(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)
Another crazy week. 2016 is filled with a lot of unpleasantness. This time the Brexit.
The Brexit is pretty much a great example of how people do not do well in being civicly engaged when you see how many people didn’t get what the Brexit vote was about. With the UK economy hit (and the world economy taking a blow) and people seeing surprised at the same time, it’s a grand example of BS politics, propaganda, and ill-informed voting producing real problems.
Needless to say I’m 1) keeping an eye on the economy, and 2) even more focused on staying civicly engaged. I certainly appreciate my newsfeed more.
Remember my attempts to hook up with a local political party? Well that kept getting changed due to rescheduled meetings – I think some of that was the group wanting to keep some control over attendees since in-person political meetings can at times attract some pronounced personalities. So I basically did two things:
- I went to the first meeting I could find without being selective, informed people there of my goal of getting more civicly and politically involved, and got some ideas and flyers. Fortunately my pick was a group who’s interests aligned with my own, so I may have found the right organization through luck.
- Dropped by the office of the local political group and got a card for the person running it. I’ll be writing them soon.
So the big lessons here is:
- In-person contact seems effective.
- Some – probably a lot – of political groups have issues with recruiting. In fact, one I had trouble getting in touch with asks people singing up for contact want to help with recruiting. It reminds me a lot of the issues conventions have had in recruiting.
I’m wondering if a lot of political organizations are bad at recruiter, only recruit among limited populations, etc. It might go a long-way to explaining lack of civic engagement . . . and points to something I may want to do.
So next up is checking out these groups, attending some meetings (that I don’t expect to be cancelled) and seeing how I can get involved. But I’m one step closer.
Here’s a big lesson for civic engagement – keep trying to find the right group or groups for you. At least in my case it was hard.
– Steve