Introduction to Cape Ann Dem

OK, we’ve been open for business a few weeks now, so it’s time for the grand opening. In which I’m going to try to explain what “Cape Ann Dem” is all about, and what I hope to accomplish.

In a given month, my meeting schedule includes the Gloucester Democratic City Committee, the First Essex Middlesex Democratic Coalition, the Cape Ann chapter of the Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts, and the Democratic State Committee. I’m also involved with the Episcopal City Mission. In my non-political time, I’m part of the Boston and Maine Railroad Historical Society and St. John’s Episcopal Church in Gloucester.

For the last four years, I’ve been heavily involved at the grassroots level in the Democratic Party. Some of this time has been spent listening, some of it working in teams, and some of it in my own research projects. I have seen the great strengths of the Democratic Party and some of its incredible weaknesses. I’ve worked with candidates whom I was proud to support and with candidates who deserved support only because the Republican alternative was so hideous. Through it all, one conclusion keeps coming back to me.

Democrats need each other.

We need each other because that’s the kind of people we are. Our political philosophy of working for the common good of the body politic is impossible to sustain if our internal debate is not about working for the common good of the party. So when Republicans shut each other out, that’s simply their way of doing things, but when we do it, it hurts our credibility in getting our message out.

But unity does not mean uniformity. We also need the true diversity of skills, talents, and resources that all of our members bring to the table. One thing that is abundantly clear to me is that the old way of doing things does not guarantee future success. This will not come as a surprise to anyone who reflects on the pace of change in our broader society. The Democratic Party has to find the new ways of doing politics, and this requires reaching out to all members of the party.

We also need to develop new leadership models. Unfortunately, politics in this day and age lends itself to a “generals and privates” model. We feel motivated through an attachment to a candidate (as in the case of the Deval Patrick phenomenon) to do things on our own. We need to develop the “sergeants” who job it is to keep things together as a unit, so that everyone knows where to go to get things done together. We also need to think about how to let everyone play the role of “lieutenant” in their own area of passion or expertise; all of us should be leaders sometimes and followers other times, if we’re really serious about strength through diversity.

This blog is part of my attempt to reach out and find those talents. I hope to recruit writers to join me in explaining what is going on in politics in Gloucester, Cape Ann, the North Shore, Massachusetts, and the United States. I hope to find readers who come here to discuss what they’ve read, and then take their new knowledge out to the rest of their world. I’d like to think that this is a way to make connections, not just for gripe sessions, but for the larger work of changing our communities for the better.

- Patrick

P.S. As I write this in Microsoft Word, the spell-checker objects to two words: Deval and blog. Somehow I have the feeling that both words will become household names in Massachusetts soon.