Unfinished Posts Amid Big Intentions
Unfinished Draft Thoughts
I’ve started and not finished something like 20 Substack posts here over the last month or so. What I have published has not been my best.
It’s okay. It’s just that I’ve had big intentions to write about big ideas and big changes happening right in front of us and changing fast. It hasn’t worked. So this post has a bunch of the things I’ve been thinking about.
Other Big Intentions
What I did stick to and see through instead was a different big intention to take care of the people in my life during a time of crisis; including me. That has meant stepping back from the work here during a bit of a crisis in my personal life.
I talk often about how we have to take care of each other and look after each other in this increasingly challenging time. It was good to take my own advice. I think I’ve been able to do some good. Some of my people have been very deeply affected by one person’s major surgery, extended intensive care unit (ICU) stay, and passing. I’ve been deeply affected, too. This life-and-death stuff is difficult no matter how it presents. It’s difficult because of who we love and how we love… and of course because none of us get to survive it in the end. Sometimes we have to deal with the huge challenges of staying alive, or of people not surviving.
I have a million things to say about all of that… but also I want to respect the lives and privacy of the people involved. It is often a gift and an honor to be able to be a part of major life transitions and for that I am grateful.
Holding For Take-Off
With all of that going on, I once again put this nonprofit’s work on hold which we were just at the beginning of ramping up in March. In late March, we posted our first-ever new Take Action page, which three huge idea lists to go along with it (with 89 ideas!). My plan after that was to do individual outreach and to get folks fired up to help us grow this shift. Hasn’t exactly happened but we can start in on it next week again. Persistence is a superpower.
I feel like I’m in an airplane stuck on a runway waiting for severe weather to pass so we can fly. Yet at the same time — it sure seems like we’re supposed to be helping other people navigate all the severe weather while it’s happening. In any case, this organization is not quite there yet. Getting closer and closer. Again, persistence is a superpower… and it will pay off.
The IRS!
In other exciting news, I had a fun chat with the IRS — and I’m not even kidding — that gave me information on our nonprofit’s bizarre tax year set-up and fixes. Since last summer’s talks with three different people at the IRS, our tax year has been fixed but our prior year filings are in non-calendar years so I get to go back and re-do all of our bookkeeping. Yay! I love bookkeeping! Okay that part I’m being snarky about, but for real the IRS person this round was super helpful and actually really great to talk to.
We also filed our taxes for last tax-year but they aren’t posted publicly yet by the IRS. You can find our first year’s filing via this search engine. We’ve not yet brought in over $50,000 per year as we’ve had some “challenges” getting this nonprofit going, but I’ve got high hopes for this year and beyond.
We’re putting things in place that will help grow this into sustainable work that will do a whole lot of good over the long term.
We Have a Voter Turnout Problem Not A Voter Registration Problem
I was on a fantastic Zoom call today where I heard the words above — and I think we need to use them a lot more for the work here.
Soooooooooooooo much of what political organizing focuses on is voter registration, and a bit on get-out-the-vote during the actual elections.
The work here is set up to more deeply address the voter turnout problem.
Like: American voters are pretty seriously disengaged from this democracy. The majority of people often don’t even vote. So how do we get more people to vote — and for things that can actually help make their lives and our lives better? Especially in a time of increasing challenges and crisis?
That’s what the work here is focused on. We’re set up to push engagement, partnerships, and pressure to reach farther into social networks and communities than what we normally do in politics.
It will only work if we get some very involved volunteers, though. I’m planning to be doing individual outreach over the next few weeks to recruit folks to get engaged in this work. One of the ways we can get this going also is for existing groups to take on some of the ideas on the Take Action page, and to build coalitions with each other to get things going.
Another way we can ramp this up is to speak to your groups — whether they’re formal, or whether it’s an ad-hoc that you put together just to get shift going. Holler to team@shiftthecountry.com if you’d like to invite us, or set up a consultation call with me to brainstorm ideas.
The Quiet & The Thresholds
It’s weirdly quiet behind the scenes, here.
I know the quiet is largely because I keep putting this work on hold either because we didn’t have baseline funding (now we do; through the 2024 election to start), or because we haven’t been able to bring in enough volunteers with our limited funding and reach, or because of putting things in place behind the scenes, or because of personal life crises.
Now hopefully it will start to get crazy busy and we will really be able to get things going. I’ve got invitations from several groups to get us started, and invites to write posts for a political news organization to help get the word out. We have some commitments for guest posts here, too.
When I have written posts here recently, I’ve often talked about precipices or thresholds here in this time of major disruption and transformation. We’ll be talking more about that.
But I mention it because it feels like we are on the threshold of a whole lot of really, really huge things possibly blowing up into even huger and more complicated things literally any minute.
Climate change is causing craziness, system disruptions, feedback loops, system collapses, weather changes, and biological changes that we are barely acknowledging let alone understanding. We’re not sure if we’ll continue to back Ukraine’s defense against Russia which could lead to larger war in Europe that we’d likely be committed to for NATO reasons. We could experience cyber attacks on US critical infrastructure or on the US economy at any time. What’s being called “AI” (artificial intelligence) is already being disruptive and transformative. We could have more and bigger war in the Middle East as Israel and Iran escalate retaliations, and as alliances and proxies act and shift. Bird flu (H5N1) is out there and fast evolving and could at some future point spread human-to-human and turn into a much more serious human pandemic than COVID-19 ever was.
And so on. You get the idea. Oh! The US democracy could fall to fascism and the entire world order and capacity to fight authoritarians and climate change could go completely out the window.
And so on.
We Need A Set Of Tsunamis
This work at this nonprofit has been created for these kinds of pressures.
What we’ve been doing collectively to fight for different futures has sort of been working but it hasn’t turned the tide.
We need to to turn the tide. We need a whole freaking enormous tsunami of change. Actually we need more than one. We need wave upon wave upon wave of big transformation.
We’re not going to get it fighting in the traditional ways when everything is changing.
So let’s fight differently. Let’s do things that reach into every corner of society and get people fired up. Let’s do things that counter the cynicism and apathy that got us an authoritarian threat in the first place.
Let’s change public opinion.
Let’s muster and foster a major, huge, overwhelming majority.
Let’s convince Americans that we can have a way different future and then let’s go about building it.
It’s not complicated, but it is going to require every bit of our creativity and fight and drive and cooperation. We can do it.
For now, keep the faith — in us, and in our democracy. We’ve got good people.
Check out this page for our guide and ideas lists.
Set up an appointment here. Invite us to speak to your group at team@shiftthecountry.com, or call (515) 375-9027.
Thank you. Be safe and be well. We’ve got big shift to do.