This Pretty Much Sums It Up

A commentator (Kall) at Matt Taibbi's blog made a passionate and excellent comment that perfectly crystallizes the frustration that many Progressives and liberals are feeling towards the Democratic Party. The comment is making its rounds in the blogosphere and I thought I'd help in spreading the word.

The idiot pundits proclaiming this as a protest to Obama’s “overreach” are just morons and deserve to be ignored by anyone with half a brain. In a just world, bankers would wipe out their savings, after which they’d be fired and have to stand in today’s unemployment lines.

The lesson Obama should take from this is that people are not fooled by Obama throwing out platitudes like “I didn’t run for President to please fat-cat bankers” and then appointing people like Tim Geithner of Goldman Sachs to Treasury, keeping Ben Bernanke around, and having people who caused the economic pain for so many people like Larry Summers and Robert Rubin as his economic advisors. And are not fooled when he does nothing but mouth platitudes, or makes a scene of phoning a bank to tell them not to buy a plane, as the largest round of banking bonuses is handed out the year after they did the financial equivalent of blowing up the world. And are not fooled when he gives a speech to Wall Street politely requesting them not to be so greedy, and that they don’t need to wait for him to enact legislation to change their behavior. And are not fooled when all the popular elements of reform like a public insurance option are gutted out of the health care reform bill in order to “pass something” and call it a win, and then lie that you “never campaigned on a public option” (for someone who ran such a new-media campaign, it’s pretty brazen to act like in 2010, people don’t have the YouTubes!).

Health care reform with the public insurance option was popular with 60% of people – the health insurance industry giveaway without it is popular with about 30% of people. And people are not fooled when he generally doesn’t enact anything meaningful because he is so comfortable in his bubble and so weak and “above the fray” of the den of rats that is Congress that he bows and scrapes to the 60th corrupt, brainless, and paid-for Senator like Ben Nelson or Joe fucking Lieberman for absolutely anything and everything.

I think Obama and his circle really believed that if he just talked the talk, and acted more empathetic in his photo-ops, no one would notice they were carrying on with the contempt Bush and Republicans had for the general public. But people did notice, and people who they counted on before to volunteer and vote for them because “they have no one else to vote for” are sick and tired of playing that game – not seeing a meaningful difference between the parties, they didn’t play the game this time and either sat out or expressed their disgust.

Whether he will take that lesson remains to be seen. He seems incredibly tone-deaf to me, and the corporate donors to the Democratic Party have no interest in that message getting through. Whether he’ll even feel the inclination to act on that lesson if it actually does sink in is also highly questionable.

I came of voting age just a little before 2000, and could never really understand why people would “waste” a vote on someone like Nader. And although I was a supporter of Kucinich in 2004, once he was out, favoring Kerry made sense to me. But I’d never really had a real opportunity to see the modern Democratic Party running things in my adult lifetime.

Now I understand why people vote third-party. When the country is teetering on the brink and can’t get by on non-solutions anymore, and avoiding failed-state status actually depends on starting to fix the problems rather than just pretending it’s trying, and EVEN THEN the Democratic Party can only respond by offering trillions to Wall Street and legally requiring people who can’t afford health insurance to buy it from private, oligopolistic, profit-maximizing companies, all because of industry’s hold on Congress… then there’s nothing else you can do. In such a sick system, all you have left is your integrity as the country goes to hell, and I understand with crystal clarity why people vote third-party.

I write for another blog in additon to MOA, Third Party and Independent Daily. One of the reasons I do so is because I feel there is a growing potential audience and constituency of people angry and frustrated by the two major parties and are looking for solid, political alternatives.

Third parties and independents operate at a severe disadvantage in the American political system. If people like the commentator I quoted above want political alternatives to the Democrats and Republicans they have to really want it enough to work for it and make it happen.

The good news: there are people and activists who have been working the independent and third party beat for years -- even decades. The angry commentator and those who share her anger should seek out and familiarize themselves with this marginalized sector of American politics and work to make it stronger and more viable. That's the only way we're gonna get alternatives to the status quo.

Politics is About People, Not Parties

Sometimes I come across a particularly profound political insight that I just have to share it widely. This is one on the political participation of young people in European politics from the Personal Democracy Forum:

Young Europeans do not want political parties in their lives. Only 4 percent of young people (15-29 year olds) participate in a political party or trade union (on Euronews from Eurostat statistics). This is a clear figure of what young people want or do no want. Political party politicians and their acolytes would quickly blame the education system, capitalism, the television or even the Playstation for the lack of interest in politics of young people. They are blinded by their group thinking and narrow perspective of what politics is. Politics is not only, and not even mainly, about what political parties and their representatives (the so-called "politicians") do. This fact, many people, including young people, know very well. I recommend the party people to go one night around bars in any city or town in Europe, to listen to what people are talking about. They talk about politics beyond political parties and their captive public institutions. They will be surprised to hear that there is political life outside the party. For politics is mainly about people and what they do, and not about organisations of any kind. That is why we need to reform the system to give chances to those who want to talk and participate in politics, but do not want to be captive of an organisation that has its own interests, often different than the interests of the rest of us.

Given the oft-cited statistic that the number of self-described political independents in the U.S. is surging rapidly I would say that what is said in the quote above holds true for us here in the U.S. as well. Politics should be about people, their needs and solving problems. Not narrow partisan interests. Most people are wising up to that insight and would prefer a political system that is responsive to those needs.

Yes to people-centered participatory democracy and no to narrow partisanship!

Two-Party System Shills

Pundit Chris Cilizza pooh-poohed the idea of the “Rise of Independents” in this Washington Post article.

Despite the reported increase of Americans self-identifying as independents according to the latest poll results Cilizza decides to throw some rain on independents’ parade by saying:

Before we get too far down that road, it's important to remember that talk of a third party and the reality of it are too far different things.

He cites a study that shows deep divisions among people who consider themselves independent, the very real institutional hurdles to building a third party, and that even if a third party candidate does emerge in the 2012 or 2016 elections, that it is highly unlikely that their candidacy will lead to the creation of a viable third party. He cites the example of Ross Perot to illustrate this point.

Cilizza’s whole angle on the rise of independents irks me. Because the entire thrust of his piece was to defend the status quo of the two major parties. His entire piece was basically an argument directed to independents saying “you are in no position and will never be in a position to really challenge the status quo. You might as well just give it up and play politics the way the two major parties want you to play it. Get with the program and STFU!”

Cilizza wasn’t that blunt but he essentially meant the exact same thing if you followed his arguments to their logical conclusion.

There are so many ways Cilizza could have handled this. He could have asked the question: why are so many people so disgusted by BOTH major parties that they are self-identifying in rejection of them in far greater numbers than in the past? What makes them stink so much that people are rejecting their label?

Then perhaps rather than piss on independents and third-party supporters and condescend to them, he could have turned the tables on the major parties and asked of them: both major parties must be doing something wrong – what can they do to get people back into the fold? What can they do to get people to support them and self-identify along their lines instead of just being compelled to play politics on their terms because two-party politics is all the system supports and is built on?

Of course, he doesn’t do that. He would much rather poke a stick at independents without acknowledging the fact that they are constituents and that declaring independence is an effective way ordinary people can and have registered their disgust with the failed policies and politicians of the status quo. Isn’t that a democratic act and which deserve a bit more respect than he is giving them?

The bottom line for people like Cilizza is to defend the two-party system. The bottom line for independents like me is that democracy is broken, the two major parties are not cutting it in terms of representing the interests of Americans in any adequate way, and we must find a way to fix this broken system. The logical extension of the independent point of view is to ask: what needs to be done to revitalize democracy? What needs to be done to promote greater participation, transparency, and to involve ordinary people in democratic practices? What needs to be done so people in positions of representing The People can have their trust and confidence?

Cilizza and those who make the same arguments that he does completely miss and dismiss these points because deep down they could care less about participatory democracy. They only care about the two major parties and preserving the status quo. They are perfectly content to serve as shills to the two major parties without challenging them or demanding that they answer all the hard questions that deserve to be posed to them.

Serious As A Heart Attack: The Independents' Story

The following article was forwarded by Nancy Hanks of The Hankster. It was written by independent activist Jackie Salit. In it, Salit provides insight on the impact of the independent vote.

Personally, I think the story that Jackie outlines in this commentary below is a "sea-change" story that "big media" picked up on briefly in 2006 and again in 2008 (election fever) but is now somehow completely missing from today's analysis. More than 40% of the American electorate identify as independents. And that growth was produced in large part by the progressive wing of the independent movement. If you blink on this, you will miss the story.

Thanks!
Nancy

SERIOUS AS A HEART ATTACK: THE INDEPENDENTS’ STORY

By: Jackie Salit

When we finally get far enough down the road on health care reform, it will become clear that a driving force in the intensity of the fight was a heart attack. Not the medical kind. The political kind.

Independents swung decisively to Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. And it is this shift by independents – who repositioned themselves from center-right to center-left – that gave the Republican right the political equivalent of cardiac arrest.

In 1992, 19 million independents voted for Ross Perot. In 2008, 19 million independents voted for Barack Obama. Over the span of 15 years, the largely white, center-right independent movement re-aligned itself with Black America and progressive-minded voters.

This did not happen out of the blue. It did not happen by magic. It happened because the progressive wing of the independent movement did the painstaking and often controversial work of bringing the Perot movement and the Fulani movement together at the grassroots. The Fulani movement refers to the country’s leading African American independent, Dr. Lenora Fulani, who exposed the black community to independent politics and introduced the independent movement to an alliance with Black America.

No doubt the dramatics that the right wing brought to the Town Hall meetings this summer were intended for the television cameras. But the organizers, strategists and radio personalities who orchestrated the theatrics had a particular audience in mind: Independents. If they could tarnish Obama’s image with indies, they could damage the black and independent alliance and re-establish the Republican Party as an influential force amongst independents. Some of that could be accomplished, they felt, by claiming Obama’s health plan would drive up the national debt – a concern that animated the early Perot movement. Some Republican strategists felt that if they simply branded Obama a socialist, it would scare independents away – not from the health care plan (everyone recognizes a plan of some kind will get passed) but away from the center-left coalition that elected him.

If indies are feeling somewhat disillusioned with President Obama over the health care reform fight, it has more to do with fears that he is being overly influenced by the partisans in Congress. Since independents voted for him to be a more independent president, it’s easy to see how some felt disappointed by his handling of the Republican onslaught. Obama’s independent appeal was based on his challenge to the prevailing culture of Clintonian opportunism in the Democratic Party and partisanship inside the Beltway. Put another way, the independent vote for Obama was an effort to define a new kind of progressivism, one that was not synonymous with Democratic Party control.

After years of hard work and organizing, independents have become a sought-after partner in American politics. They elected President Obama and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, arguably the country’s two most independent and pragmatically progressive elected officials. No wonder the Republican Party right wants a clawback.

Independents are vulnerable to being peeled away by the Republican right. The Pew Research Center reports that were the 2010 midterms to be held today, independents would lean towards Republicans by a 43 to 38 percent margin. But, the evolution of a 21st century independent movement is not that simple. First, the movement is very fluid and very new. Historical movements develop through twists and turns, not in a straight line. The far right has attempted to take over the independent movement before. In 1994, Newt Gingrich crafted the “Contract with America” to woo Perotistas back into the Republican tent. And in 2000, social conservative Pat Buchanan hijacked the Reform Party presidential nomination, though he was roundly repudiated by independents in the general election.

If Republicans are increasing their influence among independents, it’s also because the Democratic Party Left has not been a friend to the independent movement. Sure, Democrats were happy that indies broke for Obama. But they were disappointed that we didn’t become Democrats. They equate progressivism with being in the Democratic Party. But they’re wrong.

Neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party has been enthusiastic about the development of indies as a third force. For different reasons, surely. But they share a common goal: to maintain the primacy of two-value logic (where there is only one or the other, never neither) and make sure independents are passive companions. That’s one reason that the fight for open primaries – which allow independents to cast ballots in every round of voting – and the campaign to appoint independents to the Federal Election Commission are so important. Those fights are about our right to participate and our right to represent our interests in changing the political culture.

The independent movement went left in 2008, after many years of grassroots organizing to link it to progressive leadership. Now the right wants to peel it back. Obama, presumably, wants to hold on to the partnership, but must also privilege his own party, which turns independents off and makes them more susceptible to Republican attacks. Meanwhile, independents are working hard at the grassroots to hold our own.

Jackie Salit is the president of IndependentVoting.org and the campaign coordinator for Mike Bloomberg’s mayoral campaign on the Independence Party line.

Book Launch: Not Invited to the Party

There is a new book on independent politics that is supposed to be available in stores starting tomorrow called Not Invited to the Party: How the Demopublicans Have Rigged the System and Left Independents Out in the Cold. The author is George Mason University economics professor James T. Bennett.

From the product description:

Not Invited to the Party demonstrates how the dominant political parties -- the Democrats and Republicans -- have co-opted the system to their advantage. James Bennett examines the history and array of laws, regulations, subsidies and programs that benefit the two major parties and discourage even the possibility of a serious challenge to the Democrat-Republican duopoly. The American Founders, as it has been generally forgotten, distrusted political parties. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution are parties mentioned, much less given legal protection or privilege. This provocative book traces how by the end of the Civil War the Republicans and Democrats had guaranteed their dominance and subsequently influenced a range of policies developed to protect the duopoly.

This book, therefore, makes an argument for structural electoral reform along the same lines as Theresa Amato’s excellent book Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny which I reviewed in this blog. If Bennett’s book turns out to be as good as Amato’s then this signals a watershed year for pro-electoral reform activism with the release of two important books along these lines for major publishers. I fully intend to get a copy and review the book when it comes out and spread the word.

The Free and Equal Elections Foundation will hold a public forum on these two books tomorrow at the (strangely enough) Libertarian/Conservative think-tank the Cato Institute in Washington, DC. The event will be webcast live in the Cato Institute web site and an e-mail writing effort is underway among Free and Equal Elections’ supporters to have the event covered in C-SPAN.

Free and Equal, by the way, is one of the pro-electoral reform organizations out there doing great non-partisan work. They have as a member of their Board publisher of Ballot Access News, Richard Winger probably the most knowledgeable authority in the U.S as it concerns ballot access issues for independents and minor parties.

I support these books and activism because I am a supporter of electoral reform and participatory democracy. We can’t have real participatory democracy in the U.S. if we don’t open up and level the political playing field to independents and minor parties. Encouraging more competition and a wider spectrum of ideas in the public debate can only be good for democracy. So I urge you to check these resources out!

The New Independent Majority

From an ABC News/Washington Post poll and a hat tip to the Poli-Tea blog where I first got this info:

"In making their case, both parties face a fundamental challenge: Democratic allegiance has slipped to a two-year low in this poll and Republican affiliation is back near its lowest ever; instead 43 percent of Americans now identify themselves as independents, the most since ABC/Post polls began 28 years ago. "

The actual post at ABC News was about health reform and the numbers above were just snuck in almost as an afterthought. I couldn't help but be amazed at what the statistics mean -- 43 percent of Americans now self-identify as Independent. 43 percent now have rejected labeling themselves along the lines of the two major parties. This is huge news. I can't understand why this fact only merited one paragraph when an entire article is begging to be written in the mainstream media on this phenomenon.

The article I'd like to see wouldn't be how these 43 percent of the electorate relate to the major parties' positions or ideologies. What I'd like to see is a serious treatment of Independent perspectives ON THEIR TERMS, not along the terms or in relation to the two major parties.

For example, how about a series of in-depth interviews with actual, living, breathing independents and trying to get to the root of what makes them choose to be Independent despite the overwhelming emphasis and monopoly of the two major parties on the institutions of American politics.

Are the two major parties THAT BAD? What makes them stink so much that 43 percent of the electorate are willing to reject their label? What types of choices would Independent voters like to see in the US political system? Would these include an expansion of the political arena to include third and minor parties and independent candidates? Would this include electoral reforms such as Instant runoff voting and other alternative voting methods? Would these include the inclusion of third parties and independents in televised debates and having representatives of these organizations be included in institutions that decide who gets to debate, funding for campaigns, voting technology to use in elections, etc.

Any MSM reporters out there reading this and willing to conduct a serious interview with an actual Independent? My hand is officially raised.

The Political Outsiders: A Series on the Possible Future of American Politics

I have always been fascinated by the question of how political outsiders—those who are not the elite or influential members of the major political parties—can become influential and affect the political process. I operate from the assumption that America is a democratic system and all citizens and residents should have a voice. The system, if it is working, therefore, should accommodate political outsiders. When ordinary people feel they do not have a voice or a stake in the system, then the system of American democracy has failed.

I am going to attempt a rather ambitious series of blog posts which will present and analyze various ongoing efforts to enact political reform and wider participation in the American political system.

• The Fusion Strategy as touted by the Committee for a Unified Independent Party (CUIP)
• A takeover of the Democratic Party by Progressive, grassroots activists as described and exemplified by the books Crashing the Gate and Taking on the System
• Structural political reforms championed by the organization FairVote such as Instant Runoff Voting and the National Popular Vote

I chose to focus on these three because I have been observing these efforts for a long time—for a number of years. I have been observing the efforts by the CUIP to organize political independents since I first heard about them in the early 2000s. I have been consistently amazed observing FairVote’s incremental success in enacting IRV and NPV city by city and state by state year after year seemingly under the radar of mainstream political media coverage and public consciousness.

Being a political junkie I am a voracious reader of political books. Two books in particular—Crashing the Gate and Taking on the System—made a deep impression on me. These books led me to start researching and observing the efforts of Progressive, grassroots activists who have used the power of Internet technology and social media to challenge entrenched powers in the Democratic Party to create a powerful and influential niche for themselves in recent years.

Part I: Independents and Fusion

In a recent article at my other blog, An Ordinary Person, I examined a political strategy that is being touted by Independent activists for people who do not belong to or believe in the traditional political parties. This strategy is called Fusion. I contrasted the Fusion approach with the approach of third and minor parties of running candidates in electoral politics:

The third party strategy has failed to bring power back to the people in the American political system. Third party candidates who run in local and national elections, except for some anomalies, routinely post miniscule results. This is primarily the result of structural factors and the lopsided rules by which electoral politics in the US is conducted.

The CUIP asserts that there is absolutely no need to wait for these crucial reforms to happen before independents can start participating as players in American politics. Independents have to find ways to participate in politics and affect the political process now. Independents have to be willing to join in the fray of mainstream politics and be ready to throw its support behind any candidate from any party, major or minor, which represents and speaks out for independents. Salit calls this the fusion strategy.

For political outsiders who view issues and politics outside of the prism of Republican or Democratic perspectives, the CUIP’s fusion strategy presents an intriguing possibility for political outsiders to affect the political process as players instead of marginal participants. Indeed, if Independents act as a unified bloc or an organized group of political actors, whatever agenda they represent can be attractive enough for mainstream political candidates who seek their support to adopt.

This crux of the Fusion approach (and its main weakness) is that political independents can and should act as an organized bloc of voters who will throw their support behind any political candidate or movement which represents their interests. If independents are united and mainstream politicians see the benefit of getting their support, independents can potentially alter power dynamics which have traditionally favored the entrenched two major parties. With more than a third of the American electorate now self-designating as independent, the Fusion approach has real potential to have a major impact.

I say weakness, however, because the job of organizing independents and enacting an agenda that this third of the electorate can rally behind is easier said than done. Absent such a consensus, this approach is still heavily dependent on the major parties to set the agenda of political choices. In addition, independents span the political spectrum left to right and there is not a consensus even within independents what types of reforms, if any, the majority of them favor.

What pretty much unifies independents is their distrust of the traditional major parties and their skepticism of both Democrats and Republicans in addressing and actually solving problems. But is that enough to rally them into an actual, bona-fide movement for political reform?

The ongoing efforts by the CUIP is the only existing effort I know that is attempting to do this. I am not aware of any official outreach within the Democratic or Republican parties to appeal to independents in-between election years.

Recommended reading:

• We the Purple by Marcia Ford
• Committee for a Unified Independent Party
• Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America by Micah Sifry
• Electoral Fusion (from Wikipedia)

What Happens to the Obama Grassroots?

from the Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Washington -- It is the biggest and broadest American political force ever created -- a vast, electronically linked network of activists, neighborhood organizers and volunteers who raised record amounts of money and propelled Barack Obama to the White House.

Now, as Obama turns from campaigning to governing, his advisors are struggling to harness this potent web of supporters to help him move his agenda over the next four years.

But it is no simple task to convert an insurgency into a standing army.

That challenge has sparked rare discord among Obama advisors who ran a highly disciplined operation with no public disagreements throughout the long campaign.

Traditionally, the new president would blend his campaign operation with his party's national committee. Some of Obama's closest advisors lean toward that pragmatic view.

But others, who built the grass-roots organization, worry that linking it too closely to the party could cause the unusual network to unravel -- and squander an extraordinary resource.

The Obama machinery relied heavily on idealistic political outsiders committed to breaking free from old ways of doing politics. The worry is that these enthusiastic activists might drift away if they are turned over to the Democratic National Committee, where the party might ask them to support Democrats and target Republicans.

Full article at the Los Angeles Times

The key quote in the article was how do you transform an insurgency into a standing army? I would bet that many of the people who supported and voted for Obama are independents and non-ideological voters who do not have a particular affinity towards nor loyalty to the Democratic Party as exemplified by the DNC.

I agree that attempts to turn these followers into a partisan organization would only serve to alienate them (hell, it would alienate me! I consider myself an independent voter who voted for Obama). I would urge Obama's team to encourage models of political and civic participation that is not designed solely for the benefit of the Democratic Party but to model its efforts along pragmatic and realistic solutions to the country's problems based on a core set of Progressive principles. The focus should be on problem-solving. Not party politics.

Meditations on the Presidential Race 08 (Part II)

In Part I of this blog post I posed this question to myself:

Politicians don’t get elected in a vacuum—actual people vote for them and do so in the hope that once elected, that they will do something for them and represent their interests. If my brand of politics, political party, or politicians isn’t represented in the halls of power, it hardly logically follows that the political system has failed ordinary people. Perhaps all it means is I am a fringe kind of guy and my views are not palatable enough for the mainstream to rise above the level of the fringes.

I have often wondered why the politicians I like and the political expressions that move me don’t seem to get any mass traction. I liked the idea of a US Labor Party, for example, yet for the past decade and a half it has existed it hasn’t really taken off like I thought it would. The masses just aren’t moved in great numbers into buying into the types of ideologies and organizations that are designed to get them to “fight the system.”

That is, until election time—that one time every some number of years when our political leaders turn to the citizenry and appeal to them for support. This is when peoples’ desires for politicians to be more responsive to their concerns suddenly come to the forefront of the national discussion. And this is the time you get professional politicians—stalwart guardians of the Establishment—take on the rhetoric and imagery of reformers and revolutionaries.

This is when you see the citizenry pinning their hopes and political desires to politicians who promise “change” and who promise to “fight the establishment” and represent the interests of the Little People.

Take a close look at how politicians craft their campaign communications. Most, if not all, will couch their appeals in terms of being a man or woman of just plain folks. Most won’t couch their appeals in terms of representing the interests of big corporations, lobbyists, the rich and the powerful. Yet between election years everyone knows and complains that politicians and the political system are in the pockets of the rich, the corporations, lobbyists, etc. How can that be with so many reformers elected into office?

This is why I am really not that excited about the 2008 Presidential race. Because no matter who wins, no one is really expecting anyone to fulfill their campaign promises to reform or fix what is wrong with the political system. I don’t doubt the sincerity of people like John McCain, Barack Obama and John Edwards who built their platforms on a populist appeal and anti-establishment sentiments. I just doubt their ability to carry out their campaign promises given the nature of the office they are running for.

The politics that will excite me doesn’t exist in the US in any large scale. It has nothing to do with electing people to office. It has everything to do with realizing the potential of ordinary people to participate in the system of democratic participation and to carry out a platform and agenda of advocating for their own interests. If this makes me a fringe type of guy, then so be it.

Cross-posted in An Ordinary Person

On (Real) Movement-Building

Excellent political commentary by political scientist and activist Adolph Reed, Jr. on what voting Democratic means for the prospects of a progressive, political movement. Particularly hard-hitting and illuminating are the following passages where he outlines the futility of relying on a program exclusively dependent on appealing to Democratic politicians to realize progressive political goals:

Despite a mountain range of evidence to the contrary, we—the labor, anti-war, women’s, environmental, and racial justice movements—all continue to craft political strategy based on the assumption that the problem is that the Democrats simply don’t understand what we want and how important those things are to us. They know; they just have different priorities.

That’s why the endless cycle of unofficial hearings and tribunals and rallies and demonstrations and Internet petitions never has any effect on anything. They’re all directed to bearing witness before an officialdom that doesn’t care and feels no compulsion to take our demands into account. To that extent, this form of activism has become little more than a combination of theater—a pageantry of protest—and therapy for the activists.

Then at the apex of every election cycle, after having marched around in the same pointless circle, chanting the same slogans in the interim, we look feverishly to one of the Democrats or some Quixote to do our organizing work for us, magically, all at once.

We need to think about politics in a different way, one that doesn’t assume that the task is to lobby the Democrats or give them good ideas, and correct their misconceptions.

It’s a mistake to focus so much on the election cycle; we didn’t vote ourselves into this mess, and we’re not going to vote ourselves out of it. Electoral politics is an arena for consolidating majorities that have been created on the plane of social movement organizing. It’s not an alternative or a shortcut to building those movements, and building them takes time and concerted effort. Not only can that process not be compressed to fit the election cycle; it also doesn’t happen through mass actions. It happens through cultivating one-on-one relationships with people who have standing and influence in their neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, families, and organizations. It happens through struggling with people over time for things they’re concerned about and linking those concerns to a broader political vision and program. This is how the populist movement grew in the late nineteenth century, the CIO in the 1930s and 1940s, and the civil rights movement after World War II. It is how we’ve won all our victories. And it is also how the right came to power.

Full article here from the Progressive Magazine

Cross-posted in An Ordinary Person

Grassroots Power

When I talk about or discuss politics in blogging it inevitably is usually about national politics, issues and politicians. This happens by reflex—I don’t intend to focus on the national scene in my political rants and ravings on purpose.

I don’t mean to ignore or give short shrift to politics on a local, grassroots level. On the level of city council, school board, state assembly, advisory neighborhood commission, etc.

Most of the opportunities for participating in politics for ordinary people occurs on the local level. Whether it is being elected to a local office, or trying to affect public policy by being an activist for local issues, there is a lot of fertile ground for political participation I haven’t explored in blogging about politics.

This idea comes to mind to me because I would very much like to have an independent or third party choice in our national leaders. Politicians and activists who run outside of the two-party paradigm to shake things up and to effect real change in the gridlocked, polarized scene in Washington, DC.

Yet if the far-fetched notion of an independent or a third party politician winning a national level office does indeed happen, I shudder to think that this victory will be short-lived and won’t effect much change. Because we would have elected a head which will not have a body attached to it.

If an independent were to win a national office, that leader will not have a nationwide, grassroots network of allies and political comrades to turn to for support, legislative votes, and honest advice. He or she would be sitting ducks surrounded by potential enemies who would like nothing more than to trip them up and watch them fail.

Democrats and Republicans, by and large, don’t have this problem. Because they are organized grassroots to a national level—they will always have a network of Democrat or Republican activists to turn to for help, support, and legislative votes when they need it.

So given this situation, it is crucial for any independent or third-party effort to have a local, grassroots component. Don’t just focus on the high-profile, big-name races and offices. There is a need to have people from out of the political mainstream fill offices and be active on the local level.

Being a part of the local school board, alderman, or an activist applying pressure to city council may not have as much sexiness and political heft as Congress or the presidential race. But such offices and activities are crucial for a fully-functioning independent political movement.

Any serious political effort trying to effect change and to provide an alternative to the two-party system should look local to build its base, and then focus on the national scene once it has already built a solid, grassroots network of local bases.

Cross-posted in An Ordinary Person.