I am going to tell everyone a secret, especially people in rural areas.
You…can do a slow social progressive takeover of your local Democratic party, probably. You just need to carve out some time for it.
“Renay”, you say, exasperated, “that sounds fake, but okay.” But I’m here to tell you that if you’re in a rural/red state (or even blue states), you have an excellent chance of infecting the Democratic Party in your area with some straight up radical empathy. And you can do it in sneaky ways. It’s a long game. Here is a list:
1. Find your county Democrats. You may have to start at state level, but eventually you should be able to track down the chair of the county party and find out where and when they meet. Start attending meetings. If they’re not having meetings, hoooooboy. That’s a totally different thing. I spent two years fighting that battle, but if you want help, ping me.
2. At the very first meeting, if the group isn’t using a microphone, bring it up. Ask if the committee can invest in a portable PA system to bring to meetings to help people who have trouble hearing. If they balk (ables often will), don’t worry. Make the request once, and then make the request at every subsequent meeting, kindly, until they get so sick of you they cave and/or start empathizing with you. My position here: who cares why it gets done. Just get it done.
3. Keep going to meetings. Generally county parties meet every month.
4. If there are nametags at meetings, always use them and put your pronouns on them. Yes, even you, cis people. ESPECIALLY YOU.
5. At your third meeting, if the group is using sign in sheets, ask the secretary, or meeting chair if the former is unclear, if the sign in sheets could have a field for pronouns. It’s not about getting people to use it yet—that’s later—we just want it on the template so YOU can use it and set an example. Yes, you can make this request even as a cis person. In fact, it’s probably better that you do because it will cost you less. You can do the emotional labor instead of making trans and enby friends do the labor. This goes back to nametags: if you do it, you create a safe bubble for others to do it, or a social pressure situation for people to do it. Social pressure is sometimes toxic, but we can use it for positive things!
These are Very Simple things you can do to Increase Inclusion in local Democratic spaces and shove them left. This is just the start, too. There’s language scrubbing (kind of advanced because you need to have relationships with the people), requesting the committee invite guest speakers from marginalized communities, and becoming a delegate to the state party annual convention. This is Very Advanced because it generally means travel, but I plan to do it myself because in two years I’m going to make the Arkansas DPA adopt gender neutral language in their platform instead of this “he or she” business.
I mean, maybe you think of going to county meetings and go, “ugh I would rather eat glass” but you can always take an ebook on your phone or something (I do this…soon I will have time to knit again and I’ll be doing that). Take 3-4 hours out of your month and invest it.
What shoves the Democratic Party left? We do. A bunch of people taking small steps in their local communities. And then the candidates coming out of those committees get more progressive and thoughtful, too.
The world doesn’t change just because we want it to. We make it change.
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