Preparing for the [Libertarian] Revolution

by Lois Kaneshiki

Posted March 14, 2006

Editor's Note: The following essay was written by Lois Kaneshiki when she was Chair of the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania and At-Large member of the Libertarian National Committee, and after she had seriously ran in 1999 for county commissioner in Pennsylvania. It is re-posted here by Joseph Swyers with the permission of Lois Kaneshiki.

Do you read your local newspaper? Are you as familiar with what your local government is up to as your state and national? Or do you think that local government is irrelevant when it comes to the reforms needed to move society in a libertarian direction?

I think there is an unstated assumption among Libertarians that if we simply fix the federal government and get it out of our hair that everything else will fall into place. This view ignores the reality of politics, how the political machine operates and what sustains it in the first place.

Local Politicians: How Do They Get There?

The first step in recognizing the nature of the political machine is to observe how your local officials are elected and/or appointed. How do your precinct officials get their appointments? Who is on your borough or city council? How did they get there? What is their record of service in the community? What connections did they have before they even considered running for office? Are they elected as ideologues, or are they elected because other active community members are familiar with them and like them?

When I say that politics is superficial, I do not always mean that in a negative sense. If you think about it, most human relations exist on a fairly superficial level. People do not inquire about your deepest held beliefs and values before they hire you professionally or ask you over for dinner socially. Aside from the fact that you may have a common interest, they will want to be around you (at least initially) because of the way you make them feel, even if it is subconscious. Over time you might get to know people more intimately, but most relationships or acquaintances will never get that deep.

We must face this reality of human dealings before we enter politics if we are to be successful. The people whose support you need to get elected must feel comfortable with you and your style before they will stick their neck out for you. Ideologues make the average community-minded individual nervous. Another way of saying this is that you must “fit in” to the mainstream in order to be a viable candidate, get elected, and get re-elected to office.

Of course there are an infinite number of variations on this theme, and some situations may not seem like they fit into this model I have just described. For example, Jesse Ventura might not strike most people as a mainstream kind of candidate. Yet he was successful nonetheless.

However, Jesse did have a record of service in local government, even though this aspect of his credentials was not discussed in the media. And there were other variables in that particular race that worked to his advantage. But the bottom line is that he was able to galvanize a strong grassroots support base that came out to the polls on Election Day. (As he stated in a recent speech with a sly smile, his opponents underestimated the broad base of wrestling fans, as well.)

Most of us will not have the fame of a Jesse Ventura going into our first political races. The fact that most politicians are not famous before they enter politics tells us that it is an unnecessary ingredient to electoral success.

Reasons to Get Local

The reasons for getting active locally are the following:

Representative democracy cannot work if the citizens are unaware of what their government is doing. This is true for every level of government, especially locally, because local government might get less media coverage than higher levels of government do.

You as one individual can have a significant voice in your local government by virtue of showing up, following what is going on, and expressing well-informed opinions and lobbying your elected officials for change when necessary. There are so few citizens that attend their local government meetings, you will have the floor to express your opinions and influence decision-making.

This is where you will find allies who matter. Anyone who has tried to organize registered Libertarians or LP members has been frustrated, disappointed, and even burnt out by the difficulty in getting them active in any way. People who bother to show up at your local government meetings are demonstrating by their presence that they care and are willing to be active. Meeting them and finding out what you have in common will be of utmost importance to you in your endeavors! No, they will not be libertarians in every or probably most respects (but who knows, you might get surprised once in a while!) But you will benefit from having allies on single issues with which you will need support in order to make the changes you want, or to do the damage control, i.e., stop new and bad policies from being implemented, such as tax increases or bad ordinances.

Begin to build your credibility and reputation as a productive activist who cares about the community. You can build credibility even with people who don't always agree with you. In fact, this is a necessary skill to cultivate to make you effective in any of your future political dealings.

Find out how state and federal mandates effect your community and tax burden. This is the only way you can discover what needs to be changed at higher levels of office. Find out how it effects local government decision-making!

These activities are important to engage in even if you never have any intention of running for elective office. Here are the reasons why:

• We will always need local government watchdogs who will keep a check on what your local officials are up to and try to prevent bad governance.
• We need other kinds of political operatives to build a successful political machine besides candidates, such as campaign managers and workers, fund raisers, poll watchers, book keepers, database managers, media consultants, etc. Our political operatives must be intimately familiar with the local political climate. You will learn this through your direct involvement; there is no other way.
• You can be a talent scout of sorts in your local involvement, always on the watch for potential allies and potential activists who can be cultivated into future candidates and can be convinced when necessary of libertarian solutions to their perceived problems.
• As your reputation builds you will be in a better position to promote ideas that are less mainstream if necessary and get people to listen to you. People are more likely to entertain ideas they are unfamiliar with from people whom they already respect.
• Your experience will better enable you to help coach new libertarians who want to get active in the future to avoid having to “reinvent the flat tire” later.
• Be a local advisor to your neighbors on who to vote for on Election Day. You will be the one who knows what is going on! You will be surprised at how much they will rely on you for advice and information if you play your cards right.

Where to Begin

Find out when your local meetings are. What is your local form of government? Who are your elected officials? When and where do they meet? Don't forget about your local school board, as well. Learn about what your state Sunshine Law requires regarding public meetings.

If you have never been to a local meeting and aren't familiar with what your local government does, it might take you a while to figure out how things work. Don't let that discourage you. Remember, you are taking more action than 99.5% of the people in your community ever will, just by attending the meeting.

Notice how the meetings are run. Do they have a policy about public comments? In most cases there should be a state law that mandates that a public a comment period be allotted.

Notice any references made to other meetings attended and any commissions or committees. Find out all you can about these (not at the meeting, though. Do that later.)

Who is on these committees? Are they appointed? If so, how? When do their terms expire?

All government-appointed committees or boards must have public meetings, as well. If you are interested and have time you can also attend these meetings. These are very important entry opportunities into local government. You may find that many of your elected officials started off on local Planning Commissions, Zoning Boards, or other appointed committees.

In a small city near where I live, they advertise every year for volunteers to serve on these committees. It is difficult to find people to fill these appointments. It is an excellent opportunity for libertarians to have a say in their local government and find out how things work! Personally, I had a role in eliminating a bad local commission during my term as a member! Can a libertarian ask for anything more than to eliminate her job altogether?

What does all this have to do with the Libertarian Revolution?

By now you might be asking yourself, how am I going to reduce the size of government on a local commission? Or how am I going to help end the drug war? Or end Social Security? We all so hate all those federal government programs!

If Libertarians are engaging in these activities in thousands of municipalities across the country, forming alliances, gaining credibility and influence, and advancing themselves politically, they are developing the foundation of a movement and political expertise of ballot access that will be able to get libertarians elected to higher levels of office and sustain those victories once they are achieved. We must have grassroots activists in place to support these higher level officials once they are in office. Otherwise, we are building a house with no foundation that is doomed to be blown away in the next election. All politics is local.

Finding Your Niche

You will have to find a niche that you can feel comfortable with and motivated to build on. If the drug war is your pet issue, you might prefer to find a local organization that deals directly with prison issues where you live, since most people in local prisons are there on drug violations. Here in Pennsylvania we have the Prison Society which works to promote prison reform. Prison Society members are the only people besides the local officials who have privileges to actually go inside the prison to visit inmates. They have a working relationship with the prison administration and county government to act as advocates on behalf of inmates. In this case, you would be more active with your county government which is responsible for running the local prison.

I want to emphasize, however, that while getting involved in other local groups is valuable and important, it is vital to have local people attending your government meetings. If you hate sitting through them, consider finding one or two other people to take turns with and then brief each other on the important developments. WARNING: Do not trust media reports or even the approved minutes to fully communicate the important information at the meetings. Media representatives are sensitive to how they will be perceived by local politicians, because they will feel it effects their ability to get cooperation for interviews and access to information. Therefore, they may be reluctant to look too critical of these officials.

Meeting Future Allies at Public Meetings

A few months ago two of my township supervisors tried to have a citizen physically removed from a public meeting for reading a prepared statement asking one of the supervisors to resign. The media did not report this. They only reported that the citizen spoke. They of course did not report that the police chief refused to remove this individual, and the Solicitor refused to support the supervisorsÕ request. This was a show you didn't want to miss! There will be no record of that in the archives!

Seriously, this goes back to my “reasons to get involved” list above. What activist wouldn't want to get to know an individual who has the guts to stand up in a public meeting and request the resignation of an elected official? These people are RARE.

I did make it a point to meet this person, invite him to our Citizen Advisory Committee meetings. As a result of my recommendation, he is now an appointed member of our committee. I am now proud to know this gentleman and call him my friend and ally.

Who would prefer prime time television to this kind of drama? It is never a dull moment in local politics.

You may find that you are more interested in a single aspect of your local governance. That is ok. We need specialists in the various areas of governance, also. You will find it will keep you quite busy to learn all the bureaucratic hoops that must be jumped through in order to figure out how the system works.

Yes, as a libertarian, you may hate the fact that your locale gets funding from state and federal grants for some of its operations. But we cannot know what reforms need to be made, or how to communicate how the system is ineffective to others, if we are not intimately familiar with the details ourselves. Again, you yourself do not have to be interested in pursuing elected office in order to make your knowledge useful to other libertarian-minded prospective candidates in the future.

Precinct Operations: Another Neglected Opportunity

In Pennsylvania, precinct positions, i.e., the people who operate the polls are Election Day, are elected every four years. The LP of Pa elected 41 Libertarians to office this past November, the majority of which are holding these positions. At least a half dozen of these were re-elected to such positions.

Whether these positions are elected or appointed where you live, it is important for Libertarians to pursue these positions, understand poll operations, and be active in their oversight and management on election day, either as a paid appointed official or as a poll watcher.

Why Should Libertarians Care About Polling Operations?

If November of 2000 in Florida was not an excellent example of why Libertarians should care about participating in poll operations, I don't know what is. Al Gore lost the state by a pathetically small number of votes. This count was conducted by these very poll operators—partisan poll operators.

What if our presidential candidate had been competitive, let's say in some hypothetical future election? We don't even have to consider that high an office. It could be any partisan office in which a Libertarian runs. Who is watching and ensuring our votes are being accounted for? How do we know everything is working “by the books.”

Those who are knowledgeable about poll operations tell me that it is more the exception than the rule that the law is followed to a “T” in precinct operations. There are organizations dedicated solely to the elimination of voter fraud. There is the Voter Integrity Project that works to train poll watchers throughout the country. Try doing a search on the words “voter fraud” on your search engine and see how many sites come up. (I got 46,200 on Yahoo.)

Why Let the Major Parties Run Things?

If Libertarians do not get involved in the precincts, they are leaving the business of securing the integrity of the voting booth up to the Democrats and Republicans. Is that what we want?

Aside from the real business of poll watching, being a precinct official gives Libertarians yet another opportunity to demonstrate that Libertarians can be trusted with positions of responsibility and care about serving their communities. Furthermore, it gives them an opportunity to meet every voter in the precinct twice a year (without going door-to-door!)

It tells prospective candidates for higher office that when they are ready to run, the Libertarian constituency will be there to make sure they are represented on Election Day.

If you still have doubts about the importance of precinct jobs, send me a note and I will send you some specific real-life examples of what has happened here in Pennsylvania when Libertarian precinct candidates try to go against the status quo. The proof is in the pudding!

Are you a Libertarian Activist, or a Libertarian Groupie?

Libertarian Activist: A Libertarian who attends their local government meetings, researches the issues, examines budgets, and holds their public officials accountable both privately and publicly when necessary. These individuals will attempt to find honest libertarian solutions to local issues and understand the bureaucratic environment in which local officials must operate. They do everything in their power to integrate themselves in the community, not alienate themselves from their neighbors. They work to build coalitions with others with whom they can agree on important issues.

Libertarian Groupie: A Libertarian who passes out LP flyers and the “World's Smallest Political Quiz.” They think that labeling people and fitting them into either a libertarian or non-libertarian quadrant is the most important thing they need to know about anyone. They are evangelists. They spend their time trying to “convert” the non-believer, but won't have much real-life experience or solutions to people's concerns except the “party line.” They are on libertarian auto-pilot. They are self-righteous and don't care who they offend. They will never get elected or elect anyone to anything.

Groupies are more religious in nature than political.

Do We Need Groupies or Activists?

There is a saying that goes, “It takes one to know one.” The reason I am so familiar with the groupies is that I used to be one. I have a soft spot in my heart for the groupies. After all, they are libertarians!

But the groupies have not helped us get Libertarians in political offices. If anything, Libertarians have gotten into office in spite of the groupies, which makes it an even more impressive feat to have any Libertarians at all in public office.

The LP is suffering because it is an organization of groupies, not activists. This culture has evolved over the years due to the membership model of party growth, and it is antithetical with political reality.

What Do We Do Next?

The way the organization is set up and operated continues to promote the old unproductive culture. We will have our proposal for what we believe is the only hope left for the LP as a political party in the next issue.

Lois Kaneshiki is a former Chair of the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania and a former at large member of the Libertarian National Committee.