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Originally Posted by Rich Muny
Grassroots are there for activism. Are they there for doing ALL the organizing and funding? I don't know. Want to try it, either through PPA or independently?
The PPA is not a grassroots organization, and in my experience never was.
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Originally Posted by Wikipedia
A grassroots movement (often referenced in the context of a political movement) is one which uses the people in a given district, region, or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at the local, regional, national, or international level. Grassroots movements are associated with bottom-up, rather than top-down decision making, and are sometimes considered more natural or spontaneous than more traditional power structures.
When I took the spot as PPA State Director for Florida some years ago, I started to organize volunteers from the poker players in my state for three actions:
1. Meeting with the federal Senators and Congressmen from Florida (individually).
2. Reaching out to other poker players to get them involved.
3. Contacting the local cardrooms to garner their support.
The PPA helped by sending my introductory email to all the Florida PPA members to ask that they join the effort by contacting me.
At the point where I had gotten volunteers lined up to start in on #1, I got a phone call from John Pappas and the PPA's consultant lawyer in Tallahassee. The purpose of the call was to convince me not to do #1 - that is not to have volunteers across the state to individually visit their federal congressional representatives. Apparently this came out of some prior incident where a volunteer had visited their rep and had done something wrong that upset the apple cart.
That pretty much killed off the participation of many of the volunteers I had organized and were ready to go, as I had to stop them from going forward.
This not what a "grassroots organization" does.
But, I didn't give up and continued to work on #2 & #3.
I refocused my efforts on getting the local cardooms involved. My efforts pretty much revolved around getting the volunteers to get the cardrooms across the state to distribute the PPA flyers to their poker players from their front desk. I had set up with the PPA national official to ship boxes of fliers to my volunteers as needed. I got one or two boxes and then they stopped coming. When I called, I was told that they ran out but they would be reprinted shortly. Six months later I was still waiting for them to be reprinted.
That pretty much killed off the participation of my remaining volunteers I had organized.
This not what a "grassroots organization" does.
But I didn't give up.
Not too long after, the PPA came up with a program to get more state chapter activity going. They announced it to me and the other state directors, and promised that they were establishing an official state chapter structure, where each state could have their own state registered chapter, keep their own finances and bank account, etc. Pretty much what any other national organization with state chapters does. To launch this, they also set up a game for state directors - any that got 100 new local PPA members within the next number of months (I forget exactly how long) would get awarded an entry to a $1500 WSOP event.
I went to work on this, organizing a free training event with three poker pros (Linda Johnson and Jan Fisher, along with Donna Blevins from Florida) at one of our local Florida cardrooms, in conjunction with a charity tournament for a local non-profit that raises funds for the Florida Special Olympics. The idea was to get all the attendees to become PPA members, and to use the event as a kickoff for the new state chapter.
In the meantime, I waited for the PPA to come through with their promised state chapter structure. And waited. After several inquiries, I eventually I got the call from John Pappas and the national PPA lawyer consultant to explain why they decided not to do it.
This not what a "grassroots organization" does.
I followed through with my training event and signed up 78 new PPA members (IIRC). It was a great event (thanks again Linda, Jan & Donna!). The staff member from the PPA that was going to come cancelled out a week or so beforehand.
I gave up.
It's not that I think the PPA has not done anything for the cause of poker players. To
quote Rich Muny:
Quote:
PPA organized letter-writing and phone call campaigns while lobbying federal agencies and Congress. PPA also set up and organized testimony at Congressional hearings that went very well for us. Poker players wrote and called Congress by the hundreds of thousands. With these efforts, PPA stopped — and reversed — the momentum of the anti-poker forces. I believe we are fortunate to have someone as savvy on the Hill as Executive Director John Pappas at the helm, as navigating that arena is a skill all its own.
At the state level, the PPA twice stopped Massachusetts from criminalizing playing of online poker. PPA also fought the Kentucky governor’s efforts to seize online poker domain names, holding that back for years. That effort included recruiting the ACLU and EFF to aid the fight, including a joint press conference to condemn the governor’s attack on the game. PPA worked with state and national media very effectively to communicate the players’ position in the Kentucky fight. We also led the effort against a MN effort to mandate ISP-blocking of online poker sites...
But all of these actions were initiated and organized by PPA staff at the national level. Yes, poker players from around the country have participated in PPA campaigns for letter writing, emailing, tweeting, etc. But the PPA never empowered the state chapters, and the political activism almost never originated from the grassroots level.
Rich, I thank you for all your work for poker players, first as a volunteer and then as a PPA staff member. But just because you started as a very active volunteer doesn't prove that the PPA operates at and has depended upon the grassroots level for its effectiveness. The decision-making and activism has always been organized, dictated and controlled by the national office. Perhaps your Daily Action Plan, in the beginning, was the one exception. Eventually that was brought under the umbrella of the national office as well.
I don't object to the PPA changing to a group to advocate for online gambling or sports betting. The PPA has no official mandate from its members, just as the members have no voting power other than their checkbook. Personally, I won't support the group, but then I'm not a dues-paying or participating member of the PPA any longer anyway.