Door to door, face to face is the powerful campaign
strategy. But it takes time, discipline, organization, motivated staffers, and
an unswerving, strategic message.
The environment. This is the season of harvest for
environmental crusaders. After decades of sensitization, wrapping a package in
a green, eco friendly color almost guarantees universal American acceptance.
One size fits all. The environment. Saving the forests, the streams, the fish
and the views.
Terra Strategies should have no trouble hiring a
motivated canvassing staff.
When $90,000.00 plus is provided by a King County lobby group to a US Midwest state grass
roots mobilization agency for a small county election in the farthest corner of
the country, one asks why? If the environment is so obviously a priority,
shouldn’t the Cherry Point industrial zone just fall into the sea? Why create
an army to mobilize something that should take care of itself? Maybe Whatcom
County voters don’t think like the outsiders. We might do something independent
and smart, like fit an environmentally safe, market driven energy and food
grains and wood products shipping terminal into an already zoned industrial
port area. We might elect County Council members who defy the progressive
drumbeat in many other areas. We might not drink the kool-aid of the Department
of Ecology.
So now what? The streets will be swarming with fairly
paid, eager volunteers ready to spend a few minutes earnestly saving the
environment through your vote. Phones will ring regularly to test your savvy of
all the terrible impacts of a bulk shipping terminal.
Who really is the underdog here? Questioning tradition
with an air of wisdom is intoxicating, both to the young and the gray headed.
The outer garments of trade and business life are drab and boring and rough,
and the soft underbelly of work often has a greasy odor. But the exponentially
increasing burden of the national progressive machine, I think, is a much
greater evil.
Do you really desire to have thousands of emerald green mini
worlds, always at hand, hourly escapes into a weightless spiritual nirvana, fleeing
the drudgery of earning a living and serving family and job mates?
What do you really want, Whatcom County? Are the czars of
smart only to be found in some far away, financially endowed center of power?
When outsiders tell you that you are beautiful or smart or rugged, do you
really believe the flattery?
What can be done? Terra Strategies wins policy and
election campaigns by pre-empting their opposition. Positioning their workers
at the gates and intercepting the messages from their opponents. Tipping the
messages slightly, shifting your concerns and momentum to their advantage. They are here for war.
What can be done to take back the control from the
outsiders? What can be done to stop the polarization? What can be done to
strengthen families who support themselves? What can be done to decentralize
government powers and promote checks and balances in local public policy?
1. Get out of your house into the neighborhood.
Watch. Be alert.
2. Counter the Terra Strategies people; make your own
canvassing list. Challenge your brother, your sister, you son, your aunt
with the benefits of market driven modernization of energy, and with the open
ended benefits of hard work, even if not at the ideal green job. Why let
outside groups return us to the stone age in energy provision. Solyndra failed.
Electric cars don’t cut it yet. Time and market demand will give enduring
energy solutions, not pre-emptive legislation and top down financial
hemorrhaging driven by social change engineers.
3. Be gracious. Don’t get rattled by the marching
of outsider boots. Cheerily extinguish the “sky is falling” extremism of
university level social change activists. Help your neighbors separate science
and group think. Maybe get to know your neighbors?
4. Use social media and traditional meeting points
like crazy. Be kind and persistent. Terra Strategies has to glom on to a
network. You already have one. They likely have access to the several thousand
names who signed the Bellingham Proposition One. They will need more votes than
that to split Whatcom County open to the outside.
5. Ask leading questions. Many hard working locals
will not be able to name the candidates for County Council. Educate them
with the rest of the story. Sign them up to vote.
6. Don’t give up. It is not over until the votes
are cast. Reach back to timeless faith. There is a hidden hand that controls
the affairs of men. The question is whether we will be found worthy of good
governance or bad, of coming together locally, or being split apart and
devoured. JK.
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