I’d like to take something out of what you said and really put it out there for folks: Listen to your local religious radio station….

There. Right there. Did you see that? Think about it. Bfp could say, “listen to you local religious radio station” because we all have one. At least one. If you live in the midwest, south, or west you probably have a boatload to choose from. That is a critical part of organizing—-owning your own media. Radio is great because it has far lower start-up costs than a newspaper or magazine (think of some of the great magazines that folded lately, like LiP or Clamor), and people can listen to the radio while they work, drive, wash the car, cook dinner, etc. Radio is huge. Imagine what we could do with some radio stations, people.

When people say “go door to door on this issue” – do they really?

They sure do, Anna! Over a decade ago, that’s what I did—some hotshot developer had a grand idea for blockbusting in my neighborhood, and he was trying to get the support of the City Council. I quietly attended a few meetings, picked up a copy of the preliminary plans, and then went knock-knock-knocking on people’s doors. That quashed shit in a big hurry. All the City Council could see was angry voters. There’s a lot of old folks in my neighborhood. Old folks vote and call politicians to chew their asses out. Always talk to old folks every chance you get—they are a national asset; a great antidote to revisionist history.

And speaking of angry voters, what better opportunity than elections? Not just the big ones…..little ones, like school boards, county boards, park districts. Great place for a person to get her feet wet. That’s where the conservative movement concentrated their energies.

Coalition building between organizations is another area to work on. My Local and the Sierra Club were at odds over the building of a new powerhouse, but were able to come together over a compromise involving the purchase of wind generated power and even tighter pollution controls in exchange for support for the building of the powerhouse. Now, we come together to fight for wind farms against NIMBY concerns—-jobs for tradespeople, clean power for everyone. Another example is the green-blue alliance meetings the Steelworkers have been having across the country—they held one tonight in Danville, Illinois, a rust-belt city with high unemployment.

Yeah, people literally go door to door. I’ve done it. Once I was asking them to sign a petition, another time to get together a tenant’s union, and another it was asking them to vote for someone.

When people say “go door to door on this issue” – do they really? Like, go into apartment buildings and go door to door? Go down the street in their neighbourhoods? Or do they do things like send out pamphlets or leaflets?

I’ve never had anyone knock on my door about an issue except the one time Joe Clark stopped by my parents’ place when I was a kid. Do people actually do that?

I feel very naive for asking.

That’s all.

I think we need to remember though that people like Rove have the corporate media in their pocket and their ability to manipulate the conversation is very powerful. I also am wary of adopting strategies simply because they work — I know the notion of the ends justifies the means, but if we end up like neo-cons by adopting their strategies of disinformation we have not really won the battle.

I should clarify… I didn’t mean that we should always emulate Rove’s strategy, only that we should understand it, and know how to counter it.

Your point about the media is a really important one, because the powerful will always have the primary means of communication in their pocket. So how do we counter that?

I think it’s important to remember that while the powerful will always have certain advantages because of their control of resources, we have a lot of tools too, most notably our ability to be extremely creative and change strategies quickly, which a highly structured system can never really do. Our tools are just as good. They’re just different.

not really. if you pay attention to the evangelical community, they’ve been having some serious conflicts for about four or five years now–and most of those conflicts are directly related to GW being elected president. Listen to your local religious radio station or pay attention to the messages that ‘leaders’ like dodd and robertson are sending. there is a serious break about to happen in the evangelical community right now because obama is seriously mobilizing the community. Obama, unlike most progressives/radicals or even liberals, is not assuming that ‘evangelical’ means one thing (anti-choice, pro-individual, white, heterosexist, male, etc). There are vast swaths of evangelicals that are incredibly concerned about the environment and poverty and even more so, are disgusted with the ‘war on terror’. and interestingly, on a local conservative evangelical radio station, the host was going on and on about how “the environment is not as important as a little tiny unborn life.” although he never stated, “leaders are worried about the presence of obama and how he might be influencing those who are discontent with the current state of evangelicalism,” he was *absolutely* addressing that tension, very clearly reminding people what the “real” issues for evangelicals are.

There are fractures in the evangelical movement, they’ve been playing out publicly for a while–but the one who is actually exposing them is obama.

btw. Karl rove is a great strategist, but what he did was harness the grassroots movement that Ralph reed had spent the previous 10-15 years organizing. Don’t forget that the work of grassroots mobilization takes a long time–and the evangelical movement has been around since before the first bush elections. The evangelical movement almost got Robertson the presidential nod over the first bush, which shows that it had been mobilizing for years before that (specifically, since barry goldwater).

the fact that the first bush “played dirty” to silence the will of millions of evangelical voters is probably the root cause of the inherent distrust many evangelicals feel for bush 2–the first bush was called the anti-christ by a huge population of believers and many evangelical voters were not happy in the slightest to have bush 2 running for office because of his connection to the anti-christ.

also, keep in mind that Reed “reframed” (aka stole) his strategies for grassroots mobilization from the civil rights movement–specifically, there was a book written (can’t remember by whom, I think it might have been coretta scott king, but I am probably wrong) that detailed how to organize leftist movements using grassroots mobilization strategies, and Reed drew very heavily from that particular book along with many other on the ground strategies that he saw play out in real life.

What reed is so freaking successful and amazing at is recognizing the incredible classism within u.s. culture and how the subtle forms of racism can be manipulated to confront that classism without actually confronting it. So in other words, he talked directly to the “white trash” that, even today, gets mocked and humiliated through classist means by ‘liberals’ in the north. he reframed classism as ‘racism’–arguing that ‘christians’ (which, in his framing meant white, southern, lower economic class and religious) had been forced to the ‘back of the bus’ and discriminated against based on *religious* “values” (which were actually seeped in *racist* values–mandatory busing laws and school integration were actually two of the big issues the grassroots was built up around–the third was removing prayer in schools). but he didn’t just manipulate an easily fooled group of stupid rednecks (as many people would argue) or use nasty strategies to herd the sheep–he actually did the work of getting into communities and talking and organizing and going door to door and organizing picnics etc. He turned the strategies of the civil rights movement against itself to mobilize the same masses that, because of *classism*, were not only rejected but mocked and actively distanced themselves from.

so I would be careful to not reject the actual process of grassroots mobilization because “they” did it–his ideas around grassroots mobilization are actually fundamentally sound and used by movements throughout the world. also, he remains *committed* to the grassroots (even 50-60 years after it started), as was seen in the Jon Stewart clip–something that NO grassroots movement in the U.S. has done, IMO.

he offers a lot for those interested in progressive/radical movement making on the left to (re) learn–how to respectfully reach out to existing communities, how to connect community issues to more overarching goals, what grassroots base building even is, how to sustain it over decades rather than political cycles, etc.

see here for some great examples of women of color doing grassroots community centered base building.

I also really like your point about ‘measurable goals.’ I am a big fan of everyday activism and doing things each day towards the big goals of eradicating racism, sexism, classims, etc. I posted on this today at
http://professorwhatif.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/what-if-i-still-want-to-be-an
-activist-after-i-graduate/