Pushing Back, Moving Forward.
February 10, 2010
By Peter Hardie, Pushback Network
The Democratic Party is facing a dilemma, one whose definition seems to elude them. On the heels of their recent losses in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Virginia, I am increasingly dismayed by the space that was created for such monumental defeats and demoralization. Unless the Democrats turn to the base that elected this President and remarkable majorities in the House and Senate, progressive activists in and outside the party cannot rely on the Democrats to move genuine change in this country.
The losses in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Virginia were not solely a reflection of a reconsolidation of the Right. There is a science to voter engagement and voter turnout. Increasing civic participation is not based on guesswork. To get people to the polls, you must engage with citizens, earn buy-in, and effect action. Every serious local campaign staffer knows that success is generated one identified voter at a time, with lots of eyes, ears and feet on the ground. Recently, national (and many state) campaigns have been reduced to television ads and polling data, with little to no engagement of grassroots communities, possibly excepting Obama’s presidential campaign.
The problem: Obama’s campaign has no coattails, and his field operation has been weakened by the administration’s approach of “tack to the center”. The solution: Investment must be made by the Democrats to get out into the communities and knock on the doors of people of color, the poor and working class who came out for change in 2008. If they don’t reengage with these voters, they will stay home in 2010, and support for a progressive agenda in Congress will abate.
Five years ago, grassroots activists from AL, CA, KY, MS, NM, and NY assembled and agreed on certain basic premises:
• You can’t simply parachute campaign staff into places and expect to win presidential or any elections.
• People need more than television ads and robo-calls to persuade them to participate in elections.
• Participation in elections should be part of a long-term civic engagement strategy, and not just isolated events.
• Winning requires coalitions and alliances, diversity of ideas and perspectives and willingness to move through those differences to build a common electoral and policy agendas.
To carry out a strategy based on these principles, they formed the National Pushback Network.
Pushback Network organizers, advocates and activists were from poor and marginalized areas of the nation: urban, rural, and everything in-between. They measured their impact not only in policy change and electoral wins, but also in their ability to develop and train leaders, to elevate new voices and to organize forgotten communities. They saw themselves as movement builders, committed to long-term battles over some of the most oppressive and challenging problems in the United States: poverty, environmental degradation, quality and equality in education, fair tax and fiscal policies, public housing policy, among others.
The Network has grown to eight states (adding Massachusetts and Nevada) and continues to grow. It is a peer network, sustained by shared internal expertise, regular national convenings and meetings, and a commitment to win. These activists have been involved in school board, city council, gubernatorial and presidential elections. They are forces to be reckoned with in their states, and are shaping a new politics of participatory democracy, with an ideological framework that puts people and values first.
Democracy is a practice, not just an idea, which has meant ensuring high levels of diversity among Pushback’s member organizations, and leadership of color throughout the Network in every state. Democracy for Pushback also means conscious recognition of the value of multi-issue alliances; it means capitalizing on the learning and growth that comes when people of different backgrounds with varied policy goals and platforms talk together about shared goals and a shared future. We at Pushback don’t agree on everything; we do agree on who we serve– people of color, poor and working class communities, women, immigrants, youth– and the values we uphold, starting with participatory democracy.
While the Democrats do represent a big tent, and much more diversity than the Republicans, it regularly abandons the values by which it has gained the support of working and poor Americans. Handing the big banks money that could have kept millions of Americans in their homes is just one example. The fuzzy leadership and values of the Democratic Party in Washington is grist for a renewed backlash from their own base, and the millions of previously disaffected independents who signed on with Obama.
This is the core dilemma of the mid-term elections: what change is there to believe in? The mid-term elections this fall will be telling for Obama and the Democratic Party, and more importantly, will cement either a renewed vigor or disillusionment with civic engagement at the ballot box. Keeping voters engaged and committed to a set of values and priorities is a better recipe for sustained progress in the political arena than what we have seen. It is the essence of genuine leadership: the engagement of the individual, with an invitation to lead.
Networks like Pushback, with committed constituents and the respect of their communities and political leaders alike, have much to offer long term to national politics, and winning progressive policies and meaningful change. To ignore organizations committed to base-building and increased grassroots civic engagement is short-sighted. The White House cannot align the votes of progressives in 2010 on a platform of sustained compromise on basic values and sound policy; that does not constitute politics we can believe in, whether on coal or nuclear power or on public education or mortgage foreclosures.
Glenn Greenwald noted recently in the New York Times that the White House, and by inference, the Democratic Party, have to decide between moving further to the right, as the Republicans keep demanding, or galvanizing their base. Defining their base might be the first step. It is clear that corporate and financial institutions do not share common ground with great many Americans. The notion that the same party can serve Wall Street, corporate America, and the mainstreets and backstreets equally has been disproven over time, most recently in the massive bailout of the wealthy and corrupt.
Base-building organizations and networks like Pushback can help Congress and the White House move a more progressive agenda (peace-building, a sustainable ecology, justice on issues of race, gender and sexual orientation, health care and jobs, fair taxes, and core human rights to housing, equity and quality in education, food, and quality of life for all, including immigrants), if –and it’s a big if– they choose the right answer to Greenwald’s decision-point.
Whether they choose the base that elected them or not, the progressive agenda is at stake. Those who support that agenda will have to put their time and their resources to its success, if we are to get to scale and move progressive values through 2010 and beyond. We need to invest substantially in the people and organizations who have been championing change and hope for decades, and who can best remind voters of their power to make real change.
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