I've been meditating on this piece on
Organizing (unsigned but apparently by Sara) over at
The Next Hurrah, as I struggle with my thoughts about politics and organizing and all of the individual particular reasons we engage in either.
When we think about the future of the Democratic party, or a Fifty-State Strategy, or about single-issue groups in politics, or particular issues or movements that interest us, how do we determine our priorities? To what degree must we be pragmatic and to what degree do we continue to be idealist?
You really must read the full piece, but for me the key excerpt is this:
Essentially my point is that Party is always about winning elections, and that movememts are independent, and should remain so. Too many movements such as Labor. Environment, and Women's Rights got too close to party and equated party dominance with success or victory -- when in fact victory in party circles is not a victory at all -- for Party elections are that.
The party is about winning elections. But for what? Movements are independent. But how should they function? If we are operating as individuals, not tied too closely or necessarily to a particular movement (and this is more true as union membership declines, I think), at what moment do we focus on party and at what moment do we focus on movement? How do we conceive the balance between these things in our own lives, and, perhaps most importantly, in our thinking - individual and collective - about what the broad goals are?
I'm taking him out of context, but last October Meteor Blades wrote
Philosophically, I've been a far-left social democrat for four decades; pragmatically, just like my radical grandpa urged me, I've been a diehard Democrat. For this I've taken no end of shit. But I have not wavered.
I've argued with fellow radicals who have said there is no difference between the parties and apathetics who have asked what the party ever did for them. I've supported compromises, and tactical maneuvering and slick strategy with the thought that these would keep this or that outcome from being worse than it could be. I've bit my tongue and backed Democratic candidates who gave me ulcers because the alternative seemed so much worse.
I've suffered deep gouges in my principles to further the cliché that politics is the art of the possible. I've worked for radical policy change outside the electoral process and worked to elect the most liberal/left primary candidates. Yet, when the crunch came, I closed ranks and pressed reluctant others to do the same. For 40+ years, I've gone along with the politics of half a glass (or a quarter-glass) in hopes that some day it might be close to full.
This is the best example I know to follow, and close to the one I was raised with, although the only Democratic presidential candidate I ever remember my parents working for with any real enthusiasm was Jesse Jackson. When he didn't get nominated, there was no question but that we switched our allegiances to Mondale and Dukakis, but the evenings spent doing campaign work ended, at least on that level. Then we worked on local campaigns, until suddenly our city government was composed of the people whose campaigns we'd been working for.
So. For me, pragmatically, I realize that the way to improvements on many of the issues that are important to me runs through the Democratic party. But I was not raised to believe solely in electoral politics; in fact, this is an ongoing problem for me since while I do in the abstract believe in social movements as properly having enormous power to shape the political world, the fact is that in my lifetime I haven't seen a whole lot of that actually happening.
My parents have this deep-seated belief in and memory of social movements like the Civil Rights movement, the movement against the Vietnam War, feminism, movements they watched or participated in actually visibly changing the world around them. I know those things to be true, and important, but I haven't lived them. Probably the gay rights movement is the clearest access people my age (I'm 29) have to that sensation of change going on around us. But it is uneven and so often under attack--it's rare that it affords that belief in your own power to change the world. How do you have a revolutionary or utopian vision when neither revolution nor utopia has ever seemed remotely possible?
But I do think it's a generational problem. Meteor Blades can suffer those deep gouges in his principles and know that nonetheless in his lifetime he has had the opportunity (and indeed, he has had not only the opportunity but has taken it time after time) to participate in movements that actually redefined our society. The same can be said of my parents, whose movement participation was less than MB's but defined their lives in many ways. I don't see as clear an option of doing that for people around my age. We can work in ineffective ways for pure goals, or we can work in effective ways for compromised goals.
All this said, I realize that I'm as much to blame as anyone. Any of us could in theory start the next great movement - for economic justice, for real racial or gender equality, against this stupid fucking war. And it's no excuse to say that I'm no leader, or initiator, or great organizer, but I'm happy to follow and to participate. It's true, but it doesn't make it any less my fault, doesn't make me any less culpable for sitting here waiting for someone else to start it.
In the mean time, how do I split my vision, seeing on the one hand the Democratic party I must believe to be the best and strongest hope for change, though ultimately, even under the best most powerful circumstances, a compromise falling short of my real hopes for the world; but on the other hand keeping that ideal always in my mind's eye, refusing to compromise the basic values even when real-world, pragmatic compromise is necessary? In college, the playing field was clear: it was about my school. Could we support the unionized workers or help to organize the non-union workers? Could the college be persuaded to adopt more serious conservation measures? It gave us a defined field to work to change, but not an insignificant one given that we were not dealing with individual behavior but with the policy of an institution. Or we were escorting at a clinic providing abortions, and the task was clear - get this woman to the door with her dignity and emotional stability intact, chatter on about her hairdo if that was what would distract her from the men screaming insults at her. I freely admit that since college I have not been able to settle on the right form and level of political activity. Give me a specific goal, a group to work with, a task, and I will do it, but I have not set my own program or found a consistent one to go along with - offline, anyway.
Movements are independent. But I don't even have a movement. The party is about winning. But winning can only ever be an intermediate goal. It is the goal now, and until November. And then our eye has to stretch to November 2008. In a way, the sheer awfulness of the current administration gives me the sustaining vision that I would otherwise lack - the simple desperation to not go where they want to drag us. But, if we manage to drag ourselves back from that precipice, where does our greater vision come from, and how do we use it to keep ourselves motivated and moving forward rather than stopping, exhausted, at "crisis averted"?