For those who don't know ... I'm a media guy. I've been plugging away at building a coalition of independent filmmakers to start a new decentralized, nodal network on-line (
PubliusTV ... you can see a demo post up there now, more to come) when I finally hit a tipping point.
Some of y'all probably know the feeling, the feeling that you just can't imagine talking to your kids about what happened in the first decade of the 21st century without saying, "So I decided to try to do something about it."
So I decided to volunteer my time working for the Congressional candidate in my district, doing some ads for him. But a funny thing happened ... I decided to help Crash the Gate.
Part of it was the candidate,
Bob Johnson. He has a genuine desire to make things better, and an earnest belief that going to Congress is a service. That he's there for the people. He's a true populist.
But more than that, I realized that, at this moment, we can all make a difference. And I also realized that we the netroots, as a group, have far more to give than has been tapped into yet. We have been asked to give money, to write letters to the editor, to e-mail reporters to set them straight, etc. And we've been told that by giving money, we're helping to shift the power structure in the Democratic Party. Which is only partially true.
We can do more.
Because, after we give all the money to the candidates, who gets it? What is it spent on? The same tired consultants doing the same tired things. Sure, we in the netroots can reward good behavior in politicians, and withhold from others. But that only goes so far. What we need to do is find new ways of doing things, break the stranglehold certain consultants have on the money flow that keeps the usual ways of doing things in control.
Now, I well know the power of the visual, so I'm not going to say that a good chunk of money shouldn't go to TV ads. There's nothing quite so devastating as a good TV ad (although, even there, the Democrats don't seem to get it ... the DeWine ad the Brown people did ... pretty good, but what's with the US tanks next to DeWine at the end? Don't they realize that just associates DeWine with strength, undercutting the rest of the ad a bit? Grrrr ... drives me nuts ... what people hear in an ad doesn't matter a tenth as much as what they see).
But there are so many ways to replace what many campaigns pay big bucks to do with genuine people power, ways to truly create a people-powered politics. Because if the people are the source of the life of the campaign and its funds, then the people will be in control. That may scare some people, but it's time for a change.
So, I joined the Bob Johnson campaign. Bob is a candidate that believes in the power of the people, that believes in giving back control of our political lives to the people who are the real strength of the country, and when we talked about what the Internet could do, we both realized we wanted the same thing: more power and control in the hands of the people. It was a perfect opportunity, a great chance to try to come up with something new, something that, just maybe, can show a new source of political strength in the activists of this community I've been a part of for going on 4 years now.
I'm still doing the ads, but that is now secondary (what other campaign can say that their Internet campaign guy does the ads as his secondary duties?). We're going to build a true Internet campaign, where the net-roots are empowered as more than just a source of cash. Where a campaign does more than create new, complementary campaign tactics for the activists to do but actually has them do core functions of a campaign.
Bob will be posting something soon (tomorrow morning) about what our first plans are. I don't want to scoop him; this is more of a transition diary. Part explanation, part call to arms to my fellow Kossacks.
This is really about us, all of us. What ideas do we have? What can pull us forward?
Because we really can all make a difference. For me, the entry point was my skills as a filmmaker and ad producer. But we all have skills to contribute. An every comment can hold the key to grab one more demographic, one more bloc of votes, turn the tide on one more issue.
Creating a new people-powered politics is far more than just banding together to be a new bloc of donors, or kvetching on-line about what we hope happens. It's about actually doing it. It's about coming up with new ways to empower people, about re-inventing some basic campaign strategies to engage more activists. About taking advantage of the energy of the net-roots. About creating new structures to decentralize a political campaign.
And, mostly, it's about making sure that politicians and campaigns are of, by, and for the people. Because you can't have the last of those without the first two.
So, that's what I'm going to be working toward. I'll do what I can, and I urge others to do what they can, as well. We're only at the beginning of a long re-inventing of our politics, and it's up to us to do the inventing.