A common complaint among many people is that government, politicians and government entities are not responsive to the needs and concerns of average, ordinary citizens. That there are no easy, direct routes for ordinary people in order to have meaningful communications and relationship with government and the people who run it.

An initiative I wrote about a while ago called Government 2.0 is an example of a massive effort on the part of government to directly engage citizens through the creative and innovative use of social media such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, and other web 2.0 technologies. I’ve been wading into the pool of government 2.0 initiatives the past few months and have found some very fascinating stuff. On the surface, a lot of it seems to be good, ready access to officials. The true test of whether or not these efforts are sincere and truly an honest effort to engage citizens, is if average, ordinary folks who wish to be engaged with government can actually engage government using these tools.

By that, I mean does the government entity or official using social networks censor critical comments in blogs or Facebook pages? Do government officials actually monitor their Twitter and Facebook accounts and do they actually read the messages from citizens? Do these officials act on these messages that are directly or indirectly apparent in their work? Do these regular citizens who contact government officials actually get a response? Are these responses real responses instead of just form letters?

Another measure which I think is more telling is can activists — another name for engaged, politically active citizens who are organized into interest groups — avail themselves of these technologies and are these technologies useful to their advocacy work? Do activists find using these technologies easy and communicating with officials through these channels an effective way to engage with government? Does the use of these technologies actually result in access for activists? In short, does the use of such technologies actually result in a more transparent, more responsive government? By doing, so, is society more democratic as a result?

Engaging with Gov 2.0

OK, now that we have established that government offices, officials and politicians are on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc., now what? What’s the best way for ordinary citizens and activists to engage government using these tools? Should you just start Tweeting away? Should you start Facebook-friending your government official, office and politician of interest or become a fan of their Facebook page? What about blogs – do you just start reading and commenting on the blogs?

I guess I am trying to ask the question of how does one have meaningful engagement using these tools? If you are an activist organization which generates lots of press releases, for example, is it a good idea to inundate a government office or official with your press releases? Or how about Twitter messages? How much is too much before someone starts treating your attempts at meaningful communication as spam and therefore ignores you or worse, blocks you?

I think it all goes back to social media 101 — be polite, be respectful, go to it with an attitude of wanting to have an honest conversation, do some listening and observing first before you dive in and start engaging. When you do engage make sure to observe proper behavior and decorum. This should get you started on good footing. The rest is just following the blog, Twitter or Facebook conversation regularly and trying to be a productive and engaged part of the community. After all, isn’t that what social media is all about—fostering community?

Some examples of Government 2.0

Given that I am interested in Philippine-American relations and human rights, Government 2.0 as practiced by the Department of State is something worth looking into. Visiting the web site of the Department of State yields their main links to social media:

• DipNote blog
• Facebook Page
• YouTube Channel
• Flickr Photo Site
• Twitter Site

Another person of interest is the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines and wouldn’t you know, a simple Google search yields the info that she is a blogger!

• Ambassador Kristie Kenney’s blog

The Personal Democracy Forum blog is an excellent source of information about technology and its political use. I saw an article there recently that detailed a new initiative by the State Department to engage with activist groups directly called “Ask U.S.” Their initial effort is a meeting with representatives of activist groups from the Save Darfur Coalition and the Genocide Intervention Network that will be broadcast online. One piece of info I got from that is Special Envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, is keen for direct channels of communication with the public and civil society groups. His posts in the DipNote blog, therefore, are worth watching out for by people interested in the Sudan and human rights activism in general.

A citizen or activist group, therefore, who wishes to engage the State Department in some way is well-advised to take advantage of these free resources to have a direct conversation with these officials. It is all online, it is all free and it sure as hell beats trying to write emails and letters in hard copy and waiting for a response. Another way a group can use this is to put their press releases online and to put messages in Twitter or Facebook with links to these releases. While it is no guarantee that they will be read, it is good to put the releases out there for the officials (and the public) to see and if they are curious to actually link to it and read it. I would say at the very least, social media is a good supplement to traditional means of disseminating news and press releases through the press and by email to official channels.

This compilation of resources combine my interests in new media technology and citizen-centered political advocacy. Reading about, exploring, and using these resources have been educational to me in learning how to be an effective advocate, how best to harness the latent power of ordinary citizens for social and political change, and what tools are available on the Internet to help an individual be an active, engaged citizen.

This list is not meant to be exhaustive. It is a compilation of what I think are the best resources available from reputable organizations which deal with issues and politicians in a non-partisan way and which seek to promote greater transparency from the government and elected officials.

Online Resources for Researching Information about the Government

Open Congress

OpenCongress brings together official government data with news coverage, blog posts, public comments, and more to give you the real story behind what’s happening in Congress. Small groups of political insiders and lobbyists already know what’s really going on in Congress. Now, everyone can be an insider.

Show Us the Data

Show Us the Data: Most Wanted Government Documents is collecting examples of government documents and data that are unclassified and should be easily available to the public online, but are not.

Open Secrets: Center for Responsive Politics

OpenSecrets.org is the nation’s premier independent website tracking the influence of money on U.S. politics, and how that money affects policy and citizens’ lives.

OpenCRS: Congressional Research Reports

Taxpayers spend over $100 million a year to fund the Congressional Research Service, a “think tank” that provides reports to members of Congress on a variety of topics relevant to current political events. Yet, these reports are not made available to the public in a way that they can be easily obtained. Open CRS provides citizens access to CRS Reports already in the public domain and encourages Congress to provide public access to all CRS Reports.

Online Resources On Elected Officials and for Contacting People in Government

The White House: Office of Public Engagement

The Office of Public Engagement creates and coordinates opportunities for direct dialogue between the Obama Administration and the American public, while bringing new voices to the table and ensuring that everyone can participate and inform the work of the President.

Project Vote Smart

Project Vote Smart provides detailed information – biographical information, campaign finances, interest groups ratings, issue positions, and public statements – on elected officials including the President, members of Congress, state officials and leadership in state legislatures.

GovLuv

GovLuv uses Twitter to connect you instantly with your representatives in government.

General Sources of Information that Relate to Citizen Advocacy

Sunlight Foundation Insanely Useful Web sites

The Sunlight Foundation was founded in 2006 with the non-partisan mission of using the revolutionary power of the Internet to make information about Congress and the federal government more meaningfully accessible to citizens.

Personal Democracy Forum

Blog focusing on the latest news and information on the intersection between technology and politics.

Book Recommendation

The Citizen’s Guide to Lobbying Congress

Exactly what the title says it is. A handy, practical guide for citizens to lobby their Congressional representatives.

I first heard about this book in an Open Left blog diary by John Emerson and was immediately intrigued by Walter Karp’s unconventional views and his conclusions on the political behavior of political parties and politicians.

Originally published in 1973, Indispensable Enemies argues that to truly understand power in American society, one should look closely at the two major political parties, the Democrats and Republicans. Rather than looking at prominent politicians or elected leaders, lobbyists, or corporations, Karp argues that to truly understand power in America, the focus should be on party organizations and the bosses who rule these organizations on the local, state and national level. Karp argues that nothing happens in American politics, government and hence, society at large, without the approval and consent of these bosses. However, these bosses and the decisions they make, although they have a big impact in society, are largely invisible to the general public.

Emerson does a nice job summarizing the main thrust of the book at Open Left so rather than recreate the wheel I will paraphrase the next several paragraphs from his essay to illustrate the book’s main points.

• The parties and the party professionals work for themselves first and foremost. A party’s ruling clique always would rather maintain control of a losing party than win elections and lose control.

• Parties do not depend on elected officials for funding. Elected officials who don’t have their own organizations and who can’t self-finance are pretty much dependent on the parties. The parties get their funding from donors, and donors give money to prevent action as they do to get action (or have no action at all).

• Party leaders do not want reform, progress, or change. Anything new makes their job harder and threatens to bring in new, competing leaders.

• The two party oligarchies support each other against insurgents of either party. Often, disputes are highly-choreographed dog-and-pony shows leading to predetermined conclusions.

In addition, the parties and bosses take the following steps in order to keep their control and power over the party hierarchy:

• They can sabotage a popular candidate within their own party because he is an insurgent or because he seems a likely candidate to take over the party organization.

• They concede small or large areas to the opposition party. This ensures a standoff where leaders of the two parties broker deals at the expense of their supporters.

• The bosses can split their own party so that one faction can be played off against the other. They can also build campaigns around wedge issues, peripheral to the actual business of governance, which can set a faction of voters in one party against a faction in the other party.

• The bosses can neglect or sabotage outreach to new supporters. The party pros do not want enthusiastic new supporters if these supporters are likely to make unfamiliar and inconvenient demands. What they want is predictable, tried-and-true party regulars making specific, limited demands. Voter enthusiasm is not a good thing, but rather a problem to be solved.

• The two parties and the liberal and conservative wings of each party often secretly collude with one another by killing inconvenient measures that their adversaries need to seem to support, but do not want to see passed.

Unrelentingly dark and pessimistic, Indispensable Enemies was an exhausting book to read all the way to the end as Karp gives example after example of actual events in U.S. history seen through the lens of his analysis of party power politics. Karp skewers both Republicans and Democrats including damning passages about some sacred cows of American Progressive politics such as Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, the New Deal and trade unions.

The shining light in an otherwise, dark and depressing book is Karp’s belief that the antidote to the power and chicanery of the political parties is an engaged, active citizenry.

“[I]t should be clear that the essential and inherent danger to party power is independent political ambition, the presence in public life and public office of men who ignore and defy the dictates of party bosses and oligarchies. To preserve their power, party organizations must try constantly to eliminate the political condition that breeds independent political ambition. That condition, in general, is the free political activity of the citizens themselves, their own efforts to act on their own behalf, to bring into the public arena issues that interest them and to encourage by their activity the ambition of public men.

[T]he condition safest for party power is public apathy, gratitude for small favors, and a deep general sense of the futility of politics. Yet there is nothing natural about political apathy, futility and mean gratitude. What lies behind them is not ‘human nature’ but the citizens’ belief that politics and government can do little to better the conditions of life; the belief that they are ruled not by men whom they have entrusted with their power but by circumstances and ‘historical forces,’ by anything and everything that is out of human control; the belief that public abuses and inequities are somehow inevitable and must be endured because they cannot be cured (Karp, 110).”

Karp’s book, therefore, is a manifesto for citizens to actively oppose and depose the party bosses and political parties who, by their actions and behavior, have betrayed the public trust. It is a call for citizens to be active participants in deciding their civic fate and a call for ordinary people to take back the reins of American democracy from those who have taken it away.

Despite having been published more than twenty years earlier, Karp’s book still deeply resonated with me and his analysis of American political power and history rang true for today’s politics. It might be a bit outdated in this age of 24/7 news cycle, the Internet and web 2.0—but I still give Indispensable Enemies five out of five stars! If you can find a copy in a library (it was out of stock in Amazon the last time I checked) I highly recommend borrowing it. This book is highly recommended to get an essential understanding of power politics.

Pundit Chris Cilizza pooh-poohed the idea of the “Rise of Independents” in this Washington Post article.

Despite the reported increase of Americans self-identifying as independents according to the latest poll results Cilizza decides to throw some rain on independents’ parade by saying:

Before we get too far down that road, it’s important to remember that talk of a third party and the reality of it are too far different things.

He cites a study that shows deep divisions among people who consider themselves independent, the very real institutional hurdles to building a third party, and that even if a third party candidate does emerge in the 2012 or 2016 elections, that it is highly unlikely that their candidacy will lead to the creation of a viable third party. He cites the example of Ross Perot to illustrate this point.

Cilizza’s whole angle on the rise of independents irks me. Because the entire thrust of his piece was to defend the status quo of the two major parties. His entire piece was basically an argument directed to independents saying “you are in no position and will never be in a position to really challenge the status quo. You might as well just give it up and play politics the way the two major parties want you to play it. Get with the program and STFU!”

Cilizza wasn’t that blunt but he essentially meant the exact same thing if you followed his arguments to their logical conclusion.

There are so many ways Cilizza could have handled this. He could have asked the question: why are so many people so disgusted by BOTH major parties that they are self-identifying in rejection of them in far greater numbers than in the past? What makes them stink so much that people are rejecting their label?

Then perhaps rather than piss on independents and third-party supporters and condescend to them, he could have turned the tables on the major parties and asked of them: both major parties must be doing something wrong – what can they do to get people back into the fold? What can they do to get people to support them and self-identify along their lines instead of just being compelled to play politics on their terms because two-party politics is all the system supports and is built on?

Of course, he doesn’t do that. He would much rather poke a stick at independents without acknowledging the fact that they are constituents and that declaring independence is an effective way ordinary people can and have registered their disgust with the failed policies and politicians of the status quo. Isn’t that a democratic act and which deserve a bit more respect than he is giving them?

The bottom line for people like Cilizza is to defend the two-party system. The bottom line for independents like me is that democracy is broken, the two major parties are not cutting it in terms of representing the interests of Americans in any adequate way, and we must find a way to fix this broken system. The logical extension of the independent point of view is to ask: what needs to be done to revitalize democracy? What needs to be done to promote greater participation, transparency, and to involve ordinary people in democratic practices? What needs to be done so people in positions of representing The People can have their trust and confidence?

Cilizza and those who make the same arguments that he does completely miss and dismiss these points because deep down they could care less about participatory democracy. They only care about the two major parties and preserving the status quo. They are perfectly content to serve as shills to the two major parties without challenging them or demanding that they answer all the hard questions that deserve to be posed to them.

I got this in my e-mail inbox today from blogger and CUIP independent activist Nancy Hanks. Although I am not a member of CUIP, I fully support and respect their efforts to organize and serve as a valuable resource to political independents nationwide.

Nancy accurately observes that independent voters and their perspectives are not being represented accurately — or at all — in the mainstream media. There are a lot of polls out there mainly concerned about the critical independent vote in the upcoming mid-term elections. Yet these polls are being interpreted by media outlets without comment and without input from “on-the-ground” independents.

The essay below is the one attempt to reclaim the narrative in favor of independents active in the CUIP networks and in the independent movement. The author, Jackie Salit, is the president of IndependentVoting.org.

I have my own thoughts on this and will write more later. I am publishing Salit’s essay in full.

Serious As a Heart Attack: The Independents’ Story

By: Jackie Salit

When we finally get far enough down the road on health care reform, it will become clear that a driving force in the intensity of the fight was a heart attack. Not the medical kind. The political kind.

Independents swung decisively to Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. And it is this shift by independents – who repositioned themselves from center-right to center-left – that gave the Republican right the political equivalent of cardiac arrest.

In 1992, 19 million independents voted for Ross Perot. In 2008, 19 million independents voted for Barack Obama. Over the span of 15 years, the largely white, center-right independent movement re-aligned itself with Black America and progressive-minded voters.

This did not happen out of the blue. It did not happen by magic. It happened because the progressive wing of the independent movement did the painstaking and often controversial work of bringing the Perot movement and the Fulani movement together at the grassroots. The Fulani movement refers to the country’s leading African American independent, Dr. Lenora Fulani, who exposed the black community to independent politics and introduced the independent movement to an alliance with Black America.

No doubt the dramatics that the right wing brought to the Town Hall meetings this summer were intended for the television cameras. But the organizers, strategists and radio personalities who orchestrated the theatrics had a particular audience in mind: Independents. If they could tarnish Obama’s image with indies, they could damage the black and independent alliance and re-establish the Republican Party as an influential force amongst independents. Some of that could be accomplished, they felt, by claiming Obama’s health plan would drive up the national debt – a concern that animated the early Perot movement. Some Republican strategists felt that if they simply branded Obama a socialist, it would scare independents away – not from the health care plan (everyone recognizes a plan of some kind will get passed) but away from the center-left coalition that elected him.

If indies are feeling somewhat disillusioned with President Obama over the health care reform fight, it has more to do with fears that he is being overly influenced by the partisans in Congress. Since independents voted for him to be a more independent president, it’s easy to see how some felt disappointed by his handling of the Republican onslaught. Obama’s independent appeal was based on his challenge to the prevailing culture of Clintonian opportunism in the Democratic Party and partisanship inside the Beltway. Put another way, the independent vote for Obama was an effort to define a new kind of progressivism, one that was not synonymous with Democratic Party control.

After years of hard work and organizing, independents have become a sought-after partner in American politics. They elected President Obama and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, arguably the country’s two most independent and pragmatically progressive elected officials. No wonder the Republican Party right wants a clawback.

Independents are vulnerable to being peeled away by the Republican right. The Pew Research Center reports that were the 2010 midterms to be held today, independents would lean towards Republicans by a 43 to 38 percent margin. But, the evolution of a 21st century independent movement is not that simple. First, the movement is very fluid and very new. Historical movements develop through twists and turns, not in a straight line. The far right has attempted to take over the independent movement before. In 1994, Newt Gingrich crafted the “Contract with America” to woo Perotistas back into the Republican tent. And in 2000, social conservative Pat Buchanan hijacked the Reform Party presidential nomination, though he was roundly repudiated by independents in the general election.

If Republicans are increasing their influence among independents, it’s also because the Democratic Party Left has not been a friend to the independent movement. Sure, Democrats were happy that indies broke for Obama. But they were disappointed that we didn’t become Democrats. They equate progressivism with being in the Democratic Party. But they’re wrong.

Neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party has been enthusiastic about the development of indies as a third force. For different reasons, surely. But they share a common goal: to maintain the primacy of two-value logic (where there is only one or the other, never neither) and make sure independents are passive companions. That’s one reason that the fight for open primaries – which allow independents to cast ballots in every round of voting – and the campaign to appoint independents to the Federal Election Commission are so important. Those fights are about our right to participate and our right to represent our interests in changing the political culture.

The independent movement went left in 2008, after many years of grassroots organizing to link it to progressive leadership. Now the right wants to peel it back. Obama, presumably, wants to hold on to the partnership, but must also privilege his own party, which turns independents off and makes them more susceptible to Republican attacks. Meanwhile, independents are working hard at the grassroots to hold our own.

John Emerson has just posted an excellent piece over at the Open Left blog called “What is Populism and Why are Democrats Afraid of It?”

It is a capsule history lesson on populist influences on the Democratic Party from the post Civil War period up to the 1970s and how populism as a political philosophy and an organizing principle has been marginalized in the Democratic Party since then.

Populism is politics which opposes wealth and power in the name of  the common folk. It takes both left wing and right wing forms and sometimes degenerates into bigotry and attacks on minorities. Populism can be faked, and that is being done right now – e.g., Limbaugh and Beck. Populist appeals can be made by spokesmen for special interests who have no intention of fulfilling their democratic promises, but who are just opportunistically faking populism as part of an attack on some enemy.

Since the Fifties the Democratic Party, whose populist wing was critically important during the New Deal, has avoided and repressed populism. Individual populists such as Paul Wellstone have occasionally been elected, often in defiance of the party machine, but they have never had much influence in the party. The Democratic strategy has been cooperation with big business, and their slogan has been “a rising tide lifts all boats” — “win-win” solutions where everyone wins and nobody loses. This worked pretty well until about 1970, when business started to pull away from the deal, and since that time it’s been mostly downhill for the Democrats, for labor, and for the average American.

Emerson concludes that:

• Democrats have crippled themselves by renouncing populism and appealing primarily to big business interests since the 1970s
• This strategy has made Democrats incapable of counterattacking against blatantly dishonest fake-populist appeals by the Republicans.

The antidote to this dilemma, according to Emerson:

• Progressives need to take the Democratic Party over from the bottom up and bounce the present leadership.
• To do this will be labor-intensive: require a lot of face to face contact, meetings, and money.
• Emerson imagines that a million (or ten million) Democrats donating $50 a year each and volunteering 5 hours a week to a dissident progressive group will be a substantial force.
• With a genuine populist appeal, you could form such a group.

Liberal Arts Dude sez:

Since Thomas Frank’s book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” Emerson’s essay is the first serious treatment in recent years I have seen on the Democratic Party abandoning populism as an organizing principle from Progressive circles. I believe Emerson is very much on to something. Having abandoned being the political party of the common folk in its actual policies (lest anyone ever forget that NAFTA, CAFTA, “free trade,” Wall Street bailouts were largely engineered and pushed by Democratic politicians) any claims by the national Democratic Party of being the party of the common people is pretty much just rhetorical and symbolic and everyone recognizes it.

Emerson’s observation that a dissident progressive group can potentially become a powerful force which can eventually take over the Democratic Party is interesting and intriguing. Such an organization, he asserts, can be formed and grow mass membership based on appeals to true, full-throated economic populism.

Although I agree with Emerson’s observation that there is a potential mass audience and membership pool for a dissident group to draw upon I see several problems that such a group forming would need to solve:

1. Salesmanship. The Democratic “brand” for populism is tainted. Decades of anti-Populist policies and rhetoric have effectively alienated many populists and people who think along those lines from the Democratic Party. If a dissident Progressive movement is going to offer “vote more Democrats into office” as its main selling point to attract members, volunteers and to raise money, there is absolutely no way they will be taken seriously. As long as the national Democratic Party is effectively anti-populist, there is just no way to sell a dissident splinter faction of the same party as being truly populist.
2. There are already “real” populists who are organized and who are already formed into third parties and alternative political movements both on the Left and on the Right. The Tea Party folks, Libertarians, the Green Party, the various Socialist-inspired organizations, many independents all pretty much use populist-inspired messages of representing ordinary peoples’ interests against the interests of big corporations and big government. These folks are true believers enough in populism to be organized politically already along those lines. What role – if any – can these organizations play in a dissident, populist Progressive organization? Will they be competing for the same audience and money? Will they have an adversarial relationship or is there room for cooperation? They are, after all, populists in the same fight against the same powerful interests, aren’t they?
3. The “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” factor. Republicans have tapped successfully into the latent populism in the general population better than the Democrats by appealing to people based on powerful wedge issues such as gay marriage, abortion and illegal immigration. With the Democrats unable to offer anything coherently resembling a program that truly represents the economic interests of working folk, socially conservative working class people have tended to identify with and vote with the Republicans – the party of social conservatism. Can a dissident, Progressive group appeal to such voters? Is a message of economic populism enough to attract working class, largely white, social conservatives into becoming members and supporters of an openly Leftist organization?
4. What about structural, electoral reform as a starting point? I was glad that a couple of posters in the comments section referenced re-legalizing electoral fusion and explicitly mentions the role that a third party like the Working Families Party has played in New York State where fusion is legal and the third party has served as a balancing force which has pushed politics of both major parties towards more Progressive directions. Structural reforms that author Theresa Amato talks about in this post explicitly advocates for reforms that are designed to open up and level the political playing field for independents and third parties. Will Emerson’s dissident, populist progressive group be opposed to such reforms (being a splinter faction of the Democratic party) or will it encourage, support and even join in the fight to institute such reforms?

I believe Emerson is on the right track in his thinking and I encourage him to continue. I am a potential recruit to any type of Progressive organization that offers a true, full-throated economic populism to the big business, corporate thrust of the national Democratic Party. However, I am not a Democrat. I am an independent. And there are many others like me who are disillusioned with the Democratic Party and have instead, explored third party and alternative politics. People like me will need to have a better message than “vote Democratic in the next elections” as its main call to action after I have gotten fired up by appeals to economic populism.

In The Tea Party Movement: A Populist Potential, I first explored the possibility of a cooperative effort by activists from the Left and Tea Party activists on the Right. I made the argument that something like that happening may not be as far fetched as it might sound. The Poli-Tea blog took the question further in a series of posts and a fascinating discussion ensued in the comments section.

• When Fascism Comes…
• Toward a Popular Front…
• Folk Politics and Tea Party…
• Tea Party Activism…

My belief in the likelihood of such an alliance has gotten tempered, however, by recent events. This Philadelphia Inquirer report on the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh says it all:

Government officials decided a massive, preemptive police presence was necessary to avoid the raucous demonstrations that marred past economic summits. They established a virtual police state that quickly extinguished any spark of dissent, and a federal court ruling gave them free rein to do so.

To begin with, there was an oxymoronic requirement that groups get permits to march and demonstrate during the summit. Requiring citizens to obtain permission to gather, let alone speak, violates the spirit of the First Amendment.

But even demonstrators who had permission faced zealous intimidation. It started during the first demonstrations of the week, before the summit commenced. Police delayed one properly credentialed march and denied another group access to a public bypass…

Upholding the city’s right to employ such tactics in this early legal challenge set an unfortunate tone for the summit. While the judge’s ruling may not have been the final word on possible constitutional violations, it gave the police a pass to do as they pleased in handling the larger planned and unplanned demonstrations later in the week.

The police did just that, arresting, gassing, jailing, and dispersing protesters at will. Thousands of riot-gear-clad police and National Guard troops employed an arsenal of ear-piercing sound effects, rubber bullets, clubs, and chemicals to herd and corral marchers. Protesters and their messages were penned safely into nooks far away from the eyes and ears of the summit participants.

The Tea Party movement decries statism and encroachment on civil liberties but there wasn’t a big outcry — not even a peep — among Tea Party activists about police abuses of protesters at the G-20 summit. Also, despite being highly vocal and critical about economic issues and economic problems, the Tea Party movement is pretty much absent when it comes to protesting against the G-20, WTO, World Bank, NAFTA, CAFTA, and “Free Trade” Agreements. The latter three especially — actual policies pursued by both Republicans and Democrats — have been the cause of the US’s shift from a manufacturing to a service-sector economy. The economic decline that resulted is supposed to be a main source of anger among the Tea Party movement.

Common Ground

There are a lot of things where Left and progressive activists and sympathizers share common ground with Tea Party activists. For example, if you implement a large-scale survey on “big picture”questions to both populations, I bet you will find a lot of overlap between the Left and Right. Examples of such questions might be:

• Do ordinary people have a strong voice and power in American democracy? Should they?
• Do the two major parties actually represent the interests of ordinary people? Should they?
• Is the country is being led effectively by our elected leaders from either of the major parties?
• Should a wider spectrum of perspectives, viewpoints and solutions be represented in public discourse and institutions than just Republican or Democrat?
• Do the mainstream political parties care more for their own internal interests rather than the interests of the country as a whole?
• Will you be willing to join a third political party or vote for a third party or independent candidate in an election?
• Will you be willing to participate in political activities and actions that are designed to address the issues above?

My belief on that overlap is where my hopes for a Left-Right alliance comes from. But when actual events such as the G-20 Summit reveal when push, literally, comes to shove on issues that should matter to them, the Tea Party movement and conservatives in general are nowhere to be found, I have no choice but temper my enthusiasm.

I am still a believer on the prospects of such an alliance happening in the future. After all, political efforts that function outside the purview of the Democrat and Republican parties are effectively marginalized in American politics. It’s not a big stretch to then ask the question: why can’t marginalized groups from both Left and Right combine forces and work towards opening up the American political system? It will take having each other’s backs for such a cooperative effort to happen between Left and Right. We’re not there yet.

I am a registered independent because I feel neither of the two major parties truly represents my interests. Absent a strong third party movement, the best thing voters who are fed up with the status quo can do is to take the reins and be active and engaged participants in the civic arena and to make their voices heard so they cannot be ignored. In short, be active, engaged constituents.

As a liberal I am quite happy when I see this type of civic engagement among ordinary people and voters when they come out in force in support of things I care about such as the public option in healthcare or when they take a critical eye to the goings on in Washington DC and expose corruption and betrayals of Progressive interests by legislators who claim to represent the Progressive point of view.

However, the Left does not have a monopoly on civic engagement. Conservatives and Libertarians have as much right as I do to take the reins of asserting their fundamental rights and to make their case by being active in the public sphere. Thus, despite my disagreements with them on ideological and policy grounds, I can’t help but notice how effective the Tea Party movement has been at getting the attention of the Establishment and the nation at large.

Sure, they have leaders and a mass media megaphone in talk show host Glenn Beck, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. And the extreme, right-wing views of many of them make for good, sensational television. But my readings and observations lurking in Tea Party-related blogs and discussion boards indicate to me that more is going on under the surface than just racism, xenophobia, gun fetish, anti-Obama sentiment, and gullible, uninformed folks being manipulated in Astroturf efforts by conservative public relations and lobbying firms.

What I am observing (you might consider my online ethnography project on the Tea Parties) is that Tea Party folks are talking the language of taking the reins as ordinary citizens to be engaged in the civic arena.

Here are a couple of quotes:

We need to stop voting by letters the way preschoolers color by numbers. It’s time we take all the letters away and stop taking the easy way out. We need to vote people not parties, and issues not politics. That is what these tea parties and protests are about—taking the government back into our own hands where it was always meant to be. (From bhamteaparty.blogspot.com/)

I’m a home grown American citizen, 53, registered Democrat all my life. Before the last presidential election, I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party neither represented my views nor worked to pursue issues important to me. Now, I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is, I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. There must be someone who can represent me. Please tell me who you are. Tell me you are there and you’re willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now. (from We the People event)

Why is this important and why should we care?

Anyone who feels disenfranchised in the political arena dominated by the two major parties should be paying attention to the Tea Party movement. Because the Tea Parties are the first, high-profile and successful organizing effort that has successfully tapped into the wide dissatisfaction that most Americans have towards the two major parties, government and the direction of the country in general. I always thought that the first, big anti-Establishment movement to tap into this societal anger and disaffection would come from the Left. Apparently the Right beat us to it.

Yes, their activism is unfocused and do not seem to coalesce (yet) into a coherent political strategy and program. For example, they don’t seem to have any plans on running their own candidates in elections against Establishment candidates. Many of them don’t seem to have goals of the big political picture beyond obstructing and defeating Barack Obama’s policies. Many of them even assert that they are against third parties as a political strategy against the major parties. But if they are not for forming a third party, how do they plan on opposing the two major parties? Is this truly a political movement with anti-Establishment potential or more of a Glenn Beck cult of personality?

Time will tell whether or not the Tea Party phenomenon actually becomes an effective political movement against the Establishment. In my readings I am already seeing signs of savvy political sophistication among some Tea Party participants such as this blog and the comment on this post which cite how to take over precinct captain positions as a method of infiltrating and influencing the politics of the Republican Party from the bottom up. Are small-scale, local efforts such as this one going on already but are flying under the radar of popular consciousness?

This is a list of actions to take and organizations to join if one is interested in transforming American politics from two-party dominance. This list is pretty much one individual’s perspective—mine. I am sure others will have points to disagree with and will have items to add or subtract. I made this list primarily as a mental exercise to help myself think through some of the issues one faces as a citizen interested in participatory democracy and who finds the current political choices in mainstream American politics lacking.

This list is not meant to be exhaustive or comprehensive. It is designed as a starting point for discussion on answering the question “What can an individual DO about it?”

1. Join one of the two major political parties and work to change the party from within. I’m not kidding. There is absolutely nothing holding you back from actually contacting and join the local chapters of either the Republican or Democratic parties and being active in your local chapter. Develop your political resume and reputation by learning the ins and outs of politics within the party by volunteering, attending meetings and showing up for events.

For a Progressive, this may also include joining grassroots organizations such as Democracy for America and MoveOn which center their activism on Progressive reform of the Democratic Party. Do this for a while and with enough savvy and you might end up becoming an important figure in mainstream politics as a party officer, precinct captain, party leader, or heck, even a candidate for electoral office! How’s that for becoming the change you can believe in?

Essential reading if you want to take this route: Taking on the System by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga

2.  If your views are pretty non-mainstream and you can’t imagine joining either of the Democratic or Republican parties, you can join one of the existing and active minor parties such as the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the Working Families Party, the Socialist Party or the Democratic Socialists of America. The goal of third parties generally is to provide an alternative for voters to the two major parties in the electoral arena and to affect policy by influencing debates on issues important to the public.

One important thing to note: the vast majority of minor party candidates, with VERY few exceptions, routinely post miniscule results in elections. Very rarely does a candidate from outside the two major parties win elections anywhere in the U.S. You have to be prepared to accept that as part of the territory in getting involved in minor party politics. But this may be the route to take if you don’t want to compromise or water down your ideology and beliefs which can potentially happen if you take the route of working within the major parties. Also, some states are more conducive to organizing for third parties because of less restrictive ballot access laws and policies which encourage third-party political activity such as electoral fusion.

Essential readings if you want to take this route:

• Spoiling for a Fight by Micah Sifry
• In the Balance of Power by Omar Ali

3. Be active in the organizing effort among political independents. This effort is most visibly spearheaded by the Committee for a Unified Independent Party (CUIP). The aim of the CUIP is to harness the power of the numbers of the third of the electorate who are political independents to affect the policies of the two major parties. One thing to note about the CUIP: as an organization, its leaders has ties and a history with Ross Perot’s Reform Party movement in the 1990s. Their main organizing efforts at the moment are for open primaries, a growing nationwide public education campaign and supporting the candidacy of Michael Bloomberg for mayor in New York City’s mayoral elections. And they have their fair share of controversy and detractors. But if you count yourself an independent you need to at least check this group out because they are the only organization I am aware of that is actually doing public education campaigns, consciousness-raising and yes, organizing, serving as a resource for, and linking up independent activists throughout the country.

Essential reading if you want to take this route: We the Purple by Marcia Ford

4. Become active in a social issue that holds sway within the major parties. On the Democratic side these can be labor, immigration, the environment, gay rights, women’s rights, etc. Work or volunteer for a nonpartisan organization that does lobbying, advocacy and organizing centered on these issues as a way to learn the ropes and establish your reputation in reform circles. You will be surprised what you will learn and the contacts you will make after a year of working for or volunteering for such an organization.

For example, to get in the labor movement, you can join your local union. The AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition are the two largest union organizations in the U.S. United Professionals is the advocacy organization for white-collar workers in the labor movement. Working America is the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO for non-union households.

5. Join and become active in efforts to reform the electoral system and ease restrictive ballot access laws. Organizations such as Free and Equal Elections and FairVote are the most visible examples of organizations in the U.S which lobby, advocate and educate the public about electoral reform. If these issues interest you, you absolutely have to be a regular reader of the newsletter Ballot Access News by Richard Winger.

Essential reading if you want to take this route: Grand Illusion by Theresa Amato

For background: read this first [So You Want To Form A New Party? Hmmm, Come With Me]

The blog post above got me thinking about the best way to focus my political energies as someone who is dissatisfied with American politics as it is run by the two major parties. I’ve been a strong critic of the two major parties the past several years in my blogs. The post made me think about what I can do—as in concrete action—about my dissatisfaction with the two major parties.

I don’t want to be just someone who complains from the sidelines. I don’t want to become cynical and just throw up my hands at how corrupt and hopeless everything is and end up not participating in politics at all, including foregoing the basic act of voting in elections. If we truly live in a participatory democracy, I want in on the action.

I’ve been mulling the idea of alternative parties for some time now. I have always wondered about what it takes to form a new political party that will serve as an alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties. The link above illustrates pretty well the harsh realities of actually making it happen.

Basically the essay illustrates point by point the logistics of forming and growing an alternative political party on a nationwide scale. Bottom line: organizing and growing a political party from the ground up is a massive undertaking. Almost overwhelming is my perception of the very real hurdles alternative parties face: organizing, attracting supporters, ballot access laws which discriminate against minor parties, the challenges of finding and hiring experienced and competent staff for political campaigns, fundraising, running candidates in elections, and taking on candidates of the two major parties in the political arena. This is what you face if you are interested in building something new and which doesn’t exist in American politics.

OK maybe forming a third party may not be the most practical route to take for most of us who do not have the time, money, and energy to devote their lives to full-time organizing and fundraising. Given the above what’s the best strategy to take for the average citizen who is interested in political change from the status quo? What types of very real and very concrete steps can one take as an individual and a citizen who wants to participate in the democratic process?

The only option is to join something that already exists. Thankfully, there is a vast landscape of organizations out there that can accommodate the energies of someone who wants to contribute to efforts of making political change. Check out my list on Part 2!