Want To Be a Political Activist? Form Your Own Party.

When I was a kid, if you wanted to get involved in politics, you went down to the local Democratic clubhouse and hung out. Sooner or later, one of the adults would ask you to run an errand, then maybe you’d show up every day after school and answer the phones.

Around election time, things really got busy, so you were given a stack of leaflets and told to make sure that every house or apartment in the neighborhood had a leaflet under the front door.

At some point when you were a little older, like maybe college age or a few years more, you might even get on the payroll or be chosen to run for a vacant State Assembly seat. If you kept your nose clean in Albany for a few years, there might even be a chance you could win a big one and go down to D.C.

But the point is that if you wanted to be a political activist, the only path you could take was to work within the political party. Unless, of course, you’d rather stand in front of the supermarket ringing a bell and asking people to sign some petition which nobody signed.

That was then, this is now. Want to become what Grandpa would call a ‘macher’ (read: big shot) in politics today? Come up with a name for your political organization, apply to the IRS to become a 501c4, open up a website and a Facebook page, begin recruiting people…