Grassroots Organizing FAIL
Well, now I know where the derogatory term "sophomoric" comes from. My sophomore effort at organizing a political event was a stupidly pointless failure. I tried to get people to stop by a U.S. Senator's local district office for just long enough to drop off a photo and ask a staffer to make sure the climate bill gets strengthened and passed. None of the four to seven people who said they would or might make it showed up--and not only that, no staffers showed up to that office either! Apparently it sits empty most of the time, and I could have determined this beforehand but it didn't even cross my mind to check.
On a related note, 1Sky, the organization I was nominally organizing this nonevent for, recently sent out an email with the subject line "Grassroots vs. Astroturf." This led me to ponder exactly what the distinction is. The email is about the clear-cut case of mail fraud in which a subcontractor for the coal companies sent letters to Congress claiming to be from Creciendos Juntos and the N.A.A.C.P.--no question which side of the line that falls on. But what about the increasingly furious conservative protesters at healthcare town halls--are we sure they count as "fake grassroots" (rather than real but sometimes criminally violent grassroots), just because they often chant slogans like "What's wrong with profit?" (Obvious rejoinder: so there's nothing wrong with pocketing your health insurance premiums only to deny your medical claims in any way possible, if it's in the name of profit?)
Or what about the "army" of volunteers hired by the same group that sent the letters, to ask scripted questions at climate-related political events where actual politicians show up? The folks behind Power Shift, seemingly misreading the New York Times article linked above, say they're not volunteers at all but are being paid to oppose strong climate legislation. The article just says "It is impossible to know, [Public Citizen lobbyist Craig] Holman said, whether any of the citizen volunteers are compensated or what their connection is to corporate interests." And Holman may not be much less willing to jump to conclusions than the Power Shift folks.
So the real question is whether any corporate-sponsored effort to get citizens to lobby Congress can be "the purest form of grassroots," as a rep for the coal and utility company alliance claimed to the NY Times. Wikipedia says that grassroots organizing is supposed to be "natural and spontaneous" rather than "orchestrated by traditional power structures," which suggests that the answer is no. But then again, under that kind of definition, is a massive national movement organized by a huge coalition of nonprofit environmental advocacy groups really spontaneous enough to qualify as grassroots?
On a related note, 1Sky, the organization I was nominally organizing this nonevent for, recently sent out an email with the subject line "Grassroots vs. Astroturf." This led me to ponder exactly what the distinction is. The email is about the clear-cut case of mail fraud in which a subcontractor for the coal companies sent letters to Congress claiming to be from Creciendos Juntos and the N.A.A.C.P.--no question which side of the line that falls on. But what about the increasingly furious conservative protesters at healthcare town halls--are we sure they count as "fake grassroots" (rather than real but sometimes criminally violent grassroots), just because they often chant slogans like "What's wrong with profit?" (Obvious rejoinder: so there's nothing wrong with pocketing your health insurance premiums only to deny your medical claims in any way possible, if it's in the name of profit?)
Or what about the "army" of volunteers hired by the same group that sent the letters, to ask scripted questions at climate-related political events where actual politicians show up? The folks behind Power Shift, seemingly misreading the New York Times article linked above, say they're not volunteers at all but are being paid to oppose strong climate legislation. The article just says "It is impossible to know, [Public Citizen lobbyist Craig] Holman said, whether any of the citizen volunteers are compensated or what their connection is to corporate interests." And Holman may not be much less willing to jump to conclusions than the Power Shift folks.
So the real question is whether any corporate-sponsored effort to get citizens to lobby Congress can be "the purest form of grassroots," as a rep for the coal and utility company alliance claimed to the NY Times. Wikipedia says that grassroots organizing is supposed to be "natural and spontaneous" rather than "orchestrated by traditional power structures," which suggests that the answer is no. But then again, under that kind of definition, is a massive national movement organized by a huge coalition of nonprofit environmental advocacy groups really spontaneous enough to qualify as grassroots?