I'm a new poster on mydd, but I've lurked since 2004.  (Strictly off and on - if I'm a political junkie, I'm a fair weather political junkie.)  

This isn't a story about my voting experience, or the caucus I attended.  It's not a tale of slogging through wind/rain/snow/tornadoes to volunteer for my preferred candidate.  I don't live in a Super Tuesday state.  (Well - there was some Super Tuesday news from my home, but it was the least democratic of any of the contests held anywhere at home or abroad in either party on February 5.  Perhaps that's enough to guess where I am?)

So I didn't vote.  I didn't volunteer.  Instead, running late, I left the office around 5:45 p.m. and headed to the public library where I spent the next three hours preparing tax returns for people who make less than $40,000 per year.  There were six volunteers there last night.  I'm not sure how many returns we prepared - maybe 18, maybe 20? - as there are always people whom we can't help, or can't help just then.  (Consider the woman - an immigrant - whose husband has his return prepared at H&R Block, where they tell him to file married filing separately in order to maximize his itemized deductions and sell him tax preparation services and a refund-anticipation loan, without ensuring that he understands that this has consequences for his wife, too.  She's going to come back next week, with a copy of her husband's return, so that we can figure out how much he's 'saving' with that option, and compare it to how much it will cost her.  How's that for "people" on your "side"?)

ChangeGCI is a group of veterans from MoveOn's field campaigns run by Grassroots Campaigns Inc (GCI). We have been blogging to expose the ways that GCI is failing its organizers AND the MoveOn members that it recruits. Earlier this week, we posted a set of recommendations of actions that MoveOn can take to begin to resolve this crisis of leadership. If you find our stories compelling, and you agree this issue must be addressed by MoveOn, please send an email to Eli Pariser (eli@moveon.org) and cc us at ChangeGCI@gmail.com (or contact us there directly, and we will update you with further information about how you can send a message to MoveOn).

I accepted a job with GCI during the spring of my senior year of college.  After graduation, I attended a canvass training, but soon after the training I was transferred from the canvass staff to the MoveOn Operation Democracy organizing staff. Throughout my time with GCI, my interactions with management were much better than others I've heard about and read about on this blog. Working for GCI certainly cost me money, due in large part to their incomplete reimbursement for things like cell phone service--but again, my experience was not nearly as bad as what others went through. My superiors were very civil when I told them I was leaving, and they wished me well as I moved on. But I still want to add my voice to the chorus calling for changes in the model being used for organizing volunteers.

"We must give ourselves the permission to fail."

That is the lesson that my dearest college professor most indelibly imparted to me: you're gonna get it wrong before you get it right. (I said it to myself every morning for a year, as I learned the lesson the hard way...) But eventually, that permission must expire--or the wrong lessons are learned.

In 2004, MoveOn ran its first massive field campaign, Leave No Voter Behind; the campaign was subcontracted to Grassroots Campaigns Inc. Things went wrong, as things always will on a campaign -- and then things got worse, as things often will on a campaign. But after the initial setbacks, we found ourselves pinned under a crisis of leadership in which GCI betrayed the good faith of its employees, and MoveOn's members, in order to protect its contract. This move apparently worked: MoveOn rehired GCI to relaunch a field campaign.

I only began writing the series on Leave No Voter Behind when I had good reason to believe that GCI and MoveOn had simply learned the wrong lessons from the failure of that campaign. I had heard that the damage that GCI wrought in 2004 -- through mismanagement and unprofessional standards -- seemed to be continuing; however, these accounts were still second-hand. That soon changed. For the last two months, I've received a steady stream of emails from veterans of MoveOn/GCI's second and third failed campaign attempts. As far as investigative reporting gigs go, this one was rather easy.

ChangeGCI (CGCI) is a group of veterans of Grassroots Campaigns Inc operations--specifically the MoveOn campaigns of Leave No Voter Behind, Operation Democracy, and Call for Change, as well as former high-level GCI staff who were with the company at its inception (you can read diaries from some of us here, here, here, here, and here). We believe that even though GCI is engaged in important work, it has consistently misapplied core organizing principles; we believe that GCI sacrifices the quality of its campaigns for the sake of the quantity of its recruits, and that its result is far less than the sum of its parts; we believe that a campaign organization has a responsibility to honor the commitment of each organizer and every volunteer, and that whenever such honor is broken, the progressive movement suffers.

Upon MoveOn.org's request, we have submitted the following recommendations as to improvements that it can make to its GCI field program. MoveOn has not yet responded. We have a wider set of recommendations for mid- and long-term improvements to GCI's campaign model, but MoveOn's campaign is currently entering into a critical phase, and the following actions have been selected because they are all accomplishable in the short-term. We believe that these actions would bring immediate gains in effectiveness to the 2006 Call for Change campaign; we also believe that this would set a precedent of campaign accountability that can continue to develop beyond this election. Potentially, GCI could become a positive force in the progressive movement; however, if it is not held accountable, we believe that it will continue to squander our most precious resources.

[Read more Minutes at the MoveOn Minute Taker blog!]

Let the record show that the civic fields of XXX still lay sallow, with no sign of Democracy Operations. MoveOn PAC's CALL FOR CHANGE has not called the MINUTE TAKER to enlist another faithful soldier in the cause! The MINUTE TAKER can only conclude that the MoveOn commanders have fully withdrawn from XXX, leaving us conscripts without orders or equipment or, indeed, the ability to communicate. The MINUTE TAKER has resigned to sit idly, passively, in front of the television, cursing the insanity of the modern American condition, watching the moment in which we can TAKE BACK CONGRESS grow ever closer.

And yet--the record must show--so far away.

The MINUTE TAKER wonders.
The MINUTE TAKER dreams.
And, fortunately for the sake of the record, the MINUTE TAKER is not alone in this universe!
As if plucked straight from the MINUTE TAKER's fever-dreams of the heyday of Operation Democracy, and day-dreams of the fantastic possibilities of Call for Change, the mailman has delivered the long-anticipated MoveOn Minutes Illustrated: Volume II!

In late September of 2004, MoveOn PAC's Leave No Voter Behind campaign launched its swing state GOTV operations. The company that MoveOn had subcontracted to run this campaign, Grassroots Campaigns Inc (GCI), had lost almost a third of the campaign's timeline to delays. A week into the campaign, the campaign's central nervous system -- the 'cutting-edge' Web Action Center (WAC) -- crashed, never to fully return to true functional capacity. So, things had gone from bad to worse.

But LNVB still had 600 committed, energized organizers deployed across the country. The massive MoveOn membership was virtually begging to be organized into volunteer precinct teams. This post lays out a hypothetical scenario (assembled from the experience of dozens of organizers) of what could have been done given the time and the circumstances.

[Cross-posted from the MoveOn Minute Taker blog. Check there for past Minutes!]

Let the record show that the MINUTE TAKER's participation in Operation Democracy remains suspended -- the new team appears to be inactive and Field Organizer J is out of contact. No sign of M, or S for that matter. But let the record further show that the readers of the MOVEON MINUTES have taken the matter, quite literally, into their own hands! Standing far apart and above from the volumes of reader mail that the MINUTE TAKER receives, yesterday a package arrived containing extensive illustrations of the highlights of Operation Democracy (pre-team collapse)!

Below, please behold the first issue of the MoveOn Minutes Illustrated! Loyal readers of the Minutes will recognize that this is a faithful rendering of the OIL FREE CONGRESS Media Event; let the record show that this cartoon displays both logistical AND emotional adherence to the record! Drama, surprise, a dash of eroticism, the eternal struggle of man against nature and traffic, inspiration, and tactical political maneuvering -- it's all there! Onward, Operation Democracy!

[Cross-posted from the MoveOn Minutes. Check there for past MINUTES!]

Let the record show that the MINUTE TAKER sent emails, and the MINUTE TAKER left messages. M did not respond to repeated queries; the MINUTE TAKER fears that M has been lost to the cause. Weeks went by without word from Operation Democracy of further efforts.

The MINUTE TAKER has no means to communicate with other XXX Democracy Operatives. The record must show that the Operation Democracy Action Center web site has been denying the MINUTE TAKER access to the XXX team page. Instead, upon logging in to the Action Center, the following message is displayed:

We couldn't figure out what team you were trying to work with. It's possible the team you were trying to work with no longer exists.

The team no longer exists? Let the record show surprise and alarm!