Published on
10/15/2008 in
Toys.
The “New Organizers” have succeeded in building what many netroots-oriented campaigners have been dreaming about for a decade. Other recent attempts have failed because they were either so “top-down” and/or poorly-managed that they choked volunteer leadership and enthusiasm; or because they were so dogmatically fixated on pure peer-to-peer or “bottom-up” organizing that they rejected basic management, accountability and planning. The architects and builders of the Obama field campaign, on the other hand, have undogmatically mixed timeless traditions and discipline of good organizing with new technologies of decentralization and self-organization.
From The Huffington Post
The world of organizational science has changed dramatically. Witness the decentralized / centralized Obama campaign as it changes the rules of political campaigns across a battleground state near you.
The real change is the lowered cost of participation. Not in the dollars and cents sense of cost but in the effort involved in getting up off of the couch. We don’t have to find our checkbook, an envelope and a stamp anymore to make a contribution to our favorite candidate. We can do it with two clicks of a mouse.
The Obama campaign is at the forefront of this right now. If I want to call voters in swing states, I have an iPhone app that will do the work for me. But pretty soon the rest of the political spectrum will catch up and then watch out.
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I have a very strained relationship with religion in general and with Judaism (the religion I grew up with) in particular. I’m an athiest, somewhere beyond Richard Dawkins and Douglas Adams but not quite as cranky as Christopher Hitchens. My own personal beliefs are closer to Zen Buddhism and maybe someday I’ll have the courage of my convictions to actually live it in my own life rather than live it as an abstraction.
Complicated, I know.
There are however two traditions in Judaism that speak strongly to me and have impacted the way I try to live my life. One is the customs and traditions around death that emphasize the fleeting nature of our own existance. The other is the tradition of asking for forgiveness at Yom Kippur.
In Jewish tradition there are sins against Gd and against our fellows. And Gd can only forgve us for the sins committed against Her or in Her name. Acts of person against person can only be addressed between those two people. Gd has nothing to do there. We’re really on our own.
As Savvy Auntie Melanie reminded me last week, the sins they do add up. Like dust bunnies under the bed they are there and rather than get out the broom, get down on our hands and knees and clean the damn bedroom we just look the other way.
I’m certainly guilty of not cleaning out the dust bunnies of life from under the bed of fate. I’ve let a lot of things slide in the past few months and I’m going to try harder in every part of my life to do a better job in the New Year.
So if I’ve let you down, bored you, annoyed you or otherwised pissed you off… forgive me. I’ll try harder next year.
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David in the City
I’m sitting in the middle of New York’s Bryant Park – a green oasis in Mid-Town Manhattan. My Dad used to work right around the corner from here – on Fifth and 43rd – and back in those days this park was one of those places that sensible people (at least people not looking for a fix or to be mugged) Did Not Go In There. Now it’s an urban garden on steroids, modeled after Paris’s Jardin des Tuileries, complete with chairs and WiFi.
Fortunately though, the mall-ification of New York begun under the Guiliani regime hasn’t really altered the landscape between Times and Herald Squares. Mid-Town West is still the place where most of the World’s tschotkes pass through before they end up in gift and souvenier stores. The fashion district is still the fashion district and the names of the coffee shops and delis may have changed but the quality of the coffee hasn’t. And even if we’re all working on-line, here cash and a handshake are still king.
It’s kind of reasuring, all things considered.
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