First Things First: Grassroots Politics

I believe in grassroots politics.

That’s why somebody just dropped off fifty lawn signs on my front porch. Tomorrow, my husband and I will get those signs on the lawns of people supporting a great candidate for the 19th Wisconsin Assembly District. We have a system, the old man and I, group the addresses and then the numbers, and pick them off, boom, boom, boom.

This, my friends, is where democracy happens.

It’s really hard to get people to turn out to vote in a presidential election if they’ve never voted for anyone else before. No county supervisor, no school board member, no mayor, or governor. Heck, in my old hometown in Michigan, people voted for the drain commissioner. Now that’s getting down to business.

We have local elections in Milwaukee where an incredibly small proportion of the voting-eligible population votes. Huge local issues – schools, reckless driving, economic development, climate change – but not a lot of effort to mobilize people. Activists focus on the national races, hoping to make real and urgent issues that to most people are remote and irrelevant.

If my kid is in a school that only manages his behavior but doesn’t educate him, I’m worried about how to change that. Tell me how to change that. Who do I vote for? What are the options? Don’t tell me I need to vote for a progressive national educational policy. I don’t even know what that is. I just want my kid to read and write and grow up and be successful. Where do I vote for that?

All politics is personal. All politics is local.

It’s the sidewalk that’s busted, the tree that needs replacing, whether police use high speed chases or drones to catch bad guys, are the libraries open weekends, should we use public money to fund a new basketball arena, should old people get free passes to state parks, do we need rapid transit, how much should city officials get paid?

This is where I start. And then I go on to the ‘bigger’ stuff – you know, like foreign policy and the national debt. I have an opinion about those things but, hey, first things first.

I believe in grassroots politics.