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From the Ground Up
By Howard Dean, AlterNet
Posted on January 27, 2005, Printed on January 31, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21097/
This column first appeared on the
Democracy For America web site.
Over the past 30 years, Republicans have become the majority party in America
by building a terrific grassroots organization. If we are to take our country
back for ordinary working Americans, Democrats will have to match or exceed the
Republicans ability to motivate voters.
Grassroots organization really has to be based on two-way communication. In
our presidential campaign we started with no money, no base, but a great number
of enthusiastic grassroots activists. We ceded decision-making power to local
folks and let them run things in their areas as they saw fit. This turns out to
have been our single most important innovation, and it is the only one that
wasn't copied by any of the other campaigns, either Democratic or Republican.
Everything else, the small donor programs, the house parties, the interactive
web sites and organizing was used by others. The reason that the most important
piece wasn't copied is because it requires a real change in thinking by people
who run for office and their consultants, not just adopting new techniques or
technology.
Letting go of central control is what gives voters real power. When I used
the phrase "You have the power" during the campaign, I meant that by working
together, Americans could overcome the forces of the right-wing and reassume
their constitutional role in running the country. What I didn't understand was
that "You have the power" was more than that. It didn't apply only to people's
ability to change America, it also applied concretely to their ability to make
everyday decisions about how they would cause that change.
In our campaign, Americans without any previous political experience made
decisions about when to leaflet, what to say in the leaflet, where to leaflet
and how to organize. They organized and ran hundreds of organizations such as
African-Americans for Dean, Latinos for Dean, Punx for Dean, Irish Americans for
Dean, etc., which sprang not from a central "outreach" desk in Burlington, but
spontaneously all over the country, finding each other on the web, and creating
a national organization from local ones.
The idea of a decentralized campaign terrifies most politicians who have
gotten used to putting out ideas and letting others respond. We discovered that
the path to power, oddly enough, is to trust others with it.
The true mark of a modern campaign will be to listen to Americans and let
them shape campaigns instead of simply allowing them to respond.
Our campaign was far from perfect, and we did not win. But our organization
today is almost 600,000 strong that we know of, and there are more people in the
organization today than there were on the day I dropped out of the presidential
race. People still meet monthly in about 500 locations across America to talk
about how to bring reform, and then they act on their plan locally.
I wish I could tell you that this was all because of my leadership and
charisma; that is not so. The reform movement lives because it isn't mine. Our
people know that they have the power in their own communities, linked across the
country, to elect reform-minded people. They did exactly that on six months
notice all across the country in places like Utah, Alabama and Idaho, not just
New York and Ohio.
If Democrats use this model, we will effectively leapfrog the Republicans,
who despite their discipline and organization, are still a top-down, control and
command organization.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/21097/
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