Grassroots organizing: The art of stitching together a complex and diverse group of people who often have conflicting desires. How does it happen and how do you turn it into political power? Dorian Warren joins chrislhayes on WITHPod to discuss.
There are a whole lot of people running for president. Already, the candidates are beginning their nationwide trek, pitching themselves to the Democratic base. Each campaign faces the same struggle: how to craft a message that appeals to a coalition made up of people from all different backgrounds and walks of life. This candidate primary of town halls and stump speeches and campaign stops is crafting the future of the Democratic party from the top down.
Then there's this ideas primary that's taken place, which is extremely fertile. I mean there's lots of back and forth about the direction of the party, the vision that Democrats are putting out there. Amidst all these conversations, there's this constant talk about the base, the Democratic base. What's the Democratic base think? The base thinks this, the base thinks that, the base doesn't like this.
If you're trying to talk about what is the base of the Democratic party, that's a good a place to go as any. That's a part of the Democratic base when you're talking about these community based organizations, these sort of progressive grass-roots groups that do door knocking, that do issue mobilization, that are fighting on legislative initiatives, that are trying to set the agenda for the Democratic party.
So to get an understanding of where we are in this campaign that has nothing to do with the candidates, nothing to do with the caucuses, nothing to do with the early primary states, has nothing to do with any of that, but is as important to understanding where we are right now in terms of the building of a possible progressive majority in this country, I wanted to talk to Dorian Warren.DORIAN WARREN: From Chicago, born and raised. Mother was a public school teacher.
CHRIS HAYES: So you already had the ... I mean you were ... Like you said your mom was a union member-DORIAN WARREN: Exactly, exactly.CHRIS HAYES: What changed in you when you became part of a union drive? 'Cause I feel like there's a really interesting thing that happens to people's psyches.
CHRIS HAYES: But here's the thing though that I find. I've never been part of a union campaign, but I've covered them and I've been around organizers. One of the things that I think is hard and I think it's actually kind of almost a psychological personality disposition that is, forms part of the wedge between liberal and leftist, is you gotta get real comfortable with comfort and disruption and polarization.
DORIAN WARREN: So then imagine if you're an immigrant woman or black woman who's done that, you've not only negotiated across from multi-millionaire bosses and their lawyers, but you've won, then imagine how empowering that is around a situation in your neighborhood with a local city council person, or even you know, with frankly an abusive spouse.
That's what I wrote about and that's what I did for a little while, but then I was really curious. Like what are the lessons learned? Both historically in this country, but also in this period. You know it was the early 2000s, so there's a lot of talk about the changing nature of the economy. We were going from manufacturing to service. This is really before the threat of automation and artificial intelligence and technology and all that.
CHRIS HAYES: You also can't ... What I just heard from you, and I want to zoom in on this if it's okay ... You can't be like,"You're problematic. You're canceled."DORIAN WARREN: The boss wins in cancel culture, like in this case. DORIAN WARREN: In all honestly, it's slightly manipulative. But it's the same as what school teachers do every day.DORIAN WARREN: So there's a difference between saying,"Here is the faith, you have blind allegiance to it," versus the best organizers are more Socratic and are raising critical questions and actually developing people's critical consciousness to ask hard questions about power.
DORIAN WARREN: But you weren't born wanting them. Somehow you saw some images, probably of Michael Jordan in the air, and you were like, ...DORIAN WARREN: Exactly. But here's the punchline, I think on the right, when they think about public opinion, they're thinking about changing the temperature. Liberals or progressives think about taking the temperature. And public opinion is only ever a snapshot in time.DORIAN WARREN: People change. Attitudes change. When Dr.
CHRIS HAYES: There's interesting things happening. And politics is such a complicated, layered set of forces, institutions. There's tens of millions of Democratic primary voters and there's hyper-engaged folks who are hosting the living room get together for Cory Booker in Iowa.CHRIS HAYES: That's one. But that's a small percentage of the voters, but they have a outside influence. Then there's donor class. There's the think tank world.
DORIAN WARREN: Yes, that's right, and now there's a race to the top in the Democratic Party. If you're running for mayor or governor, and you basically have to be a record supporting $15.DORIAN WARREN: The union part's dropped off, unfortunately, but you're, you got to be on record. But here's the more controversial point. I think the reason why we're seeing such boldness and audaciousness around transformational policy ideas is frankly, Trump.
There's lots of things that are right on the merits that are genuinely unpopular and, again, that changes over time, but I think fair to say, from the polling I've seen, not a super popular idea, particularly among white people.
There's no magic set of words that's going to work. This is about deep organizational and institutional infrastructure and having those hard conversations and recruiting people to something over time, right? It can't just be two weeks before election day that the Democratic Party shows up in black communities and says to black people,"Okay, now turn out.
You can write some people off in that someone shows up and they're screaming, calling you an N-word, you don't have to go up there and try to try to break the law.
CHRIS HAYES: No, that's a great, because I mean, what you're seeing is you're, you're kind of like giving a woke re-characterization of the “you can't see anything anymore.” There's so much discrimination against white people these days, which is the reactionary vision that Trump feeds and we know from Michael Tesler work.
People that have way, way, way, way, way, way, way less privilege than I do, even if they do have some of the same privileges I do, as straight white men moving around of America, finding some progressive left liberal way to talk about that. That isn't just the reductive economic argument, which I think is part of the problem too.CHRIS HAYES: Because just to be like, well it's your wages. That's actually that's actually not getting at the thing.
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