Beyond Polls. Organizing. Outreach beyond where we have been for 40 plus years. And.....

I'm going to start with trucking in a few posts.

I asked Stuart if he'd like to elaborate on this one:

While I didnt explicitly ask Cueball to elaborate on this, I think its pretty clear I was looking for it in my response [edited here].

My highlight. And I agree, to a point. While qualified, I think the agreement is important. Even though the discussion in Educating the Public is about reaching people "en masse," I did also say that people do most of their learning and make breakthroughs, en route, working together. In practice.

But it isnt enough. The limit of organizing at the grassroots, in communities, is that it depends on direct contact. That direct contact is the beauty. But its also limiting. In practice, and across numerous decades now, it is the "recruitment" of self-selection. Self-selecting and self-limiting in reach.

Thats the problem with reaching people as you said, one at a time. Doesnt matter how hard you work, even how succesful you are. Look at our track record. We're dealing with fewer people than 40 years ago. It may not be a lot less. But we're flat lined at best.

And look at what 'communities' means in practice. Organizing 'the community' in Toronto means you have an enormous pool of people to draw from. So its not so difficult to aggregate like minded people. But how much are they touching their actual located community? Ditto for the big anti-glob marches: had to draw people from everywhere to do that. Were the members of communities they actually spend sustained lengths of time with, were those people there with them?

I'm not saying this make it not really organizing in communities, but it is something that has to be included.

Bottom line: whats the reach of all this?

Not enough. Because mostly people dont come 'in the door' without a previous breakthrough your organizaing had nothing to do with. They self selected themselves to you and your fellow activists.

And where does that happen? In some cases it was some other contact with being actively included in organizing. But not most of the time. Which is where we get back to the self-selecting and self limiting phenomena of organizing we are accustomed to. And why we've been flat lined [if not worse] for over 40 years.

Which brings us back to you saying "it seems to me that relying on the politics of 'positioning' in lieu of the politics of grass roots organizing, is really to miss one of the few ways that a new "national consensus" can be fashioned."

What you call "positioning"- what the NDP does most of the time- is a lame attempt at outreach.

Outreach "en masse" needs to happen. We need both en masse outreach and the politics of grassroots organizing- even if the latter is the primary place things are solidified.

En masse outreach is the only way we are going to break through the fog to get the attention of enough people. Attempting to a new national consensus by relying on aggregated local organizing is a recipe for repeating our failures.

And it doesnt have to be either / or: "grassroots organizing" or "top down educating the public."

Currently the only tools we have for en masse outreach are institutions that are not primarily community based. Like, but not limited to the NDP. So what little is done- or the ready at hand potential that exists for en masse outreach- IS indeed top down. Although I'd gladly take some top down en masse outreach... work on pushing the boundaries.

But it doesnt have to be done in those large institutions. It might be better initiated and worked on from the grassroots. Let alone 'top down' like the NDP could do isnt happening anyway. And communication tools we now have opens the possibilities. 

Upthread [post#46] I mentioned how an NDP riding association could locally do the work on how to push the boundaries of what people will consider- work that can be taken up by all everywhere. No coordination by or with 'the centre' required. You get their blessing without needing their approval of what you do or how you do it.

And it could be done by other localized organizations. An NDP riding association just comes with more of the tools at hand.

These are the kinds of ideas that will bear fruit in the long run, not just for the NDP electoral chances, but also for the strength of the left as a whole. The NDP success was built on a foundation of what we today call grass roots activism, and building organization for the community, not just for the NDP. I don't actually think that looking at it as "educating" the public is the best approach, because really the education is a two way street if the NDP is really involving itself in directly participating in, and supporting, local activism.

I find the idea of "educating" people to be a little elitest, when in fact, the purpose of a party is to effect real change in support of people real struggles, affecting their direct needs.

To a certain extent, this is attitudinal, so its hard to see how such things could be instituted. The NDP has become pretty confortable with promoting itself the easy way through the MSM media paradigm.

I think it smacks of elitism too. I repeated the words used in the stream of a discussion. They were used to say part of what the NDP fails at.... that it has a responsibility to do more than simply respond- or take snapshots of what people want.

Anyway I more than agree that the education, or learning, is a two way street.

We can only figure out how we can stretch people to consider things they dont presently think are desirable and/or feasible, by probing where they might be willing to go. That requires very hands on faciliatation, but after that its mostly listen and learn.

In the example of an NDP riding association doing research that can be used nationally... you'd be going into the field literally to see what is out there. Focus groups are most frequently heard about as a means to 'test' possible campaign initiatives or government programs. But they can equally be very open-ended... where you toss in general principles and see where people take them.

The goal being that you are looking for what people will kick around and think is worth running with. And ultimately, will actually run with... drawing in at least some people who dont normally get involved in politics of any kind, let alone electoral politics.

Thanks Ken. I'm happy to elaborate. Sorry I didn't notice the thread earlier.

Basically, my concern is this: over time, our society has evolved in a direction where the communities of which one is part are less likely to be based around formal organizations like one's union, fraternal organization, church, chamber of commerce, rate payers' association, etc. We are also less likely to be part of communities whose members are geographically concentrated in one place so that sports teams, clubs and the like are less likely to be composed of neighbours. 

Neither our political system (we still use first past the post) nor our political organizations have really caught up to this. When we interact with a union local, church congregation or whatever traditional group, we can expect that it will have fewer members and older members than it would have had a generation ago pretty reliably. When we use old fashioned organizing tactics that are based around geographic communities and formal organizations, we are likely to reach a much smaller portion of society than such tactics once did.

But this doesn't mean there is less community. There is less organization certainly (the average lifespan of organizations is getting shorter and organizations are less likely to be legally formalized) but there is the same amount of community. We just need to adapt.

First of all, most obviously, more of community is virtual. This isn't just manifest in how people communicate or where groups form; it is manifest in what people think of as an action. The average person probably does more politics in a day than they did 20 years ago but that political activity is located in answering online polls and petitions; arguing with people in places like this, etc. To many people this isn't just the prelude to political action; it IS political action and functions as a substitute for in-person meetings.

Secondly, more community is aesthetically-based. One of the features of late capitalism is that aesthetic preferences are more likely to constitute community. We have moved from an "you are what you do" society to an "you are what you like" society. Sports-based communities are, in many cases, not actual teams but groups of people who share an aesthetic preference for a particular team or sport they watch. The world is becoming geekier -- people are more likely to be part of communities based on being "fans" of one thing or another. I survived my last three years as Green Party leader by winning votes based on my base's shared affinity for Dungeons and Dragons and punk rock; my most loyal supporters were people with whom I shared aesthetic rather than ideological bonds.

Thirdly, people are more likely to be in what I might term "binge" communities -- communities based around annual conventions or gatherings in a central location rather than neighbourhood chapters with an ongoing social life. This is not just true of aesthetic communities but of professional communities too -- more and more professions are following salespeople and academics in this direction.

When people talk about organizing in communities, they seem to have this idea that they will reinvigorate neighbourhood associations, union locals and other moribund forms of community that seem to coercive and variegated for people today. The Democrats in the US have done good work adapting to this; I recently received a solicitation to be part of a nationwide virtual phone bank to for Alan Grayson of Flordia's Eighth district on Saturday -- because his campaign knows I find his work in Congress more compelling than I do that of the member for Rhode Island's second district. Sarah Silverman's campaign to get young Jewish people in New York and LA to phone their elderly relatives in Florida to put Obama over the top is another example of adapting to an experience of community that is non-geographic.

But this is just the beginning. I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts.

Whether the specific initiative worked, it is in the class of thing that needs to happen to deal with a polity that is not geographically configured functioning within a voting system that is.

What is wrong with generating publicity for Sara Silverman?

Excellent interview with York poli sci prof Leo Panitch conducted by Steve Paikin, which deals a lot with the issues in our discussion (28 minutes)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxAlJyfJEEg

I disagree, entirely. Because you are again buying into the idea that the media can somehow be brought to presenting a viewpoint outside of a very narrow boundary of what they consider acceptable discourse.

The number of Kanye West "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" moments, are very few and amount to Guerilla media.

I think you are missing Stuarts point, or responding to something different.

What Stuart said is cryptic, but I dont think it has anything to do with the media.

The point is that Obamas campaign was working with the reality of how dispersed people are.

[And elderly Jews being more likely loyal Democrats, and more likely to vote, doesnt mean you can take for granted they will vote. Least of all by the Obama campaign, which had a truly phenomenal number of volunteers. I happened to be in Michigan in the weeks before the vote. Despite Michigan being among the Obama virtually guaranteed states, there were people calling the house- not even knowing the allegiances of the household members. If you can do that, it is a huge number of volunteers on tap.]

Re: "using the media", I think we can learn more from the Scottish Socialist Party than the Obama campaign. 

How are people dispersed? Indeed they are far less dispersed than they were 100 years ago. 100 years ago most people did not live in urban conglomerations, now they do. I think this thing about geographic locations is a Red Herring.

In the previous thread Stuart alluded to the Tea Party as an example of the kind of organizing that the "left" might productively engage in. What is missing from this view is the fact that the Tea Party is largely a media creation egged on by a segment of the media that is both promoting them and encouraging them.

There are several problems with this.

First and foremost, we don't actually want to appeal to gross stupidity. Simple jingoism and prejudice can easily be articulated and encouraged. In fact there is nothing at all new about this phenomena -- it tracks very closely the kind of rabble rousing that made Hitler's brown shirts so succesful. It's not new, nor is it particularly dependent on any modern media revolution or the internet.

Second. We don't control enough of the mainstream media share to emulate this kind of organizing, even if we tried.

Indeed, we have been putting out much more substantial groups of people out on the streets to protest everything from the Iraq war to things like the G20, and at the end of the day, basically the mainstream media just chooses to dismiss such things as passe "Kumbaya moments" if they bother to cover them at all. Meanwhile, one backwoods preacher can call for burning the Qu'ran, and he is used to set the media agenda for the week.

No. There are no quick fixes here, and no way to finesse the lock down on the corporate media. The kind of work we need to do is much more detailed, and has to appeal to intelligence. That segment of the population is out there, and they can be tapped into, but its not something that can be activated by a flash flood media campaign. That is true, even if we had some substantive control of the media.

What I do agree with is that it is possible for relatively small groups of committed activists to have substantial impact on the political agenda, without ever achieving any kind of plurality of support. In this, the lesson of the Tea Party, the Reform movement in Canada, and even Stephen Harper's ability to shape the agenda of Canadian politics, even though the great majority of Canadians reject what he stands for, are useful.

Thanks Ken! This is a great role reversal thread. Thanks again for starting it.

Really? Not my intent.

Indeed. It is about how people choose whom they hang out with, how they find those people and how they structure their ongoing interaction with them. Certainly social media are involved but not mainstream media.

Then you are not being very observant about the day-to-day processes by which people make and experience community.

The issue is not what the population density is but how much geographical proximity factors into people's associations with other people. It is all the more significant that even as population density has risen, the average distance between friends has increased.

Well you haven't responded to my previous post, in the last thread, where I outlined what I thought were the problems of definitions of community, as often expressed in classical socialist and Marxist "left" definitions.

I think that observations such as that the "average distance between friends has increased" are interesting, but not really substantive or conclusive in terms of deriving a clear meaning. For example, the speed of transportation has increased as well, so the distance between friends has a relative value. We could make conjectures about what this means and entails in terms of "community", but noting for example that in the 19th century it would be unlikely for an average person to make a 200 mile trip, more than once or twice in their life, and the fact of today's society such travel is common suggests that in real terms the effect you are describing is one that exists because one can readily travel, and therefore one can be at a greater distance, and still not be dislocated from ones community or place of work.

This seems pretty obvious, does it not?

As I pointed out in the last thread, I think the mistake made of many traditional "left" analysis of community, such as those defined by ideas such as "class consciousness" that is tied to economic status, tended to forget the importance of other factors, such as language, tradition, religion, and race. Those to my mind created other kinds of cultural bonds that defined "community" beyond those defined by location, location being something that was often derived from economic factors. Putting the accent on community as defined by issues of economy and therefore location, as opposed to cultural factors, seems obvious as a way to "define" community in homogeneous societies where those cultural factor seem far less apparent but become more evident in societies that are more diverse.

Perhaps it is that we are looking for those forms of community that fit the kinds of analysis we are used to applying while missing all kinds of factors that were existent, but seemed less apparent in previous times, and in that light believe that our present day communities no longer have the "thickness" of previous forms, simply because we can not recognize the forms we are looking for because of the analysis we want to apply.

So, while it may be true that the community of "Hamilton" has less importance as a concept in contemporary Canadian society, the community of Jamaican Canadians, even if it may be dispersed over a wider area, still has substantive solvency as a discrete community.

Event a neighborhood can be a community. For example, the Jane and Finch corridor in Toronto is a community.

Your last point is inconsistent. And it fails on that inconsistency.

As you pointed out, we dont have the media the way Reform and the others do and did. And a crucial part of that is that they had the media not only for 'reporting' in great detail what they did. Even more important, and what we will never have, is they had the media preparing the way for them. Sure, they set that softening up in motion. But its not just never going to happen for us no matter how many buttons we push.

So the only 'lesson' for us is that the Right got the ability to shape the agenda. How they did it is just about irrelevant as a lesson on what to do- what to do even generally. And there is an awful lot on this board of people saying "we need to do it like Reform did". Applied as a maxim for the NDP. Even though Reform did not do what is expected of NDP, and would have failed at it as surely as would the NDP.

And the distraction of that do it maxim- just make clear and strong stands and the rest follows- is not just in relation to the NDP. Its a limiting comfort food for social movement organizing as well. Because the social movements already see themselves as like Reform in the right ways. Just need to do it on a bigger scale.

But the bigger scale- reaching more people- never happens. We've been flat lined or worse for 40 years.

Unfortunately, the protests are "Kumbaya moments". Keeping the flat-lined flame alive. The media has everything to do with how they are seen that way. But like you said, they arent our friends, so the fact is what matters, not how we got there.

I'm not so sure we are, as a society, more dispersed overall as Stuart says. But we are organizationaly thinner. As is the left- we need a bigger population pool now to draw from to get the same kind of organization.

"Same kind of organization"- there is a big part of the problem. I totally agree with Stuart that we have not adapted. You can understand that even if you have not been a particpant for the last 40 plus years. Its forcefully palpable if you have been a participant.

On an obvious level, we just have to reach more people. and that was true already 40 years ago.

What is less obvious is that we need to change how we reach them.

As much as I know about how we need to adapt is that we have to reach people without an organizaing model that expects them to join, to actually particpate in any way. To participate more amorphously [in comparison to our present understanding], and at more of a distance- even if they happen to only live blocks from us.

When we figure this out- and presumsbly there are already leading edge examples- the totality of the organization will not be more amorphous. But we have to get there with our limited understandings, connecting to people in ways that look amorphous to us... in ways we dont yet know what to do. let alone it is going to look unfamiliar when we do it.

While the internet is obviously part of the solution about adapting our organizing, I dont think its the model for adapting the 'networking'.

In fact, paradoxically in relation to what I've been saying has to change, the adapted networking is going to have more in common with the way it has always been done than it has in common with 'the netroots'.

When we adapt we'll have a pyramid of degrees of participation. We will have reached out to and included in meaningful ways, many more people who are lessser degrees of directly involved.

The resaon social movements are so flat lined is that they are so poor at doing this. The NDP has the structure to support it, and does it to some dgree, but only a fraction of the potential [and no apparent awareness of it]. Greenpeace has something of the structure on the surface, but the 'membership' is explicitly totally passive. There are number of mid-sized local and regional environmental groupd that do a very good job of drawing in and using people at various levels of participation.

We arent without models and structures. But they arrived ad hoc, and we have no idea how to be deliberate in upping the ante about using the dispersal of participation.

Getting there is part of my notion about an NDP riding association doing the intensive research of enquring citizens about their aspirations, and how the NDP could 'coalesce' those to develop punchy initiatives applied on a broader scale. But it wouldnt be just research. It would be facillitating people who dont want to 'join', but some of whom will do something concrete to reach out to people they know and/or groups they can talk to about something important they have learned about what they want to seee happen in our world.

Faciliatate those folks, watch them, learn from them. Facilitate more folks. Repeat iterations.

As much as I admire the incredible use the Obama campaign was able to make of volunteers- marrying 'feet on the ground' to net organizing, and as much as aspects of that could be a very powerful tool for the NDP....

I think that is quite unrelated to what it will take us to spread the message farther and deeper.

Which I dont thing the Obama campaign did, even partially. They did an amazing job of pulling together people who were ready to be organized, and by something they already understood as fully as necessary.

Unfortunately, thats not all we need. Or lefties in the US for that matter- who have to push against even bigger boulders. Which neither Obama or his campaign were ever doing or trying to do. They did a knock-up job on reaping whatever there was to be had from that polarization in the US- they never aspired to pushing the limits.

I disagree. Reporting on Reform, the actual movement that Stephen Harper still represents grew up in an extremely hostile media environment. Regardless of that, my point about a relatively small segment of the population being able to shape a political agenda can be reduced into simple mathematics; for example, in an election, if 100% of one group that represents 20% of the electorate votes and 50% of another group that represents 40% of electorate vote, then both groups will have the same impact on the election.

The right has succesfully catalyzed as certain world view and made it effective, through effective organization and mobilization. Sure, the left has other stumbling blocks, such as that the hostility of the media, but saying that the media will not report on us, so there will be no effect of organization, is again to be locked into the "win the media paradigm." Just because the media doesn't report on something doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Just because the national media did very little reporting on the Steelworkers strike against Vale, doesn't mean the strike didn't happen, and doesn't mean that the workers didn't come through the strike with their bargaining unit intact, and holding the line on certain key issues. The media's position on this is pretty irrelevant, really, and there was a clear real political impact of this strike.

One thing it did was send the message that despite the neo-liberal globalizing agenda, we can still hold the line the multinationals, and even with higher wages, and extensive benefits, that other countries Canadian labour in the resource industries can still be part of profitable and competative businesses.

Again, I never said anything about taking "strong stands" or anything about the politics of "positioning". This has nothing to do with the "party line", but about strategies for having political impact in real terms. Unions consistently engage in struggles without a single election ballot being cast, and have immediate transformative impact.

You have to remember I don't give a rats ass if the NDP wins any seats at all. What I care about is the job getting done. Parties are a tool for getting the job done. The real problem wit the NDP is that it seems that a great portion of the leadership has forgotten that the point is to get the job done, not get elected, and as such thinks that softening its position will aid that goal. Getting elected only serves a point if it is part of getting the job done.

Like I said earlier Cue- look at the actual historical record:

Starting in the 60's and 70's the right wing think tanks started talking up what was then counter to prevailing thinking. By the 80's the media had taken up their message of government waste, tax cutting, and the generalized benefits of less government.

They didnt "organize"- they just talked, and their message was taken up organically.

By the time the Reagan Republican Party came around, and later Reform- again they just had to talk. they had the way prepared for them.

You and others keep saying that if the NDP would just take stands like Reform did.....

The stands you want the NDP to take would incounter stiff resistance for which the NDP would pay. The media was hostile to the personalities and the personna of the Reform Party- not to its ideas. At least ideas of tax cutting. And its ideas we're talking about here- ideas, programs and intitaives that push the limits. And you all specifically raised Reform on tax cutting, as if that was pushing against the grain.

It was not. The way was prpared for them. So they were saying the right thing at the right time. And they were able to prepare the way before hand by just talking up their agenda in think tanks, and having it taken up. They never had to organize pushing the limits.

They got where they are by just talking things up. If we do that we'll get a kick in the teeth.

Yes, we also have to prepare our way. And nobody is doing that. But were going to have to be more deliberate, smarter, and organized to do the same thing that the right did by just talking.

No I don't keep saying that. What I say is that the politics of positioning and media optics is irrelevant to organizing, and you keep saying that I am saying that the NDP should take stronger stands on issues. I don't think that the Reform was successful because it took "strong stands". I think their strong stands had more impact because they were organized effectively through community activism.

Also, because they were able to mobilize a commited membership they were able to signifcantly punch above their weight. That effect eventually put them in the position of being able to take over one of the oldest and most respected party machines in Canada, the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (RIP).

I do think the NDP should take stronger stands on things, but I don't think that would solve anything. I think they should be more closely tied to grass roots organizing and thus link themselves with an activist core base. Supporting those initiatives, and in turn being supported by them would make the NDP more directly effective and meaningful directly to people.

At the end of the day, it is likely that the NDP would end up taking "stronger stands" on things, but that is not the point. It is about mobilizing people behind the position of the NDP by mobilizing the NDP behind those people.

We still do a good job of handling particular battles.

"Political impact in real terms." Which brings us back to the point in the thread title, and which I've raised a number of times: looking back from 40 years to now, we're flat lined. So whats this political impact?

Who could forget that you dont give a rats ass about the NDP? More to the point, I've couched my contributions to this not in terms of the NDP, but of where we the whole kit and kaboodle are going.

So what about that question for you of getting the job done? Is the answer, "I organize therefore I am?"

If the answer is that I do work, then you need to stop poking at others for lack of results. We all work.

Really Ken, I am just outlining why it is more useful to for activists to work with labour intitiatives, and grass roots community organizations, than the NDP because they are more effective at challenging the neoliberal agenda in concrete terms, and giving people a sense of empowerment, and mobilizing and organizing them for future battles.

I realize this also might be more of an urban thing, since there is more of that kind of thing going on generally in urban centers.

I am also saying that if the NDP wants to be truly more effective, it might consider taking up support for those kinds of things in a more direct way.

Thats not engaging anyone in this discussion. And least of all me who explicitly agrees that the media are not our friends- we'll be doing what we need for en masse outreach without them.... absolutely unlike the Right.

And I'm not saying that people should work with the NDP.

The challenging has been about how ALL of us do what we do. Most of all, how are we going to broaden our reach? Do more of the same that has worked so well for 40 years?

And since I am explictly challenging how good a job organizations you think it would be good- vital really- for the NDP to support, what about that challenge itself?

I suggest it is useful for activists to work with unions and progressive social movements and the NDP  Here is one example:

     ! The Canadian Auto Workers Union has joined forces with the federal NDP and Green Peace Canada to pressure the federal government into action to stop smog and increase auto sector jobs CAW national president Buzz Hargrove said.

..............

   At a press conference on the lakeshore in downtown Toronto, near the city's only wind powered generator, federal NDP leader Jack Layton announced an energy efficient auto policy.

.....

Green Peace Executive Director, Peter Tabuns, said this policy, which his organization heartily endorses, is the result of finding common ground between environmentalists and trade unionists and hopes the government will join them to protect the environment.

http://www.caw.ca/en/8386.htm

Yeah but unless the NDP logo is on it, anything done by the trade union, local area anti-racism activists, and local immigrant community organizations, is by definition the enemy, according to you. However, once peoples activities have been officially sanctioned by the central committee... all is well and good.

Thanks for the heads up comrade!

- now imagine if this was a Con thing, finishing with "And the New Canada of Stephen Harper and the Conserveative Party remind Canadians once again of the tax cuts they have implemented that put more money in the pockets of all Canadians and make all of these great things possible for Canadians!' and etc -

OR

- imagine a slightly redone NDP et al message, finishing with something like -

".. and Mr Layton and Ms May again remind voters that if our country joined the rest of the modern world with a Proportional Representation electoral system, those who support this proposal would have enough seats in the Canadian parliament to have a very real chance of having this policy implemented, which would benefit all Canadians, and many other policies which most Canadians want - but because we are mired in the past with an electoral system than gives power far in excess of votes recieved to the mainstream Bay St parties, we are forced, once again, to endure governments most Canadians do not support, and modern, forward-looking policies such as this remain dreams rather than the reality most Canadians would prefer. "

 - and etc - resources devoted to such a strategy - minimal, beyond a few far-sighted individuals having the sense to get such things integrated with all NDP activities - potential payoff, more or less beyond counting.

And back home, Martha is thinking - Geez, Henry, didn't we get some brochure or something at the mall last week about this proprotional representation stuff? Let's have a look ... I am getting so sick of these Cons doing all this stuff that just destroys our country, there must be something we can do ...

Tell me why the NDP can't do this again?

Do what?

Both of your examples are about finished narratives.

But your point you tried for, and the discussion around it, has been about strategies of how to get people to that point, and you have not illustrated that at all with your example. Rather you have illustrated the end point.

Leaving the meat: the unsubstantiated assertion that we are talking about "resources devoted to such a strategy - minimal, beyond a few far-sighted individuals".

For what its worth, I dont think PR and democratic reform are examples of the kind of "stretching" of what people will support, in the course of broad outreach no one does yet [at least on any scale].

I would put PR/democratic reform in the category of challenging to explain sufficiently to get people to want sufficiently. Another example of that would be the package of NDP policies and initiatives around climate change, which are finished as far as policy construction goes.

In the PR discussion there is a similarity of the kind of counter argument I make to "why doesnt the NDP just....".  The problem being that "just" part.

That said, that its not anywhere near as easily done as people think, the tools for it are ready at hand.

Unlike doing outreach to more people and around the "bigger questions" that I beleive is not just a question of priorization [or "will" if you like].... but around which we have to work out a lot on the "how" questions.

- before you can even start to get to an end point, you need to convince people that you want to get to that end point - then you talk about 'how'. I am not leaving out middle stuff, I am still trying to get people to the frigging starting gate.

- and getting people to include a small message at every opportunity - how much resources would that involve? Seems pretty minimal to me, beyond getting this included as part of a long-term strategy, and a few minutes time of a few of the better copy writers for a 'talking points' memo of some sort ...

Our cross-posts are related.

How much resources? More than the little you think. Enough to require doing less of something else [and not just the fluff like ATM fees that take nothing to do].

But like I said above, I'm not and never have questioned around that it could be done. I have said if the NDP were doing more, which doing anything like that would require, it wouldnt be my choice. I'd be doing the development work of actually putting the climate change policies in play. [Which you used elsewhere as an example of the kind of thing that is already out there and will just go on.]

It gets very difficult when people cant agree at all about what kind/amount of work is involved, to move from there to "well its a big job, but you start at the beginning". Beginning of what, I say? Doing what we've been doing for 40 plus years that has got us where?

But I think this thread in particular has been better for getting away from framing that around what the NDP could allegedly do- which we are slipping back into.

I would love some discussion about the strength and weaknesses of the two models: the Good Jobs for All coalition held up by Cueball as a good example of  groups working together to organize and mobile  and the Green Car Initiative of  the CAW, NDP and Greenpeace. It seems  both models  arise from strong overlap amongst different movements  and a fusion around specific initiatives to achieve a vision  good green jobs for all,  a healthy sustainable economy and society etc.

 I would say the Green Car Initiative had deep roots in the society and the economy, specifically in  auto workers going back to Walther Reuther and the UAW,  in the environmental movement going back to the Sea Shepherd and in the NDP  well  back before Jack, but definitely strongly boosted this rock solid environmentalist becoming leader with his own plans and visions. .

The Green Car Initiative might be seen solely  as an election issue that died with the Martin  government  but its work continued in some form in, for one example, the Good Jobs for All coalition. It has been suggested the  coalition may have been inspired by the writings of Jack Layton, but I think that is giving him too much credit and not looking at the objective and subjective forces behind the coalition , such as discussed above  It should be noted the CAW, a major partner in the Green Car Initiative,  is a partner of uncertain status in the Good Jobs for All coalition, Peter Taubuns, who as executive director of Greenpeace, was another key part of the Green Car Initiative, was  a guest speaker for the coalition as. amongst other things, an NDP MPP, and it has been said Julius (may he R.I.P.)  and other New Democrats, who we can assume supported the Green Car Initiative,  were heavily involved in the Good Jobs of all Coalition. So, apart from substantive content,  there is organizational overlap between the two models with the Good Jobs for All coalition having what an impressive range of former and  new partners , especially immigrant, refugee, and non-white communities .

So one set of questions an points to discuss  has to do with with the seeming absence of the NDP, despite its many links to the issue and coalition, as  a partner in the Good Jobs for All coaltion,  Is it that the NDP was invited to participate  and  refused, or is this another exmple of groups saying to the NDP -we can't be seen as political or partisan - keep away or keep a low profile?  Are there analogies to the labour movement battle amongst Communists Social Democrats and Liberals  for the political direction of the movement?

Another set of questions or points to discuss, things to learn, has to do what this Good Job for All coalition. bringing together labour, environmental and community groups with impressive resources and whose combined membership totals hundreds of thousands in Toronto  has accomplished in the last four years and what is it trying to accomplish now.  There have been references to the campaigns the coalition has waged-car barns  EI cuts,Toronto Hydro? If it has done good work organizing or mobilizing et us know. let us learn.  an dlet us learn?  Of particular interest to me. and I hope many others. is this coalition role in the ongoing  municipal elections, where good green jobs and the  "Miller legacy" is being savagely attacked. How is the coalition  carrying out its mandate to make good green jobs an issue in this muncipal  election and in the next federal election? and in the next provincial electoon? Any chance they would try to mobilie their communities to defeat Haper and McGuinty, any though forfor who would replece them? Are these too "political questins" for those who think good green jobs have nothing to do with party politics?

solidarity

Peter

"Look at what the Right did. We need to do that."

We do need to accomplish what the Right accomplished. But what is it they did to get there?

Reform did not do anything organizationally that the NDP has not always done.

Nor did Reform themsleves do the work of breaking new ground of pushing the debate beyond where its supporters or potential supporters already were ready to go. In the example often used here, shifting the terms of the debate around taxes and public spending was done for them first, as was true for the Republican Party.

Nor were those terms of the debate shifted by any group of the Right doing grassroots organizing to directly work on how the public sees things. The Right shifted the terms of the debate by the elites, and especially elite thinkers, having to do no more than talk. The media picked up the message and were the direct medium for the popularization of the message.

Of course the political parties of the right had to organize their political opportunities to realize the opportunity- but they did not have to organize in any way the 'pushing of the envelope' about the overarching vision/messages. By the time they were saying it, it was already the right thing to say at the right time.

We dont have that luxury. Never have. And we're not going to get it like the Right did by just talking- neither the parliamentary or extra-parliamentary Left. We have to be more organized, work essentially in spite of the mainstream media rather than being able to simply 'tag' it as carrying medium, and organize with more finesse, to accomplish the same en masse outreach as did the Right with the media as medium.

The Right does not actually out-organize us. But they do get more results. So out-organized or not, we have to do better.

But somehow, we cannot seem to stretch our minds to question the kind of outreach we have been doing. We take as an unexamined article of faith that we just need to work harder and be more dedicated at what we have been doing for 40 plus years....

Even though we started working on this years before the Right did, organizaning at least as well as they did; while they rocket by us anyway, framing most of the debates.

What the right did, and continues to do, that the 'left/progressives' do not.

1. They get their message straight, and get on with it. Tax cuts, the market rules, free trade is good, government is bad, whatever - they are on message, all the time, all together. On the left? Constant bickering. They've known it for years, from Sun Tzu on down - a divided enemy is no problem at all. There's not really a contest here - the right wins. This is important.

2. There are other factors, of course. The right has a lot of money behind them - the money that buys the media and corrupts the politics. This too is very important. The 'average citizen' has a kneejerk reaction against the NDP because of a lifetime of capitalist media telling them 'socialism is REALLY REALLY BAD!!!!!' - even when the capitalists are destroying our country, and the social democrats share the values of most Canadians - that kneejerk reaction dominates, and they vote for the capitalists, completely against their own interests.

3. The right are basically the predators here - their ONLY rule is that the winners take all. On the left, we tend to try to look for ways to see the other point of view, to compromise so we arrive at the best way for everyone to live together in peace, and etc. This is like the herd of sheep trying to negotiate with the wolf pack. They love it. There is simply no question of who wins. We give it to them.

4. Something expanded from the last two that needs to be mentioned specifically - one reason the right works together, and we are fighting amongst ourselves, is not that we are only a bit simple-minded about such things, a bit naive, etc - the right/neocon/NWO/etc people infiltrate our meetings and looks for ways to get us arguing amongst ourselves, so we do not work together effectively. I cannot say for sure, but if anyone is doing this on the left (we infiltrate them to create dissension) I cannot imagine it being effective - we're basically nice guys, and most of us would run from a serious rightwing meeting in horror, I expect - if they didn't immediately know from any number of indicators we were a sheep in the wolf pack. But they cause immense harm to 'our' cause by this sort of thing. I have no confessions, but I am certain it happens (I did (try to) organise the National Party in PEI in 93, as a complete amateur, and I got nailed - I didn't realise it until afterwards, but there was one guy who obviously wanted to take us apart - and he succeeded because the rest of us were too trusting and had no idea what he was up to - I only figured it out in hindsight, but it was a good lesson. We see it on some discussion boards here - people roaming around doing nothing more than throwing insults and derailing discussions.)

Well, just some more (out of the box) thoughts in response to the question - note, I am NOT saying we need to become under-the-rock slinkers to fight our fight, not at all, I do not believe that, to me the 'means' does not justify the end - just that we need to be aware of these people and their methods, and take whatever steps we can to deal with what they do. If we pretend we are at a sunday school picnic where everyone plays nice and follows the Marquis de Queensbury rules - well, the last 30 years show pretty well where that kind of naivete gets us.

There's more than a bit of contradiction you know between saying on the one hand that the Left inherently bickers, but that we are too nice to do nasty things, and naivley subject to infiltrators throwing things off the rails.

I've been sliced and diced and hung out to dry by people that deliberately isolated as well as sidelined me- who you would think had to have been some kind of nasty infiltrator. But they learned how to do that in the Left. We've got more than enough who are doing it for the greater good of the cause... don't need any infiltrators.

And you know, right wing folks don't cut up babies at their meetings. You'd actually recognize a lot in their internal dynamics.

They have plenty of their own divisions and in-fighting. You saw what happened to David Frum? And to buddy in the NCC who criticized Stephen Harper. And on. Gone to a right wing blog more than once or twice? Hear about the discussion of politics within US fundamentalist church organizations? or within the national organizations that are outside the Republican Party? ...within the Republican Party for that matter, although that bloodletting doesn't get too out there.

We've been doing it a lot longer. And I would say we are worse. But the Right is not even more or less a unified enitity any more than we are. They didnt have big overarching steering committee meetings, or even behind the scenes 'guidance' sessions where tasks are alloted.

I think they do more easily pursue things in an organic like minded way than we do. But not with any categorical difference.

The one categorical difference there is and which you don't even allude to, is that the Right gets to package their ideas and general agendas- their elites and elite thinkers being the ones who do this- and then these are popularized via the MSM.

So if we are talking practical differences, how can you leave this out?

Its not that the Right is united and "they get on with it" to get their message out.

Its not because they were united, its because they did what they needed to do.

The big difference with us is that we will have to do something different to get our message out. Thinking you need to stop the bickering before you can move on is about as useful as saying that we need more will [or somebody else out there needs more will].

The 'bickering' is a childish manifestation driven by disagreements that will go on. And they do not and will not stop us any more than they stop the Right.

Very much related to this is the need to get away from this notion we are going to have anything that approximates an overarching grand decision making about where to go- which you must have if you are going to do this thing called 'unity'.

Its not going to happen. I think even the NDP alone is too big for people to entertain realistic hopes of directly pushing it in the right 'big picture' directions, but that's getting ahead of things.

Its not going to happen. And we don't need it anyway. Just like the Right didnt have it and didnt need it.

But talking about how this decentralization happens is where your post I have yet to respond to comes in.

"High level decentralization." There's an oxymoron for you.

"High level" in the sense that you are aiming at the 'highest' and most general level of politics [small p and electoral]... the place where the debate shifts. But doing it with fairly small units of people working closely together, who are allied with other similar groups that do not even try to tightly coordinate their work.

I can see why some people might feel more comfortable with the nice safe white organizations like the NDP, CAW and Greaspeace, as opposed to ones with a lot of representation of from the Jamaican Canadian Association and the Canadian Tamil Congress and Toronto area anti-racism organizations.

Indeed, while I actually thought the CAW proposals around car manufacturing, later taken up by the NDP and Greasepeace was not at all a bad idea, one signficant thing addressed by the Good Green Jobs Coalition, which is also supported by the CAW, is that it directly addressess issue of social disparity and race, because it specifically looks at targetting marginalized minorities for job creation. It is not simply about retooling existing industry to save the jobs of the established union movement, and is explicitly about outrieach designed to bring unions level wages and benefits to the marginalized.

About the Green Jobs for All at Hydro Campaign

Furthemore, you really have to question the overall "environmental" utility of creating "green" cars in the first place, since at its heart private automobiles are extremely wasteful conceptually as a mode of transportation. Not that making cars "Greener" is a bad thing, but it really misses the point that real environmentally positive change has to undermine the roots of the consumer economies approach to transportation by focussing on more efficient systems of public transportation. So, is this really sustainable, as you suggest? Transforming Toronto rooftops into solar energy producers and plugging them into the grid is not open to such criticism, really.

So, what you have here is "safe" left think tank grand scheme proposal, which amounts to another "white paper" report that doesn't actually have a lot to with mobilizing anyone and is still trapped within the ideological mythology's of consumer society, and the proposal of the "Good Green Jobs for All", which is specifically about networking and outreach to expand the impact of the union movement, by and for marginalized people in the GTA, beyond those who already benefit from being unionized workers, while at the same time producing technology that must be part of a sustainable future.

Expansion of the union movement from beyond the present boundaries of its present membership and addressing core economic problems of those who are not already within its ranks, is a very important issue for the union movement to take on in a direct way: "Good, Green Jobs for All."

Cueball, thank you for the thoughtful response. I am starting to see a bit more of what you like in this coalition, the involvement of diverse groups,  but I still would like to see details  how it went about organizing and mobilizing the different communities and how it is dealing with good green jobs now, during . the municipal elections.  What can we learn?  Then, while , it is good to hear the statement you quoted  :  We believe these new good green jobs must be equitably accessible to all people, especially youth, people of colour, and newcomers.

About the Green Jobs for All at Hydro Campaign

 I am sure we agree there needs to be more than such a statement to mobilize youth, people of colour and newcomers, there must be action.. Please share

solidarity

Peter

The end of post#39 is a segway for considering this:

I think this is the right idea.

And a number of people have put a lot of thought into making an engaged and practical policy making process for the NDP. Babbler Darwin O'Conner is one.

They are well thought out for how they would work- once completed.

Once completed.

The devil is in getting there. I've one of many who has beat my head on trying for much more modest improvements. People think the problem is the intransigence of party elites. There is some of that, but even when there is none, its the dead hand of inertia that kills you.

I know I'm not up for any more of that kind of thing. But I think trying to rebuild the infrastructure, even if its a bottom-up initiative, ends up being irredeemably stamped as top-down. Because thats the structure. [Thats if you ever got anywhere.]

I think cohesive groups can simply end run the constipated process.

So for policy development something like this. And I'd aim even higher. What the NDP most needs is guiding ideas. A manifesto pretty much. A "manifesto" even if there's really 'only' two guiding ideas in it. Even if the party policy process was 100 times livelier, youd never work even a simple manifesto through such a diffuse process.

And waiting on the centre to drop it out is a losing proposition.

So a cohesive working group puts one together. It would be a tremendous amount of work to move beyond the shopping list approach of 'these are the top issue,' to come up with something that people believe will capture the public imagination, and be at least acceptable to enough of the NDP.

Put it all together, wrap it in a bow and present it to the membership: "what do you think?" "It sucks, eh? Lets do another one."

Quite a challenge for a working group, and preferably groups plural, developing competing proposed manifestoes. But doable. The group working together on a wiki platform. You could get some funding nationaly through a riding association that hosts the group. Blessing of the party would come, but no permission asked on the process, and no oversight. "No one has to accept it. But we're doing it."

Something like that.

At least in principle, I dont see why a working group not even related to the NDP could do something like that. Manifestoes written around where WE want to go are a dime a dozen. This is a lot more challenging, but any more or less ad hoc grouping of interested folks could pick something they work to construct that movement activists will think they can use for en masse outreach.

Ken (and whoever)

- sorry this is a bit long, but if noone is interested scroll down - this is an email I got today from ZNET - if you are not familiar with them, this may be if interest, considering this thread -

Dear Siamdave,

This is an instance of the ZCom Newsletter which we send out a few times a month, as warranted by news here at ZCom.

ZCom Newsletters report about site events and prospects and sometimes also includes links to visit, or an article to read.

As you likely know, one of ZCom's recently added features is called ZGroups. At ZMI this past summer I (Michael Albert) taught lots of classes, and one was on writing - not the mechanics of word choice, etc. - but getting it done, as in overcoming obstacles, arriving at a result, refining and improving the product, etc.

One of the things I emphasized was the desirability of diverse feedback, not from publishers, who might have an axe to grind, and who have too much power - but from potential readers.

Another emphasized point was that if one wants to actually finish a big project one must stick to it, work at it, forge ahead - every day - no matter what.

Okay, I am going to try to act on my own advice, but in a new way. I am also going to hopefully show that others who wish to write could do likewise, for their own efforts, in a similar way. Here is the idea.

I am going to ask for - and in my case that means I am going to set up - a ZGroup for people interested in helping me with my next book. It is a Group that ZCom Free Members, Sustainers, and Writers can join. I will post blogs of my own, periodically, of new drafts of parts of the book as I prepare them. I am hoping people will read those drafts, as unfinished as they will be, and make suggestions and otherwise comment on them - pointing out problems that need fixing, exploring ideas that may provoke additions or deletions, etc. The ZGroup will facilitate by providing a place all the resulting exchanges can accumulate. I assume the material will be mostly comments on the blogs that I post but I guess we will see. Perhaps someone will write a blog of their own, related to the emerging ideas of the book, or its logic, or style, or whatever, and then that would join the mix.

Any ZWriter could obviously follow a similar path concerning a book or other project they are working on. It is easy to ask Z admins to set up a group and we will happily create one for any ZWriter who wants help. Once one exists, collective exchange can occur, edifying all, and contributing improving the product.

I know this isn't typical procedure. Most writers are quite solitary about their work and might even have a coronary thinking about making early drafts publicly visible and that's a perfectly reasonable view. On the other side, some ZCom users will think it is incredibly presumptuous to think that anyone will try to help one write a book. That may be accurate too. To my thinking, however, a ZGroup about a book in progress is  a good opportunity for people to seriously address important ideas and modes of communication at a time when doing so is not only potentially edifying for all involved, but can also impact the final outcome.

Okay, so what is the ZGroup oriented around the flow of draft contents to be called? How About Help Albert? Then, we can set up similar groups the same way for other writers and even accumulate Helping Writer, groups, if it all works!"

------

- and then the website is here -

http://www.zcommunications.org/our-future-introduction-by-michael-albert [45] .

- just ideas, but if 'we' are going to retake our country, it will be from the grassroots up, one way or another - the 'leaders' we have are either incompetent or have other agendas ...

- another US oldtimer who has a lot of good ideas -

http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2010/09/good-things-to-do-in-lousy-times....

V

V

All good advice.

... and you could generalize Michael Albert's point: for words [or plans] that we need, we can put them together on-line. And anyone(s) can take the lead getting started.

ETA: nothing new here. Apologies to those checking if there was. I'm looking to see if we can get some new fish by keeping this closer to the top of the TAT list for several hours.

 - I get the very distressing feeling people who actually want to do stuff are more or less wasting their time on babble - look at this one from a couple days ago - http://rabble.ca/babble/introductions/activity-grass-roots-political-par... - directly asking what so-called activists are doing - and 3 replies!!!!! - as I say in the referenced essay, it very sadly looks as if babble is a place to bitch for awhile, without having to get out in the streets doing stuff that might actually be effective. I could rag on, but (sadly), why bother.

Tough old fish.

[throws back in water]  

   I'm not much of a good old days type but it seems to me that much of the "progress" since the early 60's has served to divide communities rather than unite them. Early on it was IBM/ive been moved. Now it's commonplace.

   Now it's the web/twitter/text etc. People get home in their cars, straight to the house(a/c you know) and dont say hi to anyone. The only social contact we have is at work. It's not an accident. Sorry folks, started babbling there but it's difficult being a leftie in this age of '"anti"social networking"'. I guess my point is that when I was young I knew everyone in a 4 block radius(mid 60's), now I know the people next door and that's it. Everybody has their own little life. If you say hi to someone 4 houses down they look at you like you are nuts. There just doesnt seem to be any community/neighbourhood anymore. So where do the grass roots get started? I dont know, can anyone tell me?

- the grassroots starts with the face you see in the mirror. I don't mean to be flippant or facetious - it's just true. The Grassroots almost by definition means we don't wait for leaders - we do it ourselves.

Much easier to say than do, of course - I am about your age and have exactly the same memories of when I was young - and see the problems you describe in modern "communities". Television is a big part of the problem, not only that people watch it 3-4 hours a day instead of being outside mingling, but because they are also being led away from community by the television content - people are being told that 'having fun' is what is important today - and that anything to do with politics etc is too boring etc.

I am not far from giving up myself on it all - the hold of the television is very, very strong in shaping the behaviour of most people - and because of this people are regressing - are being regressed, really, that's what 'dumbing down' is all about - in every way related to intelligence and 'being adults' - getting through to these modern 'it's all about fun!!!' people is somewhat like trying to convince an 8 year old that eating broccoli is actually tastier and better for you than ice cream or something - you know they'll probably wake up someday, but you're just wasting your time right now. Problem being, of course, there is no guarantee the dumbed down people of today are ever going to wake up, if they continure regressing. But as we see in places all over the internet, there are a lot of people who understand what is happening and are trying to turn things away from Corporate New Feudalism Land -  so by all means keep trying, or start if you have not been doing much - go and find some other people wherever you live that feel as you do, and start talking and seeing if you can figure out anything at all to help - just little stuff, local stuff at first - then try to make contact with a wider area, and etc.

A fact to consider:

As people age, their social networks get smaller. They have a lot fewer friends, and see them a lot less. And this picks up from some time in the 30s.

The pace at which this unfolded in your life over the last 40 years far outsrips the rate of the changes being bemoaned here.

And its a normal human coping mechanism to bemoan what you can't change, even if as in this case it has less impact on you than the factor that is within your control.

I dont have a silver bullet for the narrowed social network problem. [In my case, I decided I'd better at least do SOME repairs to the raft before it gets too small to support me.] But I think that keeping in sight what is in my control- whether or not I do anything about it- does put some limits on how much bitching I do about what is beyond my control.

A lot of tough old fish swimming in these waters. Small wonder we're all hungry.