Thread by @lara_putnam

I've been chewing over this substack post fr @danpfeiffer, bc on the one hand he hits *so many* important points & on the other it makes visible the huge gap between what "grassroots activsts" look like from 30,000 ft—even to best-intentioned observers—& the reality on the ground

I spent 2 h last night at the monthly mtg of a Dem women's group in a very red PA county. Two women founded the group in Dec 2016. 4 ys later they are plugging away, with a dozen+ people via zoom on a January mid-pandemic Monday, brainstorming recruitment for boro council races

Two years ago it was jarring to hear nationally amplified "Resistance" leaders proudly announce they were about to guide "their" groups into voter outreach: when the actual groups on the ground had been all-in to local/regional electoral action since 2017 democracyjournal.org/arguments/midd…

Part of the dilemma is, those people/orgs w/capacity to make themselves visible to national media/funders as representing the anti-Trump grassroots, systematically are poorly placed to see/speak for this genuine, organic localized & therefore diffuse range democracyjournal.org/arguments/iowa…

There's a real challenge here because while @profmadison's distinction👇sounds persuasive, in practice the infrastructure/tools national orgs keep insisting they are building "for the grassroots" is often not the infrastructure actual grassroots want/need

Like, the asymmetric advantages of the nat'l RW Fox/radio/Fb ecosystem generate huge problems for local grassroots groups! Channeling $$ toward fixing that would be a great boon to local groups. Hiring more DC staff to raise $ for autodialers, not so much

It's weird to still hear voices #onhere claim "The Democratic Party" needs to be forced to pay attention to local organizng, when @ this point in many place across the country, Dem party infrastructure *is* now made up of newcomers who arrived thru grassroots route, & in contrast

... some national "Resistance" groups in contrast seem to be enacting a theory of change which is all about inside-the-Beltway legislative moves & in which "grassroots involvement" begins & ends with getting people to dial their senators 🤷‍♀️

Will stop subtweeting now🙄 & fwiw direct you toward this👇 thread for some of the great models/experiments underway, in which grounded, local infrastructure for grassroots politics is being built in ways actually driven by local actors' initiatives

👇👇

Picking this thread up again to reiterate the gap between what the people on the ground who comprised the Actually-Existing-Resistance are now up to, & what nationally visible groups claiming to represent them are up to. In the last 24 h alone I have seen people in the former:

:: gather signatures for criminal justice ballot measure. recruit a challenger to run for school board. fundraise for mayoral race. strategize local Dem party cttee changes. bring together 30 elected leaders+activists fr rural+urban corner of PA (2.5 h zoom & no one left early!)

:: Sell t-shirts to raise $$ for a restaurant following COVID guidance in area where many aren't. Organize judicial candidate forum. Call senators re filibuster. Write letters to ed denouncng state rep who spread election falsehood. Hold 60 person(!) zoom on countering RW disinfo

What stands out in all that (& this is just a small sampling)? MOST of it involves 1) communicating laterally, to potential voters & potential volunteers, & 2) building organizational structures & capacity, so that tomorrow's actions begin from a stronger base than today's action

What I want to underline is what a sophisticated, many-scaled, relational *&* systemic political practice grassroots folks have developed—far more so than the Washington-centric "call your congressperson & donate again" gameplan some natl progressive orgs send to my inbox daily