The power of democracy

There’s a great article in the Sunday NYT magazine (which is already online today), that points to the central elements of the Dean campaign which continue to inspire me and energize me. Elements that include the truly grassroots organizing at its heart, the development of real community that blends digital tools and neighborhood meetings, and so on. Read the article! But here are a few quotes: “The effect that Teachout says she hopes the software will create sounds like the experience of being in a tight-knit community: seeing people you know, responding to them, being acknowledged. Teachout speaks about these ideas as if she is reinventing the concept. She says that Meetup.com, is emerging as the ‘‘ritual’’ element of the new Dean community. ‘‘It’s like church, the central place where people go to get inspired.’’”

“Rosen says the true purpose of the Internet is to allow people to connect, and he isn’t surprised there wasn’t money to be made on that premise. Through his long fluorescent nights, Rosen takes breaks from coding to gaze happily at the personal e-mail messages Dean supporters compose and send using Dean software. ‘‘Look,’’ he says wistfully, the light of the computer reflecting off of his glasses. ‘‘This is Nelson. He spent real time on this letter. Look how long it is.’’”

“Rosen is one of the more diehard programmers at the Dean office. He can easily discourse for half an hour about ‘‘open-source political campaigns’’ or the possibility of using cellphones to overthrow dictatorships or ‘‘recursive hard core CS225 data structures.’’

“‘What’s happening is an unusual and unprecedented correspondence between the campaign and us,’’ she says. It takes me a moment before I realize that when she says ‘‘the campaign,’’ she doesn’t mean the people running the headquarters in Burlington. She means the people she’s going to visit in her Airstream.”

Even if the more fascist elements of US politics eventually intervene and defeat Dean, there’s no way they can defeat this kind of energy and mobilization in the long run. Against all odds I find myself believing again, in small ways, in the power of democracy.