The Protests Are Over: Time to Implement

I was in Pittsburgh over the weekend for the first Post-Party Summit. I have to say, having done many trainings personally, I came away fired up, and quite frankly, so did many in attendance. Some of the feedback afterwards ranged from:

“The whole workshop was BEYOND my expectations! I never expected the degree of excellence. The information was needed….I look forward to follow-ups to learn even more!”

“I just came home from the Pittsburgh Post-Party Summit and to think I didn’t even know about your organization four days ago, wow! I am so glad that I followed my instincts and went. It was so informative and now I feel I have a support system in this revolution to get back our country. Thank you for all your efforts…..”

“It was fantastic. I feel like I just robbed you by only paying $50 for this.”
There were almost 270 at the event, with Friday night being inspirational talks by Rose Tennet of the Quinn and Rose Show and Erick Erickson, editor of RedState.com. Saturday was all about training and empowering, with 15 workshops and 2 main sessions, covering topics from building grassroots coalitions to digital pamphleteering to investigative journalism to running for office.

There is a method to the madness as to why the Post-Parties are set up the way they are. First, it is time to move past the protesting and into organizing and implementing. I’ve said it before, but protests are good because they allow people to see they’re not alone, and they let people’s voices be heard. But at the end of the day, despite massive protests last year, from April 15 to the August town halls to September 12, health care still passed. Why?

Because protesting fundamentally changes nothing.

The tea party protests, and the 9.12 movement, are the beginning point, not the end all. However, if the protests are all this is about, then I can guarantee one thing: we will lose.

One of the reasons the progressive left has been winning in recent times is because people with bad ideas and good organization will always beat people with good ideas and bad organization.

And by organization, I mean organizing to win in the political arena. I said it in the L.A. Times a few weeks ago, but I would be more than happy to see the protests of April 15 be the last this year because any time taken to organizing protests this summer and fall will only take away from the more meaningful work of hard-wiring precincts, registering voters, building muscular grassroots accountability, and providing greater transperancy and accountability with investigative journalism.

Second, the topics chosen for the Post-Parties are for a reason. We are confronting a system of government that has been re-enforcing itself since the Progressive Era nearly a hundred years ago, when utopian statists fundamentally changed American government and American society. With every election, this system gets stronger, all the while drifting away from serving “We the People,” and in fact serving the political class and its capitalist cronies. I am convinced that one of the only ways we can break the system, and return this government back to the ideals of the Founding, and to serving the American people, is to create privatized political infrastructure.

The reason I say that is the parties will not save this country: parties, by their very nature, are creatures of compromise. Instead of looking at them as the source of power, the tea partiers and 9.12ers need to see not just the Republican Party, but even the Democrat Party, as vehicles by which they achieve their political ends, much like the progressives did with the Democrat Party in Colorado between 2003-2008.

But this will require the local tea parties and 9.12 groups to focus on such things as identifying and training new leaders for state and local office, even federal office, and then supporting them with money and grassroots work such as door-to-door and phone banking. It will require hard-wiring and micro-targeting precincts. It will require citizen journalists providing greater transparency for government and elected officials. It will require a far more robust presence online, with Facebook, Twitter, wikis and blogs.

And at the end of the day, if the privatized political infrastructure succeeds, then the tea parties and 9.12 movements will control the nomination process, and to loosely quote a far smarter person than myself, “He who controls the nominations controls the party.” But I would say even more than that, he who controls the nominations controls the party, controls the system. And in doing so, we will turn our system of government around from this slouch towards statism put it on the right path towards greater freedom and prosperity.

Come join American Majority, Smart Girl Politics, the John Hancock Committee for the States, and RedState, for the next six Post-Party Summits. Come organize for a free America.