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15 Oct, 5 tweets, 2 min read
An indicator of how the intensity of schoolboard conflicts ramped up this summer/fall: I know several cases PA of center/left teams running write-in campaigns now, in districts where back in Feb local grassroots weren't organized/outraged enough to get recruits on primary ballot
Yet another suburban school board write-in campaign👇 School boards are really the races to watch nationwide this Nov, to see whether it's the RW backlash, or the backlash-against-the-backlash that's capturing the engaged-enough-to-vote suburban center...
Wow, must read👇account from small town SCPA. So much strategic insight on display— frankly, so much more in touch with real people & how they are swayed than anything on offer from any side of the Great Dem Pundit Messaging Wars #onhere in recent weeks,! organizingupgrade.com/not-in-our-tow…
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More from @lara_putnam

Lara Putnam Profile picture
17 Jul
This👇 by @ed_kilgore is both worth reading in itself, & mentions a precedent that has been on my mind, & that I've come think is important, even crucial.

We should start to recognize the anti-CRT push as the Swiftboating of youth-led antiracism. [a🧵] nymag.com/intelligencer/…
The key dynamic in the original swiftboat smear was it took something that Dems had (appropriately!) anticipated as an authentic source of strength—their candidate's record of military service in Vietnam—& made it so toxic that any effort to draw strength from it was neutralized
.@holden has been writing brilliantly re the importance of a "field of evidence" for participatory propaganda, & the insight fits more broadly. Where is the field of provocations that get spun up as "CRT" in local schoolboard after schoolboard coming from? hapgood.us/2021/06/12/par…
Read 45 tweets
Lara Putnam Profile picture
17 Jul
Philly Dem ward comttee internal vote drama (which is very much my jam) has me noticing that (a few) ward cttees in Philly have twitter accounts. AFAIK none in the city of Pittsburgh do. Which is striking as much for what it says about twitter as for what it says about Dem cttees
You might think that a platform that skews heavily Democratic & politically engaged would be a natural fit for entrepreneurial local Democratic organizations seeking to grow. But that hasn't generally been the case: and I'm not actually saying it should be. In part it's a good
reminder of just what a non-representative slice *even of very highly engaged Democrats* twitter captures: political twitter is decades younger, way more highly formally educated, & less female than the folks who make up the Democratic action-taking base even in big fancy cities
Read 9 tweets
Lara Putnam Profile picture
8 Jul
Important new research about postcards to voters, with evidence they can backfire & *reduce* turnout among recipients. I hope national groups that have used postcards as a central part of their volunteer (& donor) recruitment read this & take it seriously
The authors suggest the postcards' focus on a down ballot race may have "distracted" recipients, causing them to ignore other sources of info about more important congressional races also on that (2018) ballot for which they otherwise would have showed up to vote.
Hmm... maybe? ImageImage
I'm more inclined to see these results as potentially in line w/fact that feeling like you "don't know enough" is one reason people choose not to vote/get involved.A postcard pitch can remind me how much I don't know, & who shd I trust, & where even start? prri.org/research/ameri… ImageImage
Read 7 tweets
Lara Putnam Profile picture
26 Jun
It worries me that some otherwise smart & well-informed observers seem to believe that a meaningful portion of the actors who made the slogan/goal Defund the Police prominent, live within the progressive grant funding universe. I think that’s wrong in 2 different ways. [quick 🧵]
Who is the assumed “everyone involved” here? I think this may be a case where some of the Twitter Isn’t Real Life crowd are forgetting that Twitter Isn’t Real Life.
Out in the real world, who embraced the slogan/goal of defund the police? 1) a very diffuse array of young local activists, many stepping into public/political activism for 1st time, for whom it resonated w/their vision of what a better community would look like; 2) RW amplifiers
Read 11 tweets
Lara Putnam Profile picture
24 May
A tale of two very different kinds of anti-Peduto voters👇 (As a reminder, PA has closed primaries: Tony Moreno's strength among registered Dems in the precincts where Trump did best is both unsurprising* & 👀) Image
*unsurprising because 👇
[also, apparently today is my day to retweet classic @RyanDeto articles from dawn to dusk]
pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/pit…
But Moreno's support in Trump-loving Pgh precincts could only carry him so far, given that nearly 4x as many mayoral votes were cast in precincts where Donald Trump got under 5% of the vote than in precincts where he cracked 50%. [Because A: it's a Dem primary, and B: Pittsburgh] Image
Read 9 tweets
Lara Putnam Profile picture
24 May
This whole thread fr @cmMcConnaughy is essential, re: pitfalls to avoid in analyzing protests+politics. & this pt👇 is esp. relevant as we reach the painful milestone of one year since the murder of George Floyd, & a flood of one-year-on assessments of the protest wave begins
When I am reconstructing the past in my day job as a historian, I don't expect either the underlying drivers, or the periodization of significant socio-political shifts to be visible to the people living out & furthering those changes. Societal change just doesn't work that way
Often the shifts that most rapidly come to seem unremarkable—because they are overdetermined, reinforced by multiple converging dynamics at once—are most important.
Just because developments feel predictable doesn't mean they were predictable. This future was not always priced in
Read 15 tweets

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