Every movement needs great orators. Talk is important. But talk without action takes us nowhere. For every Frederick Douglass – both orator and activist – we need thousands of Harriet Tubmans.
That's something I wrote back in June in a diary called Tell us what you're doing. What I had in mind was a discussion about political doings, and hundreds of people responded in just that vein. Others discussed things they do that might not be taken as political or reasons why they aren't engaged politically. It was a terrific discussion and everybody who read it learned some amazing stuff about other Kossacks. People said they were engaged in everything from fighting racism to being chairman of a local renewable energy commission to fighting for more bike lanes.
So I think the process is well worth repeating.
This isn't just an exercise in getting to know each other better, in building respect for each other. There's also the benefit that, as I said in that first diary, knowing that we have such a broad "on-site base of experts to go to when new legislation is proposed, whether that legislation is terrible, or brilliant, or problematic but potentially could be made into something acceptable if pressure is carefully applied in the right places at the right time." Or when we have an incident such as the BP gusher. Or name a hundred other issues.
Before getting started this time, I'd like to make the same suggestion I made previously. This tell-us-what-you're-doing discussion shouldn't be confined to a single diary. The next time you think it would be a good idea to write a meta-diary, or a counter-meta diary, or a counter-counter-meta diary, or to spend time commenting in one of these, ponder the value of informing readers here about some on-the-ground action project you're involved in or have in the past been involved in or are thinking about getting involved in. (This is not to say that meta discussions are all bad or unnecessary or unhelpful. But sometimes the balance gets out of whack.)
Don't be shy because what you're doing doesn't seem like a big deal. We all participate based on our skills, our time, our passions.
Are you phone-banking? Writing letters to straighten out misinformation the local media are publishing? Campaigning for a dark horse candidate? Participating in an antiwar group? Helping build housing for the poor? Fighting for gay rights?
Whatever you're doing to make your neighborhood, your city, your congressional district, your state legislative district, your state, the country or the world a better place are all subjects others here would like to hear about. People want to know how successful you've been, how you beat the obstacles to create a success, or how you were stymied and dealt with failure, fixed mistakes, and used what you learned from one project to figure a better way to achieve good results in the next one. They want details, anecdotes and advice from you.
Last time, I promised I'd tell what I'm doing. So here, belatedly, is that.
For the four-and-a-half decades I've been politically active, I've split my time between electoral politics and, let me call it "outsider activism." (You probably have your own name for it.) That's because all the great reforms in American history have started outside of Congress and the Presidency and the courts. Little groups, growing to bigger groups, putting on pressure for change. Ultimately, that change has been confirmed by state legislatures, Congress and the courts. So, as frustrating as it often is, we need both outside activism, often stretching over years or decades, and elected officials to make things happen.
So what do I do?
I am a Democratic precinct captain in 90031, which is a low-income area of northeast Los Angeles, part of Congressman Xavier Becerra's district, that I talked about in this diary. Together with four other Democratic precinct captains, I supervise get-out-the-vote efforts in 48 precincts in two congressional districts in five adjacent ZIP Codes. Our team first got together in 2003 because the Los Angeles County Democratic HQ was doing squat to fight the recall of Governor Gray Davis.
Things we do:
• Recruit and train people to be precinct captains in the 43 other precincts
• Recruit volunteers in our own precincts and help the other captains to do the same to build small teams that will go door-to-door for the three months before the election
• Write talking points for each of our recruits and do at least two role-play sessions with them in small groups
• Update our voter lists
• Provide one-page flyers for our precinct walkers
• Provide forms so people can apply for absentee ballots (This, by the way, is a great way to get reluctant people to open their doors.)
• Recruit GOTV drivers on election day (This last has been less of an issue in the past two elections because so many Californians are voting by mail via the permanent absentee system.)
Twice a month, my stepdaughter and I help serve meals to the homeless at the Los Angeles Mission.
One weekend day a month, I volunteer as an escort for patients at Planned Parenthood. At one time, this was a major effort, with several escorts working against small mobs of anti-abortion protesters. The situation has calmed down considerably, and sometimes, there is not a single protester on site. But, as we all know, abortion providers continue to be at risk and women seeking to exercise their legal rights continue to be harassed and harangued.
Having myself served time in a juvenile prison, I have for nearly 25 years been involved one-on-one with juvenile offenders, particularly young gang members with arrest records. Currently, I work with 13-year-old "Enrique," tutoring him in English, taking him to events, and doing what I can to pry him away from behavior and associations that are otherwise likely to land him in detention or worse.
I work with Jobs with Justice in hopes of giving this coalition a public presence in Los Angeles.
I am a member of Native American Netroots and DK GreenRoots.
In January, I will begin serving as a board member on the Neighborhood Council of my area, one of 90 such local advisory councils across the city.
Your turn.