Cameroon RPCV Margaret Krome says MoveOn.org Aims to Give Ordinary People a Voice
MoveOn.org Aims to Give Ordinary People a Voice
by Margaret Krome
I sold my sweaters for democracy on Saturday.
Our family held a yard sale in the rain. The last time my children begged me to hold a yard sale I swore afterward that it would be the last. The decisions about what to keep and what to sell. Putting up signs. Setting up tables and racks. Getting sniffy that nobody wanted my old shoes, hats and bedspreads. Getting rid of extra stuff later.
However, with our whole neighborhood holding yard sales on Saturday, I committed to one more, with the goal of raising money for the nonprofit group MoveOn.org.
At a time when the machinery of democracy has either become rusty or captured wholesale, MoveOn has become a powerful, inspiring democratic voice.
I watched MoveOn's beginnings a few years ago when its founders created an e-mail campaign to push the nation's political agenda back to substance and away from a partisan impeachment campaign calculated to divide the nation. I later watched as they formalized their nonprofit status and asked members to prioritize their issues. Early on, campaign finance reform and environmental issues topped the list. I sent them some money.
Later, the war in Iraq being important, they used the media expertly to ask hard questions ignored in the heavily manipulated public debate. They engaged in the fight against even further concentration of the communications industry. I sent them more money.Last summer, MoveOn invited Americans of all stripes to suggest questions to ask the Democratic presidential candidates, then set up a democratic system to choose the most important, then printed candidates' responses to those questions. An actual airing of issues most important to everyday people, it flexed some pretty flabby and forgotten democratic muscle. No personal attacks. An incentive to avoid rhetorical dodging and ducking, since such tactics were transparent in comparison with others' responses. Just clear statements from candidates about issues that mattered to millions of Americans.
This year, MoveOn has listened to its members. John Kerry is the overwhelming candidate of their choice, and MoveOn has continued to force a debate on issues, rather than personalities. It has invited members to create political ads, on which they then can vote. Then it has raised money to run them. These are hard-hitting ads, based on facts about the war in Iraq. About who has won and who has lost under President Bush's tax plans. About his actual, not air-brushed, environmental record.
George Bernard Shaw said that "democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." Others have been a little more optimistic about its potential.
The Bush campaign, recognizing the potency of the real thing, has done its best to undercut MoveOn. After belatedly separating itself from the libelous ads of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the Bush campaign opposed all such "unaccountable" groups, with a particular finger pointed at MoveOn.
However, if a single group has been committed to accountability, it's MoveOn. Its processes have been transparent for all to see, and if the questions it asks and the conclusions it draws are pointed, it's not because the group is compromised or falsifying facts. Perhaps it's the facts that make the Bush campaign uncomfortable.
Throughout American history there have been times when one group or another has risen to the top in forcing meaningful engagement in political debate. Temperance leagues, abolition groups, League of Women Voters are just a few of many. MoveOn's goal to "bring ordinary people back into politics" seems too simple to be effective. But the idealistic notion that everyday people's priorities matter seems to have found its voice.
For me, standing in the rain last Saturday selling books and old backpacks was a tiny price to pay for having ordinary people reclaim their importance.
Margaret Krome of Madison writes a semimonthly column for The Capital Times
Copyright 2004 The Capital Times
