What I Want From the SCDP:
1. Chairman: I want a Chair who is progressive, active, and experienced. We need someone who knows how to organize, keep people informed, build relationships, and ACTUALLY EFFING SHOW UP!
2. Steering Committee: We need a steering committee that is transparent, keeps the members up to date, and does not run roughshod over the executive committee. Honestly, the steering committee has almost no power, and the executive committee has simply failed to stand up for itself.
3. Internship: We have an army of young, progressive Democrats in high schools and colleges across the city. Use them. For a little college credit and a bit of oversight, we can harness these people’s energy. This also creates lifelong Democratic voters, volunteers, donors, and future leaders. Imagine teams of interns canvassing voters from the party every weekend.
4. Precinct organizations: The ground work for effective neighborhood leadership has started and needs to expand.
5. Neighborhood clubs: These clubs need to be encouraged and expanded.
6. Party Newspaper: For all the bellyaching over costs, the newspaper was a success when we had it. It paid for itself and got our message out there. Bring it back. Also create an online newsletter to reach out to voters, donors, and activists cheaply and easily.
7. Candidate recruitment: We can sweep every county-wide office if we work to ensure we actually have competent candidates run for each office (and not whoever the hell Roderic Ford was.)
8. Fundraising: As hard as it is, Kennedy Day should be yearly not every other year. Also, we need to put SERIOUS efforts into small dollar fundraisers and recurring monthly online contributions.
9. Community outreach: we need to be useful to people. Volunteer to clean up a park or work a soup kitchen as a party. We can host forums on issues to educate voters and debates to let voters see candidates.
10. Register voters: The high schools are full of seniors turning 18. Schools allow registration in the cafeteria. These voters will likely be Democrats. Obama won by expanding the voter rolls and so can we. There are countless neighborhoods in Memphis that are incredibly under-registered.
11. Or we can continue to do nothing because there is absolutely nothing wrong with our party and city that we should work to fix.
Friday, November 07, 2008
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2 comments:
That's the platform right there. That is what we should all be working toward.
As you recall,I always saw CLubs and Community Service as high priorities for future Democratic success. I always thought that Ward and Precinct organization is too advanced a project for the current party infrastructure. However building clubs, is a more short term solution that would enable a future Ward and Precinct system to evolve. The party needs to plug in all these new voters and volunteers. The party should Host training workshops like DFM did with our Training Academy,on a regular basis, teaching classes on grassroots organizing,Media relations, canvass and field operations. Fundraising..etc.. In fact the Mid-south Peace and Justice Center offers an excellent Free eight week training course for Grassroots Organizers. It's called G.O.T. Power. I envision something along the same lines for building Neighborhood clubs.
These Clubs should each year have a one year long public service project within their neighborhoods.A public service project that the Exec Comm should share as well.
In time these clubs will be able to take over field GOTV in their target areas, and create organic connections between these communities and the Party. The SCDP would constantly have it's finger on the pulse of the public, and by having an inclusive member based outlet, the Party would become the prime activist vehicle of the public's will...as it should be.
No one faction could control it, because everyone would have a skill set level playing field. No one would need party bosses any more....they would need support of the Clubs.
Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. A million times over, agreed.
What you're speaking to with all of these suggestions are BRAND BUILDING. The party should be doing community service and precinct organization events for the same reason Nike funds inner city basketball courts and Home Depot builds playgrounds. It's Marketing 101. A regular print newsletter with a strong online component is equally simple and equally powerful (plus it creates a communication apparatus that gives us the agility to respond to things like Robin Smith and Bill Hobbs' incessant stream of verbal sewage when the state party can't or won't.)
All of these things develop loyalty, which breeds leadership in the neighborhoods, which supplements your fundraising and vote-getting, which, astonishingly, is how some political parties win elections.
Of course, you nailed it with Point #1. All of this begins and ends with leader who has the time, inclination, focus, temperament, and DESIRE to make a difference in this community. I haven't given up hope that that person is out there.
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