How to Start Small Doing Politics
In week 2, MNY10 focuses on doing politics. Specifically, on how to start local, doing real work (we call this “dirt politics”), rather than focusing on universal scale (“laptop politics”).
Political Capital — what is it and how can you get it?
Political capital is a metaphor for your record of working helpfully on political and civic issues. This record is “kept” or “accounted for” in the form of relationships, specialized knowledge, community ties and visibility, and social proof of work (testimony, pictures, citations, invitations, etc…)
Political capital is proof that you are trustworthy, helpful, and reliable enough to be listened to and partnered with on issues that you care about.
So how do you get it, starting from nothing?
How do you gain political power1 if you’re starting from square zero?
— Daniel Golliher, Political Capital Savings Plan
START SMALL, START LOCAL. This point cannot be stressed enough. Dig where you stand. The best way to be helpful is to make it your goal to complete a project that you and your friends can see through yourselves.
a step-by-step guide:
Choose a local project (for this example, let’s say I want to plant a Pollinator Garden in Gilbert-Ramirez park, in NYC)
Create a blog (I recommend using Substack)
Outline the problem you want to work on, as it is. Provide a concrete brief on the problem.
Outline the solution(s). Include pictures, sketches, visions, and as concrete a plan as you can muster on how you might make that happen. What will you need? What don’t you know? What help do you need?
Who do you hope to discuss the issue with? Reach out to them. Be friendly and inquisitive, not hostile or demanding.
Write interesting stories! Write a history of the park, write about other pollinator gardens in NYC or the world, show pictures of what other gardens look like, talk about the benefits, etc…
Collect media! Pictures, videos of you and friends making progress. Meeting w/ other local parks groups, touring their pollinator gardens, etc..
Write this blog with ~weekly or more posts for at least a month. Share it with your friends, email some posts to your local community board, city council staff, your representative at the Partnership for Parks, or North Brooklyn Parks Alliance.
Okay, now you’re ready to start making political requests, because you’ve shown proof of effort and good will. What is it you need to make this happen? Do you need a park walk through? Do you need a small budget? Do you need help from a city horticulturalist? Be kind + helpful, and follow up with Partnership for Parks, NBPA, and your local community board or parks groups asking for the help you need.
By now, if you’ve been consistent, you should have: regular contacts, meaningful relationships, a track record of useful work, and enough trailheads to continue to make progress on your goals. Good job!
This might seem like a lot just to plant a garden, but that’s not the right way to think about it. In reality, you were a total stranger to the whole ecosystem of people that manage and care about maintaining New York City parks and your neighborhood. This is like when you’re first becoming an Open Source Software Engineer and you have to pick a “good first issue” to get started. If you keep executing well on small projects, you’ll be trusted to execute on bigger and bigger projects.
In conclusion:
If you want to influence political decisions, here are your first two steps:
Learn about the political system. Can you draw a diagram of your government and basic flows of hard and soft power between all of its parts? Do you know all of its basic parts? Do you know the names of political actors and what they’re doing?
Map out your political capital savings plan, whether you’re starting with a specific project or deliberate exploration. Execute, ideally with friends!
— Daniel Golliher, Political Capital Savings Plan
Dirt Politics vs. Laptop Politics:
I want to briefly touch on these two terms, which I use to refer to two different political practices.
Laptop Politics — a political practice that never includes in-person work. No talking with real people, doing work with your own hands, or walking around your locality.
Dirt Politics — a political practice of playing in the dirt. Your local dirt. Literally, focused on improving your immediate built and social environment by engaging as locally as possible. Planting in your park, physically repainting your fire hydrants and sidewalks, adopting your local garbage can, painting murals on your public walls.
The point is not that you shouldn’t ever use the laptop. Far from it, the laptop is one of your most valuable tools, and it’s a force multiplier on your local work. Because publishing your work is free, your work scales globally just by publishing. You do the interesting work one time, in one place, then publish about it. Be your own case study.
Bonus: The Hierarchy of American Government
Last week, I shared my Hierarchy of Authorities — an index of all the law that governs me, at each level of government: City, State, Federal.
This week, I was encouraged to follow up on that work by sharing it with two professionals. I chose two professors of law from NYU. Here’s the email I sent.
Thanks for reading! I’ll continue publishing my notes from MNY10 each week :)
Best regards,
Andrew