A Modest Proposal for Democrats: All Politics Is Local

 

I am on the Board for a local organization that coordinates a number of services in our community that help the disabled, the elderly and poor children who were born into families that can't fully care for their needs without assistance.  You know, pretty much everything on the DOGE and Trump "if they are going to die, they should do so, and decrease the surplus population" hit list. (h/t Ebeneezer Scrooge)

The past two weeks have been a nightmare, as you might imagine, for any aid organizations who rely on already promised and allocated federal funding, because Lon Musk has decided he knows better than Congress on how money ought to be spent, never mind the law.  It's a mess.  No one knows what is going on from one hour to the next, because no notice has been given to any agency anywhere on how this will be managed.  The information is thin on the ground for everyone, and it changes every time the President tweets or barks an order or signs another document with his Sharpie.  We were able to get some of our funding last week when the grant window briefly re-opened, so we can pay our teaching and driving staff momentarily, but it is obviously going to be a nail biter for the foreseeable future for us and every other nonprofit agency working in the same space.

It's awful and exhausting, but it occurred to me today that this could be an opportunity as well for some community building on the Dem side of the line.  Stay with me here.

"Love Your Neighbor"

In WV, back in the days when we had a functioning party group, if you needed something fixed for a veteran in the neighborhood, the county party leadership would put out the word and the carpenter’s union guys would come over and lend a hand and it would get done.  Or if a family needed food because someone lost their job, food would be brought and the word would go around and someone who wanted to hire would send a job offer.  We took care of each other where we could because that’s what decent people in a community do.

Most of the leadership folks from back in the day have either passed away or turned Republican in WV as we’ve drifted redder.  But the notion of “that’s what decent people in a community do” is one that I’d like to see us revive, and lead by actually doing something meaningful that could have a tangible benefit in people’s lives.  The GOP is a party of social Darwinism.  We should be a better, more decent alternative to that in how we show people that we could be better by doing better.  

I’m a firm believer in the Tip O’Neill philosophy of “all politics is local.”  This would be a way to revive that and be able to say “the Trump administration cut funding for _________, but we are not content to let this person suffer even if he is.  We are better than this as Americans, and Democrats are committed to doing better.  We’ll help fix it”.

I’m grasping for something that is a positive step at rebuilding, because it can’t all be about what we fight against.  There has to be an element of what we see government as doing, what we see as our social responsibility and contract with each other when we form a government.  At its core.  We teach by doing, but because we do something tangible, it carries more weight because things are getting done that people can see.  

It gives something to organize party building around that has real meaning for the community, especially if the programs it looks like they are going to cut with a giant scythe end up disappearing.  Food pantries and food bank funding have gone on and off all week.  Same with any program helping the disabled, drug counseling, homeless issues and poverty and nutrition in general.  WIC hasn’t been able to access funding in our town all week.  We have no idea what is going on with Head Start, but I’ll hear at my board meeting this evening at least an update.

The misery is going to be profound, and it is their point: if you are poor, we don’t care, that’s your fault and your problem, is basically their message.  

Hunger is a real issue in WV.  I would imagine it's a fairly big issue all over the country on the back end of COVID subsidies being ended and childcare being tight in most places.  If Head Start funding gets cut, it will only get worse in that regard.  

We are all going to have to get better at looking out for each other in our communities.  Which is where this germ of an idea got its start.

As a former prosecutor, I can tell you that when misery and desperation rise in a given community, crime and violence and drugs do as well.  Local communities are not going to have the means to cope without the usual community aid agencies coordinating help, and the whole system we see as local government could collapse in on itself.  

We petition local governments to allow parts of public green spaces to become community gardens or to plant some fruit trees in those green spaces, at least.

Dem groups at the county and state levels could partner with farmers and farmers' market groups to have a "buy some veggies in reserve" program, where people can buy an extra pint of berries or bag of tomatoes, etc., and it goes to the neighborhood food bank.  We partner with grocery stores locally and Dems in the local area pick it up and take it to food banks.

They've been doing this kind of thing in Europe, especially in Italy, for years, with a cup of espresso or a pastry held "in suspension" for someone who needs one but doesn't have the money for it.  Someone else has already paid for the extra coffee as a gift (like paying it forward in the Starbucks line, for the person behind you).

Local Dem groups could set up community trainings on budgeting, home cooking, canning, and other food storage.  We could partner with local churches, synagogues, mosques, local Ys, 4-H groups, FFA, Master Gardener programs, whatever, as a "we're all in this together as Americans" kind of theme.  The Mormon church has a huge program of doing this out West, and they are always super excited to teach people about self-sufficiency and food storage.  

What I would love to see form is something like the WI in Britain.  

I could tell you right now which kids in Fiona's high school class needed extra food and attention when they came to our house, and why that was because of issues or poverty in their family.  Every parent instinctively pays attention to that sort of thing among their child's friends, and among the kids on their block.  It could really help with the "we're all in this together" kind of mindset that we truly need to foster a stronger sense of the social contract.  Rebuilding community is a bit of a long game issue, but we have to start somewhere trying to knit things back together.

We could get local union groups in each area to pitch in to help build handicap ramps or fix wiring or heat/cooling issues.  (One of the things we administer on my Board is home heating and cooling grants for the elderly and disabled on fixed incomes, and we are absolutely sure that funding is likely to go away because there have been no disbursements to the fund since Trump took office. We have a LOT of elderly people in WV who are desperate for help, and it has been cold here this year.). It would get the union folks on side, while also building community goodwill.  

I'm sure in our area, at least, the American Legion guys would be all for helping if it involved working with disabled veterans, too.

Plus it builds those bonds across party lines.  No one wants to see an 86-year-old woman die because she doesn't have a ride to dialysis.  It also roots the party into the community in a positive, we're taking action kind of way.

Have been wracking my brain on something positive for party building going forward.  This puts us squarely in the "we want to help and make things better" and not in the "we tear things down and make them worse" camp.  

I was thinking we could have local Democratic groups help with coordination.  We have to start somewhere on rebuilding stagnant party committees, this would give them something positive to do for their community - an organizing framework, if you will, that is for doing something for others and not just building up the party in an us vs them political way.  At its root, good government functions to organize resources for the betterment of the community as a whole.  This could Marshall that principle toward a current pressing need in the immediate moment, but also build goodwill toward an election cycle going forward.  

What I see is dems stepping in to coordinate help where they can, but also projecting a better alternative that helping others who need a hand actually helps the whole community.  The rising tide lifts all boats, in a trite phrasing.  Dems offer solutions, when the GOP creates the mess.  

It's not a tight strategy memo, but it sort of came to me as we were driving today -- we're on a 2 week trip to the beach that Bill scheduled when we saw what direction the election was likely to go.  He figured by this point, I'd be crawling out of my skin, and he isn't wrong.  Anyway, it sort of came to me as we stopped at a rest stop, and I helped a mom I didn't even know to round up her young son before he ran into traffic, and I thought, "this is what we do as decent people, we look out for each other," and then, bing.  I've been texting back and forth with a neighbor about us planting fruit trees along the border of our properties, and that got me thinking about community gardens or a "friendship row" of an extra vegetable to donate to the food bank, and how anyone with a garden could do that and how helpful it would be.  And then my mind was off to the races.

It's a baby step, but something worth thinking about.

Does that make any sense?  Or am I just a cup of coffee off lucidity this morning?  (Haven’t had any yet.  Never wise for me to type before my coffee!).