Every once in a while a new way of transmitting and organizing information comes along and creates massive changes in every aspect of society. Advances such as the printing press, telephony, and information theory have had a profound effect on the way we organize and manipulate our economics, politics and technology as well as our social and spiritual lives.
Unless you have been living in a hole for the last 10 years or so you know that it has been repeatedly said that the Internet is going to be the next upheaval, and it will be a massive one. However, as we are still right in the middle of the process the difficult part is trying to divine what these changes will entail and who will benefit (with the corollary of course, of how they will do it). While I agree with this assessment, I believe that people are mistaking the messenger for the message. More specifically than the Internet, it will be the concept of "peer-to-peer" that the internet represents which will be the real driving force for seismic change in the future.
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But isn't peer-to-peer is just a way to pirate copyrighted material?
Wrong! That may be the most visible application now, but remember that eCommerce was essentially pioneered by the porn industry back in the early days of the world wide web and now it is a pillar of our economy. In actuality peer-to-peer is much bigger than file trading. I believe that it represents a fundamental shift in principles of organization. The current economic, political, and cultural models of dissemination are all highly centralized. The bulk of us are consumers that consume the products of a small number of producers. The shift is from this model to a model where everyone is a simultaneously a producer and a consumer, and each person is interconnected with everyone else in a vast and chaotic web of interdependence. There is no more subject (producer) and object (consumer), but rather there is only the subject (producer/consumer). Suddenly each of us owns the fruits of our own work instead of living as sharecroppers of our own labor and ideas under the thumb of corporate masters.
A fairly standard behavior of peer-to-peer models is that the most popular information inherently trickles up to the top. Peer-to-peer is a shift from trickle-down to trickle-up and thus an inherently democratic form of organization. Ultimately, this model can be (and will be no matter who tries to stop it) applied to nearly every aspect of our lives.
In economics we are already seeing this transformation with a service like eBay in which suddenly every person is empowered with the ability to bring products to a market that reaches millions of potential customers. Extend this marketplace free of sweat shop exploitation to a country like Nepal or Ethiopia and consider the implications. Could this be the end of the corporate model of economy as we know it? The peer-to-peer media format of message boards, chat rooms, and social network sites are also radically restructuring our social lives, sense of community, and the media industry as all Kossacks should be readily aware. In the energy sector, there are rumblings of a peer-to-peer energy grid where a person with a solar panel on his roof can sell energy to a person in Argentina during July and buy it from someone who has converted their refuse into electricity in January. By California law today you are currently entitled to credits for pumping energy back on to the grid, but a more fundamental change will occur when each producer and consumer has the ability to bid on and auction his energy on an open market like eBay. In fact, the Internet itself is a manifestation, not a source, of change. The Internet is a simply a peer to peer way of sharing digital information, since every computer on the internet can potentially serve internet information as well as receive it.
Now, what is happening in the political world? With the exception of people like Dean and Rosenberg, the political establishment does not get it. Even with these folks I think that they know which star they need to hitch a ride from, but I'm still not convinced that even they understand what the star is. Aside from the few people like them, however, the political establishment is driving blind through the twisted alleys of history while the world plummets ahead in its sometimes inevitable way toward a result that, one way or another, can not be refused.
How do we harness this beast?
As a catalyst for reforming and rebuilding a healthy and progressive democratic majority party fueled by a strong peer-to-peer grassroots movement, I would like to suggest that democrats start mobilizing and advertising as local charity services at the precinct level. What I suggest is that democratic precincts begin to initiate projects, coordinated by both staff and community volunteers, to improve the communities that they represent. In addition to the new services would be a drive to revitalize the community forum with active participation and support from elected and appointed officials in a setting open to dialog with the public. Finally there would be an active network of communication between different precincts all the way up to the national party that is utilized to share and compare the effectiveness of different programs in order to allow the best ideas to trickle upward to the top. The whole thing will be organized through the internet. In fact, it would be impossible to organize something like this without the internet.
This would essentially be a shadow peer-to-peer/trickle-up government run by Democratic Party branded spinoff non-profit organizations that provide social services based on the progressive taxation of volunteerism and donation.
I. Even in the New, Global, Community, Politics are Local
I believe that the best way to attract a strong sense of commitment and participation in the political process lies at the local level. It is here that people can get direct and immediate results for the effort they exert. Larger political units, on the other hand, are more abstract in nature and require a more theoretical understanding to appreciate fully. In addition, local programs can often more accurately address local needs than large, national and state level programs can. This viceral sense of results for effort will let people feel that they have a stake in their community and that it is the Democratic Party that has enabled this.
Beneficiaries of these services will be more likely to vote for Democrats in the future. Furthermore, these services will be concentrated in more heavily Democratic Precincts where there is more support for them. Heavily Republican Precincts, on the other hand, will suffer from not having as many services due to a lack of volunteers and donations. As a result, people might consider supporting the Democratic Party in the future in order to gain access to the services that other communities enjoy.
II. Counter to the GOP Church Based Community
As a secular nation, the United States has always greatly suffered from the lack of a secular public forum. I think that Benjamin Franklin was acutely aware of this need as he founded the Junto Club which served as a model for other secular civic institutions aimed at building community and providing a public forum. The political forum is largely shut off from the majority of citizens due to a lack of local involvement. Most religious forums are exclusionary by nature simply due to the inability of some people to participate due to a conflict in belief. The traditional media is disfunctional and a near complete failure as a public forum, and while the internet currently provides a strong alternative forum it's strength so far has been in interest driven communities rather than geographically driven ones, which hinders its effectiveness at the local level where I believe such a forum can be most easily translated into positive results. That is why if and until more massive shifts in our social and political understanding occur such that geography becomes far less relevant, the organizational power of the internet must be tied to local, physical, communities.
A primary goal of this plan is to create the strong secular based community forum to counteract the alliance of the GOP and churches as well as to complement the relationships that the Democratic Party has with liberal churches. These local communities can also serve as a strong organizational base from which support for larger regional, state, and national social justice movements can be created.
III. Clean out the Dry Rot of the Democratic Party
This entails a fundamental shift in the Democratic Party from being a top-down driven party to a bottom-up driven party. Local communities can become test beds for new policy ideas and the best ideas can trickle to the top through their proven effectiveness. This is a great way to harness the creativity and inspiration of the millions of people who are currently shut out of the policy generation end of the political process and insure that when new policies are suggested at the regional/state/nation level they will already have a demonstrably proven track record that can be shown to build support for their passage. By the time they are suggested at the federal level some of these ideas might already be implemented across half of the country in some form or another, including in the precincts of Republican Congressmen and Senators. These forums will also serve to train and recruit the progressive leaders of the future.
Under this plan the Democratic Party changes from a blue state party to a 50 state party. Because precincts will drive the party, any place where Democrats can gather together and contribute their time and money they will be generating positive publicity and interest in the Democratic Party. Many people in predominantly red states, such as the fine people of Austin, Texas, would like to find ways to support the party but are currently ignored and shut out of the process with the exception of crass efforts to extract donation without any interets in their issues shown in return. This idea would provide a means for them to contribute in a very productive way to both their community and toward the Democratic Party as a whole.
A hollowed out shell of a party is transformed into a vital, organic, structure ready to rapidly adapt and respond to changing times and the needs and concerns of its constituents. This happens because the party *becomes* its constituents.
IV. Build Faith in the Democratic Party
I believe that this would be a massive PR coup for the Democratic Party by reframing them quickly and effectively as the party of charity, giving, and morality at a concrete level that the GOP can not produce. In comparison it will be easy to demonstrate that the GOP is long on talk but simply does not deliver the goods. This will demonstrate to large numbers of people that progressive policies will benefit the local community through first hand experience and help to restore the respect for the liberal principles upon which this country was founded; the principles that have been relentlessly assaulted by the media and political establishment ever since the Republican revolution began ten years ago. Unlike trying to demonstrate these things through the legislative process this plan does not require a majority to enact and does not require any compromises with neo-cons for passage.
The biggest political party is not the Republican Party. It is not the Democratic Party. It is the massive number of people who are either independents or do not vote at all. These people do not believe that either of the parties directly addresses their needs and wants and does not want to hear what they have to say. This idea can change that perception, and *the Republicans can not counter effectively with a similar strategy because they and many of their constituents are fundamentally resistant to these kinds of programs.*
V. How do we start?
Of course, this does not work if a critical mass of volunteers and donors is not met. So, would do one start out? I would suggest targetting a few precincts in progressive activist bastions like Berkley and Seattle where drawing volunteers and donors would be easier than in other places. To kick start the process these pilot programs can be partially funded by the state and/or national DNC. In addition, the programs can form partnerships with allied non-profit organizations to leverage the pre-existing infrastructures of established progressive movements.
Projects should be very local in nature, always geared toward positive change, and should showcase progressive values that have strong majority support in the nation at large. So anti-war rallies, drives to generate petitions for impeachment, and medical testing animal liberation efforts are probably not the best place to start. Local environmental clean jobs, neighborhood "broken window theory" movements, and small business development projects in underdeveloped areas, however, are spot on.
We would have to coordinate with the senate and congress to watch for leglistation that would outlaw this activity and prevent it from passing. Once these projects are in place, they should be publicized loudly at the national level whenever possible. The programs can then be spread to other precincts as momentum builds.
I believe that it will build, and quickly. If there is one thing that we can learned from the stunning rise of Howard Dean it is that if you provide an honestly well intentioned mechanism for the progressive grassroots to take ownership of the political process, you will not be disappointed with the results.
Let's take ownership of the political process. We start with the Democratic Party and then we move on from there.