About Practical Politics
The vast majority of American citizens are neither rigid conservatives nor government can-do-all liberals. INDEED, the largest block of voters in 2020 had no party affiliation- not Republicans and not Democrats! Unfortunately most of us don’t really know how the political process works, neither locally or nationally. The big donors and special interests do, though, and they use this knowledge to have government work their way, not ours.
Practical politics is designed to give the vast middle ground of citizens, who wish to decrease the influence of the extremes and the special interests, a renewed say in our representative democracy. It works by providing a vital understanding of the fundamentals of the political process through a time tested Action Course in Practical Politics.
Some 60 years ago, business leaders were concerned that voters were losing an understanding of the principles and purposes of the American political process. Facilitated by the Chamber of Commerce of the United States in 1959, a study guide was produced titled “The Action Course in Practical Politics” and group course study was started across the country. The original Action Course was a moderated course, with both study material and case problems, held over a period of 8 weekly or bi-weekly sessions. The course, called Workshops, were usually held in the evening, with about 12-15 participants and a Discussion Leader. The workshops were two hours in length although they usually went beyond that time frame as excitement was built from the discussions. The original action course was promoted through local Chambers of Commerce and some 250,000 to 500,000 people took the original Action Course, including the former historian of the United States Senate, Richard Baker.
It was designed to help individuals who were interested in knowing more about politics, or might wish to personally become a candidate. .The original course manual is long out of date, and in error in some areas relative to today’s political arena. It was the idea of two senior citizens who once took the course and became workshop leaders to remove or revise out of date content and errors, but not destroy the “totally bipartisan” educational purpose of the course, and then present and conduct the revised political action workshops as a public service.
This new “Political Action Course” introduces content the result of an effort of Sam Gallo, a local Louisiana business executive, who was a course Discussion Leader years ago. The broad scheme was that Sam Gallo would promote it through a grant from the Gallo World Family Foundation. And that is where we are today. The Action Course which you are about to begin is presented as an online learning course using the mutually edited material of the two men.
IMPORTANT: Although the course follows in the most part the published material cited above, where relevance to today’s political atmosphere, we have added or edited content in a few places. Also, content styling has been used to more facilitate learning than is used in printing.