The Grassroots Will Defeat Trump, But The Democrats In Congress Have A Role To Play Also

This is how the Republican Party depicts women of color fighting for their rights

This week, UC Berkeley political science professor Taeku Lee explained Trump's fears of women of color and how Democrats take them for granted instead of mobilizing them. "Women of color, especially black women," he wrote, "are potent forces in progressive politics, both in office and as organizers who mobilize voters. It seems that liberals take this for granted, but conservatives tacitly recognize the political power of women of color when they try to discredit them through ridicule and harassment. Consider President Trump’s attacks on the members of 'the squad' who have proven to be remarkably deft and savvy politicians. Or recall that Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia played referee, scorekeeper and contestant so he could tip the scales in his favor in the 2018 election for governor against Stacey Abrams, whose voter protection efforts had begun years earlier.

That’s why it’s important to note that the outcome of the 2020 election will likely depend upon the efforts of independent groups led by women of color-- like Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta and the New Virginia Majority Education Fund-- that are expert at the nuts and bolts of politicking.

A new report called Ahead of the Majority, by the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund and Groundswell Fund uses recently released census data, polling data from the 2018 midterm elections and interviews with community organizers to illuminate the political power of women of color. Their numbers are growing, and they are turning out to vote; mobilizing their families, friends and communities; and taking to the streets.

Since 2008, women of color have grown by 18 percentage points in the general population and by 25 percentage points among registered voters. This is starting to show up at the ballot box. The 2018 election set new benchmarks for turnout in a midterm election, with a whopping 30 million more people voting than in 2014. For women of color, the increased turnout was even more stark, at 37 percent; for Latinas it was 51 percent; and for Asian-American and Pacific Islander women, 48 percent.

Women of color incited this change because they mobilized their friends and family in significant numbers. Black women led the way, with 84 percent convincing members of their social networks to register and vote, followed by 76 percent of Asian-American and Pacific Islander women, 72 percent of Native American women, 70 percent of Latinas and 66 percent of white women.

Turnout also substantially relied on the efforts of independent political groups. Consider that nearly half of 2018 voters who were contacted to register or go to the polls reported that the contact came from a group unaffiliated with a political party.

Voters of color were more likely to have been contacted this way, and these numbers buttress the experience of community-based organizations on the ground that carried out an uncommon range of nonpartisan civic engagement activities to reach those who had recently become citizens or who were classified as having a “low propensity” to vote.

The impact of community groups is especially impressive given their limited resources. Those focused on reaching communities of color have even fewer resources.

Women of color who are organizers on the ground testify that they were effective because they came from the same communities they were organizing. These independent community groups see women as the original influencers in the family and designed culturally informed programs for them. Those programs drew from the knowledge of existing networks and were used to help develop homegrown talent instead of simply relying on outside strategists who parachute into communities to extract surgical campaign victories.

...We are in a time of extraordinary challenges and opportunities for our democratic politics. At moments like this, people most directly impacted best understand the urgency for change and action. In 2018 women of color showed America what that urgency means in terms of political engagement.

Ninety-three percent of black women voters supported a Democratic House candidate as did 68 percent of Native American women, 76 percent of Latinas and 73 percent of Asian-American and Pacific Islander women. This does not bode well for the incumbent president.

Mr. Trump’s re-election strategy is focused on energizing his base of disaffected white men. And with white women evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, we would do well to heed the potential for women of color to decide the outcome of the 2020 election.

Thursday there was a lot of discussion online of Jim Lardner's American Pospect piece, Have Democrats Forgotten How to Do Oversight?. Lardner suggests what Democrats in Congress can do to help to unseat Trump while the grassroots defeats him. His panel of experts came to the conclusion that the Democrats "should not see their task simply as one of picking up the package of evidence handed to them by Robert Mueller and continuing to pursue the case he was either unable to nail or unwilling to state. Mueller felt bound to define his investigation narrowly, sticking to the trail of a potential Trump-Russia plot to meddle in the 2016 elections and adjacent offenses. The House, my panel of authorities agrees, needs to define its investigation broadly, as an inquiry into the bigger and more basic problem of kleptocratic corruption-- of self-enrichment, crony enrichment, and betrayal of the public trust." Sounds about right.

That rich realm encompasses three sub-territories. The first consists of all the areas where the Trumps have tried to turn the presidency to personal profit, whether by sneaking a $60 million real-estate developers’ tax break into the Republican tax package; getting government entities, contractors, and supplicants to purchase overpriced lodgings at Trump properties; or doing whatever they did with the $100 million supposedly raised for the inauguration ceremonies. In the second zone lie the various members of the president’s circle who, following his lead, have taken financial advantage of official positions or Trump ties. That domain blurs over into a third, in which we find the galaxy of federal departments and agencies that, thanks to the strategic placement of industry lobbyists and corporate insiders in the decision-making ranks, now routinely bow down to corporate interests at everybody else’s expense.

...In Trump’s case, the immediate loot was supposed to come from a real-estate boondoggle in Moscow. But he had also developed a taste for Russian financing when past sources had run dry. “After multiple bankruptcies in the 1980s and ’90s, Trump turned to Russian oligarchs and crime figures for a ready supply of cash,” Representative Jamie Raskin pointed out to me. “They were looking for ways to launder and safeguard money looted from the former Soviet Union.” Those transactions and thoughts of more like them appear to have been the original source of Trump’s desire to cozy up to Vladimir Putin, and in that sense, they drive U.S. Russia policy today.

Democrats, Raskin and others say, should rethink the aim as well as the subject matter of their inquiry. A scholar of constitutional law by trade (a former professor of same at American University’s law school), Raskin has no doubts about the impeachment-worthiness of credible allegations already on record. But regardless of what the House decides about impeachment or how long it takes to decide, it is time, he says, to concentrate on points of fact rather than law, and to lay out the facts to “tell a coherent and digestible story to the American people about how the president’s campaign and administration have both been money-making operations from top to bottom.” Storytelling must be the mission. And the story has to go beyond the act of corruption, says Paul C. Light, an oversight specialist and professor of public service at New York University; it needs to include the injury to government’s ability to do right by everyday people. “There’s a lot of outrage in the Democratic bloodstream,” Light says. “Unfortunately the House has not paid much attention so far to the effects of Trump’s corruption. Why does it matter to the American people? How does it affect your pocketbook or your children’s future? Who’s he robbing?”

Eight years in the minority have sapped the Democrats’ supply of oversight know-how. One of the party’s past masters of the art, former Representative Henry Waxman, counsels persistence and a willingness to “hit the same point over and over again.” The Democrats, he says, should borrow a page from Trump’s “No collusion, no obstruction” playbook. They should be willing to keep pounding away at a concise (in their case, true) message about crooked government and innocent people being shafted. “Sometimes it’s hard to get something across except in a cumulative way,” Waxman says.

...On top of the usual challenges, Democrats must now deal with a president and an attorney general telling everyone under their authority (and quite a few people who aren’t) to withhold cooperation. “Lots of norms are being thrown out the window,” says Molly Claflin, a former Senate Judiciary staffer now employed at American Oversight, an anti-corruption nonprofit that files lawsuits and surfaces official documents to compensate for the recent neglect and underfunding of Congress’s investigative work.

To get over the Trump stonewall, House committee staffers will have to cast a wide and imaginative net for witnesses, what with all the Trump-dependent people likely to resist testifying. One place to look, Light suggests, is in the middle ranks of corrupted entities, private or public. The Financial Services Committee, for example, might bring in some of the Deutsche Bank financial-crime watchdogs who tried to warn their superiors against continued lending to Trump family interests. The Natural Resources Committee could question some of the career employees at the Environmental Protection Agency who have been blocked from going after polluters. If such people feel skittish about testifying, they can be offered the option of wearing masks and having their voices distorted—a nice touch, perhaps, for the committee’s attention-getting purposes as well as the witnesses’ job-security purposes.

The ultimate victims of crooked government-- everyday people-- can also be called in. A Department of Education in the clutches of for-profit college companies and private student lenders is one unlikely to implement a loan forgiveness program for holders of student debt who commit themselves to public service. Light points to that program as a neglected and ripe target for oversight. “You have tens of thousands of people,” he says, “who have made their payments on time and are working as police officers, nurses, medical professionals and can’t get a dollar of forgiveness.” The testimony of a carefully chosen sample of those people could be the perfect prologue to a round of student-loan hearings.

Powerful stories can be aired more than once in forums with different frames of reference. The House Education and Labor Committee could hold a stand-alone hearing on the loan forgiveness program, for example; but that problem could also be examined by the Oversight and Reform Committee, under the spirited leadership of Elijah Cummings of Maryland, as part of a multi-agency investigation of the role of the former corporate lobbyists and executives now littered across the federal government. They’re all over: David Bernhardt, the fossil fuel lobbyist turned interior secretary, proud of his readiness to hand out oil-drilling leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; Daniel Elwell, the former airline guy running the FAA while it slow-walked its response to the safety issues of the Boeing 737 MAX; Jay Clayton, the ex–Goldman Sachs lawyer (married to an ex–Goldman Sachs executive) presiding over the Securities and Exchange Commission, and on and on. “Trump has found a fox for every henhouse in Washington,” Raskin says. That point could be effectively dramatized not only by the testimony of career public servants trying to do their jobs, but by an electronic map of the Trump administration with one agency after another lighting up as its conflicted leaders are identified.

Tax policy and tax enforcement is an obvious hearing topic. The Ways and Means Committee, under the cautious chairmanship of Richard Neal, took a woefully long time to sue for Trump’s tax returns, and it is unclear whether or how soon that litigation will bear fruit. The practical consequences of a New York law intended to force the release of Trump’s state tax returns are also up in the air. But Neal’s committee should have plenty of fodder for investigation, including an “opportunity zone” tax break with potentially large benefits for Jared and Ivanka, the disposition of a $7 million back-tax debt owed by the hedge fund manager and Republican donor Robert Mercer, and the strangely fast-tracked Senate confirmation of an Internal Revenue Service general counsel who had previously helped the Trump Organization with its taxes.

...The country needs Congress to do more oversight, not less. It’s time for the Democrats to map out a coordinated and thoughtfully sequenced series of hearings and investigations designed both to expose new information and to stir more awareness and outrage over what is already known and half-known. Old stories, vividly told, can have fresh impact; that is true even if they have a sketchy basis in reality, as the House Republicans proved with their endless claims about Benghazi and Hillary Clinton’s emails. The Democrats can proceed, moreover, with confidence that more dirt will surface, even if they cannot say exactly what it will be or where it will be found. Elected by fraud and fluke, Donald Trump has given us the crookedest presidency in our national memory, if not our history. Never has anyone with so much to hide occupied such a central and visible place. That is a formula guaranteed to keep the flow of ugly information coming as long as anyone keeps looking.

Mueller and his team, in the course of not quite finding an actionable Trump-Russia conspiracy, unearthed evidence of a multitude of other offenses, and that haul helped the Democrats retake the House of Representatives last year. By Election Day next year, Trump’s crimes could be his undoing, and they could pose an impossible burden for his Republican partners in Congress as well. The Democrats cannot be sure of that-- but it would be a terrible mistake to discount the possibility. Donald Trump himself is clearly troubled by the prospect of renewed scrutiny. We caught a recent glimpse of that fear in his racist fulminations against Elijah Cummings-- a crazed preemptive effort to undermine one of the senior House members and committee chairs most bent on pressing ahead with aggressive oversight. If the president doesn’t think he’s home free, the Democrats had better not make that assumption either.

We'll close for now with a poignant message-- some ideas for a song and video perhaps?-- from Lee's son, Mötley Crüe lead singer Tommy:

FL-11-- Is Taliban Dan's Day Of Reckoning Nigh?

There are 5 counties-- or parts of counties-- within the boundaries of Florida's 11th district north of Tampa: Citrus, Hernando, Lake, Marion and Sumter. Retirees from Indiana, Ohio and Michigan drove down I-75 and settled here, a different breed of the retirees from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey who drove down the I-95 to Miami-Dade and Broward counties. I-95 brought Democrats; I-75 brought Republicans. FL-11 went for McCain in 2008 (56%), for Romney in 2012 (59%) and in 2016 Señor Trumpanzee beat Hillary 64.8% to 32.5%. The PVI went from R+11 in 2015 to R+15 last year, the 4th most Republican of Florida's 27 congressional districts.

When longtime incumbent Richard Nugent decided to retire, Orlando area Republican Daniel Webster, sensing FL-10 was too blue for him to be reelected in again, moved his political operation (if not his residence) north to the 11th and beat Democrat David Koller 258,016 (65.4%) to 124,713 (31.6%). Koller had run against Nugent in 2014 with similar results, going down 66.7% to 33.3% to Nugent. Daniel Webster feels secure in "his" new district. Despite the numbers, he shouldn't.

Fast-growing Sumter is the reddest county in the district. It was the worst-performing county in the district for Bernie and in the general it gave Trump 68.8% of its votes, his best performance in FL-11. This week, in a review of Alice Marshall's book, The Precinct Captain's Guide to Political Victory, Heather Rabinowitz, a Sumter County Democratic Party Executive Committee member mentioned that she "made this required reading for all of our precinct captains." Why's that a big deal? Remember what happened in Virginia a few weeks ago? It was as if the grassroots made a collective decision to win the House of Delegates, and they astounded the professional pundits by taking seat after seat after seat that was deemed "impossible." The Precinct Captain's Guide to Political Victory was written in Virginia and the precinct level operatives were all reading it. When we hear that precinct captains are reading that book, it tells us that that committee has decided to actually win.

What does that have to do with a district as red as FL-11 and with the notorious Daniel "Taliban Dan" Webster? Some now think that even if Webster finds the cure for cancer and brings peace to the Middle East and even if the Democrats nominate a ham sandwich, the Democrat will have a real shot at winning. And there's been some talk-- I have no inside information here-- that instead of a ham sandwich, FL-11 Democrats are trying to draft Webster's old nemesis, Alan Grayson to run! Grayson-- the absolute master of grassroots campaigning!

Now, Webster isn't likely to resign, even though he is senile, because:

(1)- he has no other way to make $174,000 a year [his top earnings in his family air-conditioning repair shop was $50K, and no lobbying firm would hire him, because he’s an unpopular dope];
(2)- thanks to a very generous pension plan, for every term he serves, his pension goes up $6,000;
(3)- he has no one at home waiting for him but his unfortunate wife, and that’s certainly not much of a draw;
(4)- all of his staff would be out of a job and completely unemployable, just like his home-schooled kids;
(5)- the thought of his running for higher office is laughable.

Webster still hasn't moved anywhere near "his" new district but he's not likely to lose his primary, because... well, he’s a Man Of God, right? Republicans are confident that he'd win the general even if the Democrats nominated Jesus Christ himself. And the possibility that someone will cut through the mental haze that surrounds Webster and inform him that he is suffering from dementia, and should retire? Well, there's a reed of a chance that could happen but, alas, he likely would forget that conversation entirely, five minutes later.

Alice Marshall told me that in August 2004 the Kerry campaign decided that Virginia was unwinnable, and pulled out their staff. But in Fairfax County, where she was chair of the county's voter registration committee, local Democrats decided that Virginia WAS winnable, "and put their collective shoulder to the wheel. We carried Fairfax for John Kerry. He lost the state, because other committees around the state did not make the same decision, but Kerry won Fairfax, in part, because the local committee decided we were going to win and we did not give a damn about the Kerry campaign or the DNC. In 1999 I was chair of the voter registration committee (I was chair twice, 1998-1999 and 2004-2005). That was the year of the Cathy Hudgins vs Bob Dix race for the Board of Supervisors. Bob Dix was an entrenched Republican incumbent, white male in a district that was/is majority white. He was supported by then Congressman Tom Davis, who actively campaigned for him. Dix raised $320,000. Cathy Hudgins had never run for office. Hudgins is African American. She raised $80,000. Hudgins won. Hudgins won for many reasons, not the least of which the Hunter Mill Democratic Committee was tired of losing and decided to win. My voter registration effort played an important role in all that, but by no means decisive. The collective decision on the part of local Democrats was the decisive element. I regard this as the text book example of people having more power than they think. People have more power then they realize."

And in a wave year-- an anti-Trump/anti-GOP tsunami cycle? And if the candidate is Grayson, not Koller again? Last year Webster spent $1,005,000 to Koller's $57,243. This cycle Webster had a campaign war chest of $67,543 as of the September 30 FEC reporting deadline. Grayson's war chest on that day was $501,268. Fingers crossed the Sumter County precinct workers spread The Precinct Captain's Guide to Political Victory to the Democratic precinct workers in Lake, Hernando, Citrus and Marion counties. In retrospect, this seems ahead of its time:

You Have More Power Than You Think-- Guest Post By Alice Marshall

A friend of mine in Fairfax County, Virginia recounted how this past election the Chair of the Fairfax Democrats had run her own canvassing operation because she was not satisfied with the one being run by the joint campaign. Every year Fairfax Democrats set up a joint campaign so that volunteers support every Democrat up for office rather than requiring each campaign to recruit their own volunteers. Fairfax Democrats win their elections, so clearly, this works.

However, this year it seems that the Chair, who is an enthusiastic supporter of Hillary Clinton, was not pleased with the joint campaign's operation. Since I no longer live in Fairfax I don't know whether then Chair's concerns were warranted or not, but Hillary Clinton roared out of Fairfax County with 63% of the vote, greatly contributing to her victory in Virginia.

Because Fairfax Democrats look to themselves for victory, there was no forlorn call to Hillary Clinton's national campaign begging for resources to expand canvassing and GOTV operations. Fairfax Democrats took it upon themselves to do what needed to be done. Imagine if Democrats in critical counties across the Great Lakes had done the same.

If we depend upon national leadership we are lost. We need to take charge of our communities. If local activists decide that there will be canvassing, and that it will be done in such a manner as to best deliver the vote, then it will happen. Even if the state or national party drops the ball, as long as local activist take charge of campaigns in their communities they can win.

Precinct operations is a lost art in much of our country. The big money is in advertising, polling, messaging, digital communications, and consulting. Field operations is not so well paid. Precinct operations on a continuing basis is an afterthought. It would be in the best interests of the Democratic party to do training in precinct operations in all 435 congressional districts. Or Democracy for America could offer such training, or Our Revolution, or Brand New Congress. Realistically, I don't see any of that happening.

This is why I wrote my book, The Precinct Captain's Guide To Political Victory, so that anyone, no matter their lack of experience, could acquire the skills necessary to deliver their precinct and not depend upon their state or national party.

I was Chair of the Precinct Operations Committee for Fairfax Democrats from 2000 – 2001. Before that I served on Democratic Committees in Arlington County and the city of Richmond in Virginia. I have tried every method described in my book and can guarantee the effectiveness there of.

In every speech Bernie Sanders tells us that we cannot have the change we need unless millions and millions of us get active. So what does that actually entail? It could mean movement politics, or electoral politics. While I think we need both, I will confine myself to electoral politics because that is where my experience lies.

Reviving the Democratic Party will require not only millions of new volunteers at the grassroots level; it will require them to acquire the skills and discipline of winning. I hope that Keith Ellison will win his race for Chair of the DNC. But even if he does, that, by itself, will NOT transform the Democratic Party.

If we take our politics into our own hands, WE determine what is going to happen, and we do not have to worry about a dysfunctional DCCC or DSCC. Since clearly they will continue to be dysfunctional, it behooves us to take matters into our own hands, but that can only happen if we master the skills necessary to win. Precinct operations are a lost art in much of our country, thus the necessity for my book.

Anyone who buys my book and puts even a fraction of its suggestions into practice will increase the vote for their preferred party by not less than 50 votes. It does not have to be my book, I am not the only one to know about these methods. However, unless millions of party activists acquire these skills by some means, there is no possibility of taking back our country.

The precinct captain's guide to political victory on Amazon Kindle or... at the DownWithTyranny Book Shop.

A study provides insight into contrasting Sandy recoveries between two areas with notable similarities

DNAinfo caption: "Flooding along the East River waterfront on the Lower East Side as Hurricane Sandy barreled toward New York on Monday, Oct. 29, 2012." (Photo by Chelsia Rose Marcius)

"While both areas have high concentrations of public housing residents and low-income households, the Lower East Side’s pre-existing civic infrastructure of community based organizations and social services fighting against development pressures enabled residents to recover more quickly, according to researchers who spent six months interviewing community groups in the area and 18 months in the Rockaways. "

-- from "Anti-Gentrification Work Helped LES Bounce
Back Faster After Sandy: Study," on DNAinfo New York

Highlights of the Graham-Debucquoy study:

• Urban development paths and dynamics influence the operationalization of resilience.
• Local civic infrastructure is a key condition for community-based resilience capacity.
• Legacies of anti-gentrification activism provide a foundation for resilience work.
• Meeting present socio-economic needs may foreclose pursuing long-term resilience.

by Ken

It's clear that there are all sorts of caveats to be entered regarding the headline on this report -- notably that for all the similarities between Manhattan's Lower East Side and the Rockaways, there are (as noted in the article) important differences, and the ideological tilt of pre-existing activist organizations -- in this case gratifyingly progressive -- many not matter as much as the fact of their pre-existence. What's more, the article focuses on only one of the four report strands noted in the Highlights above.

All that said, even without reading the underlying report,* I get the feeling that there's substance here worth pondering for possible application to other areas and activist struggles.

Anti-Gentrification Work Helped LES Bounce Back Faster After Sandy: Study

By Amy Zimmer
DNAinfo New York | October 24, 2016 7:41am

MANHATTAN — The low-income communities of the Lower East Side and the Rockaways both suffered extensive damage from Superstorm Sandy four years ago.

But advocates on the Lower East Side were able to engage more effectively in post-storm resiliency efforts than their counterparts in Queens because they already had a robust network of community activism in place from years of fighting gentrification, according to a recently published study from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center. [See note below about accessing the source study -- Ed.*]

Researchers focused on the role of community organizations and being able to respond to the “climate change politics” of the city, which is increasingly important as the frequency of storms is expected to rise along with rising sea levels, noted Leigh Graham, John Jay environmental psychology professor and lead author of the study.

While both areas have high concentrations of public housing residents and low-income households, the Lower East Side’s pre-existing civic infrastructure of community based organizations and social services fighting against development pressures enabled residents to recover more quickly, according to researchers who spent six months interviewing community groups in the area and 18 months in the Rockaways.

The Rockaways, on the other hand, were at a disadvantage, not only because the area is more geographically isolated on the far edge of the city, but also because it’s more racially and economically segregated.

There’s a high concentration of poverty along the eastern part of the peninsula where the residents have suffered from decades of economic “malaise,” which in effect weakened and undermined their post-storm response, researchers found.

“The Lower East Side and the Rockaways had similar levels of exposure in terms of storm flooding,” Graham said, “but the Lower East Side groups were basically a partner in a lot of the resiliency efforts after the storm, in part because residents, who live there, have been fighting gentrification for 30 to 40 years and established a level of organization, trust and power, that they were able to get a seat at the table as important stakeholders.”

Community groups on the Rockaways did not have the same level of organization prior to the storm and remain more focused on meeting present economic needs than on pursing long-term resilience planning, she noted.

“They were really dealing with economic stagnation and hardship that only worsened after the storm,” Graham said.

“The Rockaways was in crisis before Sandy hit, it continues to be in crisis, it’s an economic crisis,” one affordable housing advocate said in the report. “And so the resiliency work doesn’t just sort of happen in a vacuum, it sits on top of what’s there already in that community.”

Also, Rockaway residents have long been more aware of their precarious position surrounded by water and may not have been as surprised at being hit so hard by the storm as Lower East Side residents — which also may have affected response efforts.

As a long-term Lower East Side community organizer said in the study: “Many of us have always seen ourselves as an organization that was fighting greedy landlords and luxury developers from taking over our community, we never saw a flood, that we would be fighting the impacts of climate change and sea level rise and storm surges.”

The organizer continued: “But after Sandy, it was clear to us that we couldn’t take these things for granted, so we had to adopt it as an issue and work on it in a long term way.”

Though Graham found that mobilization around resiliency lags in Rockaway as residents struggle with more immediate economic concerns, she is continuing to do research there and has been seeing changes.

The nonprofit Community Voices Heard is focusing on the climate change movement in the area, creating an organizing hub in Rockaway. The city is also investing $91 million into a revitalization plan for the area, and the Citywide Ferry is expected in a year.
Graham is hopeful these dynamics prop up the foundation of resilience work since, she said, storms and flooding will only continue.

“We know this is our new normal,” she said.

*ACCESSING THE SOURCE STUDY

As you'll discover at the link for the Graham-Debucquoy study, only readers with credentials of various sorts can access the full text free.

The site does provide the Highlights cited above as well as this Abstract:

While (urban) resilience has become an increasingly popular concept, especially in the areas of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA), it is often still used as an abstract metaphor, with much debate centered on definitions, differences in approaches, and epistemological considerations. Empirical studies examining how community-based organizations (CBOs) “practice” resilience on the ground and what enables these CBOs to organize and mobilize around resilience are lacking. Moreover, in the growing context of competitive and entrepreneurial urbanism and conflicting priorities about urban (re)development, it is unclear how urban development dynamics influence community-based resilience actions. Through empirical research conducted on the Lower East Side, a gentrifying neighborhood in Manhattan, and in Rockaway, a socio-spatially isolated neighborhood in Queens, we investigate community organizing of low-income residents for (climate) resilience in a post-disaster context. Results show that both the operationalization of resilience – how resilience is “practiced” – and the community capacity to organize for the improved resilience of low-income residents are strongly influenced by pre-existing urban development dynamics and civic infrastructure – the socio-spatial networks of community-based organizations – in each neighborhood. The Lower East Side, with its long history of community activism and awareness of gentrification threats, was better able to mobilize broadly and collectively around resilience needs while the more socio-spatially isolated neighborhoods on the Rockaway peninsula were more constrained.

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An Advance In Grassroots Campaign Phone Banking

Phone banking is one crucial way for grassroots candidates to reach out to voters but I've been hearing from savvy candidates for several years that the commonly available phone banking software for small grassroots campaigns is subpar. One of the sharpest and most agile of the 2016 Blue America primary candidates, Alex Law, worked on creating a phone banking application called Partic, which is extremely simple on the front end for unpaid volunteers. Candidates can have their volunteers make calls from anywhere in a simple system with the best scripting function out there. It has all the features any campaign needs and none it doesn't. Blue America would like to contribute the system to some of the campaigns we felt would make the best use of it.

Can you let us know which campaigns you would like us to donate the system to? We'll pick 2 campaigns this weekend based on the number of contributions our candidates get on this ActBlue page, not the amount of money, just the number of contributions. So if you want to help a candidate, please contribute any amount you can afford to his or her campaign. Meanwhile, I asked Alex to explain the system in a guest post.

Why Partic? Why Now?
-by Alex Law

Many of you may remember my race in New Jersey's 1st Congressional District against corrupt Donald Norcross. I appreciate everything the Blue America family has done for me. This was the first organization to believe it me. While we ultimately didn't win the race, we did run one of the most efficient campaigns in 25 years and become the first campaign ever to be endorsed by a major East Coast newspaper against an incumbent in a primary without any major scandal. I know this is just the beginning for me, and I will certainly keep the Blue America family posted with what I do next in politics.

With that said, I know our work isn't done now. You may have read my letter fundraising for my friends Tim Canova, Alan Grayson, and Zephyr Teachout. That was successful, but I want to do more for the progressive community. Even though I am not in a position to be able to significantly contribute financially , I do have a lot of knowledge about campaigns. To this end, my partner and I built a phone banking application called Partic.

When I looked for a phone banking application during my campaign, I really didn't like the options. Everything was geared towards robo-dialing. The user experience for actual live callers (our volunteers) was terrible on most applications. This is because the major phone banking services are primarily geared to larger volume enterprises that pay their phone callers. When you pay your callers, you can instruct them to deal with what ever the system is. To those of us who have volunteered on progressive campaigns, we know that just isn't how it works. If the program isn't simple and easy to use, volunteers simply won't use it. This is why so many campaigns, especially small progressive campaigns are forced to rely on incredibly inefficient and expensive solutions to phone banking (usually paper, pen, and landlines).

Partic changes that. We built our application with the volunteers in mind. Everything on the front end is incredibly simple. There is no syncing with your cell phone-- volunteers can make calls with a push of a button on the computer. The scripting function allows campaigns to create incredibly detailed scripts, but the volunteers will only see one piece at a time to make communication as easy as possible. All of the data is automatically tracked and available in analyzed reports at any time. Soon, pre-recorded voicemails will be able to be dropped in by the volunteer if no one picks up. This application drives efficiency with great tools but also with great simplicity.

I want progressive campaigns to use this tool. Not to make money, but because better organizing is key to our progress as a movement. As such, I told the leadership at Blue America that I would make our system available at cost to any Blue America campaigns. The better organized we all are, the more seats we can win together.

An Impossible Dream Coming True In South Jersey?

Grassroots candidates CAN smash the corrupt machine

When I met Alex Law for the first time last year he seemed like a smart kid with a big dream and a lot of idealism and no money. He kind of reminded me of New Hampshire progressive activist Carol Shea-Porter, circa 2006-- a full decade ago. Carol had an impossible dream. She wanted to defeat a powerful entrenched incumbent, Jeb Bradley, who had a load of money-- and Carol had none. Worse, yet, the head of the DCCC, Rahm Emanuel, decided Carol was "too progressive" and "too anti-war" for New Hampshire and he was backing House Majority Leader Jim Craig, a consummate establishment insider. With Emanuel's help, Craig spent $381,290 on the primary, more than Carol spent on the primary and the race against Bradley combined! Carol beat Jim Craig 54-34% and the DCCC abandoned the district, Emanuel declaring it was unwinable. Bradley barely broke a sweat raising $1,111,590 and Carol had almost no money and was smothered in unanswered ads from the GOP while the DCCC and DNC sat on their hands and sneered. But Carol had a magic weapon: genuine, values-driven grassroots activism-- and in November she beat Bradley 100,899 (51%) to 94,869 (49%). Emanuel was furious-- although he and other DCCC saboteurs ran to the media and tried taking credit for Carol's win!

Today Carol-- still as independent-minded and grassroots oriented as ever-- is running for Congress again, against Tea Party extremist Frank Guinta. She's on the same Blue America ActBlue page as Alex Law, which you can access by tapping on the thermometer on the right. As of the May 18 FEC filing deadline, Alex had raised $67,331 to entrenched incumbent Donald Norcross' $1,404,335 (thousands of dollars of which have come from the Trump family-- although Norcross masquerades as a Democrat). The shady Patriot Majority PAC has spent another $174,083 bolstering Norcross, whose brother George controls the corrupt South Jersey Democratic political machine. But Alex's little-campaign-that-could has done so well that a panic-stricken Norcross just left his campaign another $85,000, bringing the total in self-funding to over $100,000.

Norcross' brother George also brought the widest-read newspaper in the district, the Philadelphia Enquirer and then lost control of it. No one thought there was any chance that they would ever endorse against Alex, a leader of the Bernie for President movement in South Jersey. In fact, Sunday, the Inquirer endorsed Hillary-- and Alex, sending shockwaves through New Jersey politics. The congressional primary is June 7, a week from tomorrow. After claiming Clinton "is better prepared for the office," the editorial board, which had done extensive interviews with Norcross and Law, wrote that Law would make a better member of Congress.

South Jersey Democrats will also decide three congressional nominations. The most heated contest is in the Camden County-based First District, whose freshman congressman, Donald Norcross, likes to say he's just an electrician in a tie.

But Norcross harnesses a lot more power than the average working man. The son of a labor leader and brother of South Jersey's top Democratic power broker, Norcross headed the regional AFL-CIO before his path to political office was cleared by the precisely timed midterm retirement of the state Assembly speaker himself. The party organization immediately anointed Norcross the prohibitive front-runner in a safely Democratic district. A week after he was sworn in to the Assembly, he was promoted to a vacated state Senate seat. Four years after that, yet another midterm exit - by U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews amid a campaign-finance probe-- put Norcross on a short circuit to Congress, powered once again by party unanimity.

The spectacle of Andrews being confronted on 60 Minutes helped spark Alex Law's interest in politics and ultimately his challenge to the machine that choreographed Norcross' rise. Law, of Voorhees, is the epitome of an upstart, having just turned 25, the minimum age to serve in the House, and quit his IBM consulting job to seek the nomination. He has raised about $40,000 to Norcross' nearly $1 million. (The winner will run against Bob Patterson, who is unopposed on the GOP side.)

While Norcross, 57, was often in the thick of the legislative action in Trenton, his meteoric ascent hasn't helped his resumé in that respect; his achievements in Washington have been limited. The congressman notes that he introduced a bill to raise the minimum wage and has helped bring federal funds to the district.

Law, a Sanders supporter, has staked out positions largely to the left of the congressman, who sometimes sides with Republicans in favor of industry and defense. The challenger has criticized Norcross' votes against the Iran nuclear deal, consumer financial protections, and refugee resettlement. Norcross says he takes pride in sometimes straying from the party line.

Law's most persuasive critique of Norcross concerns his reliance on donors with government contracts. Pay-to-play politics have been elevated to a dark art in South Jersey, but Norcross addresses the issue by insisting he is just an electrician-turned-politician with no special connection to such machinations.

Democratic voters longing for a genuine departure from the entrenched political establishment that Norcross embodies should choose ALEX LAW.

When Norcross "strays from the party line," as the Inquirer puts it so generously, it;'s to vote with the Republicans against the environment and for pet projects of his wealthy campaign contributors like the Keystone XL Pipeline. In fact, Norcross has voted with the Republicans more than any other New Jersey Democrat in Congress. Just above is the Blue America mobile billboard we have driving up and down the streets and highways of South Jersey all month. (Gas money contributions here please.) Saturday the truck spent the day in Collingswood at the May Fair. This is the billboard on the other side of the truck:

Why Grassroots Democratic Activists Have Had It With The DCCC

Anger at the DCCC is spreading. Well, anger at the DCCC has been huge for over a decade; that it's being talked about more openly and more aggressively at the grassroots level is what's different. Chris Van Hollen and Steve Israel lost dozens and dozens of Democratic House seats (incumbents) and ruined the chances of even more Democratic challengers trying to beat Republicans. Their DCCC organization is riven with self-serving, careerism and corruption and, some would say, even worse: incompetence. John Ellis isn't a Beltway hack. He lives in California's Central Valley and writes about politics for the Fresno Bee. Over the weekend he focused on how Democrats in the Central Valley feel about the DCCC trying to run their party. The story could be written about anyplace in the country. Contempt for the DCCC is nearly universal. Democrats in the Central Valley-- and everywhere else-- all feel the DCCC "is more a hindrance than a help in winning local elections." When you read this, keep in mind that Obama won-- by increasing margins-- his Central Valley elections while the DCCC was losing (all) theirs:

• CA 21- Obama over McCain 52-46%, Obama over Romney 55-44%
• CA 10- Obama over McCain 50-48%, Obama over Romney 51-47%

The DCCC, local Democrats say, recruits congressional candidates with little local input. It imposes out-of-state staffers on these candidates, many of whom never have run a campaign in the Valley and instead rely on their knowledge from working other races-- an approach that doesn’t work here. Worse, local Democrats say, those staffers don’t want local experience on how to run an effective campaign.


Much of the anger and frustration centers on the 21st Congressional District, where Hanford Republican David Valadao has trounced two straight Democratic Party challengers, even though Democrats have a commanding 17 percentage point lead in voter registration over the rival GOP. To a lesser extent, it is also the case in the 10th Congressional District, which is represented by Turlock Republican Jeff Denham. In that district, Republicans hold a slim registration advantage.

“There’s a frustration with the DCCC deciding what the rules are,” says Doug Kessler, Region 8 director for the state Democratic Party, an area that covers the Valley. “We want some say who a candidate is, and more importantly, have people who respect and understand the Valley and do not dictate to us.”


Defenders of the DCCC say the goal for the national organization is the same as local Democrats-- to win [which is an interesting argument since they never win, only lose]. Whatever the DCCC does, they say, is done with an eye toward victory.


In a short statement, the DCCC said pretty much the same thing.

“The Central Valley deserves a representative that will stand up for them in Washington, unlike David Valadao,” spokeswoman Barb Solish said. “We are confident that a strong Democrat can and will win this seat.”

Local Democrats, however, aren’t convinced.




Last year, Valley native Amanda Renteria returned home from Washington, D.C., with a sterling résumé and a mission to unseat Valadao. She raised more than $1.7 million. She lost in a landslide.

Renteria was well liked locally, and there is broad agreement that she worked hard.

But some local Democrats say she was handcuffed by the DCCC.


Her first campaign manager came from Boston with previous political experience that included a stint as campaign manager for Boston Mayor Thomas Menino as well as time working for John Edwards’ presidential campaign and Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill’s campaign. After the primary election, she left and was replaced by someone from the Los Angeles area.

Victor Moheno, a Visalia attorney and prominent Valley Democrat, liked Renteria and thought she had promise. He recalled the start of the campaign, when he and other local Democrats recommended a kickoff event that would identify local leaders in the district’s major towns, and then send Renteria on a campaign kickoff caravan across the district. It would, Moheno said, give the campaign a grassroots feel.

The suggestion fell on deaf ears and went nowhere.

Moheno said the second campaign manager was Hispanic like Renteria and a majority of the 21st District, but he was from Los Angeles.

“There’s an urban-rural distinction among Latinos that is dramatic,” Moheno said. “It ain’t the same. He didn’t run a Valley campaign. Sadly, those are the pros. They get paid a lot of money, but they don’t listen to people.”

Valadao ended up beating Renteria by the same 15-percentage point margin as his 2012 win over Fresno Democrat John Hernandez, who ran a campaign on a shoestring budget and had nearly no DCCC support.

“Unfortunately, I think it’s the culture of the Democratic Party hierarchy,” Moheno says of the tendency toward top-down micromanaging, be it from Sacramento or Washington.

After the loss, Democrats chalked it up-- at least partly-- to low turnout and a bad overall showing nationally by Democrats. They then looked to 2016, a presidential election year with guaranteed higher turnout, and said they would do better in their quest to knock off Valadao.


But this year-- a key time leading up to the 2016 election when candidates decide to run and start raising money and earning endorsements-- has been a disaster for Democrats.

Kessler recalls a Region 8 Democratic Party meeting in Visalia this past summer, when the DCCC was invited. The organization ended up attending via telephone-- and got an earful. The message to the DCCC: Why don’t you care about the Valley?

Holly Andradé Blair, executive board representative for the Kings County Democratic Central Committee, wonders if the DCCC does care.

“I’m proud to come from Kings County and proud to be from the Valley,” she says. “I enjoy living here, and when outsiders, particularly the DCCC-- they’re clear across the country-- look at this area, it’s an afterthought. It gets to me. We’re not an afterthought.”

Then, Fowler Mayor Pro Tem Daniel Parra was the only Democratic challenger to Valadao.

He entered the race in mid-April but has been unable to raise money. As of Sept. 30, he had raised less than $40,000 and has a little more than $10,000 in his campaign account.

The DCCC wasn’t impressed and began looking for another candidate, a move that upset some local Democrats.

In early September, word leaked that Tulare County native Connie Perez was being courted by the DCCC. In mid-October she announced her run using a slick campaign video. Less than a month later, she was out.

For some Democrats, she couldn’t be gone soon enough. Perez was a Tulare County native but was living in Pasadena while she worked as a partner at the Bakersfield-based Brown Armstrong Accountancy Corp. It also seemed she was hand-picked and groomed by the DCCC. Her campaign announcement came from a prominent Democratic communications firm in Los Angeles.

“What’s important about representation is we pick somebody we want to represent us, not some Democrats in Washington, D.C., or in Sacramento,” Blair said. “I don’t want somebody from outside picking my candidate for me. I’m perfectly capable of choosing my own candidate. Even if that candidate loses, it’s my choice.”

But it was no picnic for Perez, some supporters say.

She was being micromanaged by the DCCC, they contend. The organization designed her campaign and demanded she use their vendors. That means, for instance, that well-known Valley pollster Jim Moore was out, even though he knows the region. The DCCC would withhold money unless the candidate played by its rules, Perez supporters say.

A short time later, Bakersfield City School District Trustee Andrae Gonzales said he was exploring a run. A week later, he decided against it.

Now, the name of Bakersfield attorney Emilio Huerta, son of United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta, has emerged.

The National Republican Congressional Committee-- the DCCC’s Washington, D.C., counterpart-- is watching the spectacle with glee, firing off snarky emails with each Democratic Party move in the 21st District. One sentence in a news release on Huerta’s possible candidacy starts, “After four high-profile rejections…”

By this time, local Democrats say, the DCCC shouldn’t be recruiting candidates but should instead be turning its attention to winning the election.


Moheno, the Visalia Democrat, says the locals learned what it takes to win congressional elections with Cal Dooley, a Democrat who used to hold the seat that now covers much of the same territory as Valadao’s 21st District.

Others say home-grown success goes beyond congressional wins with Dooley or Fresno Democrat Jim Costa-- it also stretches to the state Senate and Assembly, to Democrats like former state Sen. Michael Rubio and outgoing Assemblyman Henry T. Perea.

The reason those Democrats won in the Valley, they say, is they understood the need to be moderate and to win crossover support from agriculture and business. Going too far left, they say, is a death knell here, but it is often part of the DCCC playbook.

Blair, the Kings County Democrat, says being local is also important, as is visiting little towns like Stratford, Avenal and Kettleman City.

“In Kings County, Democrats here will vote for a local person every time over an outsider,” she says. “Even a Republican.”

Maybe that’s why the NRCC is hitting on Huerta not for having UFW lineage, but for living just a few miles outside the 21st District’s boundaries.

Michael Evans, chairman of the Fresno County Democratic Central Committee, says there must be an understanding that the Valley’s political landscape is not only unlike the rest of California, but also the rest of the nation. Within the Valley, Kings County is different from Fresno County. These nuanced differences make local input into campaigns vital, he says.

“If you bring someone in from Sacramento, they have maybe a little bit of understanding, but you bring someone in from D.C., they have zero understanding, so yeah, that can be very frustrating,” Evans says.

The Democrats will never win back the House-- never-- until the disastrous Rahm Emanuel/Chris Van Hollen/Steve Israel Republican-lite recruitment policy and their highhanded decision to override local Democrats are laid to rest. If the DCCC is supporting a candidate, be very wary before contributing or even voting for him or her. It's up to all of us to help defund the DCCC careerists. You can contribute to progressive candidates directly through ActBlue.




Van Hollen's strategy immediately lost 63 House seats... but he still insists on it

Pete Seeger (1919-2014)

"I have sung for pacifists and I have sung for soldiers."

-- Pete Seeger

Trailer for the 2007 documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song

"I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known. I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent this implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, or I might be a vegetarian, make me any less of an American. I will tell you about my songs, but I am not interested in telling you who wrote them, and I will tell you about my songs, and I am not interested in who listened to them. . . ."

[Many questions later, in response to: "There are various peace groups in the country which have utilized your services, are there not?"]
"I have sung for pacifists and I have sung for soldiers."

-- Pete Seeger, testifying before a subcommittee of the House
Committee on Un-American Activities in NYC, Aug. 18, 1955

by Ken

Is it possible to cram more into a life than Pete Seeger did in his 94 years? Or to brighten more lives than he did, insisting -- so harmoniously -- on an image of a world that respects and nurtures humanity and decency? It's a life and legacy so enormous that, just as I know I can't begin to take its measure here, I know it's all just as much a part of us as it was while he was among us.

Whether he was singing his own songs, like"If I Had a Hammer" (with Lee Hays), "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (with Joe Hickerson), "Turn! Turn! Turn!," or other people's, like "We Shall Overcome" or so many others, with the legendary folk group the Weavers or on his own, or his songs were being sung by singers all over the world his music-making is part of the tapestry of half a century or more of American life, and American activism, since he remained steadfast in his vision of a more just and humane country and world.

The interrogator in the above-excerpted House subcommittee inquisition was a worm named Frank S. Tavenner Jr., HUAC's chief counsel, doing his darnedest to slime Pete as an anti-American tool of godless communism. It's one of those things that make you hope there's a Hell, because if so, that's where this miserable excuse for a human being is rotting for eternity rather than merely in the ground. (Tavenner died in 1964, and is buried in -- of all places -- Woodstock.) Howie passed along the link for the transcript of Pete's committee testimony, and I was deeply moved by his unfailing courteousness along with his steadfast refusal to be drawn into the squalid game of "naming names" to save his own hide.

And amid his testimony, when Tavenner tried to embarrass Pete with his association with (gasp!) pacifists, my eye lit on that line: "I have sung for pacifists and I have sung for soldiers." Isn't it amazing how much he packed into that simple sentence?

You have to remember that in the HUAC mentality, and the J. Edgar Hoover mentality, being against war was a crime against Americanism. I'm not sure it's all that different in the age of Rush Limbaugh and Fox Noise. And in the McCarthyite Red Scare of the '50s, views like these bumped up constantly against the vigilance of American mainstream fascism. At that 1955 hearing Pete stuck to his refusal to name names, and was subsequently indicted for contempt of Congress, which stands now as a mark of distinction. (Years later he was finally tried and convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison, but the indictment was thrown out on appeal.)

You can read about Pete, well, pretty much everywhere today. An obvious place to start is Jon Pareles' New York Times obit, but all over the Web you'll find remembrances. A group close to my heart, the Working Harbor Committee, which covers the New York-New Jersey harbor, remembered Pete this morning with a post called "Fair Winds and Following Seas," honoring "the legendary singer and activist who founded the Hudson River Clearwater Organization and spent his life championing environmental awareness of pollution in the Hudson River" (links onsite), with this clip:



And of course you can find lots of other clips on YouTube.

Like I said, Pete's spirit and presence are all around us, and aren't likely to be going anywhere anytime soon. Thanks, Pete.


"At age 94, I don't have much voice left," Pete says after being introduced by John Mellencamp to sing "If I Had a Hammer" at the Farm Aid concert in Saratoga Springs, NY, on Sept. 21, 2013.

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Big Progressive Win In North Carolina Over The Weekend

On most days North Carolinian Democrats now wake up to a nightmare. Just a few years ago the state had turned blue. Barack Obama became the first president to win the state since 1976, Democrats picked up Congressional seats, elected a Governor and even took Jesse Helms' old US Senate seat. 2008 was a great year for the Tar Heels; one could almost see a future free of Virginia Foxx on the horizon if one squinted hard enough.

A dark cloud started to roll over the state in 2010. The backlash against progress and the complacency of Democrats took the form of a tea bag. Everyone had fun making dumb jokes and laughing at these folks clutching the Constitution in one hand and waving their misspelled signs in the other. Well, these folks didn’t mind being the butt of Democrats' jokes, because they were busy winning elections. They "took control of both chambers of the N.C. legislature for the first time in over 100 years. In the wake of the 2010 election, the new GOP majority in the N.C. General Assembly controlled the decennial redistricting process, resulting in new congressional and legislative voting maps that were viewed as being more favorable to Republican candidates."

Richard “Bank Run” Burr won re-election and Congressman Bob Etheridge lost to Renee Ellmers and her Victory Mosque ad. Yes, this person is now in Congress.

Then it got bad in 2011. Governor Perdue announced she would not be seeking re-election and so did Congressional Democrats Brad Miller and Heath Shuler. The NCDP got mired in intra-party shenanigans. Then the inconceivable happened: it got worse in 2012, much much worse.

“McCrory will be North Carolina’s first Republican governor since Jim Martin left office in 1993, he will also be the first Tar Heel Republican governor to serve with a GOP-controlled legislature in more than a century. Republicans appeared to pick up nine seats in the N.C. House, building a 77-43 majority, and added one seat in the N.C. Senate, where they will have a 32-18 edge over Democrats.” North Carolina sent 6 Republicans and 7 Democrats to represent the state in the 112th Congress. The 113th, thanks entirely to GOP legislative gerrymandering, has 9 Republicans and 4 Democrats.

Even the bombastic Romney-Ryan won easily. There were reports of Virginia Foxx playing a fiddle on election night as she basked in the warm glow of the NCDP burning to the ground.

But Saturday a ray of sunshine broke through these dark clouds revealing a little blue over North Carolina and giving Democrats some hope for the future.

Randy Voller was elected as the State Chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party Saturday afternoon. Chairman Voller was considered to be the scrappy grassroots candidate who traveled throughout the state winning endorsements and support for his campaign. He defeated former conservative congressman and gubernatorial candidate Bob Etheridge in a close race.

Randy is quite an interesting guy. He's the Mayor of Pittsboro and the Democratic Chair for Chatham County which had amazing results for Dems in 2012. He is also a board member of the Progressive Democrats of North Carolina. Here is his approach:

In Chatham County, we revitalized the Democratic Party by rebuilding from the grassroots up through the precincts to the county level. Party rebuilding in Chatham did much more than put a new structure in place. Rebuilding our Party revitalized our community as we implanted a stronger infrastructure that wins elections for Democrats, elects women and minorities and raises money from the small sustaining donors at the grassroots-- the very things that a once effective Democratic Party used to do really well.

...Where some see devastation and fear the loss of influence that has sent transactional donors to the new power brokers in the General Assembly and the Governor's Mansion, I see opportunity.

Voller’s win signals that the insiders and consultants have long ago left the dance and with them the old money that kept them in power. Now is an opportunity to build the party and with it attract new donors. North Carolina is still the 10th largest State with a growing Latino and Asian population. It also has a long tradition of great Progressive minded Politicians.

2016 is right around the corner and the NCDP is going to need all the help it can get. North Carolina will again play a critical role in Presidential Elections and Republicans know this. It is how they beat us to the punch last time.

But now there is a glimmer of hope. The Vice-Chairs of the Party elected Saturday, most notably Zach Hawkins and Andy Ball, are also total rockstars with strong grassroots background who are the party’s future leaders.

It certainly is a new day in North Carolina as a complete outsider takes the reigns of the party’s future. His vision and approach couldn’t come at a better time. As a nation we need him to succeed. And as a Democratic leader himself in North Carolina, Rep. Brad Miller is also eager to see Randy succeed in building and strengthening the party.

Randy's reputation both as a mayor and a party leader is a grassroots progressive. I think he will pay more attention to the grassroots than to the Democratic establishment, which is what we need right now. Grassroots Democrats are pretty progressive, and the establishment is the business wing. The Democratic establishment's power has been from raising money by peddling "access." A lot of the contributors who gave to establishment Democrats in the past are Republicans or nominal Democrats. The Democratic establishment really doesn't have any access to peddle to them now. If North Carolina Democrats are going to get back in the game, it's not going to be because of establishment money, but grassroots energy.

The election wasn't all about the grassroots and the establishment, of course. Some grassroots progressives really think we need a chair who is known statewide, and Randy isn't yet. But I think the most important thing we need in a state chair is someone who will work with grassroots Democrats. Randy knows how to do that.