The Power of Fusion Politics (Page 6)

But building strong local chapters that bring citizens more deeply into power has been an uphill climb. "There are no resources put into New York City chapter and club organizing," says Dorothy Siegel, a longtime Brooklyn civic activist who three years ago decided to focus her energy on building citizen participation in the Working Families Party--"to make it less of an alliance of labor unions, ACORN and Citizen Action, and more of a partnership organization with real grassroots chapters and clubs." In Brooklyn, she says, she's been doing the work herself, as a volunteer. "There's just one organizer for all of New York City," Siegel points out.

"This is a party that does not have a lot of resources," notes Democratic State Senator Eric Schneiderman, whose campaign committees have contributed to Working Families. "They have to raise money to put out the troops." Schneiderman is the former chair of the New York Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and he put aside his misgivings about the Spano endorsement to make an appearance with Working Families in Massachusetts, supporting the move to bring fusion voting there. He believes the party is important to progressives' national prospects. "There's a lot of concern among progressive activists that the Democratic Party is too much in the grip of consultants who are always suggesting that they slide to the right and take conservative positions to accommodate swing voters, rather than exciting our own beliefs and animating people," says Schneiderman. "The hope is that the Working Families Party can empower progressive Democrats within the Democratic Party."

Working Families' distinction from the likes of the Independence Party, whose ballot line Bloomberg is counting on to draw New York City voters who just won't pull a lever for a Republican--or New York's Liberal Party, which started out as just that but deteriorated into a patronage factory--is its commitment to engaging citizen-activists at the local level and building power from there, much as conservatives did a generation ago. Political consultant Ethan Geto ran the Howard Dean campaign in New York State. When Dean dropped out weeks before the New York primary, Geto found himself with thousands of volunteers who had nothing to do. Though many Deaniacs didn't know or care about local politics, Geto and others convinced some to put their energies into the WFP's nominees for state office. "A new generation of activists responded to that in New York: We have to build here," says Geto. "It's a way of supporting a national resurgence of the Democratic Party."

The experience of watching organized labor go all-out for John Kerry left John Murphy of Boston's Teamsters Local 122 wondering what else labor could do in states where it's strong (in Massachusetts, 28 percent of workers are in unions).

"How many times do we have to pour millions of dollars into the Democratic Party, and thousands of volunteers? And then hoping even if they win, we still have to get them to pay attention to us?" asks Murphy, who is a member of the Teamsters' executive board. He has become a leading advocate for fusion voting in Massachusetts.

"If we do nothing and hope to simply influence the Democratic Party, that's doomed to fail," says Murphy. "How many times do you have to lose before you make a change?"

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