What Do You Mean We Need a Movement?
Sarah
By David Swanson
There's a line of thinking I keep running into that goes something like
this: Because John Kerry supports Bush's illegal and unpopular war, we
should stop focusing on the election and concentrate on building a
grassroots movement. This argument has a number of variations in which it's
maintained that we should focus on building a third party, or changing the
system to allow third parties to be built, or threatening to withhold our
votes from Kerry until he adopts humane and popular positions.
One important objection to the recommendation that we shift our focus to
building a grassroots movement is that we've already built an enormous
movement that under probably any previous administration would have had a
significant impact. We don't lack a movement. What we lack is someone we
can move with it.
The past four years have witnessed unprecedented anti-war rallies including
the largest ever, and including huge rallies prior to the start of the war.
We've seen the largest women's rights march ever, almost certainly the
largest rallies ever against welfare cuts and tax cuts, an endless series of
massive protests against "free trade," and the development of an enormous
immigrants rights movement that last year held a series of rallies and
freedom rides across the country.
We've seen civil disobedience targeting the government and corporations. We
've seen coordinated efforts combining visits, phone calls, faxes, Emails,
rallies, and civil disobedience aimed at swinging the votes of key congress
members and senators. We've seen huge gains in traditional community
organizing, the development of Internet organizing, the building of
alliances among our many organizations, and the gradual awakening of labor
to the need for militant popular opposition.
We've seen local and state government rebellion against the federal
government in the form of lawsuits and simple refusal to implement policies.
We've seen hundreds of cities pass resolutions against the "PATRIOT Act" and
the war. Pollution, education, and GLBT rights are all arenas of rebellion.
Bush, Cheney, and their cabinet members are hounded by protesters everywhere
they go in this country and outside of it. Anyone who doubts that a
movement has been built should be in New York City at the time of the
Republican Convention. And it's important to be there, not trust the media
to tell you about it. The media are the same people who haven't told you
about the entire movement that's been built.
OK, but won't the movement go away as soon as Kerry is elected? And if it
does not, won't Kerry ignore it just as the DNC has ignored it, just as the
Democratic Party Platform Committee has ignored it? I think there is good
reason to hope otherwise.
For one thing, on many issues the votes of Democrats in Congress have been
responsive to people's needs during the time that Nancy Pelosi has been
minority leader. Kerry's own voting record in the Senate, with some glaring
exceptions, has been better than his campaign rhetoric of recent weeks.
While some of us would argue that his campaigning to the right is
politically foolish, there is also reason to hope that some of it is
dishonest or at least malleable. During the primaries, Kerry moved left.
He did not say during the primaries that he would have voted for the war
even "knowing what he knows now." Kerry has moved to the right because that
has been the Democratic Party's strategy for losing elections for a quarter
century and because popular pressure on him to move left has evaporated.
Yes, we should bring that pressure back and do so now for Kerry's own good
in hopes of attracting new voters, but I don't believe that's going to
happen in a significant enough way to break through. What I do think will
happen, if Kerry is elected, is a massive movement beginning November 3rd to
make Kerry a progressive president. I think the same could have been done
with Clinton -- but we didn't even try. I think we could have nominated a
progressive Democrat in place of Kerry -- but we didn't even try (OK, there
were some limited efforts). I think we can move Kerry to positive positions
once in office, and I think we're prepared to try. New organizations like
Progressive Democrats of America (http://www.pdamerica.org) have made that
their focus, and when the labor movement is restructured next year it will
not be in a way to make it less politically aggressive. Electing Kerry is
on everyone's minds, but so is pressuring Kerry from day one.
Despite my claim that we have formed an impressive movement, there are
always ways in which it could be better and always disagreements on how to
focus it. My recommendations would be as follows. First, between now and
Kerry's arrival in the White House focus our energy on electing him and on
preventing the stealing of the election with machines that produce no
meaningfully recountable paper records. Now is the time to demand simple
paper ballots from your county wherever you live. Nothing else is more
important for the next two months.
Second, whatever our primary interests are, we should come together to look
beyond Kerry and make our number one demand of him now and after the
election the institution of instant runoff voting in all federal elections
before 2006. Kerry can be brought to understand that IRV can boost turnout
and help the Democrats, and help Kerry. Progressives who despise the
Democrats can understand that IRV will give life to third parties and
provide a powerful lever to move the Democrats to democratic positions or in
the long term create a strong new party.
Third, and this should not be an issue until after the election for obvious
reasons, we must all push for media reform, as well as continuing to build
our own media. If we do not, we will not win on our other issues, including
war and peace, trade, health care, civil rights, the environment, campaign
finance reform, and on and on. As long as the media locks us out we will
not know our own strength, and therefore we will not have any strength.
Yes, we could build an even bigger movement that could win changes even
under Bush, but it would be very very difficult, and many of us would suffer
horribly. Yes, electing Kerry in and of itself does not go nearly far
enough. But if we elect Kerry and also build a bigger, tougher, more
coordinated movement - if we demand endlessly that Kerry be our friend
rather than our trying to be his - there will be hope, encouragement, and
new life in this country and the world.
David Swanson's website is
http://www.davidswanson.org
Link to article:
http://www.davidswanson.org/columns/whatdo.htm
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Dave
Reading your post has just reminded me that I need to go make a movement of my own.