I spent much of the last day of the Democratic Convention meandering through the "convergence center"--a dilapidated four-story building where many of the demonstrators congregated and participated in nonviolence training.

There, I spoke with Kelly and Hillary, two activists who had been responsible for training demonstrators with trust-building exercises. They said that the most effective action of the week was the march on the police station housing the Ramparts Division--now notorious for officers accused of stealing drugs, planting evidence and shooting unarmed suspects.

In a protest orchestrated by Catholic Worker, several hundred people marched to the station carrying crosses--each bearing the name of someone killed or falsely imprisoned by the police. Kelly described this march as "dignified"--it reminded him of civil rights marches in the South. Hillary felt that this was one of the few times during convention week that bystanders clearly understood what the march was about and thus sympathized with the demonstrators.

But Hillary was visibly tired and disappointed with the protests in general. When I asked her why she felt that they hadn't been successful, she put her hand on her heart and began to cry. "We didn't create a dialogue!" she exclaimed, in between sobs. "We made a lot of noise, but nobody heard us."

I had to agree. The convention delegates didn't understand what the protests were about and never made much of an effort to find out. The shadow conventioneers seemed satisfied to rant about the excesses of the system and the shortcomings of the Dems; but they didn't create a dialogue (in fact, most of the sessions I attended were in "celebrity lecture" format). For their part, the demonstrators seemed satisfied with shouting about their favorite issues--a bewildering panoply of causes ranging from "end globalization" to "free Mumia" and "stamp out Lyme disease."

None of the various factions actually sat down and talked to each other. At the end of the convention, we were left with a perplexing question: How do we create a real dialogue on the left?

For now, Al Gore seems to be making conciliatory gestures to the left. Witness the emphasis in his acceptance speech on fighting for "working families" and his promise to fight large corporations: For better health care, he will fight HMOs. For lower cost prescription drugs, he will fight pharmaceuticals. For cleaner water, he will fight polluters-- and so forth. Sounds good, anyway.

Yet whenever the subject of the left came up at the convention, I heard folks say: "The left is not strong enough to carry the party by itself, so we had to move to the center. The Clinton strategy works."

Maybe it's my innate unwillingness to accept the conventional wisdom, but I question the assumption that the left is not big enough to carry the party by itself. I've seen several recent polls that seem to indicate otherwise: One says that more than 65 percent of Americans think that abortion is a private family issue (and ultimately a matter of choice); the other poll says that 79 percent believe that we face a dire environmental situation. Now these two issues don't come close to defining the issues of the left, but they are important. So it's worth considering that maybe we have underestimated the size of our constituency. Maybe the contemporary left is bigger than we think.

If that is so, how can we explain how little impact the left has had recently?

Maybe the left's lack of impact is due to our failure to communicate, our failure to establish a dialogue. We seem much more interested in lecturing than we do in listening. During the only Q&A session I witnessed at the Shadow Convention, most of the "questioners" made statements rather than asked questions.

Maybe the lack of impact is not a function of size, but our inability to raise money. In the current climate, he who raises the most money in a campaign usually wins. At the convention, the only group more omnipresent--and disliked--than the LAPD was the corporate lobbyists. Though delegates expressed disgust with the overwhelming presence of corporate money, the consensus is that the Democrats can't win without it. But what's stopping the left from raising its own money? Environmental campaigns, such as those to save wild rivers, certainly indicate that it's capable of doing so.

Or maybe the lack of impact is not a function of size, but of our lack of organization. We on the left seem to revel in our pluralism. Witness the amazing number of causes on parade during the protests in L.A. ("Make the minimum wage a living wage," "Don't wear fur," "Sanction same-sex marriages"). Pluralism is a strength but also a weakness. It confuses those outside the left, who fail to understand what we stand for. And as a result, the media tend to marginalize us. (The left is most successful in times of crisis, where we unite to fight a common enemy, where we focus our energy.)

What's clear is that we need to challenge the prevailing wisdom that the Democratic Party cannot win by relying solely on the left. We do have the numbers. If we focus our energy and get our act together, we can raise the amount of money needed to wage winning campaigns on both the national and local levels.

We hold a winning hand. Now we need to figure out how to play it.

Bob Burnett is a longtime activist in the Bay Area and a founder of Cisco Systems.