Caucus Night – Managed Chaos
I must admit that I’m already tired of hearing the word “change”. I don’t know if it’s that I’ve been wanting change for so long that when it finally starts occurring it tends to get boiled down to the least common denominator and lose some of it’s specialness or maybe I’m just tired of the word. Either way, the caucus ended up being a great experience, mostly because I got to meet a lot of my neighbors and feel a sense of community.
I attended the DFL 59th District, 3rd Ward, 5th Precinct caucus at the Catholic Eldercare in NE Minneapolis. It sounds like many people had issues with overcrowded caucuses, long lines, and no parking. In this way I guess I was lucky. It was two blocks from my home and I was able to walk and the line took about 5-10 minutes and I got a seat in the front row for the caucus; in this case because I was late and all the seats in the other rows were full. There were about 120 people that stayed for the caucus ranging in age from high school students that couldn’t vote to many residents of the nursing home we were in. Our precinct had 22 delegates and we filled all the slots and had about 16 alternates, apparently an active precinct.
The caucus itself was as I mentioned: managed chaos. We elected a caucus chair, which was the historic precinct chair, who was reelected to precinct chair for two more years that night, and his wife also happened to be a city council member in Minneapolis so the event had some leadership. Though leadership existed and we had an actual agenda, we didn’t really follow any of the rules we voted on in the beginning. Resolution discussions went on forever and motions occurred every five minutes, I think mostly because people liked experimenting with the system.
When I was thinking about models of change while at the caucus, I thought of the nature of change in hierarchies and networks that Allen and Cherrey talked about in our reading. Caucuses are an interesting thing, a combination of loose hierarchy and a large network of people with change coming from the top and the bottom. I also noticed that Obama won by a 2 to 1 margin over Clinton, but there were Obama signs everywhere with Obama volunteers handing out literature, buttons, signs, stickers and many other items that proclaimed Obama to be the “Change we could believe in.” A flyer also mentioned that “Change begins with you.” I thought this a great example of hierarchies and networks working in tandem. In terms of the implications for leadership, I wonder if Obama would have won by such a landslide if Clintons message also would have been present displaying many of Kotter’s eight steps to transformation. Obama, or rather his supporters, were certainly communicating his vision loudly. The message: urgency, coalition, vision, and the removal of some great big obstacles.
I liked the structured chaos and the opportunity for leadership to appeal to the people and for the people to make a choice. I think with a primary, you wouldn’t get the sense that you were actually part of a process. Just voting can be so abstract sometimes. The caucus felt like a community, a community of change.
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I also felt the duality of hierarchy and the power of the individual at the caucus that I attended. I was inspired by this and also hesitant. How much influence does the individual have? For example, what happens to resolutions after they are passed? Of course, this is where I need to educate myself with the process. That being said, what percentage of resolutions actually do see results?
Obama supporters were out enmasse at my caucus sight as well. Where were the Clinton signs, the Clinton advocates? Would this had made a difference? Who knows, maybe. It was only a few days before Super Tuesday that I had made my final decision on a candidate. How many caucus goers were 'on the fence' and decided to 'go with the flow' after seeing the signs and visible advocates for Obama? From a semi-informed perspective, both candidates represent 'positive change.' Could there have been a number of voters swayed by Obama efforts at the caucus sights?
Posted by: Liz Kuivinen | February 12, 2008 04:49 AM
You know I was wondering the same thing about resolutions that were being passed. I did notice that the people who were most prepared for the resolution process also signed up to be delegates, so perhaps that is one way to forward your own agenda. I also don't recall a single resolution that wasn't passed. That may have been a symptom of the hour and people just wanting to go home.
In terms of Obama supporters making a difference. I think they definitely did. My empirical evidence could be seen in the senate race and the faceoff between Franken and Ciresi. Franken signs everywhere and we did a poll where people stood to represent their choice for senator so that the delegates would have an idea of who they should push for. This was after the delegates all announced who they intended to vote for, and 21 out of 22 said they would vote for Franken primarily because of the name recognition, when we stood to represent or option for senate, Franken still won, but with only about 60% of the people. I'm sure the delegates saw a bunch of signs saying Franken and even though they didn't have their mind made up, when forced to pick someone on the spot they just said Franken.
Posted by: Ben Cashen | February 12, 2008 05:12 PM