I believe that Democrats have had a can opener the whole time
But they were convinced it was a bad opener, compared to the nice new one that movement conservatives had assembled. As a result, they ignored it, or even boycotted it long enough for it become a mass of rusty metal, that doesn't work very well, and simply requires some oil, steel wool and a good sharpening.
We have a lot of factions, from the green movement to LGBT issue politics, social justice and Public education, among many others. What we need, more than a can opener, is the ability to get our two hands to work on one action.
The can opener is urban America, and a little political Jujitsu reversing the momentum created by the "Culture War" waged by conservative America (or, as they say, "Real" America) on "the other" America is long over-due.
All of the separate factions of the Democratic Party are united in large urban areas, whether they like it or not, it's where they live. The little blue islands are our home "bases," in a physical sense, and they are in need of the focus of our National Party. They are the fulcrum of the can opener, and, for that reason, are the most obvious cause for building a "movement."
Liberalism primarily evolved out of the city-based "middle classes", based in trade, small-manufacture and the professions--the bourgeoisie, although skilled workers (Tom Paine, anyone?) and even freed slaves (Frederick Douglass) played a part as well. In turn, socialism/social democracy evolved primarily out of the working class, although disaffected members of the bourgeoisie (Marx & Engels, anyone?) played a significant role as well.
Harvey Milk used to get into intra-movement battles over whether to push openly gay candidates or straight ally candidates with his nemesis in San Francisco gay politics, the Alice B. Toklas Democratic club. The Toklas' Club philosophy was to work closely with straight allies, not antagonize anybody, and endorse straight candidates for seats on the Board of Supervisors, cautiously believing gay candidates- especially ones with Milk's politics and methods- could never win and that the city wasn't ready for them. Milk, who was refused the Toklas Club endorsement in his first race for Supervisor in 1975, his race for an Assembly seat in 1976, and his second race for Supervisor in 1977 (the latter because Rick Stokes, a strong openly gay ally of the Club, was running) was so frustrated with the Toklas Club methods that he formed his own organization, the San Francisco Gay Democratic Club, after losing his Assembly race.
But Harvey was living in a time when there were no major pieces of pro-LGBT legislation, no strong advocates on the Board of Supervisors, and no openly LGBT elected officials in the country. Today, all of that's changed.
I'm thinking about all of this because here in DC, Clark Ray, an openly gay candidate, is running against an incumbent Councilman Phil Mendelson, perhaps the strongest ally of the LGBT community and a straight man. It gets at the heart of what Milk stood for, and choices we need to make as a movement. Yet Ray is, as I see it, making three arguments for his candidacy, all of which are unstrategic and unpersuasive. I examine them on the flip.
(Following on Chris's argument in "The End Of Bubba Dominance", if a religiously and racially diverse coalition is the future of American politics, will we actually be able to govern effectivel? Community organizing and national electoral politics are not the same thing, but neither are they totally unrelated. Hence, there's a lot of food for thought in this diary, even if community organizing isn't your primary focus. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
We would all like to be able to just sit down with diverse collections of citizens from all walks of life and work together to solve the problems we face. My last post , however, discussed research showing that diverse contexts are unlikely to generate robust, free, and equal democratic dialogue.
I also asserted that it is really difficult to train people to stop dominating each other. But I didn't really provide any evidence, and commenters were rightly skeptical.
This post looks at a book by Eric H. F. Law that gives a good description of the ways people from some groups unintentionally end up dominating in small groups while others are silenced. Law's book shows how subtle the dynamics of domination can be.
Newsflash to the netroots and the media (which seems perpetually confused on this issue): The netroots are not the base of the Democratic Party.
Overwhelmingly white, male and highly educated, they're a loud anomaly in a party that's wholly dependent on the votes of African Americans, women and working-class whites.
This is a common criticism of the netroots: it is just a bunch of well-educated, well-off, white dudes who are not like the rest of the Democratic Party. Now, the same criticism could easily be made of the elected officials of the Democratic Party, given that under 30% of the Democratic members of Congress are women, even though nearly 60% of all Democratic voters are women. Further, the Senate Democratic caucus is almost entirely white, and I think members of Congress in both branches are pretty well educated and well-off, too.
In fact, much of the same criticism could also be made of the established media itself. Women make up only 37% of newspaper staff (including only 25% of news directors), while persons of color make up 5%. Again, I think it can be safely said that people in the media are pretty well-off, and pretty well-educated, too. And yet, for some reason, they have no problem lobbing this criticism at others.
The truth is, however, that the notion of the progressive netroots as lacking in diversity is now outdated. A quick survey of staff and front-page writers of the twelve groups most commonly associated with the "netroots" shows a wide range of diversity in terms of race, gender and sexual orientation. These groups include the three largest activist organizations (MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, and Color of Change), and the nine largest websites that are unquestionably termed blogs (Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, Crooks and Liars, Think Progress, Eschaton, Fire Dog Lake, Americablog, and MyDD). Collectively, these twelve organizations account for over 90% of the activism and audience of the "netroots," so while it is not entirely complete, looking at them collectively is a reasonable survey of the netroots as a whole. Not only are these groups more diverse than is commonly understood, but they blow away both the established media and the Democratic political establishment in terms of diversity.
Update: for more context on why this is important, please see Amy Alexander's The Color Line Online in The Nation
We're now at the midpoint of our first, more-leisurely-than-anticipated mutual guest blogging series. Thanks to Melissa McEwan, Sara Robinson, Pam Spaulding, and rikyrah for their time, energy, and extraordinary posts. In retrospect, our original plan of getting all the posts on OpenLeft and the mutual posts on the guest bloggers' blogs all in one week was a little over-ambitious. Oh well, live and learn.
Another thing that didn't go as planned was that we didn't stick narrowly to the initial topic.* Pam and the Jack and Jill Politics folks both said they'd like to take a more forward-looking approach than in our framing. Since our primary goal is diversity of voices on the front page, I said "sure." Apologies to all for not having communicated this better, and thanks to desmoinesdem, sb, dr anonymous, and Paul for their replies when plukasiak brought this up in rikyrah's thread. Apologies also to any who see this as resulting in false advertising, biased discourse, or disrespectful towards the concern of feminists/womanists; that wasn't the intent, but I can see how it could look that way. OpenLeft readers had said they wanted to hear from these bloggers, and I thought their proposed subjects related well to the initial theme. Was this the right decision? If not, what should I have done? It's a good discussion for the comments. On the communications, all I can say is "oops".
We're going to be kicking off the mutual guest blogging next Monday, with participation from Pam's House Blend, Jack and Jill Politics, Orcinus, and Shakespeare's Sister on the topic of "feminist and womanist perspectives on Hillary Clinton's withdrawal from the race -- and why this matters to progressives". Something to look forward to!
And it's mutual: several of the bloggers have invited OpenLeft front pagers to post on their blogs as well. We still need to work out the details of this. If any front-pagers reading this have a post they'd like to make on the topic, please say so in the comments.
As the astute observers on this site have no doubt noticed, we haven't had the vote yet on followon topics. As an experiment, we didn't put the nominatino thread on the front page ... and it didn't get any action. Oh well, live and learn. And this week, with all the stuff going on with FISA, it felt like it wouldn't have gotten much attention.
Speaking of FISA though ... wouldn't that be a good topic for mutual guest-blogging?
As we head to the start of mutual guest-blogging next week, it's time to start working on the follow up. The topic discussion thread led to a bunch of great suggestions, all of which fit our basic criteria:
important for the progressive movement in general as well as the November election
very little good discussion of these to date in most of the progressive blogosphere
consistent with and reinforcing Chris, Matt and Mike's goals and strategy for the site and the movement
Please make sure to vote in the poll! For related threads, see the guestblogging tag If you're on Facebook, please join the group!
Things have been going extremely well on the mutual guest blogging project. Thus far we've got acceptances from Jill Tubman from Jack and Jill Politics, Pam Spaulding from Pam's House Blend, and Sara Robinson from Orcinus. The idea's steadily improved, and response has been consistently positive. It seems to me like we're on track for a major success. (Additional details below; invitation list and discussion here.)
We'll be going live the week of June 30, with a sequence like the following:
Recapping the first-round blogger guest-blogger nominations so far, bearing in mind that the topic is "feminist and womanist perspectives on Hillary Clinton's withdrawal from the race -- and why this matters to progressives":
Melissa McEwan of Shakesville (nominated by Taylor, 3 recommendations); her For the record post is a great articulation of the feminist perspective, and Shakesville's 100+-and-counting "Hillary Sexism Watch" series has been tracking this for months.
Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend (nominated by Paul Rosenberg, seconded by Populista; 6 recommendations for this and tw others combined)
Orcinus (nominated by Paul Rosenberg, 6 recommendations for this and tw others combined) featuring Dave Neiwert and Sara Robinson
Talk2Action, also a group blog (nominated by Paul Rosenberg, 6 recommendations for this and tw others combined), where recent posters include Bill Berkowitz, Rob Boston, Frederick Clarkson, Bruce Wilson, and Richard Bartholemew.
Egalia of Tennessee Guerilla Women, "Fighting to end sexism in Tennessee and the nation" (nominated by Sadie Baker and enthusiastically seconded by johnieb, 1 recommendation)
These all seem like great potential guest bloggers to me, and there's good diversity in a lot of dimensions, so I think we're off to a fine start. I propose inviting all seven of the initial nominees, giving them the option of whether they prefer starting with this first round or waiting for another topic.
Thoughts on this? And does anybody have any good connections with any of the blogs and bloggers?
Increasing diversity
The number of nominations was small enough that we've still got several empty slots -- we wanted to choose at least 10-12 to allow for some deferrals and cancellations -- so it's worth asking what additional perspectives we'd like to see represented here. A few things to think about:
(This diary continues the discussion of mutual guest blogging. This is an exciting proposal, and your opportunity to make suggestions about the shape it should take. Please join in! - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
There was a lot of support for starting the mutual guest-blogging project with a topic related to feminist and womanist perspectives on Hillary Clinton's withdrawal from the race -- and why this matters to progressives. So this thread is to collect nominations for potential guest-bloggers on the topic. Hopefully, it will also serve as a useful resource for those wanting to explore the issue themselves.
Please put your suggestions in as comments. The next steps will be to discuss, then filter the initial list, discuss, and then vote. We're going to leave this thread up for a couple of days to give people time to think it over; feel free to come back and add more later.
More on the nomination criteria and a few examples, below the fold.
For other discussions of mutual guest blogging, please see:
(Here is a second diary to advance our thinking about the mutual guest blogging proposal. The previous one focused on the "who," this one focuses on the "what" and "why." - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
This thread is to collect potential topics for the mutual guest-blogging project. There's no shortage of good ideas; we've starting out with eight possibilities (included below).
Let's use this thread to discuss more potential topics as well as the criteria that we want to apply to choosing the best ones for mutual guest-blogging.
(Here is our second American Blogger winner from this week. A very timely followup to my previous post in the "Women's Voices / Women's Struggles" series. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
We propose that OpenLeft feature 5-7 guest bloggers each week, prioritizing diverse voices and perspectives not usually heard on the front page. OpenLeft front page posters will reciprocate, by blogging on the guests' sites, and the combination will (with luck) create a temporary hub in the progressive blogosphere. The result is improved mutual understanding, links with other tightly-connected networks, and a base for more collaborative and effective strategic actions.
Note: This diary entry refines several ideas from the "American Blogger" thread including input from Taylor, Syrith, me, and several others who asked to remain anonymous. Thanks to all the reviewers of the earlier versions!
It's no secret that the progressive movement could use more diversity. One of the biggest concerns I hear out here in Montana is the difficulty in taking opportunities in D.C. because of the financial difficulties for people who aren't rich to do it.
After all, who can afford D.C. prices for rent and food while working an unpaid internship?
A conversation with a friend today suggested an easy solution worth consideration: a small non-profit dedicated to identifying home-stay locations in the D.C. area for unpaid interns and the like who can't afford to rent an apartment or dorm room.
Hire staff who have worked for exchange student groups to help place people. Target wealthier progressives -- consultants and lobbyists -- for the first round of asks.
Housing could end up being secured, I would think, for as little as $1,000 or so per intern for entire semesters -- with that money going to pay for the staff and overhead of the operation.
The people accepting guests do a public service, meet interesting people from around the country, etc. The interns traveling get a housing solution that probably also helps them network into the progressive movement.
Following my post looking at Harvard social scientist Robert Putnam's latest research on diversity and civic engagement, I got a chance to talk with Putnam and get his full perspective on what the research means from a progressive perspective. Putnam, a progressive himself, said much of his views have been omitted or downplayed by the conservative pundits and traditional media, who have seized on the reports to push an anti-diversity and anti-immigrant agenda. As always, full disclosure: I work for Vote Hope, which is independently supporting Barack Obama for president as well as state and local candidates in California.
Growing up in the 1950s, Robert Putnam knew the religion of everyone in his high school classes - particularly the attractive girls. To this day, he says, he could look at a yearbook and tell you who was Catholic, Protestant or Jewish. Why? Because back then, dating outside of one's religion was not common practice, and to a teenager, little is more important than who you could or could not date.
"Now, over those 50 years, that line of social distinction has more or less vanished," he said. "Everybody still knows what their own religion is, but we stopped using it as a line of distinction among us."
Putnam tells the story to illustrate one of the key interpretations of his new research, which focuses on the "social capital" of diverse communities in America - mainly its effect on civic engagement. He believes a similar re-imagining of ourselves and our common identity is possible in America, as we become more and more diverse over the next 20 to 30 years.
"We are going to become more diverse, and it's great, with lots of long-term benefits," Putnam said. "But in the short term, adjusting to diversity is not a simple matter."
The latter part of his statement is what much of the traditional media - egged on by right-wing conservatives who have distorted the findings to fit their nativist, anti-immigrant agenda - has focused on. But Putnam said there is a lot for progressives to learn from the data.
The core of the research shows that people who live in more diverse neighborhoods tend to "hunker down." It's not the same as conflict, Putnam said, but it's a phenomenon of everyone pulling in and trusting each other less. It's true for everyone, he said - all racial groups, rich and poor, younger people as well as older folks. "It means you volunteer less, give to charity less, have fewer friends and are less likely to work on community projects," Putnam said. "The only things that go up are protests/marches, and TV watching." The statistical analysis Putnam and his team conducted did take into account outside factors like economics and the different nature of cities and suburbs. Through it all, he still found a higher correlation of diversity and "hunkering down."
Which brings Putnam to the progressive opportunity to help nurture these increasingly diverse neighborhoods and communities for long-term social change. There are two main points, which he argues in more detail in his recent journal article:
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