(Thinking forward, rather than just reacting... - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
In light of the 2010 wipeout for Democrats, we’ve all been taking stock of where to go next. The recent George Soros kerfuffle about "looking somewhere else" is a perfect example of the debate about where to invest our resources for the next two years and beyond.
The argument for investing in movement-building, towards progressive infrastructure outside of the Democratic Party is getting stronger and stronger, and you can read calls for it everywhere. I really hope the debate among big donors breaks away from dumping everything into 2012 attack ads and significantly towards long-term projects that will stand beyond the next election. Regardless of the decisions made by Democratic billionaires, we can put our resources towards movement building.
Joe Brewer, Founder and Director of Cognitive Policy Worksand a former staff member of George Lakoff’s think tank the Rockridge Institute, has launched a project along with Eric Haas and Sara Robinson.
An interesting reversal of the usual pattern in news coverage is going on here - there is almost no mention in the lefty blogs of the most notable mass uprising in a developed country in recent history - the French peoples' shutdown of their nation over the proposal to raise retirement ages. The story is actually getting more coverage in the mainstream media - over 1,100 articles by Google's count (see this article from the Guardian - great picture: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl...
I haven't been following the story as much as I could have either. It's just curious that our 'hope and changy' web outlets aren't covering this as an amazing example of a union- and people-powered movement to assert their power in the face of the oligarchy. We lefties occasionally acknowledge that we want and need the same thing here, but we're not learning any lessons from the French when we could be. What does this say about us as a 'movement'?
Let's hear it for Annabel Park of Silver Spring, MD, who, when really upset by the Tea Party Movement and it's Fox News promoters, started a response movement in her living room: The Coffee Party Movement. And, wonder of wonders, it has caught on... enough so that I've added Coffee Party to my blog rolls.
Like most of Paul's articles these are very thought provoking. But there's more to be said. It's certainly true that right-wing organizations have out-organized us, but they have a lot more money and that's really what it comes down to. We certainly need better organizing, but we have to face reality. And the reality is encouraging as well as depressing, because there ARE serious cracks in the armor of our enemies and serious divisions among them that cannot be papered over.
With respect to the Tea Parties and especially the summer's town-hall meetings, a key corporate titan appears to be Koch Industries of Wichita, Kansas. Fred Koch (pronounced "coke") founded the company in 1940 as an oil business but it has expanded into natural gas, pharmaceuticals, fertilizer, and many other areas. He helped create the John Birch Society in the late 1950s and died in 1967. His two sons who run the business now, David and Charles, have foundations that donate millions to conservative and libertarian causes and groups, including notably the Cato Institute. One Koch-funded group used to be called Citizens for a Sound Economy. It became Americans for Prosperity (AFP) in 2003, a group that has advocated limited government and opposed climate change legislation. Earlier this year, Americans for Prosperity launched a Web site called Patients United Now, which ran frightening television ads opposing health care reform (showing, for example, a Canadian woman who supposedly couldn't get treatment for a brain tumor in her native country). . . . The AFP helped distribute signs and talking points at a town-hall event hosted by Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello. . . .
This dovetails very nicely with corporate lobbying groups whenever there is a need to block progressive reforms:
It isn't just conservative (c)4 groups that backed the town halls. America's Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, is the enormous lobbying organization for private health insurance companies headed by Karen Ignagni, who makes frequent television appearances discussing health care. According to ThinkProgress's Lee Fang, AHIP mobilized 50,000 of its employees to attend town-hall meetings and otherwise lobby against the inclusion of a public health insurance option in the reform. AHIP's effort was coordinated by Democracy Data & Communications (DDC), which has helped various corporate clients set up front groups. DDC is headed by B.R. McConnon, who was once an employee of the Koch-funded Citizens for a Sound Economy.
This one-two punch is what's really effective. Normally, business and conservative groups are subsumed into the Republican party. However, in 2008 something new happened that hadn't happened since 1965: an actual "liberal" Democrat took office with the intention of enacting some progressive legislation -- and he was popular!
You see the immediate result. The instant that Obama tried to operate within the institutional framework that existed up till 2008 he found himself fighting an unprecedented coalition of business groups who refused to be bought off, and right-wing political activists like Grover Norquist.
I'm reading a lot of uncertainty everywhere about how progressive both the Obama administration and Congress will turn out to be. Many of us are trying to divine what agendas lie behind the curtain based on cabinet appointments and committee chair posts. Isn't this tea leaf-reading a waste of time?
We have little, if any, influence over these decisions (except, possibly, to raise a big, public stink about a totally unacceptable choice). It seems to me that our goal (as several netroots writers have pointed out) should be to figure out how to influence policy once the new Congress and administration are sworn in.
The people who will be taking power are transitioning from election mode to governing mode. So are the wingnuts, by pushing the "center-right nation" meme. What is the online progressive community doing to manage the same transition? What, exactly should we be doing? Is fretting openly about White House staff appointments the best use of our energy? If not, what is?
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".
Part of Living Liberally's mission has been to promote engagement and collaboration among progressive organizations. To fulfill this goal we at Living Liberally have decided to feature interviews with people involved in different parts of the progressive movement. Hopefully, through these interviews, we can learn about what progressives are working on today, and get a little more in depth about what its like to be a part of the progressive movement.
Our first interviewee, Daniel Mintz, is in Research and Development at progressive powerhouse MoveOn.org Political Action. He currently lives in Brooklyn and every once in a while shows up at the Original Drinking Liberally. Enjoy!
Seth Pearce: So, what did your parents say when your organization was condemned by the US congress? Daniel Mintz: I think, they, like a lot of people, were just blown away that with so many huge problems to tackle, the US Congress decided to spend so much time talking about a newspaper ad. Just like, whether you agreed or disagreed with the ad, what a manufactured controversy.
SP: What exactly do you do at MoveOn? DM: Officially, I'm in charge of Research and Development, which is to say that I'm the R&D dept. (we're a pretty tiny shop). What that means in practice is that I get to have my hands in lots of cool stuff that we're trying out.
SP: Stuff John McCain would know how to use? DM: Not so much.
SP: People think of MoveOn as this big shadowy progressive organization, running some kind of secret progressive world order- what are some specific things that MoveOn is working on right now? DM: Ha. What are we working on right now?...Let's see...We're getting ready to run a massive get out the vote operation in the fall, hundreds of paid organizers working with tens of thousands of volunteers. We'll be essentially combining our 2004 program, Leave No Voter Behind, where people in swing states canvassed their neighbors, with our 2006 program, Call for Change, where MoveOn members across the country made more than 7 million calls to voters in key House and Senate races.
We're also working on FISA: Right now, we're asking thousands of MoveOn members to call their senators every day to tell them not to cave on the FISA "compromise".
And we're running a National Day of Action for an Oil-Free President at gas stations across the country in a few weeks. McCain is pretty darn tight with Big Oil. Many of the more than 100 lobbyists associated with his campaign are lobbyists for Big Oil. We wanted to highlight those ties and push for our next president to free himself and us of our dependence on foreign oil. So we're holding hundreds of gas station rallies where thousands of MoveOn members will show up at local gas stations to rally and call for a real, progressive solutions to the energy crisis.
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?
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!
A few reflections on the post-Iowa/NH earthquake. I still don't have strong leanings for any of the 3 leading Dems over another. My orientation is to the progressive movement. Therefore:
(1) There is ONE progressive movement. As an independent Democrat, I see this movement as embracing both Democrats, independents, and probably even a few Republicans. That there are 3 worthy candidates is a delight. They don't each have their own movement, they are each thrust forward on the same wave. Thus a win for any is a win for all. Some of our discourse is zero-sum and that's a terrible mistake. "Candidate X would be a disaster, we must elect Y." No. That may be true from the perspective of individual candidates, but not from the perspective of the movement.
(2) That said, I think that history has left Edwards behind. His problem is that he succeeded. He brought forward a populist message when it was so uncool, but at least to some extent that message has been picked up by Hillary and Obama. His is a defeat to be proud of. I think that Edwards and his supporters have an important role to play, by continuing to hammer at the issues of poverty and corporate corruption with their every waking breath. But to hit Hillary and Obama below the belt in hopes of winning is the height of folly.
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