Interesting story at The American Prospect – they are disclosing all of the names of the members of the Democratic National Committee:
Opening the DNC’s Black Box
Why we’re publishing a previously undisclosed list of all 448 members of the Democratic National Committee
The story says that members of the DNC generally don’t have contact information for other members, intentionally, so that they can’t organize:
““There are incentives for the DNC to keep us [members] apart,” Kapp added. “So we can’t organize, so we can’t talk to one another, so we can’t grow and learn.” Most crucially, “so we can’t organize against, or, if we wanted, in favor of whatever leadership wanted. By keeping us apart, they’re really able to organize and control these meetings from the top down.””
The list is also kept secret, the article says, to sometimes give cover to corporate lobbyists. But not everything is nefarious.
“A decent number of these people are elected (like many chairs and vice chairs) by the state party executive committees; these are arguably the people most responsive to what the base of the party cares about. Some state parties are very good at making all of this transparent; if you are a grassroots activist and you want to get involved in how your state party is run or seek to be one of its representatives to the DNC, the pathway is open in those places.
The biggest exceptions come in two varieties: small backwaters and big cesspools. For example, the Democratic Parties of tiny American Samoa and Guam, as well as Kentucky, New Mexico, Nevada, and Vermont, don’t list all their state’s DNC reps, though the Mariana Islands’ party website does. But that only amounts to about two dozen voting DNC members whose existence has been hidden from public view until now. “
Vermont’s DNC members, according to the American Prospect list:
David Glidden
Amanda Gustin
Elaine Haney
Ryan McLaren
The story concludes:
“Knowing who has actual voting power over the DNC’s governance may give grassroots activists around the country who care about the party’s future some greater capacity to focus their efforts on the people who actually pull the levers. What they do with that potential is up to them.”
