Change doesn't happen fast.

And in politics, it doesn't begin at the top.

It starts small, with a movement in communities such as ours, in races for township auditor and supervisor and state legislature, and then grows into something bigger, says Jim Dean.

"It's about these kinds of elections that really affect our quality of life just as much as any presidential campaign does," says Dean, chairman of Vermont-based Democracy for America, one of the nation's largest liberal political action committees.

Dean, speaking in Lancaster City Saturday night, said getting involved at the local level is the best way for a party frustrated with 2010 losses in Congress and state houses to make their voices heard — on issues from regulating the natural-gas industry to collective bargaining for unions.

"You can fight back," Dean told some 170 people gathered for the county Democratic committee's fall banquet, a sort of get-out-the-vote pep rally held with two weeks remaining until the Nov. 8 municipal election.

"There's no reason for us to wait for the magic moment to happen, like it did in 2006 or 2008. We've just got to go do it, but doing it starts now. And getting those voters out starts now," Dean said.

The event, an annual fundraiser for the party committee, was held at the Lancaster County Convention Center. Organizers said it was expected to raise several thousand dollars.

The banquet drew several statewide candidates and party chairs from other counties. Attending were Democrats David Wecht, who is running for state Superior Court; Kathryn Boockvar, who is running for Commonwealth Court; and Kathleen Kane, who is running for attorney general in 2012.

Dean is the brother of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who founded the committee after his unsuccessful run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004.

Jim Dean, whose voice was hoarse from one too many public speaking engagements, is every bit as energetic as his more famous brother. He encouraged the party's rank-and-file to slog through the tough political environment on behalf of their candidates.

And he drew comparisons between the Occupy Wall Street movement's persistence and beliefs with the Democratic Party's.

"Let's face it: If you stack up their values and ours, we're not that far apart," Dean said.

Dean's Democracy for America supports the Occupy Wall Street movement; earlier this month it asked supporters to donate money to buy sleeping bags for the activists camping out in New York City.

Dean told the Capitol Hill publication Roll Call that his committee's goal is to support the movement — but not own it.

"We want to help the people that are there and make sure they can stay there as long as they can," he told Roll Call. "The longer those folks are there, the more public support they are going to be getting and the better the chances are that we are going to get real reform out of this."

But speaking in Lancaster Saturday night, he appeared to go further than just supporting the movement. He invited his party to embrace it

"We've got a lot of folks out there ... whose values and whose own commitment to this country are being questioned," Dean said, referring to the Occupy Wall Street activists.

"And this is our chance to bring them into this discussion so that they have a say, so that all of us are empowered to have that discussion that we have to have as part of the party, so we can find the best way of doing things, the best candidates and the best people and make this party as strong as possible."

tmurse@lnpnews.com