SCCA’s  "Know Your Neighbor" Project (KYN) 

Elections and consequently representative government are increasingly eroded by the influence of campaign contributors.  Money is used in campaigns to win the attention of casual voters who expend little time in their busy lives to follow the decisions of local government. As elections approach, most voters do pay attention and special interest money buys the brochures and the TV time to influence their decisions. 

Buying elections has taken the place of traditional person to person voter contact, a process time honored by voters as the most trustworthy source of information. 

Person to person contact by the candidate and by a neighbor talking to a neighbor about the candidate is the only counter weight to special interest money that buys elections. 

Conservation Action, with fourteen years of door to door voter contact experience in all nine Sonoma County cities, is uniquely equipped to organize neighbor to neighbor precinct projects to restore word of mouth politics. 

Our Know Your Neighbor (KYN) program ran a successful pilot project in seven precincts in west and central Petaluma in the 2004 elections. Similar success in all nine KYN precincts organized in Healdsburg gives overwhelming reason to expand the process for the 2006 election. 

"Many of us want to know our neighbors better. The Know Your Neighbor project made it easy to start finding neighbors who shared my interest in taking action in my community in a way that is environmentally conscious," reports Barry Bussewitz about his KYN experience. 

Know Your Neighbor basically organizes a team of four to eight residents of a precinct to contact their voters as neighbors to talk to them about a local candidate or issue on a one to one basis. The pilot projects found that identifying oneself as a neighbor - “ I’m your neighbor over on C street” - provided the trust and standing needed to convey the candidate’s message at the door. 

As a citizen you can do something to counter the influence of money in political campaigns. Join a KYN team! Imagine, a community where every precinct is organized by a pair of neighbors. When the newest sprawl or ridgetop development proposal comes forward, KYN teams are organized to support the alternatives, and to send a clear message to the sprawl majority councils that enough is enough. Imagine, these teams supporting city centered, mixed use development instead of sprawl, affordable housing instead of starter mansions, bicycle lanes, paths, and rail instead of the newest road over the ridge top. The possibilities are endless.

“The KYN project will be a pivotal force in organizing Healdsburg in the upcoming months.  The council is looking at inclusionary zoning for affordable housing. Plus when the Saggio Hills development comes up this summer it will take every neighbor we've got”

~ Healdsburg Affordable Housing Group