by Jim Mangia
Secretary, Reform Party National Organizing Committee

UNDER THE RADAR SCREEN -- BUILDING THE REFORM PARTY

When I was asked to write an article for our national magazine, I was thrilled. I thought long and hard about what to write, about my experiences in building the Reform Party, my work on the Perot '96 campaign, and my conversations with Mr. Perot about our vision for the Reform Party. I am very moved by Ross Perot's vision and love of America. It is a great source of inspiration for me. When Russ Verney contacted me in October of 1995 and asked me to help with the drive to qualify the Reform Party on the California ballot, I felt privileged to participate in that effort. And last January in Nashville, I was very touched when I was drafted to run for NOC Secretary.
I have worked in many different kinds of communities throughout California and the nation to build independent politics with people from many different walks of life. During the registration drive in 1995, we worked in the most conservative neighborhoods of the Los Angeles suburbs, and the most liberal inner city communities of south central Los Angeles and West Hollywood. I believe that our political, social and cultural diversity is one of our party's greatest strengths. I have come to learn how critical it is for all Americans to come together as Americans to save this country.
What we need in our effort to save America, in my humble opinion, is a strong political tool -- like the Reform Party -- that can shape and consolidate the movement for democracy and political reform that has swept our country. But of course, before you can use a tool, you have to create it, you have to build it. I wanted to share with you in this article, some of my activities in the "party building" arena as part of a motivation to intensify those activities throughout the country.
It was a hot, sunny, Saturday in early September in West Hollywood as people gathered in the community room of Plummer Park for the chapter meeting of the West Hollywood Reform Party. A very active chapter based in one of the Democratic Party's most fervent strongholds, the meeting was the kick-off for a major Reform party-building campaign in the city. West Hollywood has one of the largest percentages of Reform Party registrants of any city in California. The meeting, a very mixed crowd of Americans, reflected the diverse nature of the mixed, inner-city Los Angeles neighborhood.
As the meeting was about to get started, a man with a large kitchen knife who was bleeding profusely entered the meeting. He sat down next to me at the front of the room, grabbed my shirt with a bloody hand and said: "Don't anyone leave this room." Many of the people at the meeting immediately scurried out of the room, leaving myself and a couple of supporters (as well as the man with the knife) looking at each other in amazement. Luckily, the man didn't really want to hurt anyone, he was actually desperately asking for help. After we calmed the guy down, getting him to drop the knife and allow us to help him, the police came and took him away. People began to file back into the meeting room, at which point one brand new Reform Party member asked out loud, "Are Reform Party meetings always this exciting?"
Actually, the party building process isn't always that exciting. Much of what we do is "under the radar screen." What I mean by that is most of what we do at the grassroots is incredibly significant -- it is the foundation upon which this party is being, and will be built. But it isn't always exciting, and most of it certainly doesn't get on to the media's radar screen. But as singer Patti LaBelle once sang: The revolution will not be televised." Building the party from the bottom-up, so to speak, has been a very gratifying experience for me as the national secretary. It is the day to day work at voter registration tables, at fundraisers, on the phones, doing the mailings, etc., which are the backbone of building this party.
The day after our illustrious event in West Hollywood, Darlene Felando, a Reform Party activist here in California, sponsored a fundraiser at her beautiful home on the cliffs of Palos Verdes. Jean Nash, another Reform Party activist and myself helped Darlene to organize the fundraiser. The amount of effort and commitment which Darlene put into the fundraiser was incredibly moving. The building process was successful. Over 115 people attended, and we raised close to $4,000. The event was very glamorous. Trust Darlene, Jean and myself -- the organizing of it was not. It was hard work. CNN didn't think it worthy of coverage. That's fine. We know what we produced and how we produced it.
On the one hand, Pat Choate and Russ Verney are beginning to get the kind of media coverage we need to project our national image, vision and direction. This is very important. I've been able to publish several opinion pieces in newspapers around the country. We've done some press conferences in Los Angeles and gotten good television, radio and newspaper coverage (not an easy feat in such a saturated media/hollywood market). At the same time however, media coverage will not drive the building of our party. It's the nuts and bolts, precinct-level building that will.
When Ross Perot put out the call to build a new party, thousands of us hit the streets. In California we worked all over the place. We worked shopping malls in conservative Orange County, in front of the gay bars of San Francisco and West Hollywood, inside welfare centers in south central Los Angeles and Oakland, at county fairs and in front of every church of every denomination you can imagine. We built a diverse and inclusive party. We must continue to do no less. We must get back out into the streets and sign up a few hundred thousand new members over the course of the next year. In California, we've mounted a voter registration drive based in our local chapters throughout the state. In West Hollywood, we registered 214 new Reformers in less than a month. Reproduce that in every neighborhood in the country and we're talking big time. Not "big" enough for the media to notice on their corporate radar screens. But big enough to matter to the American people. And big enough to continue to build the political tool our people need to take back our country!