UEPI News and Commentary: Organizing and Politics: Insiders vs Outsiders?

Friends -

Grassroots organizing is the lifeblood of progressive politics. In the 1960s, many radicals looked at politics as working either "inside" or "outside" the "system." But the reality is more complicated than this either/or perspective. The recent tempest between the Obama and Clinton campaigns about whether Martin Luther King or President Lyndon Johnson deserved the most recent for the enactment of civil rights legislation provides an opportunity to examine the way things really work -- which is that all progressive reform requires both grassroots activists organizing from "outside" as well as liberal and progressive elected officials and lobbyists working from "inside" to push and then broker compromises to get things passed. This is the point of my article with Kelly Candaele in yesterday's HuffingtonPost.

Progressive politicians (like the late Paul Wellstone) view themselves as the voices of progressive movements from "inside" Congress (or state legislatures, city councils, or local school boards), but they rely on "outside" activists to make noise, draw attention to issues, disrupt business-and-usual, and create a sense of urgency. That's what Dr. King and the civil rights activists did. But it took allies in Congress to "cut the deal." The same dynamic was at work when FDR worked with the labor movement to adopt New Deal reforms in the 1930s, when women organized to win the vote in 1920, and when the environmental movement pushed for a wave of federal reforms in the 1970s. Today, as Kelly and I note in our article, the LA labor movement has developed a sophisticated inside/outside strategy to win important victories, and to use those victories as steppingstones to further change. (For a slightly different take on the King/LBJ matter, check out Barbara Ehrenreich's piece in The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080128/ehrenreich).

LA's housing and tenants' rights movement is learning those same valuable inside/outside lessons as it organizes, through the Housing LA coalition, to win stronger tenant protections, a mixed-income housing policy, and funding for the city's Housing Trust Fund. The Tidings newspaper has recently published two interesting articles by R.W. Dellinger about LA's housing movement -- profiles of two grassroots housing organizers, Francesca de la Rosa and Larry Gross (http://www.the-tidings.com/2008/011808/housing.htm), and a report about LA Voice, one of the community groups involved in the Housing LA coalition (http://www.the-tidings.com/2008/011108/housing.htm)

Progressives typically push for reforms that make society more humane and livable, such as housing, health care, reproductive rights, the environment, good schools, living wages, and workplace safety. But there are also reforms that level the political playing field and give ordinary people more power to organize and make their voices heard. Andre Gorz once called these "non-reformist reforms" or "radical reforms." In his article in the Huffington Post recently, "Change That Really Matters," my Oxy colleague Derek Shearer outlined an excellent agenda of "non-reformist reforms" that the next President and Congress should adopt, including voting rights, labor law, and community service. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/derek-shearer/change-that-really-matter_b_80654.html). (I would add campaign finance reform to this list). As Kelly and I wrote last May, no reform would be as effective as the EFCA in changing the balance of power in the U.S. and making our democracy healthier.If a Democrat wins in November, labor law reform -- the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) -- should be a top priority, but it will require the next President spending considerable political capital, and using his/her bully pulpit to encourage Americans to put pressure on Congress to overcome the fierce opposition of the business establishment.

Derek and I agree that labor law reform needs to be a key priority for the next President, Congress, and the entire progressive movement (not just unions). But we disagree on whether Hillary Clinton is the most likely candidate to push for a progressive agenda. As I wrote in the HuffingtonPost last week, Clinton would be more useful to America as a progressive Senator than as a centrist president, which is how she has positioned herself in contrast to the more liberal Barack Obama and John Edwards. Obviously she still hopes to win the White House. But if she loses the nomination or the November election, would she, freed from presidential ambitions, be willing to reposition herself as the progressive she once was and spend the rest of her career building a solid legislative record? Some think its too late -- she's already established herself as a triangulating centrist. Others, including some of her long-term friends, think she's still a closet progressive. If so, she should learn from the example of Ted Kennedy, who has been the most effective progressive in the Senate for many years.

Even as he sputters into retirement, George Bush continues to advance the cause of his capitalist cronies, as I wrote in the HuffingtonPost a few days before Christmas. (Also check out Larry Peterson's great article on Bush's relentless anti-union actions since taking office, in the September/October issue of Dollars and Sense magazine). On the day before Chief Justice John Roberts swears in Obama, Edwards or Clinton next January, Bush will no doubt be still trying to find ways to reduce taxes and regulations on big business. In every way possible, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and cronies were willing to wage top-down "class warfare" despite its consequences for our society, our economy, and even (as the mortgage meltdown reveals) large sectors of business whose own unregulated greed is now coming back to haunt them, as the faltering banking industry and housing market sinks the country into a recession and as as more than a million Americans are likely to lose their homes by the end of the year. So, to put this in property perspective, and to lighten your load, take a look at this hilarious video about the Bush Administration's misdeeds:

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January 18, 2008

Organizing and Politics: Insiders vs Outsiders?

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