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Born in 1960, Wes Boyd co-founded the public policy group and political action committee, MoveOn.org with his wife and business partner Joan Blades. Founded in September of 1998 as an[…]

Yes, because not enough good people are involved.

Wes Boyd: Our analysis was that when you look at what’s going on in Washington, it must be because not enough good people are involved. It must be because politics has been seen as so cynical and so negative, it drives away the best talent in this country. Because the town . . . the country is full of talented, resourceful, smart people. They’re not working in Washington. Well there are certainly some smart people in Washington, but not enough. Not enough of that good, American spirit is going into the work. So our mission has been to help as a service to help people figure out how to connect to that . . . . one of the impacts that I think I’ve been most surprised by is just the modeling of the way of doing this work. That many organizations involved in politics come at the work from the standpoint of, “We know the answers. We’re just gonna find the biggest soapbox we can and tell you what the answers are, and then the world will be a better place.” Well that’s not the way we approach it. We approach it to say we all are facing big problems. The world community is facing a lot of very important, tough problems. We don’t . . . We don’t know the answers. You don’t know the answers. But together, if we connect and we work together, we can find these answers. And modeling that way of engaging people – and engaging people not as we’re above them and we’re telling them what to do, the education and informing mission – ours is a service mission of connecting and helping folks be effective. And that . . . modeling that, I think has been taken up by a lot of good groups.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

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