All your diary are belong to me! Mwahahahahah - I mean, I'd like to thank peregrine kate for giving me the opportunity to talk about the local parties we don't know and maybe love. But before we get into that, some group business to take care of (totally not copypasted from last week's diary...):
Reminder that we have a day and time for our March meet-up: Saturday, March 28, at 5:00 PM, at Taqueria Mi Pueblo (7278 Dix Rd, Detroit, 48209; 313-841-3315). Please let us know in the comments if you can attend.
We have a suggestion from 2thanks for an April meet-up: Sweet Potato Sensations, in Northwest Detroit (on Lahser, across from the Redford Theater). This restaurant is starting to create a lot of buzz, so it might be a great place for us to check out.
Lastly, for now, let's keep in mind the special exhibit at the DIA: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit. The exhibit opens on March 15th and closes on July 12th. Tickets will undoubtedly sell out quickly, so we'll need to start discussing a meet-up relatively soon.
Now, to the main focus of this week's diary. A lot of times, we hear, either on the main page, or on DKE, we hear a lot about the national parties: DNC, DSCC, DCCC, etc. Occasionally, we’ll hear a lot about the state parties: what they’re doing, how their fundraising, who they’re targeting – but mostly we hear a lot about how little they’ve done. However, what a lot of people aren’t nearly as familiar with are the county parties at the county and municipal level, which are far removed from the (relative) glitz and glamour of the state and national parties. Yet these parties are often extraordinarily vibrant and hard at work to create a more perfect party. Today, in this diary, I want to take some time to report on the value of one of the most influential county parties in the state – the Oakland County Democratic Party (OCDP). At the end of this, I’d like to hear your thoughts, be they experiences with your local parties, or thoughts about how to revitalize the party at the local level.
Alright, so for those of you who live in Oakland County, and don’t know about the monthly meetings, they occur on the second Tuesday of the month at 7PM at Fifth Avenue in Royal Oak. Meetings are open to anyone who wants to participate, and generally last from 60-90 minutes. The agenda is usually pretty simple: there are usually some procedural votes and simple business to take care of (appointing members at large, approving agenda, etc.), and then the meat of the meeting is generally focused on making the party perform better countywide – for instance, in January, after everyone had finished licking their wounds over the last cycle’s results, the chair presented a detailed breakdown of Mr. Schauer and Mr. Peters’s results in Oakland County, specifically the areas with the greatest disparity of votes between the two men, as well as an analysis of where the voters we were targeting didn’t turn out, and the areas where said voters turned out, only promptly split their ticket. In February, we hosted Chairman Lon Johnson, who talked about the need to make our politics operate on a more local basis. Taking his advice to heart, the OCDP decided to establish work groups, whose main purpose was to work on projects that would strengthen the party. We were to work with each other over the course of the month, then come together at the March meeting and present what we were working.
One month passed, and I arrived at Fifth Avenue to see what we had been working on. First, we elected a few more members at large to the executive committee – since I arrived a few minutes late, I don’t remember all of their names, but one stuck out to me - Anil Kumar, one of the people who ran for the 11th in the primaries. After procedural stuff, it was time for uncommitted members to join a working group. Each working group declared what they were working on, and then claimed a spot in the lounge we were meeting in. I was actually committed to a group, so I’m not sure about every detail of the other working committees, but I’ll run through the other ones I remember.
• The Website Working Group. Alright, rather than me explaining it to you, go here. A website with a layout only a mother could love, right? Now try clicking on any link (except for the calendar). Go on, I’ll wait. What, it didn’t work? Exactly. As the party of Barack Obama and Howard Dean, we ought to have a website that’s at least more functional than TimeCube.
• The Youth Engagement Working Group. This was actually interesting. The premise of this group is that too many young OC residents aren't aware of some of the fundamental things that Democrats fight for – for instance, the collective bargaining rights of unions. So, this tries to reach out to high schools and get students to learn civic engagement, while getting educated on the issues from union reps and environmental activists. I as a party member love the idea, although I as a former student have some reservations.
• The Caucus Recruitment Working Group. Seems pretty self-explanatory. This group was trying to bolster the numbers of some dying caucuses, for instance, the Michigan Indo-American Democratic Caucus.
• The Ballot Initiative Working Group. Hmm…if this group has a 100% success rate in 2016, unions with massive numbers will be able to sit down in fairly drawn districts and blaze it at 4:20. Also pretty self-explanatory, this group is dedicated to fighting for ballot initiatives to be voted on in ’16, like collective bargaining, fair redistricting, and, yes, marijuana legalization.
Now, for the final (and best) group, and the one I was involved in. The Volunteer Activism Working Group, headed by the 1st Vice Chair of the OCDP, was created with the lessons of ’14 in mind. In 2014, we were working from scratch at recruiting volunteers. We had no lists of people who wanted to be involved, we just had lists of former OFA volunteers. This was to be expected, given the nature of the data the national apparatus gave us to work with, but there was no sense of community. Thus, it was a very manufactured campaign. Now, our 1st chair had access to the data of who we had contacted to volunteer with us in the last cycle, and working with an exceptional high school intern, they narrowed it down to the names of people who had actually knocked doors or made phone calls for us. The goal of the group was to call these volunteers and invite them to come to a separate meeting, just for them, at the end of each month. Then, we would get them to do something, be it calling their representatives for environmental issues, or getting people to come for a women’s rights rally, or, as we did that day, getting them to call their county commissioners to approve road spending. Ultimately, the goal of this project is twofold; first to get these people more involved in the off years, so we don’t have to rebuild a volunteer base every 2-4 years, and second, to create an grassroots machine that we can quickly mobilize when a critical issue comes up.
In Oakland County, we realize that we are the swing county for any statewide election. In 2014, Schauer lost the county by about 13%. Conversely, Peters won our county by about 15%. If we’re gonna fight for progressive values, and elect more and better Democrats, it is essential that we rely on each other to increase awareness, not the MDP, and certainly not the national committees.
Now, I turn the floor to you. This being an open thread, you are of course free to talk about whatever you want, but I want to know: if you are involved in your local party, what are y’all up to? And to all, what local-level project would you like to see created to strengthen your political apparatus?