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Monday, January 23, 2017

WHAT NOW?

Well, the marches are over.  They were a spectacular international success.  Not bad for a woman in Hawaii who posted an appeal on FaceBook.  Now we must ask, as is everyone, what do we do next?  There is no single answer, and it is a waste of time to argue about it.  I will say again, as I have said so often, Find something you like to do and keep doing it.  I will write for this blog, not because I imagine for a moment that it is important, but because I enjoy it and know that I will continue to do it until I grow senile or my little fingers become too stiff to type.

If you are casting about for things to do, here are several, lifted from Michael Moore and others.

1.  Donate such money as you can afford to any of the countless organizations marching in the right direction.  In my neck of the woods, a Starbucks coffee and biscotti cost about $4.19.  Forego that once a month and click on “make it monthly” when PayPal asks you for your credit card info.  If two million people give $5 a month each, that is $120 million a year, more than enough to make a real difference.

2.  Google your Senators and Representative, find their local offices, and call them once a week to urge them to do whatever is on your mind that week.  Currently, asking them to vote against Jeff Sessions or Betsy DeVos for cabinet posts is a good one.  Don’t anguish over the message.  Nobody but the poor schlub answering the phone will ever hear it.  But the call will be counted, and there is a good deal of evidence that even several hundred calls to an elected politician’s office make an impression.

3.   If you have the bad luck to be living in a Republican controlled state, Google your State Rep and Senator and make calls to them.  The smaller the district and the more local the elected representative, the bigger the impact of those calls.

4.   When OurRevolution gets its act together and puts up its interactive list of local groups, join one.  I am not about to be a community organizer, what with my obligations at home and my age, but I can certainly join a group and go to a meeting from time to time.


We are just getting started, folks, and from the evidence of the past two days, we have plenty of company.

7 comments:

TheDudeDiogenes said...

I don't think you've mentioned this yet, Prof, so I will: download the Indivisible Guide. The site also allows you to search for local groups. (There are 32 currently registered with the Indivisible site within a 100 mile radius of St. Paul, MN.)

DML said...

A few things to be aware of:

1. For reasons I don't know, the Our Revolution people have been a lot more organized around California. The Democratic party recently had its party reorganization there, where low level party leaders are elected, and they turned out pretty massively to elect a majority of delegates. These are usually low key, under-the-radar, low attendance meetings, that are attended by party insiders, but this year, most of the caucuses were jam packed. Good story about it here:
http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/315040-sanders-backers-take-over-california-democratic-party

Our Revolution is trying to replicate this everywhere, but different states reorganize at different times (Maryland, where I live, doesn't do it for two more years), and they are trying to research the process and prioritize; more states are reorganizing over the next few weeks. You need to join their site, and then you'll get a Slack (kind of like Facebook) invitation, which is where a lot of the online action is around this.


2. I've also been informed of this.

https://swingleft.org

Its targeting swing congressional districts, and directing willing volunteers where to put their energies. I don't know much about it, but it seems worthy.

3. The Women's March website has a "10 things in 100 days" program. Thing #1 is to send a post-card (that you download from their site) to your legislator about an issue. I'm a little dubious about this. I think phone calls are more effective, BUT I now know of two different "postcard parties" being hosted this week, where you drop by, hang out, and write your postcard (the hosts have everything set up to do this). I'm going to one tomorrow more for the solidarity and fellowship than the postcard itself. This could be a good tool for face to face organizing.

4. Finally, its worth noting, that this massively successful march had zero to do with the Democratic party. Its "official" leaders (Schumer, Pelosi etc.) were no where to be seen, and all of the DNC chair candidates were at a high dollar donor retreat in Florida along with the detestable David Brock. I can think of no better display of the complete disconnect between the party, and the people it purports to represent.

Robert Paul Wolff said...

Thank you for all of this. I suspect we are in for a titanic fight between the Democratic Party regulars and the people, with the Clintons defending the party regulars to the death. This may be the necessary first step.

Jordan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Matt said...

This was a nice story about the two teenage girls who, it seems, organized the march in Boise, ID - a very encouraging start:

http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/article128116394.html

tom said...

Actually, orgainizers I have spoken with say that it DOES help to make your message strong and clear. They aim to keep the staffer on the phone as long as possible, and force him/her to repeat their message: "So what will you say to the Congressman?" "No, that is not what I said..." The more harrassed they feel the more the calls count, until they begin to count more than proportionately to your vote in their fucking gerrymandered district!

Paul Kern said...

I would caution people to be careful about phony websites hawking a so-called leftist position. The DailyKos has some information on this.

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/01/23/1623982/-Swing-Left-Is-Not-To-Be-Trusted-As-A-Progressive-Resource