Strawberry roots

Nice new analogy by Britt Blaser: Strawberry Roots Activism.

Your front lawn is dependent on you for seed, feed, water and weeding, each seed pushing out just a few blades for us to admire. Rhyzomes, like strawberries and crabgrass, are more creative. Once started, they shoot out opportunistic runners which put down roots in hospitable circumstances. If the new plant prospers, it puts out multiple runners, and so on. Strawberry roots activism may be the future of politics.

... Any campaign that wants to attract rabid support must give each potential supporter the power to connect substantively with the campaign and to accept all supporters' opinions on substantive issues. ...

There were several policy professionals working for the Dean campaign. They taught me that policy professionals hate the idea of the voters expressing their explicit policy preferences in a way that politicians must acknowledge and, perhaps, respond to. ...

(link via Weblogsky)