Grassroots
Organizing in 50 States 12 Months Every Year
Winning is dangerous. It can set us up for losing.
We are tempted to over-reach or to relax and enjoy our victory without
doing what’s necessary for future ones.
What if
several years from now, many liberals are contented because liberal legislation
has passed and conditions approved? What
if no disastrous Iraq War exists to fuel voter activism? What if our Conservatives have rallied from
their defeat to get their act together? Could our liberal era be short-lived as
some Conservative pundits predict, although for different reasons: liberal
apathy instead of division.
We need to continue our 50-state
strategy and make it also a 12 months every year strategy.
No more disbanding after every election.
We need to make every neighborhood in
Intensive Grass
Roots Organizing
Many
organizations are called ‘grassroots’ because they have a large number of
geographically dispersed members. But
unless they have state or local chapters, their ability to initiate local
political activities oriented to people who are not their members is limited. Liberal groups like MoveOn reach no more than
5% of Liberals. Netroots Liberal
bloggers similarly reach only 5% of Liberals.
Liberal
groups with state or local chapters like the Democrats for
The
Democratic Party which is organized down to the precinct level is oriented to
reaching most liberals. But with no
precinct leaders for many precincts, it seldom reaches many Liberals and
usually only reaches out just prior to elections.
To reach
most liberals, neighborhood groups are needed which continually monitor and
recruit long term and newly arrived liberals in their neighborhood. These groups must go beyond being discussion
groups to canvass their neighbors, recruit them and education them. Only then do they create an environment in
which Liberals thrive and multiply.
Role of Neighborhood
Liberals Groups
We can
hope that the Democratic Party will do this grass roots organizing. But they have been responsible for doing this
forever, and in most areas of the country have failed miserably. In
What we
need are liberal (progressive) neighborhood groups, which include not only the
60% of liberals who are Democrats, but the 40% who are Independents, with the
Independents often more liberal than the Democrats. Only our grass roots Liberal groups can
canvas our neighborhoods to identify likely Liberal voters and work closely
with Liberal candidates to get them elected.
Such groups will not compete with the Democratic Party. They will greatly support the Democratic
Party, although not uncritically. We need liberal groups which are not just
concerned that Democrats win, but also that the Democrats who win are liberals.
For the long run, these groups should create
neighborhoods where liberals thrive and multiply. They should assist the liberalization of
mainstream
For the short run, these groups should be organized
to get liberals to vote so that liberal candidates become elected at all levels
of government. Electing Democrats
instead of Republicans to lower levels is important because these lower level
governments are the farm teams for higher levels of government. If our candidates can get experience and
track records from serving in lower levels and Republican candidates can’t, we
will have a large advantage.
Our
Helping Liberals Thrive and
Multiply
Previously,
many Lake Hills Liberals are isolated, not recognizing the extent to which
others in their neighborhood, community and region are Liberals; not knowing
how to contact other Liberals and Liberal Organizations which share their
interests; and associate with them to organize and conduct political
activities. Our Lake Hills Liberal group
is helping Liberals thrive and multiply by identifying and recruiting them as
members, getting many of them to display ‘Proud liberal’ yard signs and bumper
stickers so that liberals realize they are not alone..
Our Lake Hills Liberals Newsletter
Our Lake
Hills Liberals newsletter informs members about:
·
Our
liberal values
·
Our
many successful historic struggles to extend our freedoms and opportunities to
more of our people
·
Our
formation of policies and programs to realize our values
·
Our
community development and political strategies to obtain the power to implement
these policies.
Our
newsletter and website helps our well informed grass roots liberals with each
other and with liberal groups which focus upon dealing with various issues by
implementing relevant liberal policies and programs. We want to help them find, communicate,
associate and cooperate with each other.
Our
newsletter also provides opportunities for Liberal candidates and office
holders to interact closely with their more active supporters.
Linking Liberals and Liberal
Organizations
Imagine
that neighborhood Liberals groups in many neighborhoods reached out to identify
most Liberals, who then were given access to a website, which enabled them to
easily learn of activities of most neighborhood, community and regional Liberal
organizations. What a boon both to Liberals
who want to get involved with others and to organizations which want to attract
more participants.
We have
added a blog to our website so that Liberals and spokespersons for Liberal
organizations can share their knowledge and opinions with others sharing their
same interests. This communication among
local liberals provides many advantages beyond top down only communications
coming from Liberal organizations to their members. For example, MoveOn communicates to their
members; but provides no means for members to communicate with each other.
Helping Elect Liberals
When we
began, only 1/3rd (700) of Likely Democratic voters had been
identified. Within 12 months, we
identified 90% (1700) of the liberal voters in our 12 precinct neighborhood and
recruited 30% (500) of these as residential members. We have also recruited another 1700 outreach
members from throughout our
We thus
provide a head start to our candidates, who begin their campaigns knowing whom
they have to persuade to vote. We free
our candidates to focus upon interacting with already identified voters. Our successful 48th district
candidates already appreciate the assistance we have given them. Hopefully our contribution to their success
will be demonstrated when our precinct election returns are available then end
of November. Perhaps due partly to our
efforts, they did better in our neighborhood than in the rest of our
legislative district.
Our
Democratic Party has identified only 10,000 of 30,000 likely Democratic
voters. If the other 14 neighborhoods in
the district follow our lead, they could identify another 17,000 likely
Democratic voters for a total of 27,000.
If they recruited 30% of these to receive a monthly newsletter, it would
reach 7,500 voters, instead of the 250 who now receive their occasional
messages. If these 7,500 members
contributed an average of $10, the total would be $75,000 – far more than what
they raise now. We hope our Lake Hills
Liberals success will stimulate Democrats in our 48th and other
legislative districts to improve their grass roots organizing.
Please Help Us
We have
made a surprising start. Please help us
to continue. Send us your suggestions.
Recruit other Liberals and Organizations to our membership. your create other neighborhood Liberals groups. Offer your assistance with the technical
expertise to improve our communication capabilities.