Follow The Project, PBN’s live, daily, multi-media civic engagement project every day through November 7th. To lead us off, PBN is publishing a few critically important pieces that look at the importance of sound investment in effective civic organizing. Click here for updates.
“Y’all don’t know what you’re doing anyway,” is how Kentuckians for the Commonwealth’s Burt Lauderdale paraphrases the widespread dismissal of Southern leadership. “It’s a total mystery for progressives.”
“I was in a meeting right before the 2006 national election,” said Lauderdale. “The speaker got up and talked about all the really good work that was happening around the country. And then he said, ‘Well, of course the South is lost.’”
Afterward, Lauderdale approached the speaker, told him he was from Kentucky, and pressed him not to write off the South. “He seemed sort of stunned that I was even at the meeting and didn’t know what to say,” recalled Lauderdale. What did he come up with? “‘Well, it’s not the organizers,’ he said. ‘There’s just too many Baptists.’ As if piling insult on top of insult might make his first gaffe better.”
If we’re serious about changing the country we cannot afford to entire states or regions. When it comes to the South and the Southwest, the people designing the electoral strategies often have no knowledge of the regions. They’re afraid of them and filled with prejudice. As a result the attitude toward folks on the ground is disrespectful and dismissive. As a result, when paratroopers drop down to run campaigns, they often stumble from one lost opportunity after another.
The assumption that we can’t move a progressive agenda in the South or the Southwest is wrong. This conclusion is usually offered by people who look at the map through the political version of those old 3D glasses. All they see is red or blue with a little purple sprinkled in for texture. What they don’t account for is that when you are actually in these communities – and no state is made up of only one community – a completely different story is being played out.
We have developed leaders who are assertive, detailed and clear about their goals. There is a great deal of synergy in our operations that national groups are missing out on. As Missouri Jobs with Justice’s Lara Granich told us, “The learning curve can go both ways.”
Subscribe to our feed here and don’t miss a thing!
Follow The Project on:
 |
 |
|||
 |
 |
 |
||
 |
 |
|||
The days up to, through, and beyond November 2nd will be tracked using PBN’s Tumblr blog, its website, and online social networks.
