Liese Schneider

New Years Resolutions for Progressive Organizers

1. Re-learn how to organize using the world wide web. Big organizations that dominate grassroots and electoral organizing are shamefully offline. Not only are there more, better and important researching tools online then a year ago (del.icio.us, wikipedia, technorati, web 2.0) but there are some successful organic organizing opportunities out there that can be harnessed for large or small wins (myspace, meetup). It would be hard for me to list all of the amenities online that would be helpful to non-profits and electoral campaigns, but there are a bunch of organizations out there to help, as well as great software that will bring us closer to winning. Old school organizers need to step slowly away from the copy machine, get a myspace account, and recognize the power of the web.

2. GET caught up in the small stuff, i.e. local electoral victories. Nothing beats getting smart good people running for local office to start the progressive rise to power but we need a lot of talent to choose from and we need a coordinated effort. The first step is to rake the base, find smart local candidates and help them win school board elections or city council seats. Then we need to track their candidacy and when the next elections come around, we help them win the next higher seat. In order for this to work, we need someone (or organization) to be coordinating a national organizational chart where we know what districts we have, what we still need to capture and what candidates we have that will run to win. We have a problem if we are only relying on the larger party monolith to guide us through this process. This simply won't foster the kinds of progressives we need, but rather more of the same middle of the road 'winnable' candidates.

But how oh how will we fund it?

3. Capture a new base of funders using better techniques: The tried and true methods of fundraising (door to door, mailings, telephone outreach, major donor) have worked and will continue to work. But, one big change in the coming year is that in less than 3 days, the baby boomers will be turning 60 and entering into a new kind of donor - the giving kind. If we do it right, these late-hippies could fund our movement, that is, again, if we do it right.

Liese Schneider: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 11:51 AM, Dec 29, 2005 in Progressives
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