Listen to Your Granny

[realFedUp]

http://www.alternet.org/story/30651/

Listen To Your Granny

By Becky O'Malley, Berkeley Daily Planet. Posted January 11, 2006.

Now that the grandmothers are getting organized, there might be some hope for taking back Congress in 2006 and stopping the crazy war in Iraq.

snip

The popular press, left division, is full of pieces these days on the general theme of "us good guys need to get organized for the next election," which is now almost upon us. One smug young man who'd worked the 2004 election in Ohio for a national organization opined in The Nation that the problem was that too many amateurs tried to get into the act. He said he'd taken a call from someone who wanted his attention because she represented "GAG." What was GAG? Grandmothers Against George -- and he was supposed to waste his valuable time and money on people like that? Well, yes.

One big problem in 2004 was too much money thrown at too many self-important semi-pros who didn't really understand what was happening on the ground. Organizations like his relied entirely too much on bank calls from yuppies in California with cell phones and too little on savvy homefolks.

Eve Pell, a card-carrying grandmother and seasoned political writer, told me that she showed up in Philadelphia in 2004 to help get out the vote, having been recruited by one of these national groups. She discovered that the precinct to which she'd been assigned was already under control -- the African-American grandmothers who'd been working there for years had covered all the bases, and the turnout was terrific. The national guys hadn't understood or appreciated their work.

continued

[bemildred]

1. Right on. Democracy is not about "pros" running things. nt