Kelly wrote: "YWCA Book clubs, quilting circles, little leagues, VFWs, League of Women Voters, Church group, Church coalitions, women's groups, book reading clubs, you name it. These organizations are filled with and supported by people who have the kind of skills a social movement needs. (Similarly, people talk about networks of communities of faith as the foundation for the civil rights struggle in the South.).."
Hi, I'm a long-time lurker. I live in a small blue-collar town in the pacific northwest. This thread prompted me to post; first try rejected for length. My (hopefully more concise) points:
1) There's a lot of dissatisfaction out here in the hinterlands with bush, both parties, and the direction the country's heading..
2) A lot of average people lean left economically. They want a safety net, affordable health care and college, decent jobs, they don't like overconcentrated wealth, global corps, bandit ceo's, funding overseas dictators, rigged taxes, etc.
But they lean right on social issues, and associate "the left" and the dems with effete gun-hating abortionist liars who want to give money to lazy people.
3) People also resent being labeled as reactionary, stupid, bible-thumping bigots by what they perceive as the left.
4) People here don't need "organizing". They're already organized through the kinds of social and family networks Kelly mentioned. They volunteer, they support each other, they go to Mexico and dig sewers. They're involved and active.
IMO, lots of these people are the natural constituency of the left. Their energy and organization could shift the political center of gravity if tapped into. Yet they've tuned out the dems/left (and are slowly tuning out the GOP/right as well, for some of the same reasons - ineffective, corrupt liars.)
But since they see the world through the frame of God, country, family and the market economy (American Dream propaganda model), the ineffectiveness and venality of government leads some to conclude that the government's corrupt, the parties are corrupt, the media's corrupt, nothing to be done but hunker down for the impending cataclysm. This drives some of the armageddon-mongering in the religious community.
Wierd mindspace since they still, paradoxically, believe in the American dream story and the system. But inexplicably, in this most perfect of all possible systems, everyone's corrupt and everything's going to hell. There's opportunity there for anyone who can help explain why that is.
Little effective counter-story except the perennial "immigrants taking jobs" or "bad-apple ceo's/politicians/media people" or "the evil democrat communists". But the individualistic analyses aren't a satisfying explanation for the systemic malfunction.
Counter-stories from the left are ignored/dismissed in a knee-jerk way because the source isn't trusted. Michael Moore doesn't do it for most of these folk - they won't even watch F911. Moore's a radical America-hater, you know.
But something like what Lou Dobbs does in his continuing series on off-shoring, job loss and globalization does work. Dobbs is seen as a business guy who's reporting the dirty truth. Talking about some of the same things Moore is, but perceived as non-partisan. No jokes, no shouting or personal attacks. Name the off-shoring companies, cite the statistics, ask hard questions in the interview. That's the perception.
I myself made a presentation/discussion on social security to a senior group in this style, which prompted some people to write to their congresswoman. When people think SS is in crisis because of some iron laws of demographics and budgets, they'll sit on their butts. But if they think it's in crisis because somebody's jiggering the money and lying, they'll at least write letters. A chink in the standard storyline.
Someone posted an article earlier about how Ross Perot's candidancy was the last effective independent candidacy. One reason Perot was effective (IMO) was his much-maligned graphs and charts. He talked on regular people's level, and the charts made the points readily accessible. And a moral appeal most people agree with - it's wrong to mortgage the future.
IMO, left strategy should work at various levels. One is to move the political center. The democratic machine seems to have a renewed committment to the war of ideas, with surrogates like Move On and Air America, but it's still the democratic party, the party that introduced the misleading mystification of the "lockbox' into the social security debate and is committed to other mystifications as well.
I think there's a need for channels outside the dem machine and the hard-core (?) left, through which independent counter-stories could percolate to middle america. I spent a couple of years in a leftish group We reached mostly the choir. One reason was - the message was 3 steps ahead of where most people in the community were, and too few people (including myself) had a clue about how to communicate outside the choir. It was a learning experience.
Something that "left economists" could do is to post short, ross-perot-like graphic presentations on economic issues on the web in a central location. Referenced to primary sources, so people can check the facts themselves. Something suitable for local people to use to talk to the book club, the gun club, the church group. A lot of these groups regularly want informal speakers for their meetings.
If there were such a website it wouldn't be too hard to get the word out to local "activists" - by which I mean, middle-aged church ladies like me. Groups like Fellowship of Reconciliation have chapters in every small town around here, and some members are interested in other issues besides the war. One email to the national org saying "here's a website with downloadable presentations, could you pass it on?" would get it listed in the state newsletters that go out to the membership everyy month. There must be other groups as well. If you're an economics prof, how about a grad student project?
Don't underestimate how profoundly the standard storyline stops thought. When I used to hear about "interest rate hikes" on the news, my vague idea was they were some neutral mechanism automatically triggered by market conditions - like a law of nature. In my late 30's, a lightbulb went on. I realized that in every recession people I knew lost jobs and businesses, had to sell off assets, had to move, took to drink, got divorced, screwed up their kids and their self-respect - the associated chain of dysfunction. That was what interest rate hikes were about, and ordinary men enforced them in their own self-interest. It was in plain sight all the time but I couldn't see it because my head was full of mythology.
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