allows for education of others, increased spotlight and interest in the region, and may even result in developing interest in activism in our elections.
Supporting the party:
State:
We need to contact state executives and party chairs and let them know that if they need any assistance to let us know. In addition, we will request that they also carbon copy us for any pr memos or alert us when there is a republican attack. We must not allow ANY attack on ANY member of our party to go unanswered.
Regional:
Foster cross-talk and support of candidates in neighboring states. Let candidates know that they have southern democrats supporting them not only in the next county over, but 2-3 states over.
National:
Use the developed state and regional support to aid national issues when our party calls. Also, we should be able to take national issues and present them in a way as to develop local and state support for them, thus completing the political circle.
Advantages:
we begin to counter the informational output infrastructure of the Republican machine in the south, while bridging the gap between state, regional, and national politics.
Bridging the Gap between State, Region, and Nation:
By utilizing the last two action plans, we should effectively begin to educate the national party on how to frame issues to southern voters, persuade them not to abandon the South to the Republicans, and to begin to offer more support for Southern Democratic candidates. As this occurs the infrastructure and grassroots environment should be primed for phase 2.
Phase 2:
This phase will mirror phase one, with the building our community, supporting the party, and outreach, except that while phase 1 was informational based, phase 2 is focused on actual people power and GOTV operations.
While it is too early to completely flesh out phase 2 (if phase 1 works out, we should have this up and running before 08), here is the outline:
Building our community: create a state by state archive of volunteers, activists, etc so that we have a grassroots force to aid democratic candidates in their specific state. Then we develop cross state community and activism, for example aiding the GOTV efforts in a tri-state area, until we evolve it into a regional affair. In addition, we would now be able to mobilize a few people in case of national emergencies (a neck to neck senate race, etc).
In addition, I believe it is people on the ground that is the best advertisement for our community. When we work with others, we serve as a living example for our community and our support to the party.
For the record, I must say a few things; I would enjoy feedback on both the plan and these following points:
1. This is merely a bare-bones outline of the plan, more specific instructions are to come.
2. This plan does not cover financial donations to candidates, etc, because I believe that is the personal choice of individuals, and that we can't just throw money at our problems to fix them. We need information, outreach, and people donating time first.
3. As to which states are "southern" I believe the following list: Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, N. Carolina, S. Carolina.
4. As to the Democratic requirements for membership, I want to be clear that we welcome all those who support the Democratic Party. Mostly labels are used to divide us, and we should not let that happen. That being said, THERE IS A CLEAR DIFFERENCE, between a moderate or conservative democrat and a GOP enabler, and with the effects of the southern strategy we should be on guard for the latter.
5. After we build the site with content, including the blog links, a working forum, some design touch-ups, some articles, etc we will go "public". This is where we all email everyone we know about the site, and put up links to it in our writings.
6. We just have to take it slow at first, and work towards building a community. If we lay the foundations correctly, we could have a good future and perhaps help our state and local parties.
So here is what I specifically need right now, if you send me any of these, please do so in text format.
1. A list of your personal blogs or a list of all the democrat or progressive blogs in your state.
2. If you have the email address of any party officials, current, or former democratic candidates who are open to being contacted with this file, to let them know what we are doing and planning. Personally, I'd say hold on to this list, it is probably better that they be contacted by people they know, but please, start spreading the word.
3. I'd like to start an essay series that we cross-post on various diaries, blogs, and the main site. I think the first subject should be on what makes Southern Democrats unique. I need some feed back on this and other possible topics, and then we can name a week to do this.
4. We need individuals to use our forum to post news about what is going on in their state to keep everyone informed. We'd like to have some topics already started in our site's forum before we go public.
5. Please register for the site as it is now, so that we can have an easy way to communicate with each other.
6. Most of all, we just need you.
Well I hope that just about covers it for now, I'm going to continue to work on the site. Feel free to post this article where ever you need to, as long as you don't make any significant changes to it.
And remember: www.southerndems.com