reading the book and would welcome a discussion. I agree with many of your comments in a general sense, I would tend to call it offensive political correctness, rather than connecting it to DEI. To me, they are separate. I agree with all the concerns you raise and, in part, blame it on the Political
Industrial Complex. There are new ways of accomplishing many excellent goals of the Progressive Movement, but these new approaches need to be embraced. I find that reality checks are not welcomed.
I don't think it's helpful to lump the hundreds of different *kinds* of donors into a single group called "donors." The very largest donors could be foundations spending down large endowments at faster or slower rates; billionaires trying to buy politicians; or mere millionaires trying to invest strategically. Then there are thousands of mid-level donors and millions of small donors, each one with different priorities and strategies.
That makes a broad-brushed claim like "donors are exhausted" - for whatever reasons are imputed - a fool's errand. If perchance there was a way to reduce "donors" to a single hivemind and accurately diagnose their current mood, that mood will have changed by the time the analysis was published.
Timing is everything, and election cycles are at the heart of everything. When the GOP Presidential primaries are over and the GOP nominee is clear, liberal donors will all come together to beat that person and elect Joe Biden - whatever their mood was a week or a year earlier.
Sounds like you have a beef with Billy Wimsatt and the whole Movement Voter Project group that wrote the "bat-signal" memo then. They're the ones who made such a broad statement about donors. Of course there are individual differences...but there are also trends across individuals and that's why we're having this conversation. I'm glad you are feeling confident, but to Billy's point--by the time the GOP primaries are over, many groups will be way behind the eight ball because of the funding gap they're facing now.
Yes and those groups will then have to scramble to catch up, and some of them will only get funded in the final weeks of the campaign, and some will not get funded at all. Unfortunately that's the nature of political organizing, which relies on individual contributors (large and small) who are making strategic decisions about which races their limited dollars can impact. If there was a Vast Left Wing Conspiracy it could centralize all funding decisions, but that would fail as certainly as the USSR.
I appreciate the post overall but I disagree with you with your complaint about the Sierra Club Equity Guide. It's a solid resource for what's probably a large team of people who have varying levels of knowledge of every single constituency group the org has now or every troubling position the organization has taken in the past. Language guides are a tool, no reason to complain about what's in someone's toolbox.
And it's not too much to ask people to stop using "deaf" or "blind" as words connoting ignorance. Seems a bit gratuitous for you to essentially write, "see how ridiculous it is to have to respect _those_ people?"
Style guides will not bring social movements to an untimely end. They'll just give us better options than some of the tired and trite language of the past.
With respect to Bob's points, I think there's a difference between the *campaign* donors he’s referencing and the donors/donor universe that you and Billy Wimsatt are referring to. Those two groups don’t really cross paths in my experience—the kind of person who’s going to drop cash on a campaign like Marcus Flowers’ isn’t going to do that for one of Billy’s groups, at least on a consistent basis.
Anyway: I think Billy is correct to be alarmed. There’s more to politics than electoral organizing! I feel a little more free to say this now that I’m exiting my current role, but: I’m glad that Billy is raising the alarm. There’s so much energy, so many initiatives, so many good faith attempts at movement building, organizing, campaigning and change making, but they’re not getting the funding they need, let alone deserve.
At the same time, I’m watching colleagues celebrate testing and iteration regimes that were industry defined best practices in 2008 or so, and acting as if there’s nothing to be concerned about. It’s been 15 years and yet: there’s so little innovation happening, in spite of metric fucktons of money being spent by the good guys. And while I’m mixing a bit apples and oranges here, it’s also not a huge surprise that voters and donors here in the US are shutting off and tuning out.
On that donor point, though: I don’t know that I would grant the “illiberalism” bit, or the DEI bit. I think there are valid critiques to be made here, and at the same time, I think it’s very easy to stumble into a “just-so” story that says that places load-bearing blame and responsibility on something that shouldn’t bear it.
I’m going to leave it at this. Happy to talk more offline.
Donors represent one important resource, but over the long haul is the bigger danger about losing talent? More concerning than the “six figure donor” is the former staffer quoted who is no longer even a registered Democrat. Considering decades of future impact, losing one talented leader far exceeds the financial shortfall of one even fairly large donor.
Micah, I am
reading the book and would welcome a discussion. I agree with many of your comments in a general sense, I would tend to call it offensive political correctness, rather than connecting it to DEI. To me, they are separate. I agree with all the concerns you raise and, in part, blame it on the Political
Industrial Complex. There are new ways of accomplishing many excellent goals of the Progressive Movement, but these new approaches need to be embraced. I find that reality checks are not welcomed.
I don't think it's helpful to lump the hundreds of different *kinds* of donors into a single group called "donors." The very largest donors could be foundations spending down large endowments at faster or slower rates; billionaires trying to buy politicians; or mere millionaires trying to invest strategically. Then there are thousands of mid-level donors and millions of small donors, each one with different priorities and strategies.
That makes a broad-brushed claim like "donors are exhausted" - for whatever reasons are imputed - a fool's errand. If perchance there was a way to reduce "donors" to a single hivemind and accurately diagnose their current mood, that mood will have changed by the time the analysis was published.
Timing is everything, and election cycles are at the heart of everything. When the GOP Presidential primaries are over and the GOP nominee is clear, liberal donors will all come together to beat that person and elect Joe Biden - whatever their mood was a week or a year earlier.
Sounds like you have a beef with Billy Wimsatt and the whole Movement Voter Project group that wrote the "bat-signal" memo then. They're the ones who made such a broad statement about donors. Of course there are individual differences...but there are also trends across individuals and that's why we're having this conversation. I'm glad you are feeling confident, but to Billy's point--by the time the GOP primaries are over, many groups will be way behind the eight ball because of the funding gap they're facing now.
Yes and those groups will then have to scramble to catch up, and some of them will only get funded in the final weeks of the campaign, and some will not get funded at all. Unfortunately that's the nature of political organizing, which relies on individual contributors (large and small) who are making strategic decisions about which races their limited dollars can impact. If there was a Vast Left Wing Conspiracy it could centralize all funding decisions, but that would fail as certainly as the USSR.
Hi Micah,
I appreciate the post overall but I disagree with you with your complaint about the Sierra Club Equity Guide. It's a solid resource for what's probably a large team of people who have varying levels of knowledge of every single constituency group the org has now or every troubling position the organization has taken in the past. Language guides are a tool, no reason to complain about what's in someone's toolbox.
And it's not too much to ask people to stop using "deaf" or "blind" as words connoting ignorance. Seems a bit gratuitous for you to essentially write, "see how ridiculous it is to have to respect _those_ people?"
Style guides will not bring social movements to an untimely end. They'll just give us better options than some of the tired and trite language of the past.
With respect to Bob's points, I think there's a difference between the *campaign* donors he’s referencing and the donors/donor universe that you and Billy Wimsatt are referring to. Those two groups don’t really cross paths in my experience—the kind of person who’s going to drop cash on a campaign like Marcus Flowers’ isn’t going to do that for one of Billy’s groups, at least on a consistent basis.
Anyway: I think Billy is correct to be alarmed. There’s more to politics than electoral organizing! I feel a little more free to say this now that I’m exiting my current role, but: I’m glad that Billy is raising the alarm. There’s so much energy, so many initiatives, so many good faith attempts at movement building, organizing, campaigning and change making, but they’re not getting the funding they need, let alone deserve.
At the same time, I’m watching colleagues celebrate testing and iteration regimes that were industry defined best practices in 2008 or so, and acting as if there’s nothing to be concerned about. It’s been 15 years and yet: there’s so little innovation happening, in spite of metric fucktons of money being spent by the good guys. And while I’m mixing a bit apples and oranges here, it’s also not a huge surprise that voters and donors here in the US are shutting off and tuning out.
On that donor point, though: I don’t know that I would grant the “illiberalism” bit, or the DEI bit. I think there are valid critiques to be made here, and at the same time, I think it’s very easy to stumble into a “just-so” story that says that places load-bearing blame and responsibility on something that shouldn’t bear it.
I’m going to leave it at this. Happy to talk more offline.
Donors represent one important resource, but over the long haul is the bigger danger about losing talent? More concerning than the “six figure donor” is the former staffer quoted who is no longer even a registered Democrat. Considering decades of future impact, losing one talented leader far exceeds the financial shortfall of one even fairly large donor.