"President Biden’s reelection effort will launch a pilot test of its 2024 organizing strategy... that aims to directly leverage the personal relationships of volunteers."

"The moves come as the Democratic National Committee has redirected its organizing efforts to a new smartphone app that encourages supporters to communicate with people in their own friend, family and community circles and then report those contacts back to the party’s voter file. This 'relational organizing' has become a growing part of Democratic campaigns for several cycles, outperforming traditional door-knocking and call sheet lists that volunteers have long used to contact strangers during campaigns...."

From "Biden team launches organizing pilot project in Wisconsin and Arizona/The reelection effort is focused on recruiting large numbers of volunteers to use their own relationships to spread the Biden message directly" (WaPo).

Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, said the major strategic change is that organizers no longer have to work off lists of strangers provided by the campaign. Instead, they create their own lists, based on their personal social networks or location. He said organizers can now just walk into a bar — Wisconsin ranks among the highest in bars per capita — talk to seven random people in a college community and then report back the results of those interactions.

The pilot starting next month will double the number of staff working on outreach to young and Black voters in the state. “They also allow you to sit on your couch and check in with all the people you didn’t see at church that weekend,” Wikler said. “Connecting with someone they have a relationship with is the most effective way to reach them.”...

Is this wholesome — in a Heather-Locklear-I-told-2-friends kind of way? Or is this awful — appropriating and leveraging personal relationships? If someone begins a conversation with me with a political pitch, I'm offended. But maybe most "personal" friends are just people who are looking to manipulate and use you in one way or another. 

I resist tag proliferation, but I'm making a tag for "relational organizing." I'm doing this not in spite of but because of the fact that it annoys me. It annoys me the way "the politics of meaning" annoyed me. Is "relational" even a word? Yes, it is. The OED has examples going back to the 1600s. Here's a 2006 example from Time Magazine: "Girls have traditionally practiced not so much physical aggression as relational aggression." 

Is "relational organizing" an established term? I found a few things:

1. "The Key To Creating Lasting Change? Mobilizing the People You Already Know. Relational organizing focuses on the most important tools at our disposal: our relationships and our ability to talk with one another about things that matter" (Harper's Bazaar, 2020): "Every single one of us has a network.... Hell, I even recruited my mechanic to join our legislative advocacy day once. This is what activists do. We do the work of unifying like-minded people around an issue, and then we turn those relationships into votes."

2. "How to be a Relational Organizer" (NAACP, 2020): "Talking to your friends and family about politics may seem like a daunting task, but we've got news for you - it doesn't have to be so hard. Just remember these three prompts, 'Open, Question, Action' and the conversation will flow naturally...."

3. "'If we do this right …': The new Dem organizing strategy catching fire ahead of the midterms/Operatives who helped elect Sen. Jon Ossoff are exporting their voter contact program to more states for the midterm elections" (Politico, 2022): "A group of Democratic strategists is trying to spread a novel organizing tactic in this year’s election. Technically, it’s called 'paid relational organizing,' but it boils down to this: paying people to talk to their friends about politics."

4. "The Secret to Beating Trump Lies With You and Your Friends/The pandemic wrecked traditional campaigning. Relational organizing stands to reinvent it" (Mother Jones, 2020): "... a buzzy new term: 'relational organizing.'... [It's] nothing new. Word-of-mouth and community-based activism were the backbone of the civil rights, women’s rights, farmworkers’, and labor movements.... [Some political scientists] believe relational organizing holds the most promise for people of color and other communities that historically lack political power. The possibility is being demonstrated right now, as polls show that a majority of Americans are awakening to racism in policing. That could not have happened without Black Lives Matter, a textbook example of relational organizing."