In the last post in this series I wrote about the limitations of Governor Rendell’s centrist strategy in dealing with a Republican legislature that is tilting very far to the right.
Today I want to point to some of the failures of activists in dealing with the same barrier to progressive politics. Let me make clear that this is mostly an exercise in self-criticism. (Yo, David Horowitz, note that suspiciously Maoist turn of phrase.) I am going to write about some of the campaigns on which I have worked and point to three ways in which I think we might have made them, or might now make them, more effective.
Connecting the Dots
When building an effort to lobby the legislature, we activists tend to be pretty single minded. We focus on the one issue before us, and not on the larger political ideas and coalitions with which we are struggling. So, for example, when we lobbied for dedicated funding for public transit, we focused on the contribution public transit makes, in Philadelphia and elsewhere, to economic development, to the reduction of pollution, to helping seniors get out of the house and children get to school, and to social justice, by enabling people without cars to get to their jobs. When lobbying for the minimum wage, we have focused on the benefit to minimum wage workers and those whose wages are only slightly above the minimum wage. And when we lobbied to defeat HB 1318, we focused on protecting the right to vote for felons on parole or probation and all those who might not have access to Photo ID cards especially seniors and the poor.
Now you might say, this is exactly what we should be doing. We should focus our attention–and to the extent we can, the attention of activists and the public at large–on the particular reasons to support or oppose some piece of public policy or legislation. I agree that this is part of what we should being doing. . But if you look at what the other side is doing, you will see that they do much more discuss particular issues. They discuss those issues within a broader ideological context.
Look at what the anti-transit activists say: They attack liberal elitists who want to spend the hard earned money of Pennsylvanians on public transit. They blame us for forcing people to take public transit even though they would rather live in clean and green suburbia and drive to work. They complain that public transit does not benefit the vast majority of people who drive cars, especially those in rural areas. And they say that if people really wanted to take buses or trains, they say, the market would provide them.
Look at what the proponents of HB1318, the voter suppression act of 2006, say: They claim that we suffer in Pennsylvania from “massive voter fraud” that is primarily found, of course, in the corrupt, Democratic cities. And, they then blame the victories Democrats win on the Representatives and Senators who use the power of government to interfere with market relationships and give handouts to the special interests and the political machines that engage in that fraud.
Look at what the opponents of an increase in the minimum wage say: They argue that workers should not be paid more than the market says they deserve. And they claim that, by forcing Pennsylvania businesses to pay more, we will reduce employment both directly by raising wages and indirectly by making our businesses uncompetitive with those in other states and countries.
In each case, conservatives place the individual issue in a broader context, one in which market forces are and should be supreme and unchallenged. We may think that the context is absurd. But, because we leave their broader ideas unchallenged, we allow our political debates to be shaped by conservatives. When politicians, activists, editorialists, and citizens hear nothing but the drumbeat of conservative ideas, is it any wonder that they begin to wonder about the specific public policies we support?
Militancy
These days, conservatives speak with passion. We on the left, engage in policy talk. They lambaste us as un-American, atheistic, elitists out of touch with every day Americans. We fight back with statistics. They even have begun to demonstrate as much as we do.
Of course, we have put on some serious demonstrations—it was no small feat to bring 4000 people from all parts of the state to attend a rally for public transit in Harrisburg. And we have brought people to Harrisburg a number of times in support of increasing the minimum wage or in opposition to HB 1318.
The problem, however, is that, the transit rally aside, our protests have become routinized. We get up early and take the bus to Harrisburg. We stand on the grand staircase and listen to our activists make some fine speeches and then stand some more while we watch the legislators who support us make some more speeches. We go to some offices and drop some literature and then we go home.
It is wonderful that we can get people to attend these rallies. But they are not enough. Precisely because they are routine, they rarely get any serious press attention. And they are often offset by competing right wing demonstrations.
Militancy is important in politics. People respect those who are willing to put themselves on the line for the beliefs. (Remember Socrates and Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez?) Militancy is the way we show the moral imperative that lies behind the policies we support. Militancy is the way we get the press attention we need and galvanize the public to support us. We must be more militant than the right because it is only with moral passion and a galvanized public that we can get enough people behind us to overcome the financial advantage of the right wing.
The problem, however, is that militancy scares, and even embarrasses us. There are some structural and institutional reasons it scares us. I will address them in the last post of this series. I also think there are cultural reasons that militancy scares us. We live in an ironic, cool time. Public passion doesn’t fit the model of self-presentation we see most often in the politics with which we are most familiar, that on TV. Nor does it fit with the cool, analytic pose we learn in our classrooms.
Let me give an example of what I am talking about. A few weeks ago, in the heat of the fight over HB 1318, I recommended that we gather a few folks who had “gone South” in the early sixties to fight for the rights of blacks and have a sit-in in John Perzel’s office. I have no doubt that Tom Cronin and Arthur Waskow and others would have joined us. The point, of course, is to remind everyone that, as I put it in a title to one of my posts here, that HB 1318 is the “immoral equivalent of Jim Crow.”
Only one person responded to me. This is what the response said:
“I recommend against a sit-in unless you are absolutely certain that your message will be heard loudly and clearly. I think what will most likely be heard is ‘nut case protesters.’
You are making progress with direct legislative action, by making rational intelligent arguments, by presenting your case coherently. I would think long and hard before risking compromise of that effective strategy by sitting-in on Perzel.”
Now maybe this person was right. We did ultimately win (but not, as I have pointed out, in the legislature where we really made no progress.) With the Governor’s help, we did get some publicity for our views and some editorials in support of us. But I am inclined to think that this response to my suggestion reflects an inordinate fear of militancy as opposed to “rational, intelligent, and coherent advocacy.” I continue to believe a more militant approach would have better revealed the true nature of the movement that stood behind HB 1318. And I also think it would have engendered the kind of public outrage that we need, not just on this issue, but on many issues. I don’t see how we are going to create a passionate response to the rightward trend in state politics unless we make clear, on issue after issue, just how awful that trend is.
Militancy outside the context of a large movement does run the risk of making militants look like extremists. But how do we create a large movement if we won’t take the risks necessary to creating the political passions that lead to such movements?
The Issue – Electoral Connection
Our third failure is that we distance our issue campaigns from electoral campaigns. Many of the organizations that lead our issue campaigns are unable or unwilling to connect these campaigns to elections. We are unable or unwilling to explicitly endorse—or threaten to endorse—candidates on the basis of these issue campaigns. We are unwilling to stand with the opponents of the incumbents in demanding action on the issues we care about. We are unwilling to recruit candidates, and stand by their side, when they say they will run against incumbents on our issues.
There are structural or institutional reasons I will come to for this reluctance. But there is also one important strategic barrier to this kind of issue – electoral connection: We are unwilling to lose now so as to win later. We are too quick to compromise for half or a third or a quarter of what we want rather than try to use issues to win elections so that we can get something much better.
Now in saying that we should not compromise so quickly, I am not saying that we should all become Greens, help elect Republicans, and wait forty years for the Greens to gain power. But I am saying that Governor Rendell should have blamed Republicans for failing to give him the good education bill that he (and we and the public) wanted. And, with that short term failure in hand, he should he worked to pick up some seats in the State Senate and win the State House back for the Democrats. Instead, he accepted a mediocre bill at the cost of promising not to endorse Democratic challengers to Republicans.
How the Three Failures Hang Together
The three failures of issues activists are, of course, connected. It is hard to create a passionate movement in favor of progressive change if we aren’t willing to fight for something more than a quarter a loaf. Nor can we create such a movement if we are unwilling connect the dots between issues, thereby defining the difference between us and the other side. We can’t create such a movement unless we are willing to be militant.
And, without a strong, passionate, progressive movement we are going to keep losing elections to Republicans and face an increasingly right wing Republican majority in the General Assembly.