Day 2 at Take Back America: on standing for something

Day 2 at Take Back America ...

Two years ago, I was here in DC for the Take Back America conference when the various Democratic candidates were just declaring their plans to run. Today, Howard Dean, now head of the Democratic Party, and Senator John Edwards were back.

Dean had much to say that the crowd was waiting for: We need a Democratic Party that does more than criticize the Republican agenda, he said. We need a positive agenda.

The crowd is on their feet.

We need not only to save Social Security, Dean said. We need to fix the private pension system that is underfunded by billions of dollars. CEOs working for bankrupt companies continue to earn millions while they take money out of the pension funds, money that belongs to the workers, not to the corporations. Pensions need to be portable, so workers can take their pensions with them when they change jobs, and they should be under the control of the workers who earned the money.

Dean spoke out in favor of campaign reform, including Instant Runoff Voting. This is the first time I’ve heard a Democratic Party official endorse IRV, which, if enacted, could allow third parties like the Greens to run candidates without risking the spoiler effect.

Yes!

One of Dean’s biggest applause lines was his call for voting reform so we no longer have “two voting machines in a black district and ten voting machines in a white district.”

Whenever speakers here talk about repairing our broken voting system, they are getting standing ovations.

He talked about the “dark, difficult, and dishonest” vision offered by the Republicans.

And he said something else that progressives here clearly wanted to hear – the Democratic Party has to stand for something, and its leadership has to be made up of people with “deep conviction.” Voters want to know that “if something happens to our family, if something happens to our community, if something happens to our nation, the people who are making decisions are making them not from polls or propaganda, but from deep conviction."

Once again the crowd was on its feet.

So it is ironic that Howard Dean, who won widespread support because of his opposition to the US invasion of Iraq, said nothing about the war in his speech.

That was left for Arianna Huffington, once a Newt Gingrich Republican, now one of the most articulate spokespersons of the left. You can’t be a majority party without having something to say about Iraq, she said in a speech immediately following Dean’s. We are a country at war.

Clearly, many in Congress are compromised by their vote to go to war. They will have to do some soul searching and perhaps admit that they were wrong. The Downing Street memo now makes absolutely clear that intelligence was trumped up. Those who now know this should have less difficulty formulating their own exit strategy from support for this war. And they would be serving the cause of transparency and accountability if they would join in the call for a full investigation following on the leads contained in the Downing Street memo. Who knew what about the cooked intelligence, and when did they know it?

If Howard Dean is right and Americans want a party that stands for something, Democratic leadership will have to take a stand on the Iraq War and should be calling for a full investigation into how this tragedy came to be.

At Take Back America: Do you feel the love? National & local synergies

from the Take Back America conference in Washington, DC...

After the election of 2004 disaster of 2004, it's not surprising that progressives are looking for evidence of victories. And there were some then, and since, that suggest directions for rebuilding the progressive movement in the United States. At the Take Back America conference, taking place June 1-3 in Washington, DC, organizers pointed to these victories as evidence of possibilities for change, along with polling results that show that Americans are looking for a new direction.

Among the most important victories -- two grassroot campaigns succeeded in getting increased minimum wage adopted by ballot initiatives in both Florida and Nevada. The organizers of those campaigns, ACORN organizer Tamecka Pierce and AFL-CIO organizer Danny Thompson were honored with Paul Wellstone Citizen Leadership Awards at a packed Gala Award dinner this evening.

Other ACORN members from Florida were on their feet cheering Pierce's award. Pierce told the crowd that the purpose of the campaign was not only to win a raise for the lowest paid workers in Florida, but also get thousands of Florida voters who might otherwise sit out the election to the polls to vote for progressive candidates.

The interdependence between national and grassroots was very much in evidence. Another example was launched on the opening day of the conference -- Cities for Progress, a national network of local elected officials and community activists. Cities for Progress grew out of Cities for Peace, which helped get 200 city resolutions opposing the invasion of Iraq. The Institute for Policy Studies, the countries oldest progressive think tank, is behind both efforts.

Cities for Progress will focus on the costs of the Iraq War on the residents of cities across the US, the Wal-Marting of the economy, and the need for national health care policy. How much is the war costing your state, county or city? You can find out at in an analysis released by the National Priorities Project. The share coming from the taxpayers of Atlanta, for example, is $255.3 million, says the report. If that money had been spent for healthcare instead, 69,477 uninsured Atlantans could now be getting insurance. Or 4,312 public school teachers could have been hired.

These initiative are examples of the power of collaboration between national groups and grassroots groups, which are organizing, getting out voters, and winning important state and local races.

Too often, grassroots have been ignored by the national groups, or the two have split over funding competition and differences in priorities. Sometimes, race, class, and gender differences also play a role -- many grassroots group are led by women and often women of color. The national groups tend to be led by white men. One of the big questions for the progressive movement in coming years will be whether it can build on the strengths of both grassroots and national organizing in ways that respect both. If so, and if a clear and pro-active agenda can focus on issues that will make a difference in people's lives, the growing popular concern over the direction of the Bush administration can be translated into a powerful long-term progressive movement.