Get out of Florida.
As a veteran of many campaigns (including the MoveOn 2004 LNVB effort), I've got to say that it sounds like grassroots political organizing is not, how shall I put it, Greg's calling. That's okay. It's not for everybody. But please don't take it out on the rest of us.
I can't help but notice that Greg's getting hung up on the relatively minor things that went wrong - rather than all the big things that went right. Yeah, it was hard work. Yeah, there was some hollerin' late at night (has anyone ever worked on an electoral campaign without a little bit of, er, creative tension?). And sure, we had to revise some of our systems on the fly.
But that goes with the territory - both short term campaign mobilization and the kind of long-term progressive movement building for which Greg advocates and which MoveOn.org has pioneered. Getting people organized is hard work and it requires tough people to do it. In the words of Democratic strategist Michael Houley, "All I know is that the ones who stop fighting first always lose."
From a broader perspective, I find it quite surprising that Greg chose MoveOn.org as his target, despite his negative experience in political organizing. I feel like if he had lifted his head up from his navel for one second any time over the last 10 years he would have noticed that MoveOn.org has probably done more than any other organization to build a lasting grassroots-based progressive movement.
As I describe in my forthcoming book Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party, in the late 1990's, while Democratic party hacks (and most of the big progressive foundation dollars) were funneling their resources into lobbyists, ad buys, and single issue organizing, MoveOn was building a movement. MoveOn made a critical innovation in progressive organizing (or, rather, remembered some basic principles of community organizing). MoveOn mobilized people by appealing to them on the hot issues of the day - giving them a way to do something about the things they already cared about. It gives people the tools to do something about their priorities, rather than imposing its own priorities.
As a result, MoveOn has found it comparatively easy to get people involved - and has seen its membership grow literally exponentially to over 3.2 million.
These people might first get involved on a single hot issue - the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the Iraq fiasco, high gas prices, drilling in the Arctic Refuge, or an election. But MoveOn gets you hooked really quickly. You start to see how millions of people working together can make a difference. You start to see that the same people and institutions are behind all of these problems - and looking for ways to tackle their power systematically. This grassroots support was why they were able to raise more than $50 million in primarily small donations to work on the 2004 elections - and $50 million don't lie - that's a lot of authentic grassroots love for MoveOn.org.
Movement building was what MoveOn's Leave No Voter Behind project was all about too. Sure, we were working to beat Bush, but MoveOn's field organizers' and volunteers' hard work meant that we were also able to reach people who might not have been in MoveOn's email networks and get them involved in political action. Many of those people got involved in politics for the first time when someone knocked on their door during Leave No Voter Behind - and remain involved in MoveOn's efforts to win the 2006 elections, get big oil out of Congress, save NPR and PBS, and generally make this a better world! If this isn't movement building, I don't know what is.
Greg may not know about all the organizers currently in the field running Operation Democracy. He may not know how many active MoveOn volunteers first got recruited through LNVB. He may not trust MoveOn's numbers (though I don't understand why not - in my office in Fort Lauderdale, more than 8000 people we contacted reported voting and the final reports I saw showed similar numbers all around the country). He may not care about all the work MoveOn is doing to save public television and keep the internet free.
Doing all of that is hard work and it doesn't always look pretty. But Greg - please get out of the way of those of us tough enough to do it.
The "1" rating is for piling macho crap onto the end of a post shilling the PIRG/GCI party line. I'm sure you're a really good organizer, Mr. Hurowitz (in all honesty, the PIRG lifers I meet always are), but you're apparently better at real grassroots than at astroturf.
I went on from working GCI busted-ass 2004 campaign--and even trying to work for them in 2005, because I think their professed mission is laudable--to continuing to work long hours on Democratic campaigns. I'm currently managing a targeted legislative race in Oregon, and I'll put my work ethic up against anyone's. Am I a sissy because I think GCI ran a stupid and ill-conceived campaign? Or am I just a few barfights away from attaining that sweet Doug Phelps wisdom?
I can't do much better in response than Patton. I'll add only: I was one of two people (out of fourteen) in my office to meet the goals. I worked goddamn hard, and I was glad to be able to do the work that needed to be done -- but I didn't have a single successful day of organizing until I stopped listening to my superiors and started lying to them.
Those who let themselves be brow-beaten by yippeeyay thuggery like what we see in this post found, by the end of the election, that all of their hard work had been wasted.
