It’s Getting Hot In Here

In a previous post I expressed a vision in which we organize to elect ourselves to local government. It’s a daring idea, one which some like us have previously embraced on their own, running for candidacies from both sides of the aisle.

Now is time to expand their success to a broader constituency and elect ourselves to local public office.

If the progressive youth movement is going to get itself elected to local positions we’ve got to start now. We must rapidly address and neutralize divisive distractions such as personality politics and disparate ideas. We’ve got to be pragmatic now: we have a world to save.

The effort to elect ourselves to local office needn’t interfere with current efforts on other fronts: there are enough of us to accomplish many goals at once. We are a vast army, and there are untapped constituencies to enlist.

Further, as Jessy Tolkan stated, if we’re going to shift society’s momentum, we need grow ten times larger. That means embracing and cooperating with similar movements. There are many that share complementary goals with the sustainability movement.

In this moment we must cooperate, highlighting our general agreement regardless of our particular ideals and without regard to our personal self-promotion. We should model the Continental Congress, who reasoned through their differences without deviating from their expressed goal: a general movement based on their common struggle, common frustrations and common good.

To this end, a few of us have founded an organization called Voteable to act as gravity — we want to draw all the information on elections, campaigns and local needs to one place. Our goal is to help pragmatic citizens extend their campaigns for social justice — from petitioning elected officials to becoming elected officials. We welcome you to join us.

The next major US elections are 10 months away. There’s a mountain of work to accomplish between now and then. The first wave involves research, organizing and infrastructure.

We need to know what requirements for candidacy local governments throughout the world stipulate and what local issues and constituencies specific candidates should address. We need to produce step-by-step walkthroughs to guide potential candidates as they jump through bureaucratic and logistic hoops.   We need to develop a social network to support pragmatic citizens who wish to run for office or to campaign for a candidate. This will require a website to facilitate networking, fundraising, publicity and citizen resources.

A single person or small group could achieve all this, but the result would not be timely, nor efficient. Instead, we must crowdsource our endeavor.

We need to know: Local citizens should compile local requirements for candidacy. They should also reach out to local constituencies to discover unmet needs and ignored interests in specific locales. Candidates should be empowered tailor their campaign towards the needs of their own locale where the solutions don’t conflict with a general pragmatic vision (Maximin, human rights and equal liberty).

We need to produce: Further, writers and videographers should begin collaborating to produce video guides. We need to streamline the process of running for election by providing step-by-step walkthroughs.

We need to develop: The technological infrastructure should provide any candidate an instant web presence for outreach and fundraising, integrated with social networking tools and crowdfunding tools. The infrastructure should also tightly connect organizers, marketers, researchers and candidates in a relatively flat organizational structure.

Further, organizers should begin gathering candidates and supporters from various constituencies, interest groups, faith-based or non-governmental organizations, from Republican, Democratic, Green, Independent, populist, socialist and anarchist parties. All pragmatists are welcome. Pragmatism at its essence rejects the rigidity of partisanship and absolutism, and espouses cooperative critical thinking towards efficacious solutions to specific and systemic needs.

We’re open-sourcing everything about this project, because it will benefit from wide involvement and advice.

If you’re interested in collaborating, volunteering or running for office — or if you have recommendations – contact us.

As infrastructure becomes available, we’ll notify you of the new tools.

Thanks for your time reading this and we welcome your comments.