24 October 2009

March To Your Mailbox

Political gatherings have never sat well with me, particularly because they more closely resemble tantrums rather than persuasive action. Tonight, I found words for that idea that I was never really able to push out of my mouth before. Through the testimony of Congressman Barney Frank to a stationary video camera, filmed for the benefit of the Reddit.com community, it all came together. Political demonstrations are populist circle jerks that rouse emotions, but do little to influence the members of Congress. Why? Because a Congressman votes on behalf of his constituents and in a political rally, he has no way of knowing if the mass represents the opinions of his (or her) voting public.

The problem with marches is that when they're over, many people may feel like they've done their part and leave it at that. Frank's solution to this is to instead influence people to get involved on a local level by contacting their Representative and Senator to voice their opinions. Write letters and let them know that they'll only get your vote if they support your cause.

So what good are rallies? As I said, they are populist circle jerks. Take that however you like. Even in stories like that of Harvey Milk, where frequent and rousing public assemblies are used to gather momentum, the only decisive action happened when the ballots were counted, putting a man into office who could really represent.

I leave you with a 6 minute video of Barney Frank answering a question regarding his disdain for public assembly. It is not a matter of freedom of speech. It is a matter of actual political process.

Posted by Andrew Gonsalves at 12:05 AM
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  1. I don't know what a populist circle jerk is to be honest (I almost said "frank" but caught myself) and I think Frank has a very valid point. I would not belittle it any.

    I would be careful with any grave disparagement of political demonstration however, as I'm firmly convinced that most, if not all, of the prime organizational and motivational energy that help to create these is not attempting to influence congress (or parliament in our case). This would appear to me and those I know (with exceptions of course among idealist wings) to be rather a naive proposition.

    Moreover, I have myself preached at length to prospective demonstrators that the greatest sacrifice you can make to improve the efficacy of a demonstration, aside form the time you already give, is to assimilate, to look like the people you aim to influence, to help them identify with you, not identify you. And the people that all erudite, informed and savvy protest organizers in my experience are targeting are categorically not politicians, but the apathetic and swinging voters.

    Yes, you're right when you say "the only decisive action happened when the ballots were counted, putting a man into office who could really represent.".

    All I can add is, "so what?". Many, if not most, people instrumental in and participating in political rallies know this. And it is via prime time media sensationalism (i.e. the difference between "yawn" ten students waving placards in front of the oval office, and 10,000, is measured precisely by how much media coverage they respectively earn and how many apathetic and swinging voters are influence).

    To be sure, the politicians are targeted indirectly through their perception of the electorates mood as thus influenced, but not directly by the protest.

    Yes, this awareness is not ubiquitous among protesters nor could it be, as the effort is to get number up and sometimes quality is practically sacrificed in favour of quantity, but the game of democracy itself is no different in this regard. As a marketing tool the protest suffers considerably from sloppiness and limitation here.
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  2. I think back to the anti-roads movement in Britain and what I remember reading about gray power then. Namely that the protest only really made progress when the grandparents came out in support of the young kids who were chained to bulldozers, and they brought them food and support. And it wasn't that the politicians thought the old folk were important, it was that on the TV, the broad population thought they were. More over it's speculated that the broad population simply identified with them, and the complaint was no longer just one that concerned radical young folk with dreadlocks and henna tatoos, it something that ordinary middle class citizens were concerned about, hey, maybe I should be concerned about it too? And from that, the concern grew, was measured in polls and influenced politics.

    This is what is overlooked in the expressed fear that the protest energy replaces more useful activities. I seriously doubt it does.

    Moreover in the modern age we are seeing such support for writing to our local member emerge that it is only a few typed words and a click away in response to an email from getup.org.au or avaaz.org for example. Saving people the more serious road blocks of:

    1) Finding their rep
    2) Addressing the letter
    3) Printing it
    4) visiting a post office to mail it

    Suddenly our local reps are getting emails and comms like never before because such web rallies are motivating, spreading and facilitating direct comms like this.

    Moreover I take serious issue with Franks notion that representatives in government seek to represent their electorate. If you have such a reality in the United States, you are blessed. In the Australian, and British systems the notion of party loyalty is so extreme and bipartisan politics so extreme that very few elected representatives represent anyone other than their party leader and caucus. It is a culture of bipartisan group politics that many of us argue against and fight in these countries to secure representation of our electorate (the voters) in parliament! Our reps don't rightly care what their electorate thinks!
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