Perhaps it’s time to consider a shift in a common paradigm. We are in the minority. Yes, poll after poll shows majority support for a public option but how many people are out there doing something, anything to bring that about? Certainly not over 70 percent of the electorate is actively involved. Lots of people are in survival mode, and who can blame them? I would venture a guess that voting in a presidential election year is considered the high point of political activism for many Americans. We who spend our time reading, researching, discussing, and actively advocating for policies or candidates in support of health care as a right for all are in the minority and its time we act like it so we can win for everyone in the long run.
The Civil Rights Movement with the crowning legislative achievements of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and National Voting Rights Act of 1965 is informative for me. In that situation, a minority of activists convinced enough people in political power to protect a right of citizenship that didn’t directly change the lives of those making the decision. None of the people in Congress at the time had to worry about voting rights and neither did most of their constituents. The direct impact was to benefit a minority of Americans and their allies.
How did they do it? Some of you were there and I’d love to hear your perspective about the movement relative to Congress. I hope you will be willing to share. A couple of things I picked up over the years are the following perceptions:
Push hard privately - Maintain the high ground publicly
It seems that politicians have an aversion to being embarrassed just like the rest of us. Embarrassing someone, even someone who has the same political proclivity doesn’t seem to help her/him lend active support. As political documents from the past continue to be released or declassified, we are learning more about the off stage conversations of the powerful and influential during this movement. There was strong private advocacy going on in the oval office and else where. Yet in public, the leaders of the movement rarely called out those in power in a way that can be considered improper or personal. Certainly there was criticism of those in power but it was often couched in indirect language and criticisms of America. In "Beyond Vietnam" a seminal rebuke of the Johnson Administration, not once did Martin Luther King directly call out LBJ. He made no personal attacks. He did not talk about feeling betrayed directly by the signer of the Civil and Voting Rights Acts-- he talked about the government.
Yes, I too have publicly expressed my self-satisfying displeasure with things President Obama has said as a direct attack or sense of disbelief in him as a person. What good does that do? What good does it do for the public figures in our movement to attack President Obama publicly? I’m not going to do it anymore. I don’t know him or his true motives. He, like all of us, makes mistakes.
Some think they are staking out a new left flank that makes the rest of us moderates for a gullible press or public. I disagree. I think Pres. Obama can take it but weakening his ability to convince those who need convincing by lowering his political cache is a losing strategy. Is it any wonder that our corporate media in all of its forms revels in the progressive attacks on Pres. Obama? If they thought it would strengthen the president, they would ignore it, just as they ignored years of progressive actions against the war in Iraq in deference to their corporate protector Pres. Bush.
In to the lion’s den
As I safely write from across the Atlantic, I think about those who went into the lion’s den during the Civil Rights Movement to directly lobby for the change America needed, not just blacks. Doing so with courage in the face of danger inspired people from the black community and outside of it to go beyond their comfort zones to advocate for change. The resulting deaths of the martyrs did not break the movement but solidified its resolve while exposing the cruelty of the opposition. When the majority of Americans wanted to identify with those in the movement rather than its segregationist opposition, there was a groundswell of support for civil rights legislation. I don’t think bloodshed is necessary but direct confrontation with the opposition is. Who is the opposition--for me it is clear that the corporations who have poured billions of dollars into campaigns against the reform of systems from which they benefit are the opposition. Tea Party Patriots and Conservative politicians are their proxies.
Coalitions of convenience?
What is disturbing about a coalition of convenience with someone who is philosophically opposed to most everything you stand for in order to attack a specific policy is that ultimately it leads to an impression that one stands only for winning a point, not transforming through creating new frames of thought. It brings true motives into question. Malcolm X’s meeting with white separatists did not lead to him being endeared by the majority of black people, regardless of his intention. Naturally, it brought him into question. Coming together based on the common enemy approach when that so-called enemy has more in common with you than your new found ally is cynical and reduces politics to a zero sum game. Minorities rarely win zero sum games.
While the moments are not frequent, there are times when American politics rises above the "What’s in it for me?" mentality. Usually at the significant sacrifice of the minorities involved. The Progressive Movement in its modern incarnation is calling for a kind of existential change in the way America sees itself just as the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Suffrage Movements did. Some of our victories will be legislative but the long lasting will be social victories that lead to even greater cultural and legislative success. Attacking our potential allies in public and aligning with enemies doesn’t seem to be a winning strategy for a minority movement.