Progressive Thought 6/23: Talk vs. action

by Eric Schechter

(Following are some notes resembling what we discussed on July 23, plus what I wish I had remembered to say.)

There were around 8 of us present. Sorry, I don’t have the exact number, I forgot to take roll. Cynthia and I prepared the agenda, which we partly followed. Susan, who has had some previous work with framing, was also a major contributor in the meeting, but everyone had a few things to say. Nell was absent — she’s on her honeymoon. Congratulations, Nell! We love you!

Our reason for gathering is to improve our participation in the progressive movement. It’s a worldwide movement that is already large and getting larger; Paul Hawken’s book and video about that are very inspiring. Hawken talks about hundreds of thousands of different organizations that are developing independently of one another. That makes it obvious (if it wasn’t already) that there are many different ways to participate in the movement, and evidently TAP can’t do all of them. Nell and I have been inspired by the writings of Lakoff and Waldman (and others), and so we’re taking them as a starting point for this discussion group.

At the end of our previous meeting, the most prevalent comment (aside from “enjoyed it, I’ll be coming to the next meeting”) was “I hope we’ll be getting to action, and not just talk.” So I thought I should begin this meeting by discussing talk versus action.

What would action without talk be like? I can imagine us marching on the White House with pitchforks and torches. But if we did that without a lot more preparation, either our group would be massacred (like the protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989), or we would overthrow the old dictators and see them replaced by new ones (as in Russia in 1917). Russia in 1917 was a poor and agrarian society, with little education and little networking, two things you need for a successful revolution. By “networking” I don’t mean electronic; I mean people communicating with one another. The American Revolutionary War was both preceded and followed by many years of people communicating in person and by letters.

We discussed other revolutions briefly. Martin Luther King was partly successful — he did reduce racism but did not eliminate it entirely. And he didn’t do it by himself — he was the movement’s greatest speaker, and we attach his name and face to the movement, but it really was a mass movement.

Talk is a type of action. We talk for a number of reasons –

• to bring people into the movement, by persuasion, by sharing enlightenment, by affecting with stories
• to continue the education of people who are already in the movement, including ourselves
• to continue developing and evolving our ideas, analyzing and synthesizing them
• to get the movement networked, organized, coordinated
• to evaluate where we stand, how we’re doing, how we need to change

So in this discussion group, we’re going to talk about

1. What to say — our vision, etc.
2. Who to say it to — i.e., who are our audiences
3. How to say it. Lakoff and Waldman have written about some important techniques (identity, framing, etc.) that too few progressives have mastered, or even recognized the importance of. If you can master these techniques, you’ll be making a BIG contribution to the progressive movement. (However, we’re not making any specific reading assignments at this time.)

(Personally, I think I’ve seen my own communications improving, partly due to reading Lakoff and Waldman. I was interviewed by reporters at a rally on July 19, and I think I spoke far more effectively than I could have spoken a year ago.)

Our goal in these meetings is to train ourselves for communication. We may concentrate on current events; the Rockridge Institute has new essays every week analyzing recent issues. After a while perhaps we will focus on some electorally-related campaign.

Talk — in large groups or one-on-one — is all we have to change the world, so we’d better get good at it.

Our opposition already has gotten good at it. They’ve been doing that all along, but they’ve had a particularly concerted effort ever since attorney Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote a memo about it to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in September 1971. (He was appointed by Nixon to the Supreme Court a month later.) The memo recommended that conservatives should fund think tanks, scholarships, and the purchase of communications media, in order to generate and propagate conservative propaganda, “talking points,” framing language, etc. (Of course, the memo didn’t use exactly those words, but that was the gist of it.) And they had plenty of funding available, because it just so happens that conservative economic policy has the side effect of making the rich richer — an effect that the rich are willing to promote.

You might not realize how important communication skills are. When propaganda is done effectively, it is very subtle — you hardly notice how you are being influenced (see examples below). But it is very influential.

Linguists Sapir and Whorf, in the early 20th century, developed the idea that the world cannot be represented objectively with language. Any language contains inherent biases which influence the thought patterns of its speakers.

This idea has been explored in a number of works of fiction; perhaps the most famous is George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” published in 1949. In that story, a totalitarian government intentionally reshapes the nation’s language to instill biases that preserve the government’s hold on power.

When I first read Orwell’s novel, decades ago, I merely saw it as an outlandish fantasy, but now I see it coming true. Every week, Karl Rove, Frank Luntz and other conservative spin doctors create new propaganda phrases, such as “tax relief” and “Islamo-fascist.” Those phrases are disseminated by Grover Norquist and other backroom leaders. Then they are repeated, over and over, by conservative pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, etc. This is one of John Stewart’s favorite comedy routines — he shows a half dozen pundits all using the same phrase. But Stewart’s humor doesn’t disarm the framing. After you hear the phrase “war on terror” used enough times, you start to think that such a “war” actually exists, that the phrase actually makes sense. Such phrases become part of the frame of our society’s discourse, our way of thinking. And if there really is a “war on terror,” it can be used to justify the president’s power enormously — far more so than, say, a war on Afghanistan. That phrase was crafted brilliantly.

I have begun to understand this propaganda system largely thanks to George Lakoff. Lakoff is a professor of linguistics who has turned to progressive politics. His first political book, Moral Politics, was published in 1996, but it was a bit theoretical and hard for most people to read. His next political book, Don’t Think of an Elephant, in 2004, was much more accessible, and suddenly many progressives are reading Lakoff. Actually, I think Lakoff’s writing improved after that, so I would recommend some of his later works rather than the elephant book. Many of his latest articles and his latest book (Thinking Points) are available free online at the Rockridge Institute and Rockridge Nation. Lakoff is still a bit theoretical and strategic; Paul Waldman’s writing approaches some of the same topics but is more pragmatic and tactical.

If you choose the questions, you win the debate. We looked at one example described by the Rockridge Institute: To Catch a Wolf: How to Stop Conservative Frames in Their Tracks.

Wolf Blitzer often pretends to be a neutral broadcaster while framing his questions and his news using conservative frames. During the second Democratic debate on June 3, he was caught, and Barack Obama caught him. Wolf’s “question” was:

BLITZER: I want you to raise your hand if you believe English should be the official language of the United States.

Obama refused to take the bait:

OBAMA: This is the kind of question that is designed precisely to divide us. You know, you’re right. Everybody is going to learn to speak English if they live in this country. The issue is not whether or not future generations of immigrants are going to learn English. The question is: How can we come up with both a legal, sensible immigration policy? And when we get distracted by those kinds of questions, I think we do a disservice to the American people.

The last big topic in our July 23rd session was this exercise: Can you think of any discussion you’ve ever had, or lecture you’ve ever heard, that suddenly made a light bulb go on in your head? Or that didn’t? What works, what doesn’t? Why haven’t progressives been able to get their ideas across?

Here are a few answers that people came up with. Often it’s not a sudden light bulb turning on; rather, it’s a gradual tipping, after many items have been added to one side to alter the balance. For instance, the USA has gradually moved more and more toward opposing the war. One of the big factors adding to the antiwar side was the revelation of Abu Ghraib.

For me (Eric), one of the major tipping factors, perhaps a light bulb effect, was Al Gore’s movie. My background is science, not politics. Gore’s explanation of the feedback loop, with reflective ice being replaced by dark water, showed me that global warming isn’t just a slow and gradual thing — it is accelerating; a crucial balance has been overturned. I’d always found politics confusing, with all of its opinions and biases and spin (though Lakoff has begun to clear that up for me), but I’d always held science as sacrosanct, as fact, as truth. When Gore’s movie showed me that global warming was a fact, and that the White House staff was rewriting scientific reports to deny global warming, I was incensed. If they can lie about science, they can lie about anything, and I started taking another look at the other things they’d been saying.

Have a Little Faith In Us

by Aicha Qandisha

(Editor’s comment: Muslims and other people of faith were underrepresented at USSF. The progressive movement has not yet come to terms with the left hand of God, as Aicha describes.)

The woman seated across from me on MARTA stared at my t-shirt and squinted as she re-read the words. It was late, she looked tired, and it wasn’t the first stare my shirt had garnered that day.

This is what a Radical Muslim Feminist Looks Like.

The corners of her mouth crept up into a slight smile. “Ok then,” she said, chuckling a bit. We ended up having a great conversation – turns out she’s from just outside my mother’s hometown in Mississippi and is part of the Katrina Diaspora scattered across the country, struggling to reclaim their lives.

More importantly, she didn’t flinch at faith.

Unfortunately, it seems the organizers of the first United States Social Forum flinched. Outreach to progressives of faith regarding the Forum was insufficient. Local Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist friends said they knew of no outreach from USSF organizers or affiliates to their congregations. Other progressives of faith from around the country told similar stories.

Throughout the week I was met with bewildered looks, awkward silence, and even mild hostility if I mentioned pertinent issues of faith during some workshops. One young woman I met spoke of how uncomfortable she felt identifying herself as a Christian in any context during the week, despite being a committed and active progressive.

The experiences of others and myself at the Forum highlight what seems to be a lack of comfort with and inclusion of religion and people of faith with a certain element on “The Left” and within the progressive movement. This lack of cohesion and, sometimes, outright exclusion weakens both the faith-based and broader progressive movement denying them the benefits to be found in perhaps unexpected coalitions such as new ideas, energies, and partnerships.

These days religion is more likely associated with conservatism, extremism, even militarism and consumerism. The existence of a religious Left has been all but forgotten as the U.S. lurched towards the Right in recent years. The narrow, conservative, antagonistic view of religion is partly the fault of media misrepresentation.

Media Matters highlighted the issue in their report Left Behind: The Skewed Representation of Religion in Major News Media, which analyzed coverage beginning the day after the 2004 election through the end of 2006. According to the report, conservative religious leaders were quoted, interviewed or mentioned 2.8 times more often than progressive religious leaders when reviewing newspaper and television coverage combined. Television, which Media Matters constrained to the three major networks, three major cable news channels and PBS, provided outlets for conservative religious leaders 3.8 times more often than for progressive leaders. Major newspapers utilized the voices of conservative religious leaders 2.7 times more than those of religious progressives. The bias is remarkable given that most in the US hold what would be considered progressive views, based on a recently released report by Campaign for America’s Future and Media Matters reviewing polling data from reputable sources such as Pew Research and Gallup.

Atlanta was selected as the host city for the US Social Forum because of the city’s significance in the US civil rights struggles. Anyone who knows anything about that progressive movement knows people of faith were at its forefront.

I am not a resident of Atlanta, but I reside here temporarily. I mention this because it means my ability to engage in outreach to any community is limited given my transient status. I share the ideals espoused by organizers of the Forum and signed up to volunteer in order to make it happen. My first question to people in the local organizing office was what outreach had been made to the faith community and specifically, because they are often forgotten in such efforts, the Muslim community. I was met by polite, yet unsatisfying answers:

“We don’t have any contacts.”
“I wouldn’t know how to approach them.”
“We don’t do religion.”

I had no contacts and only a week before the start of the Forum, but I did have an Internet connection. A quick Google and Salat-O-Matic search led me to the only mosque I knew and coincidentally the largest in the area: Al-Farooq. I cold-called the director and explained what the Forum was I why I believed the Muslim community should be involved. He cautiously agreed to meet me after the Friday prayer service so I could pass along posters and fliers. I arrived early for jummah and struck up a conversation with a middle-aged women dressed in white. When I began explaining the Forum and my visit with the Director, her face lit up.

“Oh, I am so glad you came,” she said, clasping my hand in hers. “I haven’t heard anything about this. When is it?”

“Next week,” I replied. Her face registered disappointment.

“I wish I’d known about it.”

The Director proved helpful, but said because his function was mostly to oversee finances and the construction of the huge new facility I should call another member of the community who was involved in youth organizing.

When I phoned him, his enthusiasm was hugely gratifying. He was ready to bring others into the discussion and suggested a conference call. And he absolutely understood why I felt the ideals of the Forum matched the faith.

“So, when is this happening?” he asked. I cringed.

In her session description for the Building a Faith-Based Progressive Movement workshop, presented during the Forum by the Church in Society division of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, facilitator Loretta Horton, Director of Poverty Ministries Networking with ELC, illustrated the hard middle ground progressives of faith often find themselves shoved into these days.

“At many progressive gatherings, the faith community is often overlooked or completely left out of any conversation focusing on building a progressive movement for change in this country. Now is the time for progressive people of faith to step forward with conviction and be bold as we live out our theological beliefs of what a just society looks like. We have to challenge those on the religious right who would distort scripture, support public policy that is racist and sexist, and who use the rhetoric of hate as a tool to divide communities.”

During the workshop, members of the ecumenical and interfaith panel spoke of their personal struggles within the movement.

“It’s hard to be a Christian on the real radical Left, an unapologetic Christian,” said Malika M’Buze Moore or Atlanta’s 1st African Presbyterian. “I walk with my comrades and feel lonely.”

“In social movements faith is viewed with quite a bit of suspicion,” said Reverend John Selders of Amistad United Church of Christ in Connecticut, who acknowledged that religion has “hurt a lot of people”. “I am continuously amazed when people say ‘you’re from the church and you think WHAT?’”

Building a progressive movement is supposed to be about inclusion.

“The God I know speaks in an inclusive language and is a big ol’ God,” said Rev. Selders. “We gotta find partners in those spaces and places that may not be the likely ones and they may not be the comfortable ones.”

None of us are one-dimensional beings. Our multiplicities, every little quirk and contradiction that makes us who we are, are like facets on our own brilliant diamond; they make us shine. A movement that celebrates its multiplicities, including those of faith, will be stronger, more brilliant, and more valuable to the world.

Salaam.

Notes on July 9’s “Progressive Thought”

by Eric Schechter

Everyone had a good time at the first meeting of Progressive Thought, on July 9. We had about a dozen people. Most or all said they’d come again. I hope we can get a slightly bigger group at the next meeting, on July 23. Here are an overview of what we did, and some comments on what we might do.

The July 9 meeting began with Nell giving a short talk on building a progressive movement, and with me (Eric) reading a few notes about what I got out of Lakoff’s “elephant” book. A copy of those notes is below. After that we watched about 5 or 10 minutes of Paul Waldman — you can see what we watched if you go to http://fora.tv/fora/showthread.php?t=198, click on “play,” and skip ahead to “Chapter 6: A Statement of Values” — that’s about 19 minutes after the beginning of the recording. After that we had an open discussion for most of an hour. Finally we closed with the optimistic 6-minute video by Paul Hawken, available at http://www.blessedunrest.com/video.html, and then a brief questionnaire. (By the way, if you feel a need for a boost of hope, I recommend the 78 minute video by Paul Hawken available at http://fora.tv/fora/showthread.php?t=1148.)

My little speech at the beginning of the session was largely devoted to the difference between progressives and conservatives. That speech seems to have heavily influenced the subsequent open discussion; many people related their own experiences in attempting to confront conservatives. It was good to have everyone talking, but the discussion seemed to me a bit unfocused, not really pointed in any particular direction. It was good for our introductory meeting, but I don’t think it can be taken as a precedent for our future meetings.

Nell and I have begun discussing what we’ll do on July 23, but we haven’t got much of it worked out yet. In their questionnaires, several people called for discussion that leads to “action.” Certainly Nell and I are keeping that in mind in planning the next session — we do hope to accomplish something beyond mere talk. But we are both leery of rushing into anything that could be called action. Nell has been an organizer for a long time, and she has seen that rushing into action without a long-term strategic plan is ineffective, a waste of effort. Indeed, Lakoff says very explicitly in the preface to Thinking Points: “This handbook is not about quick-and-dirty, short-term fixes to immediate tactical problems. It is about long-term strategy.”

My own thoughts are these: The most important thing we need to do is communicate the progressive vision to more people. (In religious terms, you might say that we need to spread the good word.) If we do that effectively, then results — e.g., legislative action — will come easily as a consequence; if we don’t, then results will be an uphill battle. So we need to figure out what is the vision, who we are trying to communicate it to, and how we communicate it.

Sorry, I don’t have a written version of Nell’s initial speech. Here is a copy of the speech that I read at the beginning of our meeting on July 9:

What I got from Lakoff, by Eric Schechter

I’m one of the organizers of this group, and George Lakoff’s writing means a lot to me personally, so I’ll tell you a little about it. I was confused about politics for most of my life, and that paralyzed me into inaction. But the confusion started clearing up about a year and a half ago, when I ran across Lakoff’s book, Don’t Think of an Elephant! I think some of his later books are even better, but they weren’t available back then. Since reading Lakoff, I’ve become able to read other authors, and my paralysis is gone.

Lakoff gave simple answers to three questions that are crucial to me. Actually, his answers are oversimplifications, but that’s the nature of the game. When you’re driving on a long trip, you use a road map, not a photograph of the road. The only way to understand politics is through a patchwork of overlapping oversimplifications. The trick is to find good simplifications — ones that make sense. Lakoff does, to me.

(1) The first question is, how are conservatives and progressives opposed to one another? We differ on every issue, but it’s not just isolated issues — there must be some simple unifying principle. What is it? Lakoff answered this in terms of psychology — in terms of the fact that the first political structure we ever enounter in our lives is the interpersonal dynamics of the family in which we grow up.

Lakoff describes us progressives with a “nurturing parents” model. The government provides a nurturing environment for us — with social security, health insurance, roads, courts, and so on — an environment in which we can develop our own potential. We progressives believe in hope, reason, love, and community. Waldman summarizes that with this slogan: “We’re all in this together.” I like this very positive view of people.

But Lakoff describes conservatives in terms of a “strict father” model, which involves a much lower opinion of human nature. (Here I’m talking about conservative ideology — not conservative voters, most of whom are good-hearted people taken in by the rhetoric. And there are actually many different kinds of conservatives; this description is admittedly a simplification.)

The conservatives believe that people are motivated mainly by greed and fear, people don’t want to help you, and the world is an unfriendly and even dangerous place. The conservatives deepen this feeling by telling us to be afraid of one thing or another. And that makes the father figure more appealing. Our leader is like a father: father is in charge, father knows best, father is wise and powerful, father will protect us. Father knows more than we know do about what is going on, so we shouldn’t question his methods or strategies. Father’s authority must be obeyed without question. (I never served in the military, but the television series Star Trek made this system very understandable to me.)

A few other authors have recently presented similar ideas. Thom Hartmann has a book titled Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class. He says that the conservatives do not really believe in democracy, though they pay lip service to it. Conservatives don’t believe that the common people can or should rule themselves. Instead, power and authority should be concentrated in the hands of a small, wise elite, which must be obeyed. In fact, since father knows best, the public doesn’t need to know everything, and some conservatives even feel it’s okay to lie about some stuff when the end justifies the means.

(2) The second question is, why do we hear the conservatives everywhere, when they’re less than half the country? If you turn on the radio or the television you hear conservatives. Well, the reason is money. Conservative economic policies have a habit of making the rich richer and everyone else poorer. Consequently, many rich people have been spending some of their wealth on conservative radio stations and television stations and newspapers, and funding for conservative think tanks, to generate propaganda favorable to conservatives and the rich. This has always happened in a decentralized way, but it also became an orchestrated conscious effort starting in September 1971, when Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote a secret memo recommending it to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A month later Powell was appointed by Nixon to the Supreme Court.

(3) My third and final question is, how do the conservatives still win so many voters when they are so wrong about everything? What makes them so persuasive? Well, their think tanks have produced several effective tactics. One tactic is the twisting of language. We can only think in language, and language is subjective. When someone challenges you to a debate, your first step should be to change the question; otherwise you’re probably going to lose. This idea is not new — George Orwell wrote about it 58 years ago, in his novel titled “Nineteen Eighty Four,” which I recommend highly. But Lakoff has brought this idea up to date and analyzed it in depth. In fact, his later work, Whose Freedom?, is an entire book analyzing how conservatives are trying to change the word “freedom.”

You might think expect both sides, conservative and progressive, would be equally guilty of twisting the language. But actually the conservatives do it far more, for a couple of reasons: they’ve invested more money on think tanks, and some of the conservatives feel it’s okay to lie. We need to counter their lies with the truth.

In conclusion: Lakoff and Waldman have both written about the progressive vision, and how we need to communicate the progressive message. Nell and I have found their writing to be very inspiring, and so we want to use it to begin a discussion group.

USSF – July 1 b

from Nell Levin

The Backbone Campaign is creating a “shadow” or alternative cabinet , called the Progressive Cabinet, made up of leading progressives, the idea being to show the country that progressives have the leaders and the ideas to run our country. Each Cabinet member has been asked to make a statement about what he or she would do in their first 100 days in office. At the Progressive Cabinet Summit in Atlanta on June 26th, each person who was present was asked to come up with a brilliant idea for the future of the United States and the world. Below are the brilliant ideas that emerged.

Brilliant Ideas:

• Register every public high school senior in America to vote by graduation. Steve Cobble/PDA
• Corporations will no longer have the rights, or more rights, than citizens. Susan Keith
• Moratorium on the building of all new power plants, no coal, no natural gas, no biofuel, no nuclear–only solar (supplemented by wind power). No commodity-based power plant energy resources. Desi Doyen
• Scale back the military especially including the military presence abroad.
• Let’s frame global anti-poverty legislation in terms of homeland security and eliminating terrorism. Nicola Torbett
• Create a structure to move progressives’ ideals and reporting into the mainstream. Tracy Van Slyke
• Raise the minimum wage to a living age. Holly Sklar
• IMPEACH DICK (get W too) and incarcerate him and repeal every bill his office worked on. And don’t tell me that reinstating the Bill of Rights is not “positive” and using our Constitution is not “possible.” David Swanson
• Use arts to inspire Americans to use the mandate of the Constitution to change the government and “create a decent society.” Amy Morrison
• Change our immigration/migration systems by eliminating borders and making guest workers fully documented so they can be allowed to travel and get jobs or teach, etc. across the land. Luis Cuevas
• A paper ballot–one that is actually counted–for every vote cast in U.S. elections. Brad Friedman
• Ensure that people are involved in legislative process. Have them engage in one day of “politics” –like jury duty and draft of citizenship. Kety Esquivel
• Committee on Progressive Information–modeled in structured only after the CPI, bringing together progressive advertisers, writers, business people, illustrators/artists to start a progressive publicity campaign. Diane Wittner
• Have approximately half of our resources go to independent media. Matthew Cardinale
• Health care for all. Healthcare is a human right. Byllye Avery
• Guaranteed annual income and health care for all U.S. citizens paid for by dismantling the U.S. military machine. Nell Levin
• If folks voted on issues and politicians were tasked with how to achieve those policy goals and would not continue in office without accountability for realizing those goals. Diane Shamis
• Sing each other’s songs. Baldemar Velasquez
• Elect by popular vote the news anchors of networks with more than one million viewers. Harvie Branscomb
• Public/private initiative to engage in long-term future planning. Charles Lenchner
• Deploy a Procession for the Future to help folks imagine what a progressive vision for the country includes. Bill Moyer
• For everyone to see through the eyes of one another and realize that we are all one. Debra
• Proportional representation (IRV voting that counted); publicly funded elections; re-enfranchise those formerly incarcerated; popular election of president (IRV). David Cobb
• Buy up all the analog bandwidth being auctioned from the changeover to HDTV. Matt Power
• Implement the International Declaration on Human Rights–civil, political, social and economic rights through U.S. law, regulations and foreign policy. Susan Somach
• We can organize progressives to coordinate an cooperate using the internet–NetRootz.com–easy, free, organic. Jeeni Criscenzo
• Free education for formerly incarcerated people. Jakada Imani
• Begin a system to allow and promote tithing to progressive organizations. My idea would enable even people who can only give a little to support several organizations w/o administrative burden on individuals or organizations. Emily Levy
• If we would hold persons responsible for educating children and be inspired to do so. Ahmes Askia
• Amend the U.S. Constitution to include a 7th Generation Principle provision, meaning all citizens, government policy makers, corporations operating in America, etc. be required to make all levels of decisions backed upon the well-being, health, environment and sustainability for seven generations to come. Tom Goldtooth
• Create three DVDs addressed to progressives, independents and conservatives which will educate and be used to recruit members to media action. David Barbour
• Have a plan for the scheduled closing of the over 800 U.S. military bases overseas, turning some of them into centers for positive initiatives on issues such as alternative energy and peace building. Medea Benjamin
• Everyone has the opportunity to be part of a state-funded creative, mutual support circle to develop their social artistry and political empowerment. Diane Saliba Aolt
• Create a Progressive Cabinet.

USSF – July 1

“Another world is possible. Another United States is necessary.”

from Nell Levin

I got an email from Sekou Franklin, who teaches Political Science at MTSU and is on the TAP Advisory Board.

He says: “Please keep sending the blogs and let us know if there is a “real” possibility that this may lead to a peoples’ movement, or at least something that moves beyond the two-party duopoly.”

In case you’re confused by the term “duopoly”, here’s how it is described in Wikipedia: “Modern American politics as been described as a duopoly since the Republican and Democratic parties have dominated and framed policy debate as well as the public discourse on matters of national concern for about a century and a half. Third Parties have encountered various obstacles to getting onto ballots at different levels of government, more so in recent decades.”

So, from what I gleaned at the USSF, are the winds of change moving in the direction of a people’s movement beyond the duopoly?

Approximately 15,000 people attended the Forum. The numbers are themselves impressive. I have been to many other progressive political gatherings. Attendees often range from active retirees to Beltway insiders to college kids to church goers to local activists to people who are passionate about a particular issue, such as the media reform Conference in Memphis in January.

All of the above were in Atlanta. But I don’t know of any other progressive gathering that attracted this many people (including young people, people of color and immigrants) who are involved in such a wide range of issues. I would say that this heralds an emerging progressive majority, particularly since young people will be determining the future direction of the country.

In his July 9 Nation article “Will The Progressive Majority Emerge?” Rick Perlstein counters the myth that “If the Democrats wanted the country back, they would just have to learn to become mainstream again.” He cites polls that show that Americans believe that government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep, that they favor raising the minimum wage, that they want the government to guarantee health insurance for all citizens, that the Bush tax cuts were not worth it because they increased the deficit and caused cuts in government programs, and that the Iraq war is wrong.

So this progressive shift is not just among the sort of people who are committed enough to travel to Georgia on their own nickel and spend five days traipsing around downtown Atlanta in the heat attending workshops on the prison industrial complex, women’s rights, how to end the war, and immigration reform.

The numbers themselves don’t tell the whole story, however. The next question is: Are people beginning to think beyond their particular issue to building a larger movement for social, economic and environmental justice? Or are they still isolated in their issue or their identity silo? How much conversation was there about connecting the dots between the issues, about systemic change, about building a transformative movement in this country? And how are we going to create this movement?

Here are some reflections by some attendees.

Rev. Kenneth Glasbow of The Ordinary People’s Society of Dothan, Alabama says: “There is a hierarchy in society. That hierarchy not only makes the laws, but classifies the people. The USSF is about addressing that inequality, addressing the other inequalities that exist, and facing that oppression so people feel the space to express that. All of us are suffering separately. When we come together, we see the power of all of us. In coming together, we can see the connection between us.”

Genero Rendon, Director of the Southwest Workers Union, San Antonio, Texas says: “The USSF is an open space that gives credibility to every movement. Everybody coming together is a sign of power, sign of convergence. We have to galvanize force and come out with some concrete measures for change.”

Carlos Jimenez, National Coordinator of the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), Washington, DC says: “The USSF is a way to connect people working on issues in different parts of the country, as a time for trainings and teaching for students, and as a way to get people really excited to continue doing the work they’re doing. We want to unite activism in college campuses around lots of issues–antiwar, reproductive rights, access to education, environmental and economic justice. To use the USSF as means for coming together.”

Clearly people are excited to be coming together. I attended a forum on immigration on Friday night where there was talk of building a black brown coalition with the slogan “Immigrant rights is the new civil rights issue.”

I did not get a sense, however, that an overall strategy has yet emerged on how to harness all of this enthusiasm into a movement. Someone remarked at the Building a Progressive Faith Movement for Social Change workshop that people are still isolated in their issue silos.

Not that figuring out how to build a movement is easy.

I spent a lot of time with the Backbone Campaign folks whose motto is: We need to build a propositional not an oppositional movement. This is something that TAP has been saying for a while. We need to lead with a positive vision for the future because that is what excites people and makes them willing to put their butts on the line. People get very tired of the constant nay-saying of the Left. It leaves us feeling hopeless and discouraged, like we can never win. However, holding up the image of a future that will be better for all, being willing to imagine new possibilities that don’t yet exist is much more invigorating than simply tinkering around at the margins.

It is also significant that the USSF was held in the South. Just bringing people from other parts of the country to the South provided an opportunity for people to get beyond their stereotypes of Southerners. The South has the largest number of African Americans in the US and its immigrant population is growing fast. Look for a shift in the political climate of the South in the coming years. I love Project South’s motto: As the South goes, so goes the nation.

In the final analysis, we are probably not yet beyond the duopoly but a people’s movement is emerging. We are at a turning point in American history, thanks for George W. Bush’s failed agenda. In the coming years, this people’s movement will chart a new direction for America and thus the world.