[Peace-discuss] response to:Trying to move Kerry to the left!!!!!

[Evan Past]

--- Chuck Minne <mincam2 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
 I know where you are coming from and I admire
> your outrage. But I think that you have completely
> lost sight of what it takes to get elected in our
> country: MONEY.


I want to respond to this issue by suggesting that
although money is made the issue, in fact in most
cases it is not merely money. We could easily create
networks that do not cost money but are politically
effective. See my article (as yet noone will publish
it!) Emanuel



How Systemic Problems Rip the Living Guts out of
Democracy

Emanuel Pastreich
Champaign, Illinois
June 26, 2004

Over and over one hears criticisms of candidates like
John Kerry that, although not necessarily incorrect,
fail to mention the true problems of the Democratic
party. Those problems have nothing to do with issues
or personalities. The Democratic Party has been
crippled by the emergence of a class of paid political
consultants and organizers who are so great in number
that they form a class equivalent to doctors and
lawyers. These paid
political organizers instinctively take every action
they can to protect their own territory, often without
being aware of how they exclude the talented
volunteer. Because paid organizers do jobs that were
once conducted
by volunteers and they instinctively see any attempt
to organize an empowered grassroots movement as a
direct threat. In fact there is good reason to believe
that they would rather lose elections than concede
power to local organizers who work for free.

The result is not only an impenetrable wall around
Democratic candidates that makes it impossible for the
inspired outsider to approach them, it is also the
predictable mailings (and e-mailings) that ask for
money, but offer no opportunity for involvement.
Involvement, if it is demanded by the citizen,
consists of making phone calls begging others for
money. It is rarely, if ever, a substitutive role in
the campaign. The results are crippling, and in the
case of John Kerry, who is himself a nice guy, the
negative impression he gives can be traced in part to
this class of political organizers. Equally
significant, these paid political professionals
scratch off their lists all people who cannot give
money. Although those professionals may have the most
progressive ideas in the world, they have no interest
in organizing people who lack college educations or
who cannot offer anything more than their vote. The
strategy of getting local people to build their own
cross-class networks for action and then to share
actual authority is anathema.

This shift is part of a larger social shift in
American culture that is well-documented in Theda
Skocpol's book "Diminished Democracy: From Membership
to Management in American Civic Life" (University of
Oklahoma
Press, 2003):

 "To the extent that nationally influential membership
associations still flourish, they are likely to be
professional groups. Where once cross-class voluntary
federations held sway, national public life is now
dominated by
professionally managed advocacy groups without
chapters or members. And at the state and local levels
"voluntary groups" are, more often than not non-profit
institutions through which paid employees deliver
services and coordinate occasional volunteer projects.

Another shift seems to have happened as well. No
longer are supreme acts of national citizenship
understood as going hand in hand with active
participation in voluntary associations. And no longer
do we highlight the
achievements of politically active, cross-class
voluntary associations, like the GAR and the Grange.
For some years now, America's most visible and
loquacious politicians, academics, and pundits have
proclaimed that
voluntary groups flourish best apart from active
national government—and disconnected from politics.
The  downplaying of the governmental and political
wellsprings of civic engagement is subtle among
academics and middle-of-the-road commentators, but
quite blatant among conservative pundits ( pp. 7-8).”

 “Associations with Restricted Reach

 Because today's advocacy groups are staff-heavy and
focused on lobbying, research, and media projects,
they are managed from the top, even when they claim to
speak for ordinary people. Even advocacy groups that
use
canvasses or mailings to recruit large numbers of
supporters, tend to gravitate toward upper-middle
class constituencies. An excellent case in point is
Common Cause, the quintessential "public interest"
advocacy group. Heavily tilted toward liberal
Democrats, Common Cause also attracts moderate
Republicans. Yet privilege rules across the partisan
divide. A 1982 survey showed that an astounding 42.6
percent of Common Cause adherents had completed
graduate or professional degrees; 14.5 percent had
some graduate or professional education short of
degrees; and another 18.7 percept had basic college
degrees. In the same survey, the median Common Cause
member had a family income 85 percent above the
national median at that time. Common Cause has managed
to do quite well, thank you, with several hundred
thousand of such relatively privileged and
sophisticated supporters. The organization really has
little need to dig deeper for many times more
"members."

  (pp. 244-45)

We see a painful cycle in politics, not only in the
Kerry campaign, but also in the Kucinich campaign. The
only way to reach people, organizers think, is through
mailings and TV advertisements. Those require funding.
Funding can
only be found in the upper middle-class, or
foundations, or interest groups with narrow agendas.
So the campaign focuses on keeping those priceless
sources for funding happy. If you approached most
campaigns as someone who
wants to get his friends involved, but he and his
friends cannot offer any money, there is no place for
you. Of course you could volunteer calling people to
ask for money, but when it comes to the organization
of groups that will have real impact on the campaign
and its message and strategy, there is no room at the
table.

 


		
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