Money for Organizing – Yes!
The amount of money spent on the US midterms was astronomic. Billionaires spent tens of millions to beat the California wealth tax. Elon Musk spent almost a quarter of a billion in Texas alone in political protection money for his business enterprises. They have it to spend obviously, and the US Supreme Court has eliminated any caps, so for these guys, politics is business and business is politics. Others spend millions every election cycle trying to influence politics, believing that is how progressive change is made. Perhaps many might argue that this election, they got their monies worth. All of us who have ever made any political donations were bombarded with text messages for Talarico, that was even admitted in the cold opener for Saturday Night Live. There’s another, better way to look at how to use big and little money to make change.
Randy Shaw, writing in the current issue of Social Policy and expounding on the same themes in a recent interview on Wade’s World, makes a very persuasive argument that the rich, philanthropists, and foundations would make more change and, in fact, build more sustainable and institutional power by funding community organizing at even a tenth of the level they are spending every two years in election cycles. Not surprisingly, it’s an argument that I’m very sympathetic to and supportive of, and not just because it’s the work we do and, in our self-interest, though admittedly it is.
Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, one independent study after another has established that the investment in building community organizing at the grassroots levels can’t be beat. Organizing builds something because it is an investment in collective action and mass organization. Political donations, as business investments, walking the line on “pay for play” and plain and simple corruption, might pay off, but general, public investments and even some of the corporate plays, are a crapshoot on an individual and a hope and a prayer they will deliver.
Randy is an organization and institution builder and political activist in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as the longtime director of the Tenderloin Legal Clinic and powerhouse behind BeyondChron, the Bay Area news source. His call is not just to the rich, but to community organizations to come together to collectively make the demand and pool their energy to push philanthropy and the rich to resource fundamental capacity building.
We’ve talked about a similar scheme that has been proposed by some political consultants for donations to match resources generated by community organizations so that they could expand their work. It might sound like the impossible and herding cats, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.
In our discussion, he also riffed in a way on the Talarico self-parody. His argument is that they wouldn’t be asking for one dollar or five dollars on repeat speed dial, “if it didn’t work.” His question is “why don’t we do this?” That answer is easier, even if takes us back to the earlier proposition. Politicians raise the money to build the list and the capacity to spend the money to make money. Larry Stafford with Progressive Maryland explained the process at ACORN’s international organizers meeting in Glasgow. The vicious circle there is that it takes money to make money, and that’s a phone call that we have long been making that has not been answered.
Maybe it’s the time to ask “Why not?” If we’re serious about making change and protecting democracy in the US and other countries, this is absolutely the time for everyone to pick up the phone, answer the email, and get in line to help.