Welcome back, Saturday Campaign D.I.Y.ers! For those who tune in, welcome to the Nuts & Bolts of a Democratic campaign. Each week we discuss issues that help drive successful campaigns. If you’ve missed prior diaries, please visit our group or follow Nuts & Bolts Guide.
During the 2015-2016 election cycle, we focused a lot on a specific candidate, Jessica Jones, who ran for state Senate. Thanks to so many groups looking for social and direct activism, we’re going to start this cycle following three different fictional people: an educator in Tim Smith, a stay-at-home mom in Nancy Wood, and an accountant activist in Sarah Goodnow.
Last week, we talked about how they worked to build up their activism. This week, I want to focus on how a division of duties and purpose is truly critical for the long-term success of your efforts.
When groups like Indivisible and PSN came about, one of the driving forces was unity. The message was so powerful that the DNC and other organizations also adopted the theme. The DNC has a “Unity Commission,” advocacy groups have “Unity Dinners,” and you hear a lot of talk about unity.
These all sound well and good, but for your efforts to succeed it is important to realize that unity is not at all what we are striving for in our purpose. Our goal is to win. While unity works out well for, say, Star Trek fictional villain The Borg, humans don’t generally work based on an overwhelming amount of unity.
Even when unified on a purpose—a goal of defeating bad candidates—we still have our own different ways of getting there. In many ways, rather than focus on unity or Indivisible, we should focus on the symphony we can summon on our issues. Sally Boynton Brown referred to this concept as having harmony; but having thought about this quite a bit, I realize that in order to be successful, we need more than simply a harmony; we often need intermezzos, crescendos, and rising action. We need it all. United in purpose, but individual and different in our means.
So, how do we get this to apply to our activism?
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