Almost a week after the election and I am still in shock. It's the kind of trauma, like a death or divorce, where you wake up and the world is OK until you remember that THAT has happened. That the world has turned on its axis and will never be the same. Sure, you'll recover somehow, because you have to, but there is a fundamental change for the worse, a loss, grief to be gotten through, fear you'll not be able to handle it, that the emotions will overwhelm.
I have worked, professionally and personally, for progress for over thirty five years in data and analytics in the public sector. Starting in 1985 I worked at the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois-Chicago, then at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, followed by the Chicago Urban League, as a tenured faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, as the Research Director at World Business Chicago, as Deputy Director for Data Policy at the Brookings Institution, as President of the Metro Chicago Information Center. And now I do gig work.
I’ve watched in despair as my profession has replaced human touch with data science. Where once we used data to inform civil discourse, we now think data science IS civil discourse. The idea that effective social change will come about through technical expertise has given rise to a class of technocrats who believe that analyzing large amounts of data can supplant conversations and local organizing. I know I sound like Evgeny Morozov. Except I’m older, I’m a woman, and I don’t get Twitter followers for snarking.
Say what you will about corrupt Chicago machine politics but there was a method to the madness. You knew your precinct captain and he knew you. Politics wasn't an every-four-year-game played out at the national level where you get a call from some stranger asking for money and declaring apocalypse if you don’t give. It was every day. It was about your neighborhood and how it ran so that your vote was courted. Every day. I'm not romanticizing Chicago machine politics but I'm pointing out the level of ground game that went on all the time.
Of course pushing back against the machine was a sophisticated community organizing network that played the same ground game. The National Training and Information Center, in Chicago, investigated real estate redlining and resulted in the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (the first “Big Data” for the public sector, I’d argue, which I analyzed while at the Woodstock Institute). The Americans with Disabilities Act? Also, from Chicago ground-up politics. We had the Chicago Association of Neighborhood Development Organizations (CANDO). We had the aforementioned CUED and MCIC, both of which are now defunct. We had the Chicago Rehab Network. We had the vast resources of the Chicago Municipal Reference Library (an unparalleled “open data” trove). We had Saul, branded as a Marxist but really a ruthless campaigner in the best sense of the word.
What passes for "progressive" activity has increasingly taken place inside think tanks and foundations where the agenda is dictated by what the latest fad is among other foundations and think tanks, not by a non-apologetic examination of systemic conditions under which we live which includes the foundation industry itself. Operational support for neighborhood organizations has been replaced by funding for bright shiny objects like civic platforms, open data, open-source technology. Funding information that could be used for political accountability, but without the organizational infrastructure to USE that information only serves to build careers and make brogrammers feel good, delivering self-references at DO GOOD conferences, an oxymoron if ever there was.
Look, people, the conservative right has been playing a long game starting with the run-up to Reagan's election in 1981. The left has sat back while the conservative right now controls the majority of state houses, state legislatures, the federal house, senate, and now the presidency. We have been losing everywhere for a long time.
What’s our long game?
The Democratic Party has failed to have a cohesive set of principles with a disciplined agenda that includes a plan to handle the media. We have no brand, no plan, no ground game. We have no plan for winning hearts and minds. DNC — can we at least have some marketing personas please? How about a good PR plan?
For myself, I’ve got to stop. I’ve got to stop arguing with the MacArthur Foundation or the Urban Institute or Data Science for Social Good or Brookings, or whoever-the-fucking is castle-making at the moment, about the importance of people above data. About the fundamental need for data in service of people. I’ve had private conversations, spoken at a couple of conferences, worked within the foundations-system, and it’s exhausting. There’s no Amplify there.
I’m choosing a couple of organizations that I can believe in and I’ll do what data munging and narrative-building I can for them. I’d also like to learn community organizing techniques, although I know I’m better behind the scenes than in front.
P.S. I joined Kos in 2008 and was heartened by his emphasis on ELECTING DEMOCRATS. I’ve watched as some have come to the site and called me authoritarian for pointing out that Kos founded this site for this purpose—it’s not a public square. It was started by Kos for the purpose of electing Democrats. If you’d like to come and argue what might make for a better Democratic party, or what the agenda should be, or how we need to blow up and start over, or how to reach the disenfranchised, great. If this site isn’t still about this any more, it’s news to me. So stop treating this site as some kind of place to shred.
