I’m reading Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, not because Alinsky is our co-pilot at Balloon Juice and not because Newt Gingrinch doesn’t want anyone to read the book, but because the title has the word “rules” in it. There are rules for that? Great. Why didn’t anyone tell me? I love the book. There’s a reason Newt Gingrich doesn’t want us reading it.
I’m helping our statehouse candidate with his campaign finance filing, so I went to campaign school yesterday in that same spirit. It’s easier to take instruction than make it up as we go along. The Ohio Democratic Party puts on campaign school and it’s for Democrats who are first-time candidates running for state or local office. I got there late and left early because I didn’t account for time lost due to an oddly Cleveland-specific snowstorm on the way in, and then I didn’t want to get trapped there for the weekend on the other end, but it was really very helpful. They had a good turnout. There were about a hundred people there, and that’s in a snowstorm at 9 o’clock on a Saturday morning.
I learned about the “vote deficit number”, which involves averaging the Democratic vote total over three (losing) races and subtracting that number from 52% of the average total vote in those same elections. That’s the vote deficit the Democratic candidate will have to make up in conservative districts or areas in any particular race. Ours is very, very high, I’ll just admit that up front. We’re drowning in deficit.
I also learned about the Rule Of Halves, which we have observed here locally, except we call it the 50% Rule, so, it turns out, we already knew it. This rule dictates that if one invites 100 people to an event or political gathering, 50 people will show up.
We had an impromptu presentation from a union member who is running, and that was about rules too, although he called his rules “protocol”. He said if the candidates are unfamiliar with labor endorsements or donations, they have to learn the protocol, which involves contacting the labor council first, filling out the candidate questionnaire (ALL OF IT!) and then using that first labor endorsement to get in the door for any additional labor endorsements they are seeking. I don’t think John (the candidate) is going to have any problem with labor protocol, because he’s a member of a labor union, but Dear Leader Saul Alinsky writes that people don’t understand things that are beyond their own experience intuitively or magically, and one shouldn’t assume that they do, so I’m glad the union member stood up.
Yutsano
Your job sounds much more fun than mine. :)
MikeJ
People badmouth the professional political class, but knowing the rules and who to talk to really are half the battle. It’s silly to leap into a battle where you will spend a year of your life putting in 16 hour days and not have a crew that’s been there before and know a little something about it.
Which isn’t to say people should blindly do things because “that’s how we’ve always done it”, but often there is a good reason why we’ve always done it that way. You still might want to change things, but you should at least know the pitfalls of doing so beforehand.
gbear
I bet the number would rise to 90% if the invitation promised free beer (which my community council does. We have our yearly meeting at Summit Brewery).
BGinCHI
I assume Union Thug training is next Saturday morning. Make sure you stretch really well before going, Kay.
Seriously, it’s going to be fascinating to watch your candidate go all the way through the election cycle pretty much starting from scratch. You should be keeping notes for a book.
Another Halocene Human
Ugh, Union Thug training. I think we need a new class of union thug. The old class got too used to skimming money off the top, going to the same old boring conferences where they try to interest you in partisan politics while the participants are really trying to arrange discrete hookups, and getting too cozy with management.
We need some union thugs who want to smash the ruling class, okay? Real zealots who want to network to bring about real change. So far it’s been happening on a shoestring outside the union hierarchy.
The unions themselves need more democracy, too, but you’re never going to see the Republicans advancing union democracy bills because TPTB prefer ineffective or suborned unions such as PBA or the Teamsters.
gbear
@Another Halocene Human: So which union do you belong to?
Egg Berry
He’s not?!?!
BTW, apparently, Breitbart tried to punk Bill Ayers:
Another Halocene Human
Kay, also, too, I’m glad to see you’re trying to change the system from within.
I stayed away from radical politics for decades because I was, as a feminist and someone who cared about the lives of the poor and children, disgusted by all the violent revolution talk. What bullshit. Guess who ends up “collateral damage”? The weak, that’s who. The same people we took up the cause for? Oh, but the cause is so much bigger than that. Yeah, history is littered with failed causes. Fuck that noise.
Some of the most effective revolutions in history involved people power and not a single shot was fired. Did the working class fare better in Scandanavia or Greater Slavia in the 20th century? So… you’re advocating armed conflict why now?
I’m glad to see that a new generation has taken up the lefty banner and the call to violence has been largely marginalized. I’m also seeing activism and teach-ins by the only folks who can brag of ever having brought about REAL change in America–alumni of the Civil Rights movement.
BGinCHI
@Egg Berry: Principled conservatives.
Another Halocene Human
@gbear: ATU. Why?
Alesis
“I’m reading Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals,”
Somewhere a tote-bag is being clutched in outrage…
Anoniminous
Another good How-To book is Take Back Your Government by the SF writer Robert Heinlein based on his nuts-and-bolts experience in EPIC.
Warning: things have changed since 1939 (like, Duh) and the available edition has “Jerry Pournelle-isms’ all over it, so there’s some things that can be tossed/ignored.
kay
What in hell does Tucker Carlson hope to gain by spying on Ayers?
He hopes Ayers will inadvertently reveal stupid Secret of the Left?
It’s just stupid.
He should stop bothering people.
gbear
Just wondering. So often commenters who gripe about unions have never been in one. I’m in afscme.
Another Halocene Human
Tucker wanted hot tips on how Ayers managed to stay relevant after all these years. Plus, they were both born with a silver spoon in their mouth and have engaged in morally questionable behavior, so there’s that.
Anoniminous
@Another Halocene Human:
The AFL was always a bunch of bootlickers. The CIO has been the only mass union organization that wasn’t. How they got that way, why, and the trajectory back to being bootlickers provides a deep insights into the failures of US unions and US unionism since.
Shorter: if all you care about is money then those who care about money the most will end-up running the thing.
Baud
A lot of people barely have a grasp of their own experience, so good advice.
Another Halocene Human
@gbear: Lol, I’ve been an officer in the LU for four years now. (Not always willingly.)
But hey, we’re changing things here. Management is PISSED.
How is AFSCME? We’ve got office workers here in CWA. Wondering how they compare. (We have a “wall to wall” law which makes for some really odd locals.)
Another Halocene Human
@Anoniminous: Yeah, fuck the AFL anyway. That’s why you have these union guys voting Republican. They think they’re in a craft union. (They think immigrants cause all their problems, too.) What a bunch of dweebs. You know, if they would ACT like a fucking craft union by pushing for project labor agreements and MORE regulation, they wouldn’t have an immigrant problem because the big jobs wouldn’t even be able to hire $9/hr ignorant Honduran labor. (I say ignorant based on the work that these scabs do. It’s shameful. In the end, the person who paid for the building is the one getting screwed.)
Me, I’m a big fan of CIW, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, who fought on behalf of tomato pickers. Look, people, you will never get real wage growth when you set the floor at a negative number. (Tomato pickers get paid by the piece, then pay extortionary prices for a roof over their head that puts them in debt in many cases… good, old company town arrangement.)
AS LONG AS SLAVERY IS PERMITTED IN THE UNITED STATES, WE ARE NEVER GOING TO GET AHEAD. But there’s no reasoning with some people. *sigh*
Jeff
@gbear:
That’s too true– but not much work would get done.
Chuck Butcher
Something to remember about unions, political parties, and other power establishments is that over time they get comfortable. They not only get comfortable, they get co-opted.
Take a look at where comfort and dominance took the GOP. Take a look at the difference between the founders/organizers of either the AFL or CIO and what they turned into by the 70s. Or take a look at the Democratic Party by the 80s.
Anoniminous
@Another Halocene Human:
Preach it, bro.
ETA: Somewhat off topic, but there is some serious shit going down in Greece right now.
Michael
Believe it or not, a round of confirmation calls the night before the meeting will push your attendance rate to closer to 66% at least, not to mention give you a better idea of who is likely to flake.
I used to like to do a round of calls in the morning, leave no messages on the phones that didn’t answer, and then a second round in the evening hitting up all the numbers that didn’t answer in the morning, leaving a message for anyone who still didn’t answer.
We used to get ~75% attendance from the original list, and once you accounted for the people who told us they wouldn’t make it, closer to 85%
You just have to be willing to do the work
edit: and to whoever mentioned offering beer/pizza/etc, that definitely helps push up attendance rate, and you can probably find someone who is willing to donate food (usually someone who says they want to help but doesn’t want to volunteer will give food instead)
Phylllis
Get your voters to the polls. It’s how ‘we’ won our local school bond referendum. The ‘Vote Yes’ committee worked double-time to get those people out to vote. It ended up with about the same number of no votes as the one we tried several years before (which is what the gal from the state school boards association told us to expect); we tripled the number of yes voters over the previous try. Get your voters to the polls.
barkleyg
http://redglitterx.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/13-rules-for-radicals-alinskys-guide-for-activists/
The TEA Party vilifies him, but they also imitate him. And people wonder why I call the TEA Party a bunch idiots and racists pretending to understand the Constitution. Othen than that I have nothing good to say about the TEA Party
Anoniminous
@Michael:
Free food is a double Win!
It gets the core group off on the right foot by having a organizing success by turning-out more than “Teh Usual.” Speaking for myself, nothing is more dispiriting than working one’s ass off only to have the same twelve people show.
Second, it opens the possibility of recruiting more people to the core group.
A spaghetti dinner shouldn’t cost more than $50 and it’s likely you can meet that with a donation jar strategically located.
Mike in NC
Tucker Carlson needs to spend more time jaywalking in New York City traffic.
sloan
@Egg Berry: Ha ha ha ha ha! That made my day. Tucker Carlson gave $2500 to The Public Square.
What is The Public Square? I’ve never heard of it, but their next event is “When Identities Collide: Sexuality and Black Feminism”, funded by Carlson in exchange for a dinner he and Andrew Breitbart went to during the Super Bowl. And then they missed the end of the game because they were asked to leave at halftime. That just warms my heart. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving pair of self-important douchebags.
Davis X. Machina
According to my brother, the Case Western product, the mechanism is well understood, and, despite what you hear on the television, the lake has nothing to do with it, nor is ‘lake-effect snow’ a real phenomenon.
Cleveland sucks. This creates an area of intense low pressure which will produce hellacious snow.
As for ‘lake effect’ — where else does this alleged phenomenon occur? Buffalo. Rochester. Erie. South Bend. Traverse City? See a pattern there?
Chris
@barkleyg:
For all that Republicans hit the ceiling like it’s the second coming of Lenin, I seriously don’t see what’s “radical” about all that crap. It’s a playbook for Politics 101. Republicans from Lee Atwater to Karl Rove have used it. Lyndon Johnson used it. The old school political machines used it. Most of it’s just common sense for the nasty and ugly business that is politics. Alinsky might have diluted and written down some of these “rules,” but I seriously doubt if he most of that (heck, any of that) even came from him.
Martin
Kay, this is seriously impressive. No fucking way that the GOP is going to be able to do this on this scale. I hope the Dems don’t stop dong this.
Is this organized by OFA or the state party or who?
jafd
@Anoniminous:
Second the recommendation on Heinlein’s _Take Back Your Gov’t_. Some stuff therein is now historical trivia, some details of our grandparent’s world, enough useful to be worth the time to read.
You may want to check out Get Out the Vote, Second Edition: How to Increase Voter Turnout, by Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber. Haven’t read it myself yet, but others recommend it highly.
Good luck !
BP in MN
@gbear: Cool, sounds like you’re in my ‘hood. Didn’t get a notice about the meeting last year though; maybe they skipped my block deliberately.
kay
I like Cleveland, Davis X and I love snow.
This was just weird, because 3 miles out of the city the sun was shining.
I’ve lived in South Bend. That’s a little different. There, the sun does not shine
for 6 months.
I do like Great Lakes cities, though, generally, although I know they’re a little down on their luck.
Martin
@Martin: Nevermind, I managed to read over the “Ohio Democratic party” phrase 3 times. I think I’m losing my ability to absorb details when I read because I keep doing that, and I swear I never used to.
kay
The state Party put this on, Martin, although “my” Obama 2012 guy was there.
He emailed me a day prior which is good because it means he’s got a county list.
This was one of two. They had another one in the bottom half of the state.
It is a good idea.
WereBear (itouch)
Seconded.
Chuck Butcher
Kay,
in re the vote deficit, that number reflects traditional results, the outcomes of previous situations and approaches. That number tells you that something doesn’t work. It does tell you that there is an institutionalized voting pattern, also. Parts of an institutionalized vote are not approachable – the infamous 27% plus another good sized chunk.
What you do have is the Kaisich backlash plus the national GOP behavior. Getting messages broadly heard is the really big problem since you need to give people a reason to vote as they haven’t. Not being the same isn’t the same thing as being seen that way. One of the worst things about those deficit numbers is that money goes elsewhere, more winnable ‘wheres.’ “Earned” media gets to be a huge factor. Having the candidate or surrogates everywhere something is going on really counts. Non-politcal things like gun shows, car shows, grange meetings, anything that puts some people in the same place at the same time.
Davis X. Machina
@kay: I don’t think anybody likes the weather where they went to college, unless they went to like Arizona State.
My brother went to Case, and moaned about Cleveland’s weather constantly — and he was from Boston.
I went to Holy Cross, where there was a verb,’to Worcester’ — 42º, northeast wind, rain/sleet — which could happen any time from the 15th of September to the 15th of May, and often did, straight through.
And now my own son — a Mainer, who’s seen a lot worse — is unprintable on the Pittsburgh winter. Forbes Ave instead of Kitty Hawk, he says, the Weather Bureau gave the Wright Bros. a bum steer.
rikyrah
Kay,
I love you sharing all of this with us.
MTiffany
Yeah, because he’s read it and using those rules himself…
Kristine
Thirded Re: writing a book.
Chuck Butcher
@Davis X. Machina:
Heh, I don’t remember much complaining about the weather at MTU on the Keweenaw Peninsula of MI. But then, you’d just be demonstrating the entire stupidity of your presence since 300+” snow and continuous sub-zero isn’t exactly a secret. So, if it is winter and it is cold and snowing you can’t really claim to be surprised and disappointed.
Liberty60
Coincidentally, I am also reading Rule for Radicals now, and about halfway in.
I have to say, its a terrific , pragmatic primer for how to organize any political organization.
He scorns ideology and dogma, and focuses on just the nuts and bolts of how to organize.
I think what terrifies the Right is how he offers up an unaplogetic, cold eyed view of politics, and doesn’t drape it in morality of pieties- the moral pieties we hear are often just window dressing to reinforce the status quo.
Billy Beane
So I was just over at that orange site seeing who has their hand out today asking for money for their sick grandma, grandpa, brother, sister, lesbian friend who had someone say something mean to them etc. and decided to pop over and see what nonsense is going on here.
And I find Kay…..happily keeping the Gingrich Ainsky flatulations going by pointing at it and yelling…”ewww that stinks”.
Heck of a job you
little Gingrich puppetunshakeable progressive you. Proof once again that if you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.sharl
@Billy Beane: You are clearly superior to the folks at this site. It would be best that you move on, lest our unworthiness somehow sully your purity and dull your omniscience.
Billy Beane
@sharl: Yes and no. Thanks for caring my little groupie.
sharl
@Billy Beane: FRED/DERF/…!!
Howz it hangin dood?
Hob
@Liberty60: I don’t think the wingnut fixation on Alinsky means they’re actually afraid of him, or know anything about him. They’ve just decided to push the “Democrats are all secret commies trained by the Symbionese Weather Panthers” thing as far as it will go, and Alinsky superficially fits the bill because he wrote a book with “radicals” in the title and he is widely respected on the left. Not to mention his name– Jewish and Russian!– so perfect that if no one by that name had existed, the Birchers would’ve had to invent one. It wouldn’t matter if Alinsky had been a poseur with nothing to say, or if the book had been about gardening or football, they’d still be trying the same shit.
Gwangung
@Hob: Pretty much so.
Then again, if there’s something to learn from Alinksy, then it’d behoove us to earn.
barkleyg
Hob – February 12, 2012 | 11:54 pm · Link
@Liberty60: I don’t think the wingnut fixation on Alinsky means they’re actually afraid of him, or know anything about him.
kay
Billy Beame, I like Alinsky. I love the book. I don’t agree with everything he wrote, but I agree with most of it.
Did you read it?
Because he’s got 4 pages in there on how “radicals” have no sense of humor and lecture people rather than talking to them. He sees that as a problem.
You must have missed that part.
I’m sure you’re purer and more worldy than I am, but I don’t think you read the book, so don’t lecture me on it.