Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez was on NPR Tuesday talking about Virginia and his “Organize Everywhere” strategy.
We should take a few minutes to celebrate the successes of Virginia, New Jersey, Maine, and Washington.
Then, we need to get back to work. In light of the election this week, Iet’s explore what “organize everywhere” might mean.
What organizing everywhere means to Tom Perez
To Tom Perez, what organizing everywhere means is building relationships with people. Here is how he put it in his NPR interview:
I think what Democrats stopped doing enough of was organizing everywhere. And we were good at mobilizing, Robert. Mobilizing is that sprint up to the election. But we weren't good at organizing. Organizing is the marathon. It's talking to people 12 months a year. It's building relationships with people. And we used to be the best at that.
It’s a little vague but Perez elaborated on this by talking about the importance of running people up and down the ticket.
The old DNC was about helping to elect the president every four years. He feels that what the DNC should be focused on is competing at every level of elected office.
How politics works
Organizing everywhere needs to start with how politics works. It starts with understanding that political change is grounded in social change.
The model looks like this:
Social change → political change → policy change
Part of what this means is that politicians don’t “create change” like we would like to think they do. We have to force them to do it.
This is how the civil rights movement, the suffragist movement, the LGBT movement, and the corporate special interest movement have all managed to pass significant legislation.
It was also our biggest failure when it came to passing healthcare reform. We passed the reform, but what we didn’t do was lay the foundation well enough for why it was needed. We didn’t make it make sense to enough people.
As a result, politicians who supported it were punished. As David Atkins wrote in one of my favorite Daily Kos diaries:
As the healthcare debacle went on month after month, I didn't ask myself why the Democratic politicians weren't pushing single-payer or Medicare for all. I wanted to know where the Left-leaning organizations were. Where were the think tanks, the message machine, the newspapers, the whole infrastructure? Where were the national, well-tested ad campaigns pushing Medicare for All? Where were the free screenings of Sicko at major movie theaters across the nation, complete with sponsored food & drink for those who attended and signed up to take action? Where were the mid-cycle ads done by Madison Avenue professionals targeting specific Senators and making them deeply uncomfortable? Where, in effect, was the message campaign?
It didn't exist. What we had were labor unions and the AARP delivering generic hopeful messages without an ounce of the power or creativity that one might find in a random Budweiser ad.
Organizing everywhere means people have the ability to put enough pressure on politicians to make them legislate in our interests.
This means we have to elect politicians who will work in our best interests and unelect politicians when they don’t. And we have to pressure them to do the right thing when they’re in office.
10 practical thoughts
This can seem overwhelming. The good news is that the Resistance movement is headed in this direction and, hopefully, so are Tom Perez and the DNC. That’s reason to be cautiously optimistic.
To continue to move this forward and organize everywhere, here are a few practical thoughts on things we can all do:
1. Remember the goal: Get people to fight with you
- This doesn’t mean winning an argument.
- If someone is a potential ally and you’re arguing too much with them, are you succeeding or failing in your goal?
- If someone is going to be against you no matter what, don’t waste your time trying to convince them.
- Energize the base, win the independents, isolate the opposition (make them look bad).
- You may want to consider the division line exercise: Why would someone want to fight with you?
2. Polls do not measure passion
- People saying they favor an issue in a poll does not mean people will necessarily fight for this issue.
- Look for the issues people will fight for. For example, health care and identity.
- What you care most about may not be what others care most about. If you want people to fight with you, you may have to talk about what they’re interested in fighting for, or find mutual areas of agreement.
3. If someone won’t support what you want, you may still be able to convince them not to fight against you
4. Politics is about emotion
- Pick allies up when they’re down.
- If you can find things to fight together on, you will find other things to fight together on.
- A little humility goes a long way. We’re all infallible.
5. No one ever won anything by not participating
6. Passing legislation requires majorities in legislatures
- We’re not a parliamentarian system (even if we wish we were).
- We’re a winner take all, two-party system.
- If you want a parliamentarian system, you will have to figure out how to do this given the system we have.
- If you don’t have politicians in office who will fight for things you want, you can’t possibly translate this into legislation.
7. Keep up the pressure on your politicians
- If you like them, remember that they have to win. Support them.
- If you don’t like them, support someone better in the primaries who can still win.
- Between elections, work to change public opinion to put more pressure on them whether you like them or not.
- Someone who will do some of what you want is better than someone who is against everything you want.
8. You have to start with reality (not what you want reality to be)
- For example, it’s great to want money out of politics. Current reality, however, is that money wins. This means a few things:
- Politicians have to raise money.
- Look for ways to make money matter less (like more people voting).
- Some money might be better than other money (small businesses, green energy, or tech, for example).
- Things will change when we can find ways to elect politicians and keep them in office without money.
9. There is no perfect politician who is going to change everything
- We have to push on all politicians.
- When they start getting elected/unelected on issues we care about, that is the only way change will occur.
10. Laughter is infectious
As David Atkins said:
If you want to win, ORGANIZE. Develop parallel organizations willing to persuade with the power and intensity of a corporation.
I am cautiously hopeful about Tom Perez’s "organize everywhere” strategy and the efforts of the resistance so far.
David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy (ebook now available).