Time for the Inside Game

Let's get real.

Protests will give a movement credibility and clout, but they're hard to do when the weather's bad.  Deny it, but winter in the States ain't a river in Egypt. Can you imagine occupying Wall Street in January, when the wind chill between the Lower Manhattan skyscrapers reaches polar proportions? Not so much. Maybe Occupy LA will have better luck. I say protest while the weather's good, but now is the time to make plans for the "inside game." Here are two thoughts:

1. For a while now, I've been ranting into the ether about how the working guy needs an association, just like retired people have the AARP, and people in the egg industry have the American Egg Board. Associations are how things get done today. Good thing someone's thought of it.

In a time where labor demand is highly dynamic and easily subsitutable by "inputs" from elsewhere, labor needs to look beyond unions. We cannot reasonably expect people who hold temp jobs at the mall during the day, and make ends meet delivering pizza at night to join a union. But those are the very people who need representation in Washington and their own state capitals the most.

Working America is (surprise surprise) an association for people who work. Its ranks have swelled in recent weeks with the sudden attention to working people. It's the AFL/CIO's attempt to reach out to the non-unionized workforce. Maybe it's not perfect, but it's a good vehicle for organizing people away from the reams of labor law and regulation, the oversight of (and cooptation by) management, and the confines of calcified union rules.

2. A second part of the inside game will be in making changes to the system that we can agree on as a nation, thereby broadening the appeal of the movement to include people with different politics, but similar interests. In my last post I spoke about "a constitutional amendment to shore up our democracy, reduce the influence of powerful interests, free candidates from their parties, encourage greater participation in civil society, and ensure that everyone who can vote has the chance to do so." A constitutional amendment push demands high levels of activism in both state and federal government. Organizing for such an end could have tremendous secondary effects.  

Many, if not most of us can agree that our voices, conservative, liberal, whig, no-nothing, and know-it-all, have been muted by those with unfathomable money and influence. As I mentioned before, there is a collaborative effort with a Harvard ethics professor and a Tea Party leader to start thinking about constitutional changes that would benefit us all.


There is also Get Money Out; a group dedicated to making an amendment happen, complete with membership, verbage, and its own lobbyists. Sign up, if that's your thing.


Fall is here, and winter's not far behind. Time to get your (inside) game on!