Author: Douglas

Social justice by Douglas

Self Care: Privilege and necessity.

self-care n. 
The care of oneself without medical, professional, or other assistance or oversight.

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” -Audre Lorde

Self-care is something that I have had strong feelings about for a good while now. Being involved in progressive politics, it has been a topic that has come up around me from time to time. Every time it has come up, I have discussed my thoughts on the concept with the same general feeling:

I hate it.

Continue reading Self Care: Privilege and necessity.
Organizing and Strategy by Douglas

Use Your Words: Why conservative rhetoric will never build a more progressive South.

I was visiting Cottonmouth, which is a fantastic progressive blog in Mississippi, when I came across this video calling for the expansion of Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA):

The ad seemed real polished, and it seemed like it would connect with many low-income and working-class voters. I say many instead of most or all because of the following passage from the same video:

They’re saying no to 9,000 new jobs and almost $1 billion of economic activity in our state, and they are leaving 200,000 of our neighbors in the cold. Working families, not freeloaders; preventing them from getting decent medical care.

I just cannot understand this.

Continue reading Use Your Words: Why conservative rhetoric will never build a more progressive South.
Labor by Douglas

Insects Voting for Raid/Terminix: The Curious Story of Republican Union Members and Business Unionism.

Being a union member and voting Republican is like being an insect and voting for the Raid/Terminix ticket.

This is something that my father used to always tell me when I was coming of age in politics. I never understood it either; even though I was much more conservative in my youth than I am now (though always a Democrat; I will likely cover that in a later blog post), I could never understand why members of a labor union would cast a ballot for a party that actively works to destroy them.

Continue reading Insects Voting for Raid/Terminix: The Curious Story of Republican Union Members and Business Unionism.
Organizing and Strategy by Douglas

All Politics is Local: Why we need a stronger focus on communities and young people in Democratic organizing.

When I worked in Democratic politics, I never really thought of myself as a community organizer. Political organizing is something that is very short-term in a lot of ways: most field organizers are only in a location for three to six months at the longest, many field organizers are not indigenous to the area in which they are organizing, and the nature of political organizing is such that you discuss many issues within a campaign, and not just one or two. I always used the term “community organizer” to describe those folks that worked for non-profits or issue-based organizations like Clean Water Action or the ACLU.

Y’all, I was SO wrong.

Continue reading All Politics is Local: Why we need a stronger focus on communities and young people in Democratic organizing.