As I write this, the second Senate vote has just gone down in flames. I wanted to write a piece about what comes next and what to do….I also wanted to write about how we respond to the potential upcoming firing of Robert Mueller and the AG possibilities during the Senate break…. but as I started writing, an email popped up on my screen from the Secretary of the Chester County Democratic Party (CCDC) and I knew the most important topic for today is “Why ICC?”
The Indivisible movement started as resistance to the Trump agenda. And ICC is an outgrowth of that, but since our inception, we have looked at doing MORE. These past six months have included a lot of rallies, trainings, canvasses, voter drives and citizen engagement. This engagement has included ICC members becoming involved with not just resistance action, but also their local committees, as well running for, and winning, election in the primary this year, as well as garnering slots for the fall general election.
ICC has evolved from a small Facebook group to almost 2,500 strong. In addition, we have a website, about 500 actually active members, a newsletter, great plans for the upcoming election (YES! First Tuesday after the First Monday in November every year since 1791, this year on the 7th) as well as programs and meetings this fall.
If you’ve ever heard me speak publicly, you’ve heard me say that resistance is fine but it’s an interim solution. I want to get to the point where we have a responsive government and all we need to do is write a couple checks a year, send a thank you note, and make sure our voters keep “the good guys and gals” in office. To that end, ICC’s mission statement (on the front page of our website) is not just about resistance but also about getting progressives into office and other things (blatant plug to get you to our main page and explore what’s there).
So, why ICC? Why should you look at our Facebook group, our website, our newsletter, and come to events? Why do we give you daily actions to undertake? Why do we reach out to you and ask for you to get involved? Because right now we are a bridge from what is to what needs to be. Let me explain: apologies, this is long-winded but will circle back.
ICC has a Leadership Team of nine people. We meet weekly to do “the business” of ICC. Why this group of people? Because we stood up and said individually “I’m willing to do the work.” In addition, we each said “I am willing to lead.” What does it mean to lead? It means long phone calls and email chains because people have questions and need help and want direction. It means planning things that work out, and figuring what went wrong when things don’t work out. It means working with candidates, committeepeople, and other organizations, solving problems as they arise, and building the framework of an organization that will stand the test of time and still be viable and valuable once the current regime is vanquished.
It’s hard work. It’s time-consuming. And we hope that with what we’ve got planned for this fall, we will be able to engage others and share the load. Each of us on the team has different issues dearest to our hearts. We are very different people who do not always agree, but who always reach consensus. We do it because being active here in Chester County matters to us. Getting people to resist now, and work towards better government moving forward is critical to all of our hearts.
Circling back to CCDC email mentioned in the first paragraph: it was a link to an article in the Times. You can read it, but the bottom line is that it was about rifts within the Democratic Party and how giving money to the local Democratic Party apparatus to undertake community organizing would solve the problem. You know what the article didn’t talk about? Leadership. Throwing money at a problem rarely works if there is not a person, or a team, in place to set goals, define objectives, develop alternatives and deploy the plan. It’s what we are trying to do at ICC – to organize, energize, inform and activate our members (Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Greens, other parties and the non-aligned).
I look at the current situation. A country falling into darkness: public monuments potentially sold off so the land below them can be drilled; an administration guilty under the RICO statutes concerned only for themselves; a Congress beholden to the 1% and committed to turning the country into a Feudal state. Close to home, we have the Mariner pipeline, thankfully on hiatus, a danger to all who live, work and attend school in our county. We have teachers in our county teaching that the Civil War was NOT about slavery and the Confederate flag is “just a symbol”. We have elected representatives who want to tinker with the tax structure making Chester County eventually affordable only to the rich. Where are the leaders to help galvanize people to action?
People are terrified of losing their health insurance and access to care. People are worried about the next round of jobs to disappear. Did you know that 25% of retail jobs, approximately 500,000, have disappeared in the last few years? Retirement? Replaced with “would you like fries with that?” Getting kids through college? We ALL just want to wake up from this nightmare. Who will lead us out?
I don’t pretend that ICC is the leadership necessary to change the US House and Senate. Nor can we appreciably move the needle on the split in the State Houses. But we certainly can continue to resist, and endeavor to change the minds of elected Republicans. We can continue to run for local office and work from the ground up to change the School Boards, the Township Supervisors and Borough Councils and Count Row Offices while simultaneously building a bench for higher office. We can protest locally against Mariner, we can be incredibly careful about where we spend our dollars, boycotting those who support those who would destroy us. In addition, we can leverage our differences from the Party.
And you know what else we can do? We can train a whole generation of leaders who will continue the work. No one on the ICC Leadership Team views his/her position as a long-term commitment: only long enough to bring others along.
THAT is why ICC: because we must stand Indivisible. Because not enough people understand how government works and how politics works. (Yes, they’re very different.) Because waiting for the Democratic Party at the local level to solve problems is not the answer. Right now there is no question that the Democratic Party is better than the Republican Party, and that Democratic candidates must win if problems are to be solved to the benefit of we regular people. However, the local party can’t engage people who have said “NO MORE” to the Democratic Party and have a healthy distrust for what is ingrained and inculcated in the party at all levels. The Democratic Party cannot reach people with a message of where we are going, what we’re doing, and why, because they don’t know. The party understands raising money and spending it to elect people with a (D) after their names. But they never provide a reason as to why to be a Democrat.
We are planning a large meeting in September to explain our plans and get more people actively involved at all levels. The date is dependent on the location, which is not yet nailed down. But wherever it is, we hope you will join us as a proud member of Indivisible Chester County: a local group committed to political action to make our country what it used to be: a place we could all be proud of – with liberty and justice for all.