The progressive movement can do a lot of things. We can elect good politicians (and we get a chance to do that a few times every two-year cycle -- local and state politicians matter too). We can track the actions of the bad ones.
The most fun (for me, anyway), is to lobby Congress and our state and local governments to implement progressive policies. I'm a lobbyist (my firm is called Progressive Public Affairs), so in this brief break in presidential primary politics, I thought I'd share one of the tactics that I like to use in the hopes of recruiting more of the progressive movement to think of themselves as lobbyists.
I hope that more organizations -- particularly those based in Washington with a large membership -- use this tactic more often. It's recruiting messengers. And it's essentially focusing on the parts of the country where people get to vote in federal elections instead of on the parts of the county where people work for the federal government. More after the jump.
How many groups do you belong to have their headquarters and most of their staff in Washington D.C.? I send quite a few checks to that city, and it often seems like a waste.
Why do we have so many progressives lobbying Congressional staffers?
We should have far more progressives lobbying mayors and state legislators and community leaders and local chairs of the Democratic Party on the progressive agenda we care about -- because those people can get the ear of Members of Congress much better than we can.
The best way to convince a Member of Congress to support a progressive policy agenda is to show that the local political infrastructure supports the agenda. So if your group is about protecting our civil liberties or investing in our infrastructure or reorienting our energy policy or cutting taxes on the first $20,000 of income your group should not be primarily working to convince congressional staffers with jurisdiction over the issue to support your cause. Your primary goal should be to figure out who the Member listens to in his or her district and convince as many of those people as you can to support your issue.
If that means you need to figure out how to talk about your issue in a non-wonky way, all the better.
If that means you need your staff to spend time outside of D.C., all the better.
And if that means you might need fewer staff in D.C. and more staff in the rest of the county, all the better.
Recruit messengers to take your agenda to the Members. It's not as comfortable or easy as taking to their D.C. staff, but far more effective.