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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 https://twitter.com/danpfeiffer/status/1351222727282204677
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 https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/middle-america-reboots-democracy/
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 https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/iowa-and-democratic-funders-delusions/
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 https://twitter.com/profmadison/status/1351571732759523331
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 https://twitter.com/profmadison/status/1351571732759523331
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 https://twitter.com/lara_putnam/status/1324727200877318144
