10 Things Your Org Can Do Right Now To Give the Progressive Movement a Chance to Win

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/visions/10-things-your-org-can-do-right-now-give-progressive-movement-chance-win




Progressive leaders are stressed, often beleaguered, besieged by requests for their time and focus. Non-profit leaders spend most of their time either raising money or worrying about money. Union leaders still have lots of money (though much less than before) but they face an institutionalized hostile environment, dwindling memberships and a relationship with most elected officials in which they are routinely taken for granted, often in the most cavalier manner.

Elected officials spend 40% of their time raising money and give nothing back to the organizations that got them elected. Stressed, themselves, by a cynicism born of the power of money in politics, they have little time to think, nurture their progressive instincts or read.

In broader terms, progressives have been losing or playing defense for so long that we call scrappy fight-back campaigns “victories.” (For example, Ohio’s governor takes away collective bargaining, even for police and firefighters, the union and their allies fight back and win, and we call it a progressive victory—no matter that the right-wing has taken millions of dollars out of play for the next campaign, in much the same way that, in boxing, body punches set the victim up for the eventual head shots.)

We know a lot about what needs to be done in the long term:

a) Change campaign finance.

b) Build a formidable progressive infrastructure that is large, well-funded, and connected.

c) Engage and develop new and under-developed constituencies such as working women, Latinos, African Americans, and young people.

d) Develop large numbers of new leaders.

[OneGrassRoot]

1. K&R n/t

[marmar]

2. k/r