Its like I must continually justify to myself this increasingly odd political hobby of mine. Think of this: registered voters: a couple dozen people run a couple hundred people at every level of every political organization, or any organization for that matter. The parties are supposedly set up for democratic participation, but most people want to party in the social sense rather than go to those boring meetings, so only people who want to do that tedious work actually do it. Most of it is volunteer, most of the paid is poverty wages. So there are very few of us political "activists" meaning we are politically active. It is in many ways a distasteful activity, like drain cleaning, but has to be done. I've learned that it is possible to call anything "fun." A bit of political activity, like a certain amount of physical exercise or a certain amount of food, makes me feel better.
I've talked with lots of neighborhood people as a result of this activity, so its good for me at least, I tend to be otherwise a bit stay-at-home & don't see anybody much. I see the possibility of real neighborhood association. An exceptionally peaceable group of people live here. Something could perhaps be done, but until now it hasn't been.
Then there is the Wake County Democratic Party. The two key elements of organizational progress from one point to another are transmission of existing administrative structures by the old guard and innovation. At the moment this process is in critical transition point all over the world in the shift away from paper. WakeDems is in the middle of that migration too. The old guard looks at its institutions & can't tell which ones are now useless but as usual there is a protector of the process to lobby for continuation of every single thing that was previously done, not to mention the money appropriated to that traditional activity. Young people full of ideas but mostly don't know how to do them in some crucial aspect. Old people not helping with facilitative support. Dynastic tendencies in play as usual in politics, acorn don't fall far from tree. Political turfs develop, occasionally little baronies, occasionally continued dynastically.
There is a hole in leadership/management in WakeDems at the moment. What happens is that the elected positions in the party are mostly filled by old guard or proteges, people insurge, every now & then an insurgent wins a post, life goes on thinks the old guard.
I have no interest in the meeting lifestyle that is required in political administration. That is too bad because that is where all of the mischief gets (mostly incompetently) made. Someone's got to do it. But not me, my interest is voter education. A lot of them don't know, think its boring, some of them vote anyway, a lot of them actually, without knowing anything about any of the candidates. Oh, that name, I've heard of that one. I used to do that. I'm into political education, not the exercise of political power. Leave that to the sociopaths lol. Just kidding, people who are holding the levers of power. Just kidding.
So we have about half of the precincts organized in Wake Co & it has been that way for years. Most of the precincts are only formally organized with officers & nothing is done. A few have dynamic officers who do things. At HQ there is a chronic disconnect with the precincts. There is a kind of vibe, occasionally worded, that "precinct work" is prosaic & boring, accompanied by thoughts that candidate work is somehow exciting, perhaps in a rah-rah sense. I, on the other hand, think that precinct work with the neighbor thing & the civic engagement, is where its at, and candidate stuff is lots of icky pandering, money grubbing, clownish theatrics. So HQ doesn't help the precincts. They like to tell the precincts what to do, but never a HQ vol shows up to help out a precinct project, not even to organize one. The precincts are supposed to generate their own organization, then HQ will be happy to give them work to do and tell them how to do it.
I'm thinking that's backward. HQ should be out there actively finding the people to organize the unorganized precincts. Since they're not doing it over years of time I think the existing precinct officers can usefully get together to organize the unorganized precincts and to also join together as precinct officers, who obviously have a different set of interests than HQ, that is so even though the goal of more Dem votes is the same. I would like to talk with other precinct officers about the usefulness to party organizing of a conscious organization, caucus perhaps, of the precinct officers. Anyone?
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