What David Crosby left us. Plus, learning from the recent killing of a climate activist in Georgia and from the rise and stalling of the Sunrise Movement.
Micah: Your synopsis of the Sunrise organization analysis (post-mortem) is invaluable. Truly. I needs to be studied.
One enormous take away, among many, is that the left needs to work on local power, ie., push to elect local, city, and state officials, precisely in order to build the structured wing of the movement. (I too am a student of Momentum and the Engler Bros. analysis). We're fortunate that the far right has given us a workable and successful model: build the mass momentum driven movement and build the structured movement for power in parallel. The latter has to come from the bottom up (e.g., tea party) and aim toward the party closest to us (the Demo Party in our case). The Sunrise Movement's federal target, like Bernie's movement, had the weakness of no solid base. Unlike the far-right.
One other aspect of the far right's model that needs study and replication is community based organization in which people lead their lives, like unions used to be for the Demo Party and like evangelical protestant churches are for MAGA. It's no small accomplishment that Trump got 80% of the evangelical vote in BOTH '16 and '20. NO dropoff, even with covid. Now that's a stable reliable base. Where's ours?
A final note: the left doesn't seem to have power in our DNA, at least not yet. Most of us are laissez faire liberals, "leave me alone and I'll leave you alone," bordering on libertarian. Power is dirty. It's coercive. "Democracy" over the years has gelled into a utopian concept not far from the old SDS slogan, "Let the people decide." That's a bit problematic to say the least.
Mark: Great points. And you've lived more of this than me! A few comments to add/build on yours: I agree the left needs more of a stable reliable base, and I'd add that it probably needs to be built on something more than personal identity. Some shared set of activities that are rooted in community. I've speculated a bit about things like community-supported agriculture groups and bike clubs being building blocks; we all need to eat and to exercise and when we do that with other people regularly social bonds come naturally. Could those be organized into something more explicitly political (centered on pushing toward a more resilient and sustainable society)? Just tossing that out there for further thinking.
As for the left avoiding power, yes that's true on the more grassroots side but I think as national politics has gotten more fraught, polarized and existentially important, more on the left ARE serious about trying to organize for power (at least on the electoral side I see a lot more leftists, especially self-identified socialists, trying to do that inside the Democratic party). The folks sitting in trees trying to stop stuff, well, while I admire their courage it's far from clear to me how they are going about building the power to win.
Micah: In New Mexico right now there are many thousands of very smart, creative, and energetic people working in nonprofits and in the helping professions, e.g., education, law, social work, medicine. Yet there are less than a tiny handful of such people working within the structure of the Demo Party and/or running for office. For the most part the Party is totally sclerotic. There are a few significant exceptions, and progress has been made by some extremely active organizations such as Conservation Voters New Mexico, the ACLU, etc. But the Party is the same old center right confused mess its been for a long time. The unions have more or less pulled out, only occasionally able to produce enough votes in legislative districts and in Albuquerque. The Party is much older and whiter than it's been in my 44 years here. The progressive wing is small and disorganized, wields little power. So your second point, that the organized left are serious is true, but without much electoral base.
Concerning structures of grassroots organizing, bike clubs and other interest groups may be of some value to the progressive cause, but they'd have to be pretty special, beyond any models I've seen here. The key concept is that people's political ideas generally come from their friends and family, people they trust. If you spend much of your time with union people, they are the ones you trust; similarly evangelical churches constitute true communities of families and friends. It's hard to see bike clubs creating such tight and therefore powerful communities, reliably getting out the vote.
On the other hand, there's been a model developed in Southern New Mexico, Las Cruces, to be exact, that has become a bit of a political community with some electoral clout. It's the Progressive Voter Alliance of Dona Ana County. It's been in existence since 2006, I think, and though it's only a meeting place for progressives, it's elected many progressives to City and County and State positions, including two Democrats in a formerly solid conservative Congressional District, NMCD2. The current Congressional Rep is a Democrat, Gabe Vasquez, who in November narrowly defeated a MAGA Q-Anon whacko incumbent. Demo Party gerrymandering helped a lot this election, but so did the PVA's own base.
They use a system called "Personal Influence Networks," each activist having built their own network which produce reliable votes. It's something. It's stable because of the element of trust.
Getting back to my original point, the thousands of young creative people in nonprofits and the helping professions (millions nationwide), If we can get to these people with a simple argument, we'll have our future leadership cohort for power. We have to convince them that all they're working for now can be done at scale and therefore much more effectively using the resources of government. The Green New Deal. Remaking government is our goal.
We're up against terrible depoliticization, good people having been habituated to the current neo-liberal consensus ("common sense") that government can never do anything good. Historically that's just not so. We have to teach about the New Deal and the Green New Deal. (The Roosevelt Institute is a good starting place for economics at least).
Government has the aggregate resources (taxation) to care for the well-being of the people and the planet. The religion of the free market solving all problems has brought us to the current crisis. The solution is social democracy, democratic socialism, governmental regulation and wealth sharing.
Micah: Your synopsis of the Sunrise organization analysis (post-mortem) is invaluable. Truly. I needs to be studied.
One enormous take away, among many, is that the left needs to work on local power, ie., push to elect local, city, and state officials, precisely in order to build the structured wing of the movement. (I too am a student of Momentum and the Engler Bros. analysis). We're fortunate that the far right has given us a workable and successful model: build the mass momentum driven movement and build the structured movement for power in parallel. The latter has to come from the bottom up (e.g., tea party) and aim toward the party closest to us (the Demo Party in our case). The Sunrise Movement's federal target, like Bernie's movement, had the weakness of no solid base. Unlike the far-right.
One other aspect of the far right's model that needs study and replication is community based organization in which people lead their lives, like unions used to be for the Demo Party and like evangelical protestant churches are for MAGA. It's no small accomplishment that Trump got 80% of the evangelical vote in BOTH '16 and '20. NO dropoff, even with covid. Now that's a stable reliable base. Where's ours?
A final note: the left doesn't seem to have power in our DNA, at least not yet. Most of us are laissez faire liberals, "leave me alone and I'll leave you alone," bordering on libertarian. Power is dirty. It's coercive. "Democracy" over the years has gelled into a utopian concept not far from the old SDS slogan, "Let the people decide." That's a bit problematic to say the least.
Mark: Great points. And you've lived more of this than me! A few comments to add/build on yours: I agree the left needs more of a stable reliable base, and I'd add that it probably needs to be built on something more than personal identity. Some shared set of activities that are rooted in community. I've speculated a bit about things like community-supported agriculture groups and bike clubs being building blocks; we all need to eat and to exercise and when we do that with other people regularly social bonds come naturally. Could those be organized into something more explicitly political (centered on pushing toward a more resilient and sustainable society)? Just tossing that out there for further thinking.
As for the left avoiding power, yes that's true on the more grassroots side but I think as national politics has gotten more fraught, polarized and existentially important, more on the left ARE serious about trying to organize for power (at least on the electoral side I see a lot more leftists, especially self-identified socialists, trying to do that inside the Democratic party). The folks sitting in trees trying to stop stuff, well, while I admire their courage it's far from clear to me how they are going about building the power to win.
Micah: In New Mexico right now there are many thousands of very smart, creative, and energetic people working in nonprofits and in the helping professions, e.g., education, law, social work, medicine. Yet there are less than a tiny handful of such people working within the structure of the Demo Party and/or running for office. For the most part the Party is totally sclerotic. There are a few significant exceptions, and progress has been made by some extremely active organizations such as Conservation Voters New Mexico, the ACLU, etc. But the Party is the same old center right confused mess its been for a long time. The unions have more or less pulled out, only occasionally able to produce enough votes in legislative districts and in Albuquerque. The Party is much older and whiter than it's been in my 44 years here. The progressive wing is small and disorganized, wields little power. So your second point, that the organized left are serious is true, but without much electoral base.
Concerning structures of grassroots organizing, bike clubs and other interest groups may be of some value to the progressive cause, but they'd have to be pretty special, beyond any models I've seen here. The key concept is that people's political ideas generally come from their friends and family, people they trust. If you spend much of your time with union people, they are the ones you trust; similarly evangelical churches constitute true communities of families and friends. It's hard to see bike clubs creating such tight and therefore powerful communities, reliably getting out the vote.
On the other hand, there's been a model developed in Southern New Mexico, Las Cruces, to be exact, that has become a bit of a political community with some electoral clout. It's the Progressive Voter Alliance of Dona Ana County. It's been in existence since 2006, I think, and though it's only a meeting place for progressives, it's elected many progressives to City and County and State positions, including two Democrats in a formerly solid conservative Congressional District, NMCD2. The current Congressional Rep is a Democrat, Gabe Vasquez, who in November narrowly defeated a MAGA Q-Anon whacko incumbent. Demo Party gerrymandering helped a lot this election, but so did the PVA's own base.
They use a system called "Personal Influence Networks," each activist having built their own network which produce reliable votes. It's something. It's stable because of the element of trust.
Getting back to my original point, the thousands of young creative people in nonprofits and the helping professions (millions nationwide), If we can get to these people with a simple argument, we'll have our future leadership cohort for power. We have to convince them that all they're working for now can be done at scale and therefore much more effectively using the resources of government. The Green New Deal. Remaking government is our goal.
We're up against terrible depoliticization, good people having been habituated to the current neo-liberal consensus ("common sense") that government can never do anything good. Historically that's just not so. We have to teach about the New Deal and the Green New Deal. (The Roosevelt Institute is a good starting place for economics at least).
Government has the aggregate resources (taxation) to care for the well-being of the people and the planet. The religion of the free market solving all problems has brought us to the current crisis. The solution is social democracy, democratic socialism, governmental regulation and wealth sharing.