Why does the right more than the left flock to city council, school board, and town halll meetings?

[Tom Rinaldo]

Of course there are plenty of exceptions to the rule, when liberals and progressives instead turn out in force to public forums and meetings, but more often than not it is right wing outrage junkies screaming at public officials in small cities throughout the land, making civil discourse and productive discussions impossible as an intended byproduct.

As a general rule it is not all that easy to get folks out at night, in large numbers, to make their sentiments known in local settings, but rightist nuts manage to turn out to jam small assemblies and meeting rooms.

Back in a former life I was trained and employed as a community organizer in the Saul Alinsky model. Few things were deemed more effective than having irate crowds pressure local officials in person at public meetings. The right does this routinely now.

The left, on the other hand, can turn out hundreds of thousands for high profile rallies and marches, whereas the right has been unable to. They, however, (I fear) may overall be getting more bang for their political buck

[msongs]

1. nutters are more visual than rational calm speakers nt

[Tom Rinaldo]

3. There is that of course, but they also tend to turn out in larger groups

We more often make our cogent points as individuals knowledgeably testifying. Or so it often seems to me...

[Mr.Bill]

2. I think many of them are

being paid to do it.

[Tom Rinaldo]

5. Come to think of it, no one has offered to pay me since the fall of the Soviet Union

I've missed the added income

[Progressive Jones]

12. They are being told by RW radio propagandists to go to these events and cause trouble.

It's not about political discourse. It's about chaos, and nothing resembling governance.

I monitor RW radio from time to time. I have to know what the freaks are onto.
The propagandists (hosts) are always telling their flock that "You own that school board!! You own that City Council !! Show up at meetings and take over !!!".

Mark "Lil Joey Goebbels" Levin is one of the worst with this.

[SharonClark]

4. In my city, it's the "left" who have disrupted city council meetings.

So far.

[Tom Rinaldo]

6. Where is that, and over what issues?

Black Lives Matter protests after local police killings are a major exception to the observation I was making.

[louslobbs]

19. In which city are you claiming the "left" has been showing up

And disrupting City Council meetings? I’d like to research the meetings and the agenda being discussed that was disrupted. Thanks.

[Elessar Zappa]

7. I don't know

but we need to take a page out of their playbook and I include myself in that “we”. We also need to pay more attention to school board elections and other local races. The right has been taking over local positions since the 1970s.

[brooklynite]

8. The people who show up are the people who are angry about something.

[VarryOn]

10. Yes. And with large protests with thousands, half are there just to say they went...

And aren't that passionate...or at least that's my experience.

[yonder]

9. I think it's their disruptive, bullying nature.

With a microphone/bullhorn in front of them, they get a notion of legitimacy for whatever emotionally based, subjective opinion they want to shout about.

In their minds, louder is it's own argument.

[LeftInTX]

11. The Tea Party was founded on Saul Alinsky's principals

They used Rules for Radicals as their playbook


https://www.amazon.com/Rules-Conservative-Radicals-Collaborative-Technologies/dp/0979497442

Michael Patrick Leahy, the co-founder of Top Conservatives on Twitter, and one of the early leaders of the Tea Party Movement, offers sixteen rules for conservative radicals based on lessons from Saul Alinsky, the Tea Party Movement, and the Apostle Paul. Leahy shows how today's average citizen, armed with inexpensive tools of collaborative technology, can influence the public dialogue in ways never thought possible only a few years ago. Leahy argues that today's conservative radical should follow the tactics of Saul Alinsky, but apply the morals and ethics of Martin Luther King.Leahy provides unique insights into the true story of how the Tea Party Movement and the Town Hall Protests of August 2009 came to be, and sounds the alarm of conservative optimism for the future of our country. He argues that we can save our republic, but that it will require a dramatic increase in the degree of political engagement of like-minded conservatives around the country. Based on his personal experience, Leahy offers unique insights into project servant-leadership and the dynamics of self organizing projects. He argues that succesful self organizing projects are characterized by rapid response consensus development, transparent communications, and rapid implementation of tactics by a core group of engaged project colleagues, all of whom are guided by principles of project servant-leadership first demonstrated by the Apostle Paul. Today's patriotic American citizen must be prepared to willingly step into the pool of piranhas--those amoral left wing zealots who seek only to destroy their opponents. Leahy offers sound advice about effective ways to fight back and defeat these piranhas. We should do no less for our posterity, he concludes, than Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and Washington did for us.

[Tom Rinaldo]

20. Interesting.

I trained under an Alinsky protege, Mile Miller, at the Citizens Action League in California, I think that was early in 1978 and I worked with that group as an organizer for about a year, maybe a little longer. I saw the effectiveness of the tactics, and helped win a couple of local campaigns using them. Those small campaigns were almost intentionally apolitical in any ideological sense, other than the meta principle of empowering powerless people to get what they wanted and/or needed. The group I worked with pressured a reluctant small city into putting in a traffic light at a dangerous intersection, and also got that city to roll back the cancellation of a local bus route. But in the big picture the goal was to identify and train effective local leaders who would then meet with and coordinate with other local leaders in a state wide citizen's lobby, thereby building a potent political force. These smaller battles were essentially training missions.

It seemed almost an implicit assumption that as long as you worked with relatively disenfranchised populations, and screened out developing potential leaders of any obviously reactionary bent, that the movement that grew from those efforts would be fundamentally progressive in orientation. At the time I was involved that was mostly the case, but I took mental note of the fact that there was no fail safe mechanism to guarantee that. Our local chapter that I was staff to started to drift toward the right some around issues regarding curbing rising property taxes. The Citizens Action League had been building support for a progressive approach to curbing excessive rises in property taxes, but when that got held up by infighting between the Democratic State Legislature and Governor Jerry Brown, the momentum in our group swung toward Proposition 13, the Jarvis-Gann initiative, which lacked any progressive features and was more of a vehicle for more rightist populism. I was working in an inherently more conservative part of San Mateo County, and I saw the trend developing sooner than did our liberal state wide leadership.

The fact that the far right could adopt and adapt Alinsky's organizing techniques for their own ends does not come as a complete surprise to me

[stillcool]

13. Jane Meyer wrote a book...

"Dark Money: The hidden history of the Billionaires behind the Rise of the Radical Right". They have a vast network set up with anything they need in a moments notice. I didn't finish the book, as it was very depressing, but what little I read added some clarity. Like the "Brooks Brothers Riot", many of the made for tv moments are just that. I think the problem is the left wants good government, and the right wants no government. We had a rally and a march for health care way back when. A couple of thousand of us, barely made the news. A handful of tea-partier's had a sit-in at a Congressman's office, and they got the full monte. There's way more behind the right than is ever mentioned.

[GentryDixon]

14. They're paid by Billonaire funded agitprop.

We need to pay attention to what is happening in this country.

[central scrutinizer]

15. "outrage" is the key word

If somebody, some entity, is doing what you want and what you voted for them to do, there’s little impetus to go to meetings and thank them. But, if I’m pissed, by goddess, I’m going to read them the riot act. Phone lines in congressional offices usually run 90-10 against for this reason.

[bluecollar2]

16. George Soros can only pay

So many at once? Maybe his pockets aren't that deep...

[KT2000]

17. they are basically complainers at heart

someone gives them a meme to complain about which they do, they consider themselves informed, and board and councils are easy to get into. From there their lack of knowledge and bloviating personalities stop any progress the boards attempt. RW are really stooges for their masters.

[Turbineguy]

18. People who tend toward the left

are busy making the world a better place.

[JanMichael]

21. And I imagine usually working for people that own small businesses....

....that can take the afternoon off and scream.