This is an encouraging and interesting article by Nancy LeTourneau in Washington Monthly:
washingtonmonthly.com/…
Some highlights:
This is not a leftist Tea Party, because newly engaged suburban activists hail from across the broad ideological range from center to left. It’s not a Sanders versus Clinton redux, because that “last year’s news” divide is flatly irrelevant to the people working shoulder-to-shoulder in the present. It’s not an Occupy Wall Street-type questioning of liberal democracy, because these activists believe laws can make good government as strong and transparent as possible. It’s not the 1960s, with young people leading the way—although there are lots of helpful teenagers in the background saying, “Mom, it’s fine: go to your meeting; I’ll get dinner myself.”
The need to contest “every seat, every election” is a new mantra among activists in red or purple communities, appalled by the range of elective offices they discover all around them for which Democrats stopped even fielding candidates over the last decade.
Relying organically on what social movement theorists call “relational organizing,” the newly active volunteers mobilized existing social networks to bring in newcomers and connect to expertise.
One word comes up over and over again when talking about what these women are doing: pragmatism … Republicans gave them the initial issue around which to organize when they immediately took on the task of repealing Obamacare. That gave these groups the specific goal of intervening to make sure they were not successful …
What has happened over the last week after the Parkland shooting is that this movement organized by white suburban women could be augmented by the students who are organizing on the specific issue of gun violence.
A good read. I think/hope it will bear solid electoral fruit …