Unsolicited opinions
The Leadership Institute, a former employer, is
launching a social networking site for campus conservatives. Now this of course comes 5 years after facebook and a few years after the College Republicans tried their own device. I haven't seen 'campus reform' but hope that it's great. The one common denominator I've noticed, and this transcends websites and databases, is that these things are structured never with the end user in mind, but rather, with the organization's needs and desires in mind. If one looks at college students, what are their natural wants and desires, what is their self interest, and how does this work towards it or not address it at all? I suspect, and I feel like I'm always debbie downer with this stuff, that this site will be of rather limited use other than to 100 students across the country who self-select into the universe. A better way to handle the situation would be to create information markets for the database, which is a way of using words I just made up to say that the central infrastucture here could feed into the various groups that already do campus organizing - so let's get to clear examples: setting up a new website that ranks professors, and collects both student information and that information about the specific professor. Or, slightly more controversially, offer a site that posts the papers and exams used in the classes as well. Play into the student's self-interest. Offer a bundle of books at cost and not at the enormous markups charged by their campus bookstore. Then, after doing this, collect the data and find out what students are most passionate about. Use these tactics to cast the widest net and then start bringing these people into the general conservative movement afterwards rather than expecting them to have the desire to advance abstract principles.
But again, no one asked me.
Labels: campuses, movement, organizing
Some old ideas, some gems, from an old co-worker
Ah, my Leadership Institute days had some good ideas and some great ideas.
Below are some good ideas for campus organizing.
Original ideas for campus organizing
A weakness of our movement is that all the resources and places where attacks can be issued are within large, expensive non-profit/public policy groups. These companies rely on profits and bottom-lines just like any free enterprise corporation, the effect is a static way of thinking that usually relies on the reliable and cautious. Any employee embracing risk and pushing the envelope will find opposition and eventual removal from these dinosaur organizations. What needs to happen is for a couple low key, non attention seeking organizations to start multiple website companies and watching groups. Low budget and lack of attention will keep these active freedom fighting associations free from the status seeking, infighting and caution of the bigger groups.
Create National Conservative Student Government Parties—develop a 5-10 step program of general steps on how to win.
Act as an “Activism Consultant” for student leaders instead of club building
Teach students to make the establishment play by their own rules with innovative, fun to do, edgy tactics. Make sure that the students are not simply stuck on an issue or generality. Activism requires that there is an enemy—be it a politician, professor, administrator or student leader. Moral indignation, defiance, and the war mindset all come into play when you can articulate who the evildoer is.
Dream-build--Brainstorm with contacts on what the problem is, what they want changed and how to get there. Ask the questions, steer the activists to the “right” conclusion on how to act. Don’t tell them directly what to do if you can help it—remember that you are an advisor and organizer, not a general.
Make sure contacts do most of the work, including the planning, financing, and recruiting. Allow the contacts to have ownership of the project
Cover their victory on your website and in friendly media. The effectiveness of “smashleftwingscum.com” was it motivated contacts to push the limits
Internally, develop a “levels system” a very basic guide showing what level of development our contacts are at. It is not up to us to grow them, they need to take the initiative. This is a good way to allocate limited resources.
“Air support”—we need a list of lawyers who will do pro bono work. We should have a formal letter from one of these attorneys that we can distribute to our people saying that if their rights are violated, an investigation will be done.
Step-by-step guide (could be fashioned to fit into a semester) on how to get a professor fired/punished/impeached. We need to prove the guide works soon so we can have testimonials and issue threats to liberal campuses as needed.
“Prof-Watch” “Starting where Horowitz left off” Make a checklist of professors we want to take down. Depending on who we choose, we will need to form bonds with group leaders at those schools. This page shouldn’t be displayed on the site until we can claim a couple victories.
Media evidence--Database of streaming and downloadable audio (text needs to be provided as well) of leftist professor rants must be on the site.
Language—we must not throw angry slurs or appear out of the mainstream when attacking these professors on the website. The idea is to create a consensus among the student body and relevant community members that this professor is a pariah. Accuse professors of “indoctrinating,” “aggressively suppressing free speech,” “lewd acts of behavior,” etc. Avoid phrases like evil, scum, moonbat, etc.
Monitoring pro-freedom-on-campus legislation.
Congressional and State Government Lobbying--Similar to Freedomworks we should have students lobby Congress for legislation guaranteeing specific rights on campus. We can easily build a long list of grievances that need to be addressed.
Legislative Watch. Have a section of the site showing what pro (and anti) conservative student bills are in congress, federal and state
Donor Wars—This is territory that conservatives have only breached once that I know of. Reaching and effectively communicating with the donors who give money to a liberal college.
Testimonial--Conservative Alumni at UCLA created a community organization that educated college donors on how liberal things had gotten. This group was eventually shut down, after doing a lot of damage. We must find a way to reach the donors.
We need to pick a couple schools and find ways to reach their donors. Distributing literature about how left wing the campus faculty at football games (athletes are donors) might be the best approach.
Build a database of campus donors—and send them a direct mailing letter asking for money as we use the stories of how liberal the professors on their beloved school have become
Get media coverage of left wing professors in paper and have alumni respond.
Set up community based “Concerned Alumni of _________” This group can co-sponsor actions with us and do all kinds of things we cant do on our own, such as destroy campus reputation, lower student attendance, etc. The group can also host town hall style meetings…
Website Idea: Replicate CampusActivism.org in every way possible. Best way would be to design a rightwingactivism.org of some sort. We could use a place to upload resources, share stories, etc
Website idea: Informer’s Corner—Similar to Bureaucrash, though we can do it far better…There should be a section (modeled with a Soviet-style poster look) where conservatives living on really liberal campuses can discreetly send us messages from the underground. . These conservatives will get emboldened to take action as they play into the idea that they are a freedom fighter. It is crucial that the site be graphically and rhetorically designed to create this dynamic
Hate group list from the “Northern Poverty Legal Center.” (closely modeled after Southern Poverty Law Center) The NWLC should actively attack SDS, MEC’cha and other campus affiliated left wing scum groups. Once we develop the lawyer list of pro bono folks, this will be more feasible.
Coalition building guide—every campus student body can be broken down into groups of like minded people. LI has found that pro-life and gun groups get the most attendance. We need to develop an internal study showing what the biggest groups of ideologically similar people are, and have it broken down demographically. With that information at hand, we need to build a profile on each group—who are they, gender, major, fraternity/sorority, etc. This is NOT to be limited to political views and issue positions alone. The study should take other groupings of likeminded people into account like religious affiliation. Within the profile on each demographic, we need to determine what issues, relating to the campus, they would be influenced by. So when our organizers are choosing a tactic, they will be better able to know what enemy to choose, and what issue to incorporate. Coalitions are not fixed alliances, they are created case-by-case. The intel we collect will make who to invite to what more scientific and reliable.
Interactive Conservative Calendar that activists can upload dates of events.
Labels: campuses, college, ideas, organizing
Groups with a field presence
From what little time and exposure I've had to DC, it was always striking to me how few organizations had a true field program. The political science nerd in me would note that this perhaps represents an 'inside' strategy versus an 'outside' strategy, but what ought to be added to the various lobbying strategies is that even an inside/access strategy is dependent on one's clout in the real world, in the outside the political circle world. You can focus on a specific niche or a specific type of person, but that niche/group really has to have a disproportionate impact on the rest of society. This is why I think college organizing is wise because it takes the 50% of people who go to college and starts to narrow the field. Not that there's any difference in the inherent dignity of a person, let me ward off the uber-Catholic friends of mine who will email tirades, but that there has to be some recognition that certain people in society are more influential than others. If one had a choice between converting a pastor or a retiree, one should focus on the pastor simply because of the greater number of people they have access to, and wider array of people they're exposed to.
Politically, it seems, few groups do this kind of 'outreach' or perhaps call it 'organizing' or what have you. And though it's related to communication and marketing, it's not quite the same. The easiest path is, of course, inviting people out to lunch and discussion, but it's not a professional lunch eating course either -- it's the personal connection with an ability to make change in an area, activate and train a motivated individual, and enable them to reach their full political potential.
Most groups, however, if they have a field program at all, seem to limit it to odd objectives. The Leadership Institute has had a strong field program for several years, and they set up center-right campus groups across the country, an admittedly good thing, but many of those groups end up being very transitory and very short-lived. It's not hard to understand why, because they are almost completely disconnected from a national movement. Instead of being a part of something larger, they are the entire political universe for their given topic. While at LI, I suggested taking the largest groups in the conservative 'movement' and then trying to start campus groups that would be affiliated with that separate organization, and then letting them handle the follow-up. You'd essentially be creating a youth movement for others. This fell on deaf ears, probably for a variety of reasons, but I think its essential truth still holds: that it's pointless to organize for its own sake, and that connection and access to a wider, larger movement is also essential for longer-term success.
As another example, most state parties have a field program, and certainly every serious campaign does as well - but to what end? After the election that momentum dies, their cause folds and they lay in wait for another day. Obama's answer to this after his campaign was to start an organization that would simply continue his campaign, Organizing for America, that would essentially lobby to enact his agenda. And that's smart, but I think, a bit greedy and incomplete. The wiser course of action would have embraced a degree of subsidiarity that is perhaps unconscionable to the center-left, and tossed those activists, groups and momentum off to their wide array of interest groups to strengthen them.
There is, I think, on some basic level a disconnect with entrepreneurialism that precludes some of this from their movement, but certainly the growth of recent groups proves that statement to be, at best, half-true. The center-left has grown their activist base, has done a great deal of organizing work, and has done a splendid job tying those people into the whole. Not only is the right unable to compete, but they are unaware of the immensity of the movement against them, and can only muster victories when the challenge should not have been competitive in the first place, and when the conditions are completely stacked against the other side.
The problems with center-right field organizing, then, are really only a minor problem in the grander crisis of a collapsing center-right movement.
Labels: organizing, politics, theory
Field Offices and campus organizing
I've written a few plans and considered good locations for campus organizing, and while there are always a variety of issues to consider, in an ideal world
1. Austin, TX
2. Berkeley, CA
3. Athens, GA
4. Ann Arbor, MI
5. Boston, MA
6. Madison, WI
A few other thoughts: you need someone to manage a small team in these areas, perhaps in their mid-20s, and then the best situation would be to hire 2-3 people straight out of college. The rationale for this is that you don't want these solo operations because it then either becomes a race to promote one's self above everything else, or it leads to a special brand of crazy. For me, it seems, mainly the latter. You would want to target two general types of places: those that are absolute leftist strongholds, and also cities/college towns in swing areas. This is why Austin outranks Boston, and why Madison might be better moved up the list. You want to reach people in these areas to help counteract the effect of a constant indoctrination in the classroom.
There are also some salient issues you could always organize around, issues like culture/heritage/identity, values/family/life/abortion, war/state/bureaucracy that are powerful wherever you go. It's always entertaining to see certain forced agenda topics try and take root in college, and are usually transitory. I recall one while I was an undergrad, where there was a push to be anti-gun. Well, in case you hadn't noticed, there isn't much gun crime in college and, as well, most colleges ban guns anyway. So, it's a loser of an issue. These natural, 'salient' topics, however, should prove organizable in any situation or area.
Labels: campuses, college, organizing, theory
The progression of Pro-Life disaffection
Having sat through a very mendacious speech about pro-life battles a few months ago, that was all heavy on how pregnancy centers were the only ways in which to save babies in the pro-life movement, a statement that is either woefully ignorant considering Dr. New's wonderful research on the effectiveness of legal restrictions or intentionally deceptive which I believe to be the case, it occurred to me that there must be a generally standard set of steps followed by individuals who become fervently pro-life.
I would write this out in a longer article, but I don't really have the time and don't really think I have the credibility and, pragmatically, the audience, regardless:
1- direct action
2- education
3- legal issues/lawsuits
4- legislation
5- culture
6- pregnancy centers
7- local area, the most micro, solving it one by one level
8- disaffection, burn out, apathy
From what little I can tell, and what I can tell about my own personal experience, that seems to be the steps that happen most often, in that order. People float into one and then slowly float into the next and move along the path until they reach burn out or apathy. The challenge would be to figure out how to contain this, slow it, or ideally stop it among pro-life activists so that they don't burn out and stay active.
I suspect that the best answer would be to highlight their individual successes in a constant, routine basis. The Gerard Foundation's "Life Prizes" which I lightly criticized previously, might be a part of that answer, as is the development of alternative media outlets among other solutions.
Labels: organizing, pro-life movement, theory
March for Life improvements
Ed Burke of the Logos Institute, which I had never heard of until today or at least do not recall,
wrote a critique of the March for Life that a friend sent to me recently. I found his observations to be very perfunctory and pedestrian. The March doesn't need a reinvention as much as it needs an evolution. I wrote and sketched out, at a previous pro-life position, an outline as to what that could be, if anyone was so curious I would be happy to share it if you want to email me for it. Of note, the friend who forwarded it claimed that some were trying to change and update the March, and others have made similar efforts in the past. Personally I have a difficult time attending only because it all seems like so much wasted opportunity.
Here's the bulk of the email:
The inherent idea behind the march can be put into question, but any teenager attending probably has the same thoughts. No, the real question is how to take this momentum that has at least 150k each year coming to the march, and more effectively use it.
Burke hits on part of that by mentioning the past use of lobbying to influence the legislators. However, any PoliSci 301 course can tell you that the difference between access-based and controversial-confrontational lobbying means that the latter won't work with issues that are 'divisive' - it's the grassroots, the candidate recruitment, the actual muscle behind the movement that has to make these clowns feel the heat so they'll find the light.
And sadly that heat is left to be brought by NRLC affiliates who are aged, tired, worn and too often complacent in old methods, tactics and history. Nellie Gray, God bless her, is who I had in mind when I wrote that sentence even though she's not NRLC.
Ways in which you could grab the march and use it for grassroots purposes:
1. training (already done by a few other groups) - too often the training is too academic though. People lose sight of the ways in which they can save a life, the actual way in which individual people make a difference. I find a lot of the NRLC crowd (I feel like I'm writing in way way way too big overgeneralizations here) who have this attitude of "we can do it, trust us, if only everyone did there'd be no abortion" and not tolerating alternative methods. We need a pro-life big tent, dare I say it, we need unity though perhaps not a unity flag.
The training ought to be: "here's how to make yourself useful for a CPC; here's how to run for office from scratch; here's how to convert anyone; here's how to shut down a clinic" and related topics -- make people believe they can make a real difference and jettison all the feel good stuff like pro-life t-shirts and the billion methods that don't save any lives.
2. activation/radicalization: set goals for people who attend, encourage results and not thinking the right thoughts
3. capturing the data: Rod Martin tried doing this with LifeHQ, with Sean O'Hare. God bless them both, that's something the March should have done in an organized fashion for the past decade at least. I heard they both got threatened by the March organizers. They should collect this data, work to measure and turn out more and more people each year with reliable numbers and not just the WAG's that they typically use, and then share that data with any and all groups within the respective state where the person is from.
Labels: organizing, politics, pro-life, pro-life movement, theory
Pro-life injustices, and its opportunity for outreach
Walter Hoye has been jailed in California for standing on a sidewalk with an unpopular message. His 'crime' was talking to people,
even the San Francisco Chronicle can't cover up the obvious in their story. Because of the content of his speech, because of what he was saying and what his personal principles are, he was jailed. This all leads one to the question of: does this offer an opportunity for group and activist development in churches. And I would have to say, probably not. Hoye's actions seem outside the range of normal church activities. Few churches, and virtually no Catholic churches, evangelize anymore or are used to such actions and activities. Using this as a catalyst seems stuck because our people are so unused to the tactic of taking any action outside simple prayer. They forget that prayer ought to rightfully lead to action. Prayer sanctifies as it leads one to move. That connection seems lost, so perhaps this incident can help us reach out to a different set of people: for example the "spiritual" moderates who would be offended by a pastor being jailed but are perhaps not of a particular denomination. I don't know, perhaps I'm overthinking this.
Labels: activism, organizing, pro-life, pro-life movement, theory
Conservatives on Twitter
Here's a
link to conservatives on twitter, a very interesting find. While twitter seems overrated, it does have some interesting organizing potential.
Labels: organizing, technology
Article: Stages of Radicalization
I've written
an article about my thoughts in radicalizing individual leaders and activists. This is part of my CounterMedia project, which has been slow-going for some time.
Labels: activism, leadership, movement, organizing, strategy, theory
5 books every college organizer should read
I was thinking about the various books that would be crucial for a college organizer to read, and as one who is not a fan of book learning as much as I am a fan of action, I thought that these five would be the best for your time not spent taking action:
1. Closing of the American Mind - Allan Bloom
2. Rules for Radicals - Saul Alinsky
3. Radical Chic - Tom Wolfe
4. I am Charlotte Simmons - Tom Wolfe
5. Dedication and Leadership - Douglas Hyde
Labels: books, campuses, college, conservativism, organizing
Natural Student Issues
For campus organizing, many of the groups doing good work on colleges are really working on esoteric and extraneous issues to what are properly understood as natural student issues. This is somewhat related to the political science terms "preferences/salience" and "popularity" meaning that the intensity of attention to one issue is different than a menu-list of issues. For instance, Newt Gingrich has his "
American Solutions" which, at times, seems a bit silly. He lists a hundred or more potential policy solutions, which I suppose is good for think-tank types. But it represents a coupling of divergent policies that are popular, but very few which are actually salient, which people are intensely interested in. For another example,
Students for Saving Social Security is a great idea, and a great group, but it's working against the natural salience on campus on a variety of what could be conservative issues. No 18-22 year old is naturally talking about social security reform. These represent strategic choices, grander than the specific tactics that some organizations use to pitch their products, their programs. As an example of another organization, perhaps as a mild critique, the
Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a very fine organization, limits itself and its intellectual conservative offerings, often to a very self-selecting group of intelligent students at elite universities. Even though the masses are craving alternatives to the indoctrination they are receiving in the classroom, ISI is tactically limiting their offerings.
We should thrive on controversy, because it means that we are being read, talked about and discussed. And if we believe that conservativism represents truth, and that given a fair hearing our ideas will prevail, we should take every idea that students are curious about, and offer conservative interpretations that they won't hear elsewhere. The usual reaction from establishment types is that this will cause a recalcitrant attitude, and people's hearts will become closed, which may be true in the general population. But with the many intellectual journeys students are taking in their four years of undergraduate education, it is worth focusing on that which will excite and entice them, rather than focusing on many issues which will always bore them. I would much rather show pieces of inherently beautiful art and talk about culture and be idiotically called a racist than show an actuarial table, charts and statistics and have the entire audience asleep.
Therefore, I think there are about 9 or so natural student issues. Here they are in no particular order:
Natural Student Issues:
1. Race
2. Culture and Identity
3. Bureaucracy
4. Tuition
5. Jobs and future careers
6. Feminism and Gender
7. Homosexuality
8. Community and Greek Life
9. War and Global Conflicts
Labels: campuses, college, conservativism, organizing, philosophy, strategy, tactics
