How will the Obama Movement balance local empowerment and strong national leadership?
As of August 2007, Exley reported:
There is still no online system available for the teams graduating from Camp Obama (or the teams they establish below them) to report in their progress back to headquarters. This is a huge missed opportunity to give field directors perfect visibility into the work of every team, anywhere in the country – visibility that could be used to identify the best field volunteers in the organization for promotion, and to identify problem areas that need special attention from staff organizers.
So far as I know, this situation still prevails and needs to be corrected. It is essential that local organizers have efficient ways to communicate upward and horizontally – partly for problem solving, peer support, and community building. By using the Internet effectively to facilitate this communication, we can avoid the kind of top-down power that has often been reflected in organizations based on Alinsky’s methods.
One approach might be to form small home-based teams that meet at least monthly and provide feedback to the national office regularly. These teams could select representatives to local teams who would digest this feedback, form their own recommendations, and select representatives to Congressional District-wide teams. These teams in turn could develop their own input to the national office, organize regular Congressional District-wide public events, and select representatives to a statewide team. And the state team could select representatives to a national Advisory Committee. This bottom-up process could help empower the membership.
A precedent exists for such home-based teams. As the campaign reported in “Obama: The Organizer and the Moment":
In March, people all across the country hosted Hope Action Change house parties, opening their doors to neighbors and strangers who were hungry for change. People like Janet Sutherland of Council Bluffs discussed their deeply personal stories about how our government had failed them, and talked about how, together, they could change things.
This is what grassroots democracy is all about – small groups of friends and neighbors coming together to address common challenges and come up with collective solutions…. People were talking about the collective challenges facing their communities. People were sharing common hopes for change in 2008. People were connecting.
These home-based teams could meet prior to the election to talk about post-election activities, for they would inspire more people to participate. And the movement needs to be ready to act immediately after the election. To do so, the national office needs as many good ideas as possible from the grassroots, and the grassroots needs to be prepared.
What lessons can we learn from other national organizations?
As I recall, a key turning point in the weakening of the Rainbow Coalition was a dispute about the national representative from Louisiana. The local members wanted one individual, but Jesse Jackson insisted on someone else and the conflict was never resolved. We need to avoid that kind of scenario. A number of national organizations – including labor unions, NOW, and the Sierra Club – currently operate with a considerable degree of democratic control by their membership. We need to look at how those organizations are structured and learn from them.
Will the Obama Movement promote new structures in the community that empower people?
The Obama Movement, for example, could persuade all of our elected officials to convene monthly Community Dialogues to enable their constituents to ask questions and make statements. These public forums would be carefully structured to make sure that they were fair and orderly. If more people wanted to speak than time allowed, speakers would be selected randomly (random selection is an important principle that reflects faith in people). With no pre-arranged agenda, each individual would be free to speak their mind. Community organizations could use these events as organizing tools by mobilizing their members and distributing literature at pre-reserved tables. Participants could stay afterwards to network and initiate new friendships. In these ways, Community Dialogues would help hold elected officials accountable, better inform those officials about their constituents’ thoughts and feelings, and help foster community.
The fact that Obama has pledged as President to conduct national town hall meetings suggests that he would be open to this idea and would consider randomly selecting participants in his forums. We need new official structures like these to help make our society more democratic.
Will the Obama Movement join in broad coalitions to advance its mission?
Some Alinsky-style organizations have refused to join in coalitions, preferring instead to focus exclusively on building their own organization. Hopefully, the Obama Movement will not repeat these mistakes. Regardless of how strong it becomes, it will always be stronger by occasionally uniting with others.
For example, the movement could join with other organizations in a Million Member Monthly Mobilization to present the same urgent demand to every Congressperson in the country at the same time. If more than 2,000 voters per district were to devote two hours a month to back the same demand simultaneously, the impact would be enormous. Who knows? It could grow into a Five Million Member Monthly Mobilization.
The staff and members of each organization that belonged to this coalition could then return to their normal activities. But if they were to come together monthly to briefly support one another, they could accomplish more together than they can alone.
Will the Obama Movement join in global coalitions to advance its mission?
Shortly after he took office, John Kennedy inspired the nation by taking on the steel industry for unjustified price increases. This example is instructive. Our political leaders can support efforts to hold private corporations accountable to the public interest, including the need to protect workers’ rights and the environment. Consumer boycotts are often an effective way to achieve these goals. But there are many simultaneous boycotts, which dilutes their effectiveness.
If global advocacy organizations, including the Obama Movement, were to establish a process to identify – deliberately, openly, and democratically – a priority for a unified Annual Global Boycott, we could win victories with those campaigns and persuade other corporations to respond favorably to their stakeholders.
Structure is essential. We can’t rely solely on spontaneity. We need structural reform throughout society, including our grassroots organizations. In this piece, I’ve presented some preliminary ideas concerning how the Obama Movement and our society might be structured.
I encourage you, by using this form or by directly editing my Obama's Movement web pages, to present your own proposals and report on Obama Movement activities – especially Congressional District-wide activities – that address post-election possibilities. I’ll summarize your input in future articles. Together, we can move forward.
