Former Green Party candidate to challenge Mass. gov. Deval Patrick as a Democrat

by: rossl

Mon Feb 08, 2010 at 15:44:28 PM EST

Talkin' 'bout my generation...

by: rossl

Sun Feb 07, 2010 at 07:06:12 AM EST

Well, we all know Dylan, Lennon, and Young.  But what about Francis, Folds, and Morello?  If you take a look at the music scene today, it's apparent that there are a lot of young people who care.  There's currently a lot of music in the same spirit, if not the same style, as the classics of protest music.

Enough waiting. Let's rebuild the Progressive Party of the United States.

by: Michael Kwiatkowski

Mon Feb 01, 2010 at 10:43:24 AM EST

How many of the extreme right-wing and criminal policies of Bush-Cheney has Obama adopted?  How many of those extreme right-wing policies has he exceeded?  Last month, knowledge that Obama has gone a step further than Bush, authorizing the executive branch to murder American citizens on the flimsiest of rationales, became more public.  This sh__ has GOT to end.

My political activities now are focusing on the building of a viable third party as a tool of a reinvigorated and independent progressive movement.  No efforts to reform the Democratic Party from within can succeed so long as the upper-level of the party establishment is able to crush dissent from within, as is explained here.

[T]the Democratic primaries will be where the action is ... Maybe someone like Kucinich, Feingold ... It will be a "good liberal," not a radical, advocating positions that are reasonable but declared "unrealistic." ("You'll throw the race to the Republicans, we can't have that!") The basis of the campaign will not be a sudden embrace of Bolshevism, but rather Obama's embrace of Wall Street. It will be a mix of angry rank-and-file and disgruntled party machine.

The insurgent candidate will lose. The candidate will not call for a 3rd party, will support Obama after the primaries -- will make a concession speech that would shame the Moscow Show Trials. Many of her or his followers will follow suit. The candidate will not personally work to create an independent infrastructure within the Democratic Party. Obama will probably win, not because of his impressive performance but because the foaming-at-the-mouth Republicans will be splitting. After the election, the Democratic challenger will not lead a 3rd party.

This has been the pattern for decades.  There is no one within the Democratic Party willing to lead a progressive breakoff.  The day Dennis Kucinich kisses all party support for his re-election to Congress goodbye is the day I will rejoice, but it's not going to happen.  So it's on lay progressives to take charge, organize from the ground up, and lead the way to building both the movement and the political organization that will bring it to power within the halls of our nation's capital.

This won't happen overnight; it will take decades for a fully functional progressive political organization to be built, and we will be opposed every step of the way by Democrats, Republicans, and corporations now empowered to spend as much money as their executives want to sway public opinion against us.  But we have got to start sometime, and now is as good a time as any.

Those who claim this isn't the right time will not tell us that the "right time" is never going to come -- there will always be the next election cycle to worry about, too much at stake to "risk throwing it to the GOP."  Never mind that all Democrats ever do is throw elections to Republicans simply by behaving like they're members of their counterpart political party.  We must ignore such admonitions and press on.  There is no such thing as perfection in politics, to be the enemy of good things that will never come to fruition so long as the existing political structure continues.  And there is nothing more to be lost by doing what is right and necessary to take back our country.

The good news is that a Progressive Party already exists in some states.  In Missouri, Vermont, and Washington, progressives began rebuilding the political party that bears their name from the ground up, and they used smart strategies and tactics to gain power first at the local level and then at the state level.  They are now starting to branch out into national-level politics by running candidates for the House of Representatives, with a Vermont Progressive having run for the House of Representatives in 2008 on a platform that included calling for Bush's impeachment.  And David Sirota has written previously about New York's Working Families Party, which has gotten results at the local and state levels.

So the foundation exists for progressives to rebuild our movement.  The will is there.  What's lacking is leadership.  If no one in the 'netroots is willing to assume vital leadership roles, then it is up to each and every one of us to take charge and lead.  Enough is enough.  Progressives must stand up to the far right, which dominates both major political parties, and end its rule.  No more excuses, no more capitulations, no more waiting.  Let's get it done.

FCP discussion

by: jeffroby

Sun Jan 31, 2010 at 14:11:15 PM EST

3rd party musings -- a whole new ballgame

by: jeffroby

Sat Jan 30, 2010 at 22:35:50 PM EST

That said, it started me thinking.  I've been over the 3rd party arguments pro-and-con for years, many of them dragging along unchanged since 1976.  But then I realized that some of the people I've been talking with are progressive Democrats and some are independents and some are both.  Yet we are all saying remarkably similar things.  I'm not regarded as a sellout for pushing Democratic primaries, and they are not wild-eyed radicals.  There is a new realism among independents, including at least respect for the Full Court Press, and Democrats are no longer all saying my party right or wrong, remember how bad the Republicans are.

A New Look

I think the times they are a'changing, and 3rd party politics needs a new look.  Three changes:

Making Amends: Why the Progressive Movement Needs to Reclaim its "Far Left Radicals"

by: willyloman

Wed Jan 27, 2010 at 19:50:56 PM EST

The Leftwing blogs (the few that remain) are all a dither over President Obama's announced 3 year discretionary spending freeze and they are right to be upset.

But most of these sites were heavily pro-Obama in the run-up to the 2008 general election and for many months afterward as they continued to blindly support him in spite of his neoliberal leaning policy decisions. Some of the regular contributers and administrators of these sites went so far as to shout down or ban outright the "far left wing" dissenters who were warning them against the possiblity of what we are seeing right now; an Obama administration extension of the Bush regimes' criminal activities under President Obama, the protection and even the hiring of former Bush officials who could and should be investigated for various crimes (including but not limited to; election fraud, making false statements to congress, false imprisonment, systematic torture, embezzlement, tax evasion, banking industry RICO Act violations, fabricating false evidence, crimes against humanity and war crimes), the continuation and even the expansion of illegal wars of aggression in service to the imperialist agenda of the military/banking/industrial complex,  and the dire consequences of putting more DLC type Clintonistas in charge of our already failing economy.

Being angry about President Obama's Hooveresque announcement is all well and good, but the fact is, you're still missing the point just like you did nearly two years ago when the "radical left" tried to warn you and you paid them back for their courage and their integrity by banning their IP addresses from your sites so as to silence progressive dissent prior to the election (Remember such classics as..."don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good"? or "He's just faking to the center-right in order to win the election" or my personal favorite  "He's playing chess while you're playing checkers"?  Remember those? Ring any bells? How's that "he's just faking center-right" theory working out for you these days? Does he look like he's "faking" now or do his neoliberal structural reforms look deadly serious?).

In a follow-up article I am going to explain to you exactly why you are incorrect about your current assessment of Obama's most recent and most painful neoliberal IMF structural adjustment policy. Why it is not, in fact, "stupid". Why it is not, in fact, "just a rouse". Why it is not, in fact, a "mistake". Why he is, in fact, going to follow through with it because it is exactly what the neoliberal IMF/World Bank supporting Clintonistas have been planning and working towards since 1996.

But before I do I would just like to say that right now most of the "progressives" administrators who are currently beating their breasts and gnashing their teeth in the left-wing echo chambers they call "open forums" should probably take this opportunity to look back over the period leading up to the election in 2008 and unban many if not all of those "far left wing radicals" they dismissed so easily and insultingly back in the days of "HOPE for CHANGE".

The truth is, those radicals were right and you were wrong and the progressive movement, which is absolutely littered with institutionalized partisan "yes men", needs all the qualified help it can get these days.

Perhaps an email or a public apology would be in order.  By arbitrarily banning such critical voices at such an important time, you played a part in getting this administration into power by silencing dissent; important dissent, that everyone should, by now, know was a completely accurate warning of things to come.

This is not about exacting a pound of flesh or hindsight being 20/20. It's not about the fact that people back then had no real other "viable choice", as was the common last ditch argument made by blinded partisans without any arguments left to them.

This is about accepting responsibility for ones actions; the exact same thing many "progressives" on these sites are demanding our congressional representatives do on any given Monday.  This is about recognizing a structural flaw in our electoral system, one that pits logic against emotion and leads to some rather undemocratic results regardless of political party affiliation.

This is about reconciliation and finally getting it right.

More importantly though, this is about bringing back into the fold, those disenfranchised people who were bright enough and aware enough years ago to see this coming when most "progressives" didn't or simply refused to.

Bright, unafraid people, those willing to step up and stand up for what they know is right, those willing to take the heat even from their own  in order to try their best to warn others of the mistake they were making 2 years ago, those kinds of people couldn't possibly be harmful for the progressive movement right now.

They could be just what the Progressive movement needs; a partisanship-free unblinking analysis of the current state of the union, devoid of Democratic party loyalties or White House PR machine created talking points and committed, really committed to true liberal ideals not just Party affiliation.

These bright, articulate, forward thinking deconstructions of ideological authority that have been systematically disassociated from the Progressive movement need to be consciously approached, actively cultivated, and brought back into the fold. Because quite frankly, the institutional self-censoring of the Progressive movement leading up to the 2008 election has left us with a number of status-quo supporting  institutionalized voices incapable of the kinds of critical thinking and/or courage we desperately need right now.

So those of you whom can relate to this call to action, you know who you are. Eat your humble pie, put your ego in check for just a moment, and do whatever it is you have to. But while it is becoming more and more obvious that the true enemies of the people of this nation are allied together (in the Supreme Court, the Republican and Democratic Parties, Wall Street, the corporate board rooms, the corporate media industry, the military industrial complex, the Insurance industry, as well the White House)  and currently working in complete harmony with one another, you had better learn that divisions within our ranks only serve to make our adversaries stronger and our impact weaker.

In order for the Progressive movement to survive the gathering storm it must progress and as any adult knows, there is no progress without painfully honest self-evaluation.

The selective disenfranchisement of critical (and now understood to have been acutely accurate) progressives was a mistake that must be corrected if for no other reason than to ensure it won't happen again now that many previous nay-Sayers are joining the ranks of the "radical far-left".

The upcoming elections are going to be polluted with the same, populist-dividing talking points fed to us from the same PR agencies by the same institutionalized pundits posing as "progressives".

Are we going to be smart enough to let the perfect be the enemy of the good this time? I certainly hope so. The people of this country can't take much more of this kind of "good" that's for damn sure.

On General Strike

by: jeffroby

Tue Jan 26, 2010 at 23:00:16 PM EST

My immediate thought and what i got from that diary was that even if a person had only small opportunities to have an impact on the revenue stream like canceling the cable, but that move was part of a whole big movement under ONE umbrella framed as a general strike, which also absorbed the people making the big moves, and the people already impacted severely by the way things are, then there would be some eyes popping open.

Wikipedia:

A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants. It is also characterized by participation of workers in a multitude of workplaces, and tends to involve entire communities. The general strike has waxed and waned in popularity since the mid-19th century, and has characterized many historically important strikes.

... The classic general strike, by contrast, involves also workers (and members of the working-class) who have no direct stake in the outcome of the strike. For example, in the San Francisco General Strike of 1934, both union and non-union workers struck for four days to protest the police and employers' tactics that had killed two picketers and in support of the longshoremen's and seamen's demands ...

Some in the labour movement hope to mount a "peaceful revolution" by organizing enough strikers to completely paralyse the state and corporate apparatus. With this goal achieved, the workers would be able to re-organize society along radically different lines.

Since we are political people, I think it most helpful to go with the syndicalist use Wikipedia quoted in the paragraph directly above.

We deal in change

by: jeffroby

Tue Jan 26, 2010 at 22:52:45 PM EST

I am very far from being okay.  The murder of handcuffed Afghan schoolchildren by American "civilians" (CIA?) who have access to helicopters has me in a surly mood.  I have to repeat to myself over and over, "small steps, small steps, stick to the plan."  So I stick to the plan.  The Full Court Press is a good plan, a very good plan.  But I'm feeling a little less tolerant of bullshit today, so let's have a fight.  Over strategy and method.  Let me pick on ActBlue, because variations of its strategy of funding liberal candidates to replace the worst of the Democrats has been holy writ among progressives for so many years.

At one level, no such fight is necessary.  I'm sure the ActBlue folks are good people.  If I were in the right district, I'm sure I would vote for many of the candidates they funnel money to.  In fact, a key feature of the Full Court Press is its flexibility, its compatibility with other tactics.  It merely calls for filing candidates in all 435 congressional primaries around a modest but pointed program:

WPA-style jobs program
Medicare for all
Repeal Stupak and Hyde and their ilk
U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan

It does not comprise a complete strategy.  Since the only bottom line is supporting the above points and getting on the congressional primary ballot, it does not require campaigning hard against Dennis Kucinich if he doesn't endorse the program.  We would not want to undermine an effort to defeat Stupak.  On the other hand, if an incumbent said they agreed with "U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan" but had voted to fund the war effort, they wouldn't get the FCP stamp of approval either.  Our tactics may be flexible, but our principles are not.  Being flexible doesn't mean being a patsy.

the Jane Hamsher Front -- Strike the Empire Back!

by: jeffroby

Mon Jan 25, 2010 at 21:11:14 PM EST

Then along comes Jane Hamsher.  For the record, I had criticized her in my intro to the Full Court Press as one of those progressive leaders who had caved in and was supporting the bill even without the "robust" public option she had once demanded.  But then she turned around and came out 4-square for killing the Senate bill.  And then, a few days ago, she joined with notorious scoundrel Grover Norquist  to demand an investigation of Rahm Emmanuel for malfeasance regarding his relationship with Freddie Mac.

Well, I gotta say the lady's got guts.

Her move follows one or both of two tracks.  It could be seen as an innocent exercise in good  government.  Or it could be a counterpunch to the way Rahm and the White House have viciously sidelined progressives around, well, everything.  Both are valid.

But working with Norquist! the Dems cry while clutching at their smelling salts.  Okay, let's look at the Democrats' record.  The Stupak amendment passed mostly with Republican votes.  And then when the House Democrats passed its Stupak-laden bill, they made Stupak their own.  They passed a Republican measure.

So the Obamacrats cry "teabagger!"  Jane Hamsher is getting her money from Jack Abramoff!  Next thing you know, she'll be leading teabagger rallies.  The charges are nonsense, but the underlying politic is worth some thought.

Make no mistake, the teabagger movement is a fascist-led, corporate-funded reactionary movement.  But its success is in part a monument to progressive failure.  While progressives had dreams of Obama-plums dancing in their heads, they ignored their working class base, which was outraged that Wall Street was getting bailed out while they were losing their homes.  They distrust the Fed.  They fear a distant government that might do things like, oh, mandating people to buy insurance they can't afford.  The teabaggers were able to merge this righteous anger with backward racist and sexist currents in the American people.  Because progressives were asleep at the wheel!

Won't get fooled again! Again.

by: jeffroby

Mon Jan 25, 2010 at 21:06:38 PM EST

Even more hard-fought was the struggle between the tenant organizations which had created the campaign in the first place and ran the campaign's district committees (I chaired District 6, the Mission), against the Democratic Party's consultants (the little wigs) and Democratic clubs and official leftists, over whether the campaign would be a consultant-based media affair, or grassroots tenant-based.  The underlying question was whether the district committees would last beyond election day.

The money went to the consultants and for TV ads, while the district committees were starved.  The measure had been gutted even before the campaign began, in order to appease a few prestigious Democratic clubs that in the end actually opposed the initiative.  In the home stretch, it became clear that Prop R was going down.

Now a whiny voice pipes up from the back of the room.  "Hey, old guy, is this gonna be another of your boring stories about how you had to walk 20 miles through the snow to get to an SDS meeting?"

"Shaddup, kid, there's a point here somewhere!"

As I was  saying, in the final weeks, the campaign bosses went into a pseudo-frenzy.  Once more to the barricades, voter registration, lit drops.  The campaign came down to getting a slate card under every door in the city.  No volunteer was to be left standing as the polls closed.  

What a long, strange trip it's been

by: jeffroby

Mon Jan 25, 2010 at 21:01:59 PM EST

I was a 60's kid, brought up white lower-middle-class, believing in the American dream, freedom of speech, civil rights, truth and beauty.  In 1964, I supported both Barry Goldwater and Martin Luther King.  How's that?  Got to college, and along with millions of others, found out that the American dream was a lie.  War in Vietnam was an obscenity.  Michigan State University had nothing to do with either truth or beauty.  Got active.

Sitting in to support three groovy professors who had been fired at the behest of the Mothers Against Degeneracy.  The Akers Hall Kiss-in (hundreds of people kissing in the lounge because they were told they couldn't.  The war.  Always the war.  Marched, did wild in the streets.  Saw it crushed.  Friends with broken bones, in jail.  Dead.  The George McGovern campaign in 1972 picked up the pieces and sold them cheap.  I was shattered, broken.  Emotionally and political numb.

How did I get through it?

Action and Avalanche

by: jeffroby

Sun Jan 24, 2010 at 20:51:29 PM EST

... then give us some small tactics.  You'd find a lot of folks would join in, well at least I would.  I am not experienced at this.  I'm not even sure I understand it!  But I'm ready to help even if I'm not yet ready to lead in this kind of project. I'd love an essay from you with concrete action items that illustrate these "small tactics."

I responded to Ground with a tactic for a group of maybe 10 people that begins thus:

Go to your representative's office, present your demands, and insist on seeing him or her.  Staffer tells you congressperson is in Washington and isn't available.  You say, we'll wait here until he/she comes back on the next plane.  Staffer says that's ridiculous.  You say you're staying.  Staffer threatens to call police.  Fork:  If police come, you treat them politely, explaining the justice of your position, then you leave, having provoked a response that provides a news hook.  If police don't come, you stay 5 minutes past closing time, then leave.  You have defied authority, stayed out of jail.  And upset the staffer.

You could also come back when the rep is in town.

Another I've toyed with is for a small group of people to prepare a flier and go to a jobs fair (New York State even gives a schedule of them here).  These grotesque spectacles give the illusion that you could get a job.  The flier could say any number of things.  If the small group included unemployed people, the flier could advocate not leaving until jobs were offered to all.  Tactically, you could back down when pressured by security.  Having to be forced out by security or police becomes an issue all by itself.  If the group were all employed, it could have a general statement about unemployment and call a meeting.  Give a phone number and web page (not that expensive since the traffic would not be massive).  The very act of trying to organize at such events could provoke a reaction, and that reaction, however small, then becomes an issue.  Then you could take your group and "Go to your representative's office ..." as above, demanding the right to organize at these events.  (Organize for what?  You'd have to figure that out.)  Some of the fairs listed are for government jobs, and thus the issue would be more sensitive than if the jobs were private sector.

Method of activism pt. 2 -- practicum

by: jeffroby

Sun Jan 24, 2010 at 20:48:40 PM EST

No, these affairs did not grip all of American society.  Most people tried to go about their daily lives.  But these matters gripped the activists, and the activists were in motion, and the activists set the tone.  Not that we were better people.  Social motion allowed us to try different tactics and see what worked.  Decisions were thrust upon us whether we wanted them or not.

We HAD to address:

What kind of society should America be?

participatory democracy
socialism
social democracy
communism
anarchism
anarcho-syndicalism
humane capitalism
back to the farm?

Stupid arguments.  Loud arguments.  Smart arguments.  Old wheels dragged out and re-invented, new wheels imagined.

Toward a method of activism pt. 1

by: jeffroby

Sun Jan 24, 2010 at 20:41:54 PM EST

The overall state of dialogue on the left is incredibly banal.  It is narrow.  It is ahistorical.

Our current condition comes at the tail-end of a long deterioration.  At its best, left politics at the beginning of the 60s was alive and dynamic and creative.  At its worst, left politics by the end of the 60s had the character of the war of all against all.  The life of organizations was nasty, brutish and short.  While the tide of the movement had been rising, everyone had new blood to proselytize, recruit, mobilize, even as they excoriated each other as sellouts, petit-bourgeois deviationists and running dog lackeys.  Advocates of more radical action were successful, an active movement validated them -- or bailed them out as the case might be.

Mr. Obama, Do You Believe Us Now?

by: Timothy V. Gatto

Sun Jan 24, 2010 at 03:32:17 AM EST

Obama isn't guiltless when it comes to taking corporate money. He received huge donations from Goldman Sachs, Morgan-Stanley, AIG and others. Corporate money was fine by him as long as he was getting the lions share. Now the Democrats have to worry about all that corporate money going to the business friendly GOP.

There's one way to stop this coup on democracy, and that is for Congress to introduce a law specifying campaign limits and while they are at it, take corporate "personhood" and throw it in the trash bin where it belongs. I read an article that was entitled "You never see Corporations Go to Jail". How true. It's a fact that corporations are set up to shield investors from bankruptcy and lawsuits. So how can an entity have "person hood" and rights of "Free Speech"? It appears that in this co0untry, the only ones that are being heard are the rich.