Week after provocative week my wife and I sat in on discussions of
corporate power sponsored by WILPF, The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. I give our hosts, Morris and Leah Karpen of Asheville, high marks for attracting several young  adults to dialogs which were often heavy going. One young couple  stays in my memory. They were idealistic and willing to sacrifice for their causes. They went to Washington to protest IMF and World Bank policies. They circulated a petition to get Ralph Nader's Green Party on the November 2000 ballot  in North Carolina. Their initiative failed.

I suggested that the couple attend any party's Buncombe County precinct meetings--to see politics being born. For political precincts are where politics is always human and tangible. The couple just did not grasp precincts. Mrs Karpen then described what precincts are and how they breathe life into American democracy.

There are a hundred or so precincts in Buncombe County NC, the number varying from year to year. Except for absentee and early voting, every registered voter in the county casts a ballot in the precinct where she lives. County political parties have organizations in each precinct, led by an electedChairman, Deputy Chairman and Secretary.  My precinct is County #66 or Swannanoa #3, voting at Warren Wilson College. Although I have lived in the same house for ten years, my voting place has changed at least four times,
whenever the Board of Elections shifts precinct boundaries.

I like bowling and playing pick-up volleyball. I  gladly play with any team that will have me. To most people politics is also like that. Joining a party is the price to pay to help select a party's candidates for the
general election. To move from mere membership to active study to donating money to volunteering is a natural progression.

Important planks in national party platforms started out as resolutions of ten or twenty activists in a precinct. A handful persuaded their county convention to endorse a precinct resolution. County persuaded State. And State talked a National platform committee into acceptance. Precincts make a difference in more ways than you might imagine.

To most volunteers "small is beautiful" in politics. Precinct is home base, where the heart is. The county is still comfortable. But the Congressional district begins to feel itchy. Farther from home than that is like volunteering for the Foreign Legion.

In any volunteer organization from Rotary and Lions to Methodists and
Mormons, to Democrats and Libertarians, the chain of command willy nilly siphons assets away from small local units. Until about four years ago nothing memorable seemed to happen in county Republican organizations at any level. We felt lucky when seven people showed up at our precinct meetings. Came the revolution! Suddenly Vince Lombardi was re-incarnated in Republican County Chairman Michelle Cox. And Nathan Ramsey rode into Dodge City with his armed-for-bear green-eye-shade County Commission posse. About Michelle Cox it is impossible to say enough good things. She is inspired and she inspires. But at a cost. For she robs precincts to create her own face-to-face team. That may be her job. A part of precinct leadership entails fighting that centralization.

An active county organization at this early, explosive stage of growth
sucks in personnel where they already exist, are organized and  have the habit of working together.  Unfortunately for precinct  minimalists, the county summons reads, "friend, go higher." And some to not want to go higher. Like Odysseus's Sirens or the Lorelei, our unprecedentedly active county organization joins an already hyperactive Congressional District organization in wooing all the precinct volunteers there are.

Precinct teams are in the posture of NC's Civil War Governor Zeb Vance fighting off the accelerating demands of Confederate President Jeff Davis.

I predict that 2001 and beyond will force every Republican precinct to
create two lock boxes: one for year-round precinct-only  knocking on doors; and a second to hold a separate expeditionary force of "Blue Helmets"  to ship to Asheville headquarters. For this to work, precinct activists must double their numbers and the County and Congressional party organizations must accept that for most political activists precinct is home. I like this kind of challenge.

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for INDEPENDENT TORCH