Hey everyone, I wanted to put together a quick update on our meeting with Michael Yaki yesterday, the head of the Obama Platform Committee. I am way too overwhelmed and breathless to put together a coherent report but will try to put some more info in comments later (or update or diary again when I've processed all this). I know my compatriots on the call are going to have things to say that I can add to this or will diary later.
But I just had to tell you. It went well. Really well.
On the call were Michael Yaki, entrepreneur, ferrisvalyn, Jerome Armstrong, wisecrackin, jawboneblues and yours truly, Democracylover in NYC.
We had an hour scheduled. Yaki had to leave the call on schedule to do another conference call but was so interested and enthusiastic he offered to come back on for more time after. He spent another hour with us brainstorming ideas about where we might take this kind of project in the future.
We had a full agenda planned and while we hit most of our key points, Yaki asked a lot of great questions in the beginning that made this a fun, freewheeling conversation about the platform, the process, and the potential of creating some real transparent participatory governance exercises. The main takeaway: I think, should Obama be elected, we will have a very receptive audience for building and developing more transparent government processes, creating netroots and grassroots driven initiatives, and driving toward real open-source democracy.
A few additional points off the top of my head:
- Yaki really liked the idea of doing things like this. Suggestions included state platforms, White House initiatives that are bottom up and others. Yaki was playing with the netrootsplatform site and mixedink tool during the call and he had a lot of great ideas and questions. His enthusiasm seemed to grow as we went along and the more he looked at the site and the process.
- We talked a lot about the finetuning—how to avoid freeping, how to make sure really diverse groups can come on, how to make sure the group you are working with is truly represented.
- Yaki really wanted to use some of the netroots platform language in the final platform (esp. some of our language around broadband) but was unable to because of time constraints.
- Yaki was impressed (one might almost say intimidated) with the knowledge of at least one of the platform writers (Orangeclouds, take a bow). He essentially said (and this is not a direct quote) "When I read the level of depth I was wondering if we were just missing the boat on some of this..."
- There's a lot of enthusiasm from the Obama folks to do more transparent, participatory initiatives. Yaki's message: Let's get our candidate elected and then keep this up.
- Yaki also shared some of the process and considerations in writing the DNC planks and how to balance the issues of principle and electibility (esp. in context of how that would work in an open-source environment.
At the tail end of our discussion I asked Yaki if he had any advice for making sure we continued to dovetail well with the plans of a future Obama administration to promote transparency and do more participatory government. I was really thinking about what we might need to do between now and November (the answer to that is: get him elected, and watch for problems in the voting carefully!).
But Yaki took it in a different direction. He told the classic (if possibly apocryphal tale) of the day Frances Perkins presented her plan for a great works project to then President Roosevelt (in some versions it's Social Security). She describes it, details it, explains the plan. Roosevelt looks enthusiastic, seems genuinely engaged and approving. So at the end of the presentation Roosevelt says "Great Frances, perfect, well envisioned, great execution. Now go out and make me do it."
[In another version, it's a group of activists and the quote is "Now go out and find me a constituency that'll make me do it." But the idea is the same.]
Let's go out and make 'em do it : ).