Be a Precinct Captain

by Nez Perce County Chairman and 2016 Idaho National Committeeman Pete Gertonson

1. The world is run by those who show up. If you are happy with the way the world is being run — on a local, state and national level — you can sit on your deck and enjoy another novel or cast another fly toward a waiting rainbow. If you have some concerns about freedom of the press or hope that your favorite trout stream will still be available to future generations — or that perhaps you owe something to your community, to your children and grandchildren and your neighbor’s children and grandchildren, then you need to find ways to show up and help manage the world.
2. We are the people we have been waiting for. One can sit around and complain about the decision-making of our elected officials, whether school board members, county commissioners, state legislators, or members of Congress — but they and their friends and supporters showed up. If you would like to see changes made in Idaho and America — in education, the national debt, the war, our own health as a people and the health of our environment— guess who needs to get involved. If you let someone else manage your government — and there are plenty of others out there who are more than happy to do so — you probably aren’t going to like what you get. Our current state and national governments illustrate my point!
3. America is a democracy — for at least a little while longer. You have the opportunity, as an individual citizen, to have a major impact on your local politics, to influence your state’s political decisions, and to be part of movements that will impact the national and world scene. If people like you don’t get involved, and we become governed (or continue to be governed) by such groups as international corporations and neo-cons, our democracy could in fact go away.
4. The only answer to organized money is organized people.As usual, Bill Moyers gets to the heart of the matter. Politicans can be bought. National administrations can be bought. Ordinary citizens like you and me are hopefully harder to purchase. We are in fact the wildcards in this scene, and if we become organized and create political movements, we can offset even organized money.
5. Political organization begins at the grassroots level. All over America the building block of political parties is the precinct, the local neighborhood. Granted, in Idaho some of our “neighborhoods” are physically rather large — up to 75 miles across — but the precinct remains the first line of political organization and action.
6. You can have an impact. As a precinct captain, you can leverage your own concerns with those of your neighbors and translate those concerns into political influence and, most important of all, into votes in the voting booths of America.

Maybe it’s time for you to show up and help govern the world. If ordinary people don’t get politically organized, we could actually lose our American democracy. You can help change the world — and serve the interests of your loved ones, your community, and yourself — by becoming politically active as a precinct captain with the Nez Perce County Democratic Party.

You are the one you’ve been waiting for. You are the one we’ve all been waiting for. Please join us and help make the world a better place. Today.

Note from the NPC Dems:

Precinct captains are members of the Nez Perce County Central Committee which meets the last Wednesday of the month at 7 pm, January thru October, at the AFL-CIO building in Downtown Lewiston.

They seek out Democratic supporters in their precinct and see that their concerns and interests are recorded in the VAN database. They work to identify possible volunteers and donors and to register new voters.

Captains are part of the team working on Democratic campaigns, events, and fundraising within the county. They help in election activities, including Get-Out-the-Vote, poll watching, and monitoring the vote count.

Precinct captains are the backbone of the Democratic Party.