Many of you know that I do some consulting for Democracy for America. As part of that, I sometimes highlight things that the organization is doing. That’s what I want to do in this piece. DFA is getting ready to launch a brand new website and they are also going to unleash some cool organizing tools. As part of their promotion for the new site they are going to be giving away some DFA gear that has been autographed by Howard Dean.
Because DFA wants more input and engagement from their million-strong membership, they have created a way for you to create your own petitions. If you follow this link, you’ll land on a page that will allow you sign in (or sign up). Once you do that, you’ll get an email when the new site goes live (i.e., soon).
When the site is live, you will be able to create a petition which other DFA members will be able to sign. Anyone who creates a petition in the first 48 hours of the site being live will be eligible for some Dean-autographed DFA gear.
So, do me a favor and start thinking about good petitions. If you were in charge of a million-member progressive organization, what would you want them to work on? That’s what we’re asking you. So, let us know what you think.
Organizing in red states like Texas, Montana, the Dakotas, Arizona where a sustained registration drive and good GOTV efforts could make a big difference.
Yes, maybe tied to states with senate elections in two years as well as districts that could be in reach with a massive voter reg drive.
right there’s a large unregistered base in Texas from what I understand that may be favorable to our candidates
In thinking what DFA can do, I would propose some sort of traveling seminar, a how to do it seminar for grassroots organizations teaching practical things like how to find candidates, how to get funding, how to organize a campaign. I think there are a lot of progressive neophytes out there who could become 50 state candidates with fresh faces if only someone would show them the ropes. We have to get away from the political dynasties and the self-serving candidates who are only interested in how to profit from their office.
A sane education policy that actually honors democracy and educational research.
How do we turn something like that into an action drive?
Let’s start with dumping Arne Duncan and getting over the charter school crush. Let’s make it illegal for profit-drive companies to run “public” school academies. Let’s equalize funding across the board and actually provide additional services for those areas with the most need. Let’s drive to end the standardized testing madness.
I could go one for while…
Please do – this is the time and place for exactly that. My mother retired from DPS in 2006 after 40 years of teaching in Detroit. My sister is a teacher in Dallas. My father substitute teaches at Cody. I know that you can go on – I could go on for a while, and my knowledge is second-hand. Spell it out and let’s work on making it happen.
I talk about what my school is going through here :
http://tunneltraveller.blogspot.ca/2012/09/trying-to-breathe.html
I really don’t know what will happen to us, but some of the reforms foisted upon us do not look like good teaching.
After Engler stole the bond money a lot of the rest is a foregone conclusion – they’ve been working to kill the city for decades, they may yet succeed. They probably won’t like the results…
Good to hear from you again, Toni.
Thanks so much 🙂
Booman, I’m not clear on the concept. Are these petitions like Change.org? People would be creating a petition and getting people to sign it? Is that the action?
There are two things important to me right now: 2014 and supporting legislation for President Obama/Democrats 2nd term.
2014: Democrats are still fired up and the GOP is making an even bigger ass of themselves. We can start registering new voters again in Indiana on Dec. 3, 2012. There are voters who were disenfranchised because they didn’t have IDs. I’d like to see as many Democrats registered as possible with IDs if needed. We have off year local elections here that we could use to GOTV for new voters. Democrats are disarrayed in a lot of these red counties, mine included, and we often don’t have Dems running for office, like Mayor of my town. I’m obviously talking about grassroots/Democratic Party action in my state, but it would be great if there was a national presence to link to.
I’m often ill and unable to do much physically so it makes it difficult for me to get engaged, but I do what I can.
Can you clarify how my thoughts and your petitions could work or what it is exactly that you are looking for? Sorry for the confusion.
I’d have two priorities: the environment and health care.
Somehow the environment, including climate change, has completely fallen off the radar. Maybe it’s a victim of the recession. I would want to pick specific goals and get them back in the game: climate change, water policy, habitat preservation, national lands, air quality.
Health care is a long, long way from being finished, and progressives own it now. We need full implementation of the medicaid expansion, better mental health options, more primary care doctors, better coordination of care at every level. We need a volunteer force to help people sign up for their new coverage.
With such a rich range of targets, I think it would be good if DFA had a way to help people develop their petititions before posting them – a forum? A preliminary vote to pick priorities? An area to commit to volunteer for specific goals, to see which ones grab people?
Supporting Bill McKibben’s drive to divest from fossil fuel companies, akin to the successful divestment campaign launched in the 1980s against apartheid. The twin, inseparable problems of climate and energy are really the most important issues for human life on the planet (and for the estimate 70% of species that will go extinct if we don’t do anything to stop business-as-usual growth), and they need an all out effort.
I want to eliminate and/or challenge the prison industry. I mean, climate change too, but as far as domestically, it’s definitely the most important issue imo. Washington and Colorado struck a dent into it at least 🙂
So I guess figure out which state should be next. MA, VT, CA, OR are probably good targets.
Also, Obama’s next SCOTUS nominations can hopefully give us a liberal majority, which will strike down the K9 sniffing authoritarian rulings.
Also, word has it that Obama’s team wasn’t surprised that the measures won, but that they were so lopsided. It’s why after CA legalized medical MJ in 1996 that Clinton’s drug czar immediately spoke out about their plans…whereas this time, as far as I know, the admin has not said a word.
Right now, I’d focus on federal election reform – fair redistricting, unrestricted early voting and paper ballot records.
Yup.
Voting rights, voting rights, voting rights.
And undoing the Supreme Courts striking down of the Voting Rights Act review of historically discriminating states.
Why not a law allowing review of any state with the same thoroughness that used to be applied to Southern states.
Without representative democracy that is fair and transparent, everything else is at risk. Democrats should concentrate on making sure that people aren’t denied the vote, and that their vote reflects their preferences. E.g. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-16/republicans-can-t-declare-mandate-with-more-democrat-house-
votes.html (there were 1 M more votes for Democratic House candidates than Republican. Of course there were 435 races, yada, yada, but still.).
Along with that, I’d say:
#3 is going to take a long time. We need to work on it and lay a foundation now. #1 and #2 are state responsibilities, but a nationwide effort can speed that along.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Public Option added to the ACA? This was presumably one of the more popular elements of the original proposal which somehow never made it into the final legislation.
As much as I want the Public Option too, I think that if for 2016 or beyond. Obamacare has to shake out and have people familiar with it before we can start improving it. Two years of experience will show the strengths and weaknesses/ It is long enough for the inevitable teething troubles to be resolved.
I predict that Health care costs will continue rising faster than inflation and possibly faster than pre-2014. Some sort of reform will be needed. Republicans, of course, will favor total privatization ala McCain.
What people really want is to take the control of health care decisions away from their employers and the private insurance companies. The public option was a political sop to those who wanted single-payer. Max Baucus never intended to pass it.
Medicare at 55 was in the ACA until Joe Lieberman threatened to filibuster and it was taken out. With the crisis over Medicare now it probably wouldn’t be an option to try to put it back in, but it would help so many people who have been out of work or working part-time because of the economy.
Reform of the national security and intelligence institutions that is not a captive initiative of the military-industrial-media-educational-contracting-prison complex. Unlike the Project for National Security Reform, which has the same old faces that never saw a war they didn’t like. In addition to more effective national security and intelligence, there are civil liberties issues up the wazoo in any reform effort. Starting with depoliticizing the FBI (or rebuilding it from scratch). This is something that really hasn’t been done for 65 years. And then it was in the initial Red Scare of the Cold War.
A school for campaign managers. Cover how to find a good candidate, convince them to run, and the day to day aspects of running the show.
Right now, at the local level, we have a preponderance of people with some experience, but an active scholarly approach similar to an accelerated half MBA would be a godsend.
I’ve bought a ticket to the Mass lottery today. If I hit (214M), that’s what I’ll be doing with the money.
I wonder if there is a way for us to buy lottery tickets and give to an organization like DFA in support of specific projects. Not sure how the legal/logistics would work for the weekly drawing tickets before the numbers are announced. Scratch-offs would be easy and could be mailed before scratching. It would be harder to mail it in if it had been scratched off and a big win showed up!
It would be an easy way to fund our favorite projects.
I can see how it would be extremely complicated to work out. Tickets from different states. Can the organization claim the money? Would the donation be the original cost of the ticket or the money won?
But it would so easy to do for people who didn’t have a lot of money to donate themselves.
I’m not sure more national petitions are a very effective use of energy. We already have dozens of sites/orgs with similar services from outfits like Kos, MoveOn, and many more.
I hope DFA will consider shifting to establishing a local presence with education on the issues, bird-dogging incumbent pols on the issues, and showing the connection between what Congress does and the success of the state and local community. Local Dem organizations tend to suck and to toe the party line even when it goes against Dem principles. If we’d had this kind of operation in WI-1, for example, I think there’s a good chance Ryan would be off the national stage entirely. It’s no too late to make that happen next time.
End the Cuban embargo now.
There are so many VERY worthwhile issues…
I think it’s imperative to fight back on the fronts that leverage our power. That should make progress on other issues easier to attain. There are certain “keystone” issues and many of them have already been commented on better than I do here:
Voting rights
Fair districting
Registration
Fighting back on consequences of the Citizens United decision – money is not speech, corporations are not people.