Political giving as free speech and free assembly, and sacrament
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(Burlington, Sunday morning)
8:00 AM, November 9, 2003. I’m
sitting here at Kelly Nuxoll’s kitchen table looking out the back
window at the azure waters of Lake Champlain and the horizon of low
mountains beyond. It is early Sunday
morning, I’m still a bit sleepy. Outside the day is bright with golden
green fall leaves, and cold below freezing. Here inside I’m comfortable.
My challenge this
morning is to explain some insights that came to a bunch of us who were
working late at the campaign last night. It
was a strange night—we were all high on the announcement earlier in the
day that the campaign would “go private” rather than take federal
matching money and the restrictions that accompany it. That
announcement, held in a church-like room at the University of Vermont
student center, left most of us feeling sobered as well as elated, as
we grasped the fact that now the campaign is completely on its own.
“happy Trippi”
(Photos above taken in Joe Trippi’s office on Saturday night)
Adding to the special sense of the evening was a full lunar eclipse. Between meetings we would slip outside behind the building to watch the slow spectacle developing in the sky. At its peak, or rather at the nadir of the eclipse, the transformed into a dull red disk beaming serenely down to us. The crew includes Matt
Gross, Larry Biddle, Nicco, Kenn Herman, Joe Rospars, Jim Brayton,
Kelly and me during the past 24 hours, as we worked with Joe Trippi to
implement an idea that has been alternately bedeviling and beguiling us
and a number of other folks (including Britt Blaser, who has been very
helpful) for the past few weeks. The
challenge is how to make participation rather than money the main point
of political giving—while still, of course, raising as much money as
possible for the cause. Here is my best shot:
To members of the Dean campaign, giving money to the campaign has taken on a very special significance. Giving
has become, in an age of failed campaign finance reform, a way to
reform our democracy. It is an expression of free speech and free
assembly. As free speech, our giving speaks
to the world of our support for this guy Dean, and it funds messaging
by the campaign on our behalf. Political contributions, as the courts have ruled, is the major form of political speech in a time of ubiquitous paid media. But
Kelly has pointed out that our giving as a community is also an act of
free assembly. It is analogous to the early patriots meeting in barns
and taverns of the American revolution. Bringing
together over two hundred thousand givers, with an average contribution
of about $70, is an historic act of political assembly. And the community keeps growing.
(Reading the Declaration of Independence from Special Interests, Saturday noon)
> I have a wilder idea: >political giving is a sacramental act. This idea may be sacrilege to some—I hope not, but it might be—so let me be clear that this is my idea, not the campaign’s. Giving money to the campaign—in any amount, no matter how small—has become the community’s sacrament. It is our political holy communion. It is the common, uniting ritual of our community. When
I click “submit” after filling out my name and credit card number, I
make a personal statement that is perhaps—in our strange times of money
and media and life in cyber and natural worlds—more significant than
any other act I can make. No less an authority than Al Franken has said that God is pissed off with George Bush. God asked Al to write a best selling book, and perhaps God asks us to click submit. Clicking submit may be an “outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.”
>It’s now about 9:30 AM. Kelly has now joined the ruminations. While making coffee and preparing the smoothy, she suggests that clicking submit is not quite communion. Perhaps baptism, I suggest? No, she says, it is like testifying. It is standing up and putting your voice out there. It is speaking up in Quaker meeting. It is not on ly about supporting Dean, but about making a statement for change. Communion, she objects, is too passive a comparison. In communion the wafer goes in your mouth.. In
testifying, something is coming out of your mouth, you are the agent.
In fact, she points out a bit later, it is truly an example of putting
your money where your mouth is.
