jamesdIII

The "?" is the average american making the connection between money in politics as the problem and public campaign financing as the solution.

The average person needs to see that public financing isn't just a solution, it is the only viable solution.

Once that happens, we'll get there.

Edit: Richard Painter frames it really well, he says that the first X dollars of tax collected, any tax, should go to determining who gets to spend the rest of your tax money. Anything else is taxation without representation. You can sell that idea to Americans all the way across the spectrum.

Join an organization. When they ask you to do something, whether it be to send a letter, make a phone call, show up somewhere or share something with your friends, do it.

Demand Progress and Rootstrikers are great places to start.

The most important thing you can do is be "that" friend who talks about politics. We'll never get anywhere as long as it remains taboo to talk about politics in public. Learn to talk in a way bring people together, i.e. right now we have taxation without representation because the election funders get an election before we do and we have to choose their favorites.

Above all, be unrelenting in your conviction that public campaign financing is not just a solution this problem, it is the only solution.

If you look at public opinion polls, you'll find that we do, in fact, think our government is corrupt. Being ranked 19th isn't a statement of how good we're doing, it's a statement of how bad everyone else is doing.

It's also important to recognize that there is a very wide berth between 20th and 5th.

Hi Lawrence, I attended the rootstrikers conference in SF and am incredibly thankful that I did. Outsider perspectives like Jakada Imani and Richard Painter's really made the conference valuable for me.

I'm wondering if you see any similarity in the grand narrative of this fight and other (successful) fights on social issues of the past. It seems like all of the major breaks with the status quo required mass demonstration, but any student of organizing knows that it takes a lot of tedious work to get that agitated.

I think the discouraged folks I talk to want to see a path to victory in experiential terms rather than political ones, i.e. now we make phone calls, tomorrow we march in the streets.

Being able to make connections with past successes, framed in the right terms, has helped me with persuasion in other areas.