Resolved - In Community Work - ALWAYS Work With, NEVER Work For.
1. Do campaign stuff YOU like the most / hate the least. Given that campaign stuff is phonebank, or doorbell, or rah-rah sign wave, or write letters, or ...
Make up your mind and do it.
2. You must get to know your neighbors. In my home city of Seattle, WA. & in many states, the smallest political unit is the precinct. Work with neighbors on campaign stuff who like what you like / hate the least what you hate the least.
3. DO NOT help any campaign, or political party, or union, or anything which does NOT help you and your neighbors in your precincts.
4. If the meetings and agendas and meeting minutes of the organization are NOT available, online, 4 weeks before a meeting, if there isn't a clear, easy to access, open process for creating the agenda before the 4 week deadline, at best you're working FOR political incompetents who are trying another run at the failed top down, clique in charge paradigm. In reality, the "leaders" in this organization are manipulative clique in charge scum who are on their side, not your side, and they're just trying to use you.
5. DO NOT go doorbell or phonebank or ... people who are more than a 20 minute walk away (given Seattle precincts) until you know which neighbors to work with in your neighborhood.
6. ONLY doorbell / phonebank / rah-rah outside your precinct in a manner which will build LONG term relationships - working with the same people from your precinct with similar interests in the same outside precinct, year after year.
For of each of the above points, I could go into a lot more depth explaining why I'm advocating what I'm advocating. IF anyone wants go give me $100,000 up front, I'll go to some grad school & spend a year or two writing up all that depth, nice and formal. I have been a peeeeee-on or wall flower for lots of campaigns over the decades, and I believe that what I'm proposing is valid because of those experiences. Of course, I should then use all that depth to be like the typical political asshole & pretend that MY experience is actually some 10 commandment list of scientific facts & insult those who disagree & beg for money & pretend that MY experience is actually some 10 commandment list of scientific facts ...
There are 3 sets of reasons the depth isn't coming: 1.) I don't have a spare $100k and year or two, 2.) I'm not a martyr, 3.) IF you're committed to supporting this current completely failed top down clique in charge model, ha ha ha ... go for it!
I'm sick of losing to fascists.
I'm sick of having my time wasted by trust fund dilittantes, or their groveling wannabees. These dilettantes have proven, over my 58 years, to be the most politically pathetic fucking losers to ever curse a community.
I'm done having my time wasted by political / union / whatever "leaders" who are just going to sell me out, and try to hide their top down clique in charge sell out theology under a pile insults on anyone who won't work for the sell outs.
rmm.
Comments
I prefer to bang
on doors than phone bank little old ladies. I'm phonephobic so I only use the phone to order pizza.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Does phone banking even work?
I ask because when I still had a modern phone which showed who was calling I simply didn't answer if I didn't know the caller. Now that I have replaced that with a genuine out of style oldie dial model from before the deluge, most robo calls and such don't seem to be getting through. Maybe because the older tech didn't have computers?
(About the dial phone, I was strolling through an antique mall with ny granddaughter who said it would be "so cool" if I had the oldie kind of phone.)
My limited experience with compaigning was that around every Dem party headquarters there are a gang of young males without visible means of support looking to hook up with females. No thank you.
One of my daughters is now a dues paying member of DSA. What I liked about what she told me was this group seems to be doing some actual research, something which the rest of the left abandoned long ago. She talked about "mapping", which sounds to me like finding who owns what, who those people are and to whom do they answer and so on.
Mary Bennett
In general, phonebank SEEMS to be
about the Hair-On-Fire-Crises!! style of campaigning. I'm pretty sure number of calls made is a critical metric for the Dem-0-RAT CON$ultant$,
IF the phonebanks were based on:
volunteer - "Hi, I'm Joe / Jane, I live in your neighhborhood at _______ , please vote for candidate _x, y and z_____ "
voter - "Joe / Jane - thanks for calling me, again. this is 5th / 15th year year & even though I disagree with you on candidate x, I'll kick the tires on y and z ..."
of course, this kind of participation would be radically different than the Hair-On-Fire-Crises!! style of organizing, and would ultimately put out of business people without a personal touch to any given locality ... ha ha.
rmm
But then I sigh; and, with a piece of scripture,
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ;
Hi Seaboz
Long time no read. I agree with your essay. We worked politically on a precinct level for about 10years starting in 2000. My problem is that even on a neighborhood, precinct, state level my solid Demoratic city/state is corrupt, and useless even if you do get so called progressives elected. Seattle seems to be better at organizing lefty socialistic types. Here in Portland all the new gentrified neighborhoods are into being social liberal's who are 'resisting' the Republican evil. Even DSA seems to me to be a astro-turf division of the Demorat's. You can't reform this pig of a duopoly from within. So for now I will vote for every socialist, anarchistic, unaffiliated from party, 'extremist' lefty on the ballot.This include all subdivisions of the Demoratic party. They talk the lefty lingo and yet can't bother to obstruct properly.
I will work outside the farce of electoral politics here in my neighborhood. My food co-op, Stop Demolishing Portland and real marches sans pussy hat's, Demorat's and Hillary lovers. Why work to get a bunch of 'lesser evil' Dem. assholes elected who once elected tell you that their greed is inevitable progress, then demolish your neighborhood/city and fine you when you slam the door. Me I'm done with doorbell ringing and talking people into voting for a bunch of crooked pols whatever party they fly under. I now tell their minions to quit ringing my doorbell.
I've had less time,
or, have I had less energy such that I'll put any time into anything which smells of the same old shit. Is it - 1.) I'm 58 and just naturally have less zip than at 28 or 38, or, 2.) I'm so goddam fed up with my time being wasted by the venal fucks, their aspirants, and the dupes of each ... or ... 3.) some mix of #1 and #2?
Your experience is disappointing, but, makes 'sense'. I've lived in Seattle since I was 29 in '89, AND, if you've managed to do well with a decent job & home in hte Pacified Northwest, you probably haven't rocked the boat too much ... at all ... ever. People in Seattle & Portland can complain about over crowding, but, compared to my home state of Massachusetts, these states are empty => if you have a decent job / home AND lose it, and don't have family wealth, you're juggling 3 jobs between the gas station and the grocery store.
I'm using a baseball metric on candidates - 3 strikes, I'm done with you. period.
IF Obama had sold us out to Wall Street to get Medicare For All, I would have thought - this sucks, BUT, we won a BIG one. After Medicare is signed, we'll go after those banker bastards ... Instead - ha ha ha.
TTFN.
rmm.
But then I sigh; and, with a piece of scripture,
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ;
We are not doing that well
financially and certainly not rich but we have managed to live in the PNW. We do own a house and our business weathered the big crash, barely. We moved to Portland in 1989 from San Francisco where we were working poor. We were un-gainfully employed corporate techies who were sick of paying the outrageous rent and feeling like Philistines . We bought a house here in 1990 in an affordable/livable funky SE neighborhood for 72,000$. It was an old dilapidated wreck, a structurally sound beauty built in 1914 and not yet yuppified. 27 years (a lot of sweat and money)later the house is valuable cause the funky neighborhood is now gentrified and considered a hot market.
We are self employed and work out of our big house. Mom and Pop store reversed, offices upstairs and living down. We just refinanced the house and still have low payments with a lot of equity left, we paid our back taxes and invested in our business. Our work is all electronic online so were not tied to the Portland job market. Our street's 'demographic' has radically changed over the years. Used to be astists, musicians, chefs, punks, hippies, eco 'terrorists' and working class (whatever that means) it ran the gamut including diverse ages/generations.
At this point we would not not make enough money to even qualify for a home loan here. We could not afford to rent here, that's for sure. So I guess we're lucky. I'm not about to move to no other place as we are too freaking old and it took 27 years to get this urban house to where we have decent mod cons, grow organic food on our small plot and enjoy our cozy unspoiled funky burrow. Besides this is my last stand, I'm staying, I'm planted.
Like I said I do not believe for one minute that partisan politics are the solution. Interesting, crazy times and if you ask me about to get more so. The last 16 years have radicalized this old coot who once thought that 'change you could believe in' was coming via the Demorat's. When will enough people wake up and realize that they are what's for the richie rich's dinner? Living among the comfortable well heeled game players, I don't expect any change will come from the SE Hawthorne district. Sad but hey that's life in the good old USA. Screw or get screwed and get these homeless people off the streets they are wrecking my bike commute with their squalor.
TTFN. Hope to read you again here as you are one of my favorite posters from way back.
Sincerely
Sharahazade
Wow!
some parallels - wife & I 'bought' in 2010, AND, we couldn't afford to live where we live on today's prices.
There are some things I left outta Tremendous Intelligent Nefarious Design (TIRD).
I want to participate by neighborhood to get rid of all these fuckers.
I have some criteria on who to support. 1 shitty vote, and, you can kiss my ass for further support. 2 shitty votes, and it is 'next up', time to get rid of your ass. This TIRD has a pisshole's chance in hell ... but ... it isn't like much of what I've seen over the last 30 years has worked worth a shit.
About those demographics ... in 2014? there were appx. 26 million households with money income over $100,000 a year. That is about 1/5 of all the households. So, we're most doing not great / shit, but, there are ghettos of relative wealth where everyone is looking at what Bill Gates or the Waltons or Jeff Bezos has, instead of looking at the 80% who are hanging on by their fingernails. Seattle has a few hundred thousand households doing pretty good - and they think their rainbow pins and their $500 to planned parenthood is turning the tide.
rmm.
But then I sigh; and, with a piece of scripture,
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ;