Tomorrow (June 2, 2009), empowered citizens of New Brunswick, under the name Democrats for Change, will seek to bypass and in fact directly challenge machine gatekepers by gaining seats within the Democratic power structure of Middlesex County, New Jersey. At first glance, it is easy for many on the "left" to ask, "How is this revolutionary? Seeking to be part of the system? Let alone through being part of a major party?" In reality, this campaign is a living, breathing example of revolutionary democracy's goals in the simplest sense - (do what is necessary, including infiltrating constituted, entrenched, "system" power to) increase democracy, build dual power (not to mention the campaign itself has been organized and conducted in the most democratic of ways, and includes a clearly people-power preliminary "platform").
I commend these citizen candidates and wish them success on this important day. I look forward to longer, more reflective analyses of the campaign on this blog from those who fortune has made more than the mere cheerleader I am.
Showing posts with label Topic: Elections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Topic: Elections. Show all posts
Monday, June 1, 2009
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Building Neighborhood Committees, Canvassing, and Winning (Keith) by Keith
These are some notes on organizing in New Brunswick but I think that they may be useful to others who are thinking about dual power and seizing power locally.
We must build neighborhood committees if we are going to win on election day and if we are to build a lasting revolutionary democratic movement in New Brunswick. In many ways the committees will be one of the most important outcomes of the whole campaign. Below I put down some notes on building the committees and the crucial role they will play on election day with Get Out the Vote.
The universal task of all neighborhood committees’ is to get out the vote. Beyond that each committee will develop organically, based on the concerns and issues faced by the citizens in that neighborhood. In some neighborhoods parking is the main issue, in others police violence and gang activity, and other neighborhoods have issues that will only emerge as citizens meet and talk. As people come together and feel their collective power, other issues and possibilities, that are presently beyond their imaginative capacity and ours, will emerge. In other words they will change the conditions and themselves and thereby make new possibilities.
Our biggest challenge at the present moment and the key to winning election day is getting these neighborhood committees off the ground. The committees are an organizational structure so to understand what kind of structure we need we must first understand the practice or activity the committees will engage in. Again much of the activity will be determined by the committees themselves, but one activity that we know will be asked of all committees will be getting out the vote on election-day. So we can build structure around that task, and then allow other practices and organizational forms to develop organically based on the needs of the citizens in the groups.
When we knock on a door we may be talking to a neighborhood leader, or a future neighborhood leader (or a national leader in embryo!). We should offer each person the highest level of participation and work down. This is especially important in Latino/a neighborhoods. We will need to find bi-lingual people who can organize Spanish speakers. Additionally, Revolutionary Democracy recognizes all residents as citizens and therefore they have full rights and freedom to participate regardless of their “status.” So while they cannot vote in November they will be able to vote in their neighborhood committee.
A key component of our campaign must be building neighborhood committees as the basis for our anti-machine local revolutionary democratic movement and the canvas is the place to get them started. Ideally each committee will be made up of five or more registered voters. The chair of the committee will be responsible for making sure that all committee members vote on election day. Mobilizing the group on election day will take preparation, that preparation is the basis of the committees initial existence.
Recruiting neighborhood leaders while canvassing
When canvassing we come across people who are natural leaders of the neighborhoods, people others turn to for help, or people who command respect. If these people, for example, tell other to sign a petition they are listened too. When canvassing we should try to get these people to become leaders of a neighborhood committee. We have to lay out the whole vision with them. We are trying to transform this city in a democratic way. We want schools that provide the best education for our children and makes it possible for the kids to do whatever it is they want to, their background and the school system should not be a limitation but an advantage. We want the schools to be community centers and recreation centers that provide job training and job placement. We want professional police who help the community end gang violence instead of encouraging it. And so on (we can talk vision stuff in another essay). The point is that we lay out the dream and then we lay out the path that leads from here to there. The path is the ward campaign. We can explain neighborhood committees, how they will function to discuss neighborhood issues and how they will function in relation to a real democratic city council.
Then we explain how to build the committee: Do you know 3 or more people you can register to vote or who are registered? Can you hold a meeting to explain the campaign? what we are doing? and how we will be counting on them to come out and vote on election day? Can you stay in regular contact with your committee? That is minimal. The committee’s can do much more, but that is a start. At this level of organizing it is all face to face, ultimately this networks include elements of friendship. You can invite a potential committee chair to Sunday dinner and hook them more deeply into the campaign. The idea is to get them close to the campaign and also feel ownership so that they willing to take initiatives to help develop it. We can help with the initial meetings and send organizers. Building trust and friendship will be crucial.
Recruiting neighborhood leaders at Public Meetings
When we hold a public meeting it is important to lay out the vision of a democratic city, and then link the ward campaign to that vision. The next step is to explain the role of neighborhood committees, what the job of the committee chair will be and ask people to volunteer to host a first meeting. Again, the first meeting can be your brother, your cousin, your momma and neighbor and your sister’s friend, start with whatever is doable and build-- something is better than nothing. Whoever it is we have to get together explain the campaign and how to vote for it and the role of the committee on election day. The more resources we can provide so that people take ownership over the process and their committees and develop them creatively according to the needs of their neighborhood the more we will build revolutionary democratic power.
We must build neighborhood committees if we are going to win on election day and if we are to build a lasting revolutionary democratic movement in New Brunswick. In many ways the committees will be one of the most important outcomes of the whole campaign. Below I put down some notes on building the committees and the crucial role they will play on election day with Get Out the Vote.
The universal task of all neighborhood committees’ is to get out the vote. Beyond that each committee will develop organically, based on the concerns and issues faced by the citizens in that neighborhood. In some neighborhoods parking is the main issue, in others police violence and gang activity, and other neighborhoods have issues that will only emerge as citizens meet and talk. As people come together and feel their collective power, other issues and possibilities, that are presently beyond their imaginative capacity and ours, will emerge. In other words they will change the conditions and themselves and thereby make new possibilities.
Our biggest challenge at the present moment and the key to winning election day is getting these neighborhood committees off the ground. The committees are an organizational structure so to understand what kind of structure we need we must first understand the practice or activity the committees will engage in. Again much of the activity will be determined by the committees themselves, but one activity that we know will be asked of all committees will be getting out the vote on election-day. So we can build structure around that task, and then allow other practices and organizational forms to develop organically based on the needs of the citizens in the groups.
When we knock on a door we may be talking to a neighborhood leader, or a future neighborhood leader (or a national leader in embryo!). We should offer each person the highest level of participation and work down. This is especially important in Latino/a neighborhoods. We will need to find bi-lingual people who can organize Spanish speakers. Additionally, Revolutionary Democracy recognizes all residents as citizens and therefore they have full rights and freedom to participate regardless of their “status.” So while they cannot vote in November they will be able to vote in their neighborhood committee.
A key component of our campaign must be building neighborhood committees as the basis for our anti-machine local revolutionary democratic movement and the canvas is the place to get them started. Ideally each committee will be made up of five or more registered voters. The chair of the committee will be responsible for making sure that all committee members vote on election day. Mobilizing the group on election day will take preparation, that preparation is the basis of the committees initial existence.
Recruiting neighborhood leaders while canvassing
When canvassing we come across people who are natural leaders of the neighborhoods, people others turn to for help, or people who command respect. If these people, for example, tell other to sign a petition they are listened too. When canvassing we should try to get these people to become leaders of a neighborhood committee. We have to lay out the whole vision with them. We are trying to transform this city in a democratic way. We want schools that provide the best education for our children and makes it possible for the kids to do whatever it is they want to, their background and the school system should not be a limitation but an advantage. We want the schools to be community centers and recreation centers that provide job training and job placement. We want professional police who help the community end gang violence instead of encouraging it. And so on (we can talk vision stuff in another essay). The point is that we lay out the dream and then we lay out the path that leads from here to there. The path is the ward campaign. We can explain neighborhood committees, how they will function to discuss neighborhood issues and how they will function in relation to a real democratic city council.
Then we explain how to build the committee: Do you know 3 or more people you can register to vote or who are registered? Can you hold a meeting to explain the campaign? what we are doing? and how we will be counting on them to come out and vote on election day? Can you stay in regular contact with your committee? That is minimal. The committee’s can do much more, but that is a start. At this level of organizing it is all face to face, ultimately this networks include elements of friendship. You can invite a potential committee chair to Sunday dinner and hook them more deeply into the campaign. The idea is to get them close to the campaign and also feel ownership so that they willing to take initiatives to help develop it. We can help with the initial meetings and send organizers. Building trust and friendship will be crucial.
Recruiting neighborhood leaders at Public Meetings
When we hold a public meeting it is important to lay out the vision of a democratic city, and then link the ward campaign to that vision. The next step is to explain the role of neighborhood committees, what the job of the committee chair will be and ask people to volunteer to host a first meeting. Again, the first meeting can be your brother, your cousin, your momma and neighbor and your sister’s friend, start with whatever is doable and build-- something is better than nothing. Whoever it is we have to get together explain the campaign and how to vote for it and the role of the committee on election day. The more resources we can provide so that people take ownership over the process and their committees and develop them creatively according to the needs of their neighborhood the more we will build revolutionary democratic power.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Obama 2008: By Any Means Necessary (Keith) by X.
I know Jeremiah Wright… Well, I never met him, but I know his ideas, he is a part of the American political left. Nothing he said outraged me, or even upset me. I agreed with a lot of it, and disagreed with some of it. If we were to meet in person I imagine we would get along just fine, and we probably could do some good work together. Obama had to distance himself from his pastor in order to remain a viable candidate -- a smart move. Gary Wills, writing in the May 2008 NY Review of Books, pointed out that Abe Lincoln, who Obama invoked when announcing his own candidacy, was associated with John Brown and the “radical” abolitionists. Like Obama, Abe had to distance himself in public from the “extremists.” But the abolitionists remained the left wing of Lincoln’s coalition, and although he publicly disavowed them (gently) he was secretly and indirectly connected to them.
About 100 hundred years later, in 1968, Robert Kennedy’s candidacy for president represented a similar coalition. His brother, John Kennedy’s election marked the achievement of full citizenship for Catholic (Irish and Italian) workers (that’s why Kennedy’s picture hangs in all those Irish bars). Bobby Kennedy continued to lead those “white” workers and he was bringing them into an alliance with the Civil Rights Movement (Kennedy was meeting and marching with two of its most prominent leaders, Dr. King and Caesar Chavez). In other words, Kennedy’s campaign was a next phase in the Civil Rights struggle. But the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 and the FBI repression of the left made it difficult for a left wing to get into that coalition and soon King and Kennedy would also be murdered.
These assassinations sent most left wing forces in the United States into a disorientating tailspin that we have yet to recover from. If it were 1968, Hilary would be Hubert Humphrey, McCain would be Nixon, and Obama would be Bobby Kennedy. Some of our friends on the left have asked us to “Recreate ’68.” Yes, but let’s not repeat the blind rage, instead let’s do it over and send Humphrey and Nixon packing. So, we must build a John Brown, Malcolm X, Jeremiah Wright bloc— a left bloc allied to but independent from Obama’s campaign.
Malcolm X drew center-left forces like King closer to himself and led them, but after Malcolm’s assassination left wing forces pushed liberals and center-left forces away and into the hands of the right. Obama’s campaign is the potential rebirth of the Kennedy-King Coalition. And it is time for the radical left to do what Malcolm would have done—get into the coalition as an independent force, consolidate a left wing and build a liberal and left coalition to stomp the war loving right wing in this country while building our own independent left movement.
We have a couple of immediate basic tasks: Obama must be the Democratic Party candidate—By Any Means Necessary. We should plan to camp right outside of Denver during the Democratic Party’s Convention and hold anti-war demonstrations and our own left convention. If right wing Democrats try to force Hilary-Herbert Humphrey-Clinton on us we march on the convention and make sure Obama gets the nomination--By Any Means Necessary. In November, we must make sure Obama defeats the war criminal John McCain. And finally, after the election, we must be prepared to convene anywhere in the country (Florida, Ohio etc.) to make sure that the Supreme Court does not decide the contest.
Some of our fellow leftists have been very critical of Obama. The problem with their criticism is that they want Obama to be a leftist. He is not a leftist, he is a representative of the progressive, democratic wing of the capitalist class and he is making an appeal to workers of all nationalities to support him. Obama is a liberal. He is a center-left candidate. He is a part of the mainstream of the Democratic Party. We are the left! It is time we got back in the game.
About 100 hundred years later, in 1968, Robert Kennedy’s candidacy for president represented a similar coalition. His brother, John Kennedy’s election marked the achievement of full citizenship for Catholic (Irish and Italian) workers (that’s why Kennedy’s picture hangs in all those Irish bars). Bobby Kennedy continued to lead those “white” workers and he was bringing them into an alliance with the Civil Rights Movement (Kennedy was meeting and marching with two of its most prominent leaders, Dr. King and Caesar Chavez). In other words, Kennedy’s campaign was a next phase in the Civil Rights struggle. But the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 and the FBI repression of the left made it difficult for a left wing to get into that coalition and soon King and Kennedy would also be murdered.
These assassinations sent most left wing forces in the United States into a disorientating tailspin that we have yet to recover from. If it were 1968, Hilary would be Hubert Humphrey, McCain would be Nixon, and Obama would be Bobby Kennedy. Some of our friends on the left have asked us to “Recreate ’68.” Yes, but let’s not repeat the blind rage, instead let’s do it over and send Humphrey and Nixon packing. So, we must build a John Brown, Malcolm X, Jeremiah Wright bloc— a left bloc allied to but independent from Obama’s campaign.
Malcolm X drew center-left forces like King closer to himself and led them, but after Malcolm’s assassination left wing forces pushed liberals and center-left forces away and into the hands of the right. Obama’s campaign is the potential rebirth of the Kennedy-King Coalition. And it is time for the radical left to do what Malcolm would have done—get into the coalition as an independent force, consolidate a left wing and build a liberal and left coalition to stomp the war loving right wing in this country while building our own independent left movement.
We have a couple of immediate basic tasks: Obama must be the Democratic Party candidate—By Any Means Necessary. We should plan to camp right outside of Denver during the Democratic Party’s Convention and hold anti-war demonstrations and our own left convention. If right wing Democrats try to force Hilary-Herbert Humphrey-Clinton on us we march on the convention and make sure Obama gets the nomination--By Any Means Necessary. In November, we must make sure Obama defeats the war criminal John McCain. And finally, after the election, we must be prepared to convene anywhere in the country (Florida, Ohio etc.) to make sure that the Supreme Court does not decide the contest.
Some of our fellow leftists have been very critical of Obama. The problem with their criticism is that they want Obama to be a leftist. He is not a leftist, he is a representative of the progressive, democratic wing of the capitalist class and he is making an appeal to workers of all nationalities to support him. Obama is a liberal. He is a center-left candidate. He is a part of the mainstream of the Democratic Party. We are the left! It is time we got back in the game.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
The People's Campaign (Keith) by X.
The People’s Campaign organized an electoral challenge for three city council seats in 2000 in New Brunswick NJ, after years of organizing on the Rutgers campus and five solid years of organizing with the New Brunswick community around education, housing, and police brutality. Our work prior to the electoral campaign gave us a number of contacts within the community as well as some recognition and respect as dedicated organizers. We began by conducting surveys of the various communities as the basis for a platform. (1) The surveys also gave us the opportunity to discuss the campaign and its next step: an open convention where the candidates, platform, campaign manager, and steering committee would be voted on. The convention was one of the campaign’s great successes: Hundred of people attended and the students were represented in numbers closer to the portion of the population that they actually make up in the city (unlike in previous events). About nine people vied to be chosen by the convention as candidates. Some had the backing of an organization while other ran as individuals.
The three candidates chosen at the convention were an Afro-American bus driver, a Latino van driver (who only spoke Spanish) and a white revolutionary who had graduated from Rutgers. In addition to electing candidates, the People’s Campaign featured –a first in the United States– an elected campaign manager and a steering committee that most people at the convention felt should be broad and representative of different communities and social classes opposed to the existing political machine. So the revolutionaries had to not only deal with small business people and petty landlords among others but also to negotiate to keep them supportive of a radical program—these were real lessons in coalition building and “politics” which much of the Left, because they refuse to engage in grassroots electoral work, has never even experienced.
The program was extensive and radically redistributive. New Brunswick had been re-nicknamed by city officials the “Healthcare City” because of the number of hospitals and medical research facilities in town. The People’s Campaign platform called for free healthcare for all residents, admittance to Rutgers University for all New Brunswick high school graduates, rent control, an elected civilian police control board, affordable housing, a public swimming pool and so forth. The candidates and all positions of responsibility were subject to recall at any time up until two weeks from Election Day. (The group decided to place this limitation on recall so that everyone could focus on the election in the final weeks.)
Our opponents were long time incumbents of the Democratic Party, one of the most powerful political machines in the State of New Jersey. The previous mayor, John Lynch, is not only mobbed up (now under indictment), he is also the king maker of the statewide democratic party. The machine is backed by Johnson & Johnson (J&J), a global corporation whose world headquarters are located in the center of downtown New Brunswick. The local Democratic Party does J&J’s bidding and J&J rules the city with a mix of coercion and consent. They set up NGOs that attempt to determine the cultural and social life of the city, making sure it is corporate friendly while striving for pseudo- hipness.
The local Democrats dominate local small business through intimidation. For example, they have fire and health inspectors that can shut a business down. Small businesses are expected to make substantial financial contributions to the machine as part of the cost of business, and display Democratic Party propaganda. The machine also awards contracts and can make sweetheart deals for things like property purchases and liquor licenses. In order to work for the city as a firefighter, cop, in sanitation, or in the parks department you must regularly attend fundraising dinners and make campaign contributions. These workers are also the machine’s ground troops, they tear down opposition posters, hand out and post machine literature and work the polls on Election Day. We learned this during the course of the People’s Campaign became a crash course in politics—politics 101. Despite five years of organizing before the electoral campaign we had little sense of how the city was actually run until we faced off against the machine for political control of the city at the ballot box.
We organized to win, not to protest. We handed out over a quarter million pieces of literature (no shit!) and recruited hundreds of new people to the movement. Clausewitz famously commented that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Well elections are the closest thing to war without bloodshed. We battled their hired campaign goons on the streets: When they ripped down one of our posters, we ripped down ten of theirs. We ran from the police, got caught by the police, and finally negotiated with the police with the help of supportive attorneys that since the machine was tearing down our literature (and the police weren’t stopping them) they would no longer stop us either. While we negotiated this agreement, we had won it first on the street: The police couldn’t stop us since our numbers were too large. They agreed to stop bothering us so that they would no longer look like incompetents.
Election Day was the major battle. We recruited progressive lawyers to volunteer to monitor for fraud on Election Day (the machine is notorious for cheating through fake residences for supporters, vote suppression, etc.) We had some two hundred and fifty volunteers at the polling stations and getting out the vote (GOTV). This required high levels of organization and planning. Much of it is very basic: All campaign workers must be fed (that has to be organized and planned) and we need people at every polling station handing out literature and talking to people, winning votes and reminding supporters. Inside the polling place, we need challengers and lawyers who monitor the process and determine which supporters have voted and which voters still need to brought to the polls and so forth—it is a tremendous effort.
Nonetheless, electoral politics, at least for the foreseeable future, is one of the best ways to engage with the day-to-day struggles of the majority of people, they provide a vehicle for revolutionary democratic forms of organizing and they allow for the actual seizure of power by the people. Winning control of a city council or winning a mayoral election means the control of jobs, resources, and the ability to pass laws: The war on drugs could be over in your town, the domination of landlords could be ended, minimum wage laws can be passed, etc. Running and winning local election is a school of revolutionary democracy and a way to build the movement. Not the only way, but an important and necessary way.
In Alejandro Jodorowsky's surrealist western El Topo, the gunfighter protagonist (for whom the movie is named: El Topo or the Mole) confronts four master gunfighters. The philosophy of one of the gunfighters should be adopted when engaging in electoral politics. The gunfighter tells El Topo that he no longer tries to win gunfights, he only tries to attain perfection in each fight; and thus bullets have no effect on him and he never loses.
The major error we made in the People’s Campaign was long term planning. We failed to consider seriously what we would do if we won, if we lost, and most importantly how to maintain, consolidate, and grow the movement that we had built during the course of the campaign. Indeed, winning or losing is a secondary concern that we confront at the level of tactical consideration: The strategic question is beyond winning or losing, the strategic question is how to grow a revolutionary democratic movement where people work and decide together. If we do that, we can then do certain things if we win the city council seats and other things if we don’t, but the main thing is that the movement grows with people taking control over their lives, working and deciding. We develop the revolutionary process whether we win or lose.
On Election Day our candidates received over two thousand votes each (28% of the total) and our first meeting following the electoral loss was still attended by over 80 people. The possibilities were enormous. We had accomplished more than any other grouping that challenged the local political machine in decades. But our accomplishment was not the number of votes we got (although that reflects what was happening), our accomplishment was bringing people together to work and decide, to build an electoral movement based in democratic participation. Unfortunately, most of the people who attended the post election day meeting didn’t return for another. They never returned because our conception of revolutionary democracy only really emerged after the campaign was long over. We focused, unlike the master gunfighter, on winning and losing, rather than on building revolutionary democracy. The initial meeting deteriorated in petty bickering and half-baked proposals. We had failed to consider what to do if we lost (not to mention what to do if we won). We could have immediately planned, discussed and debated the next election, what had gone wrong during the last campaign, what went right, etc. etc. We could have consolidated a movement of very committed people.
By trying for perfection the gunfighter wins without trying to win. The same is true in electoral politics. It is not that winning is unimportant. We are not advocating running electoral campaigns as protest campaigns, or agitation campaigns, or to get a certain small percentage of the vote and then get matching funds. We run electoral campaigns to build the movement and do our utmost to win the election, to organize people to seize power little by little, bit by bit. Elections are a tactic. If we build the movement along revolutionary democratic lines, if we strive for perfection, if we keep our strategic goals in the forefront, if we grow a movement of fully engaged people, working and deciding together, we will win at the ballot box and everywhere else we take on the system.
________________________________________________
(1) Surveys are a great way to learn about issues people face day to day. The mistake with our survey was that we generated the questions for people to answer and rank amongst our core organizers and then went to people to discuss them. A better way would be to add an additional step and let people develop the survey itself.
The three candidates chosen at the convention were an Afro-American bus driver, a Latino van driver (who only spoke Spanish) and a white revolutionary who had graduated from Rutgers. In addition to electing candidates, the People’s Campaign featured –a first in the United States– an elected campaign manager and a steering committee that most people at the convention felt should be broad and representative of different communities and social classes opposed to the existing political machine. So the revolutionaries had to not only deal with small business people and petty landlords among others but also to negotiate to keep them supportive of a radical program—these were real lessons in coalition building and “politics” which much of the Left, because they refuse to engage in grassroots electoral work, has never even experienced.
The program was extensive and radically redistributive. New Brunswick had been re-nicknamed by city officials the “Healthcare City” because of the number of hospitals and medical research facilities in town. The People’s Campaign platform called for free healthcare for all residents, admittance to Rutgers University for all New Brunswick high school graduates, rent control, an elected civilian police control board, affordable housing, a public swimming pool and so forth. The candidates and all positions of responsibility were subject to recall at any time up until two weeks from Election Day. (The group decided to place this limitation on recall so that everyone could focus on the election in the final weeks.)
Our opponents were long time incumbents of the Democratic Party, one of the most powerful political machines in the State of New Jersey. The previous mayor, John Lynch, is not only mobbed up (now under indictment), he is also the king maker of the statewide democratic party. The machine is backed by Johnson & Johnson (J&J), a global corporation whose world headquarters are located in the center of downtown New Brunswick. The local Democratic Party does J&J’s bidding and J&J rules the city with a mix of coercion and consent. They set up NGOs that attempt to determine the cultural and social life of the city, making sure it is corporate friendly while striving for pseudo- hipness.
The local Democrats dominate local small business through intimidation. For example, they have fire and health inspectors that can shut a business down. Small businesses are expected to make substantial financial contributions to the machine as part of the cost of business, and display Democratic Party propaganda. The machine also awards contracts and can make sweetheart deals for things like property purchases and liquor licenses. In order to work for the city as a firefighter, cop, in sanitation, or in the parks department you must regularly attend fundraising dinners and make campaign contributions. These workers are also the machine’s ground troops, they tear down opposition posters, hand out and post machine literature and work the polls on Election Day. We learned this during the course of the People’s Campaign became a crash course in politics—politics 101. Despite five years of organizing before the electoral campaign we had little sense of how the city was actually run until we faced off against the machine for political control of the city at the ballot box.
We organized to win, not to protest. We handed out over a quarter million pieces of literature (no shit!) and recruited hundreds of new people to the movement. Clausewitz famously commented that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Well elections are the closest thing to war without bloodshed. We battled their hired campaign goons on the streets: When they ripped down one of our posters, we ripped down ten of theirs. We ran from the police, got caught by the police, and finally negotiated with the police with the help of supportive attorneys that since the machine was tearing down our literature (and the police weren’t stopping them) they would no longer stop us either. While we negotiated this agreement, we had won it first on the street: The police couldn’t stop us since our numbers were too large. They agreed to stop bothering us so that they would no longer look like incompetents.
Election Day was the major battle. We recruited progressive lawyers to volunteer to monitor for fraud on Election Day (the machine is notorious for cheating through fake residences for supporters, vote suppression, etc.) We had some two hundred and fifty volunteers at the polling stations and getting out the vote (GOTV). This required high levels of organization and planning. Much of it is very basic: All campaign workers must be fed (that has to be organized and planned) and we need people at every polling station handing out literature and talking to people, winning votes and reminding supporters. Inside the polling place, we need challengers and lawyers who monitor the process and determine which supporters have voted and which voters still need to brought to the polls and so forth—it is a tremendous effort.
Nonetheless, electoral politics, at least for the foreseeable future, is one of the best ways to engage with the day-to-day struggles of the majority of people, they provide a vehicle for revolutionary democratic forms of organizing and they allow for the actual seizure of power by the people. Winning control of a city council or winning a mayoral election means the control of jobs, resources, and the ability to pass laws: The war on drugs could be over in your town, the domination of landlords could be ended, minimum wage laws can be passed, etc. Running and winning local election is a school of revolutionary democracy and a way to build the movement. Not the only way, but an important and necessary way.
Zen and the Art of Electoral Politics:
The Conclusion of the People’s Campaign
The Conclusion of the People’s Campaign
In Alejandro Jodorowsky's surrealist western El Topo, the gunfighter protagonist (for whom the movie is named: El Topo or the Mole) confronts four master gunfighters. The philosophy of one of the gunfighters should be adopted when engaging in electoral politics. The gunfighter tells El Topo that he no longer tries to win gunfights, he only tries to attain perfection in each fight; and thus bullets have no effect on him and he never loses.
The major error we made in the People’s Campaign was long term planning. We failed to consider seriously what we would do if we won, if we lost, and most importantly how to maintain, consolidate, and grow the movement that we had built during the course of the campaign. Indeed, winning or losing is a secondary concern that we confront at the level of tactical consideration: The strategic question is beyond winning or losing, the strategic question is how to grow a revolutionary democratic movement where people work and decide together. If we do that, we can then do certain things if we win the city council seats and other things if we don’t, but the main thing is that the movement grows with people taking control over their lives, working and deciding. We develop the revolutionary process whether we win or lose.
On Election Day our candidates received over two thousand votes each (28% of the total) and our first meeting following the electoral loss was still attended by over 80 people. The possibilities were enormous. We had accomplished more than any other grouping that challenged the local political machine in decades. But our accomplishment was not the number of votes we got (although that reflects what was happening), our accomplishment was bringing people together to work and decide, to build an electoral movement based in democratic participation. Unfortunately, most of the people who attended the post election day meeting didn’t return for another. They never returned because our conception of revolutionary democracy only really emerged after the campaign was long over. We focused, unlike the master gunfighter, on winning and losing, rather than on building revolutionary democracy. The initial meeting deteriorated in petty bickering and half-baked proposals. We had failed to consider what to do if we lost (not to mention what to do if we won). We could have immediately planned, discussed and debated the next election, what had gone wrong during the last campaign, what went right, etc. etc. We could have consolidated a movement of very committed people.
By trying for perfection the gunfighter wins without trying to win. The same is true in electoral politics. It is not that winning is unimportant. We are not advocating running electoral campaigns as protest campaigns, or agitation campaigns, or to get a certain small percentage of the vote and then get matching funds. We run electoral campaigns to build the movement and do our utmost to win the election, to organize people to seize power little by little, bit by bit. Elections are a tactic. If we build the movement along revolutionary democratic lines, if we strive for perfection, if we keep our strategic goals in the forefront, if we grow a movement of fully engaged people, working and deciding together, we will win at the ballot box and everywhere else we take on the system.
________________________________________________
(1) Surveys are a great way to learn about issues people face day to day. The mistake with our survey was that we generated the questions for people to answer and rank amongst our core organizers and then went to people to discuss them. A better way would be to add an additional step and let people develop the survey itself.
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