Writing one year after his greatest political success--the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965--Martin Luther King noted that the movement he led faced a choice between "chaos and community" (see: "The Second Phase")
While the political success of electing Barack Obama one year ago is in no way equal to the passage of the VRA, as progressives we once again find ourselves faced with the kind of choice MLK saw and understood so well.
Without being judgmental of either option, I want to pause for a moment to describe and consider what I think are the two main choices progressives, today, face: protest vs. policy. The key to the success of either lies not in the expression of opinion, but in a renewed commitment to what I call "ingathering"--people finding each other and standing together again in visible, real space.
Progressive Politics as a Protest Movement
Left-wing politics has a long history grounded in protest--a politics rooted not in the production of concrete ideas and policies, but in the critique of policies put forward by other members of the political system.
The most famous left-wing protest in the past 50 years is probably the movement to end the Vietnam War. But even before that, progressive politics had some very visible examples, many of which are forgotten, today. My favorite example is the Bonus Army, which marched on Washington in 1932. Watch this amazing 3 minute video:
When you read Studs Terkel's masterpiece about the Great Depression Hard Times, we still pick up the echoes of the Bonus Army in the voices of the Left. Most of us, nowadays, have never even heard of it.
For me, age 42, the image of the Bonus Army shacks set fire by MacArthur's police is more powerful than any image of the anti-War protests that were ten times larger in the 1960s and early 1970s. They touch me because they are not students, they are not young people--they are working men deprived of their livelihood who came to Washington demanding that the government make good on an IOU they received for sitting in the trenches of Europe. What we do not see in those protests are the tens of millions of men who would have been there had they not perished in the Great War. To think about how big the Bonus Army would have been if we include the ghosts of WWI soldiers who did not come home, is almost beyond comprehension.
The Bonus Army--that kind of politics--is a proud legacy of the left. And while many may disagree with the way protest arguments have been formulated in the past few decades (they often do not ring true with me)--we all agree that protest politics is an important legacy and that it is our legacy. It is part of who we are, why we are here, why we come to this place--stand on this ground with these people--rather than going to another place.
We should note, however, that the Bonus Army was not the group responsible for the idea of a veterans bonus check. That was a policy crafted in another part of the political landscape. The Bonus Army marchers--heroes to the last--voiced a kind of politics that was in reaction to someone else's ideas, policies, legislation.
Progressive Politics as a Policy Movement
Left-wing politics also has a long history grounded in the creation and realization of concrete policy--a politics rooted not in the fomenting of critique and outrage at injustice, but in the crafting of proposals that get passed into law.
My favorite example of progressive politics as policy is a program first mentioned by FDR in his inaugural address, crafted into 1933 Senate Bill 5.598, and known ever since as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The CCC trained unemployed young people to work on basic forestry and conservation---what we might call "green jobs," today, but with a more vocational twist. Take a look at this 5 minute video of some veterans who went through the CCC (and take special note of the policy the old guy with trendy dark-framed glasses proposes starting at 4:44"):
These old timers were not only grateful for the training and work they received as recruits in the CCC, but they still retain all these decades later the hallmark of progressive movement rooted in policy: they talk and think about positive change in terms of policy proposals. The guy with glasses talks about "what we need"--proposing a legislative initiative that would require all American high school students be spend two years in a CCC like program or the military, with the purpose of seeing what the world is like before they leave high school. If ever there was a testament to the success of the 1930s progressive movement it would be this kind of statement--fifty years after spending a few years planting trees and living in tents in the hills of West Virginia, the CCC veteran still believes deeply that America's best home for the future depends on reviving the very kind of policy he experienced.
The kind of politics embodied in the CCC is a proud legacy of the left, even if it seems strongest in the older generations. It is a kind of politics rooted not in the mobilization of passions and large public displays of critique, but in the mundane crafting policies, often with long names and descriptions that require experts to translate. But it is a kind of politics that long endures.
Why Movements Succeeded: Ingathering
So far, I hope I have managed to lay out two different paths, here, without being judgemental about either. I admire the heck out of both protest movements and policy movements, and look at the people who dedicated their lives to both as the giants on which we all stand today.
My point is not to condemn one or the other, but to suggest that neither can succeed without an element that I call "ingathering."
What I mean by "ingathering" is an actual meeting of people--a stepping beyond the expression of opinion in public forums to an actual assembly of flesh-and-blood folks together as a visible, mobilizable force.
Without ingathering, there is no movement building. Without ingathering, expressions of anxiety and desires for new policies can amplify into cries of outrage and calls for new directions--but they eventually dissipate like mist.
The key to transforming sentiment into action is ingathering.
From 2004 to 2009 (roughly), the progressive movement in this country made great strides with ingathering. Beginning with the Dean movement, the in-gathering of people on the Left was largely protest-oriented politics. People were drawn to Dean because of how outspoken he was on the Iraq War. The power of the Dean movement spoke to the impact that in-gathering can have in a very short amount of time. Most people who joined the Dean movement did not have much political experience, but they became a national force.
I remember giving my first public address at the Demfest in Austin, TX in 2005, where for the first time I had the chance to meet and talk to bunch of "Deaniacs" at the same time. What a great bunch of people--all of them still 100% charged by the experience of ingathering.
Over the next four years, the ingathering of the progressive movement focused more and more protest energy into elections. People on the Left were given more and larger opportunities to come together in real space, real places--to see each other, talk to each other, hug each other--to feel that we were visible and to mobilize with real impact.
Eventually, that ingathering was harnessed into multiple presidential campaign, and then converged on the Democratic ticket--resulting in a Democratic victory and the greatest success in the Left protest movement of the last decade.
What has happened since then?
After that success of Left-wing protest movement politics, the momentum of in-gathering has moved in two directions.
Initially, those who were more policy oriented than protest oriented were able to ingather in the wake of the 2009 elections. Many new progressive organizations were formed with the goal of pushing policies, many people now had the opportunity to either work for these agencies or to volunteer on policy campaigns. Meanwhile, much of the protest energy withdrew from ingathering, returning to public forums and the expression of opinion (also important).
But another thing happened, too. And it happened on the Right.
In the last moments of the last presidential election, Right-wing conservative movement politics rediscovered the power of ingathering. Sarah Palin, despite all the bizarre rhetoric she floated, had a powerful impact on the Right in that she drew people out off their couches to gather together in real space--to become visible and to mobilize.
Once Obama was elected, a second Right-wing ingathering took place under the broad rubric of "The Tea Party" protests. These protests were and are a place where many disparate people meet--many are racist, some are just confused, others have actual, meaningful arguments. Most significantly, though, the Tea Party represented the step up to ingathering of what had previously only been a vast expression of Right-wing opinion. Suddenly, the right-wing protest movement was visible and mobilizable. And from that moment, they became influential.
The Tea Party movement, as a result of it's switch to in-gathering, was able to effectively derail a national policy debate by mobilizing their numbers to take over Town Hall meetings. They did not propose any concrete policies, but remember: that is not what protest movement politics does. Their success was the result of the fact that they had in-gathered.
Ingather or Dissipate
At this point it is possible to step aside and offer criticisms of just about everyone and anyone who was in the political process over the past 12 months--but that is not the purpose of this discussion. My purpose, instead, is to make a very basic pitch about the direction the progressive movement will head, whether we want it to or not:
either we ingather or it will dissipate
No matter how articulate or passionate our opinions have become in the public forums that we frequent, either we step back up to in-gathering or the movement as we think of it will largely dissipate.
Furthermore, to see which aspect of the progressive movement will continue to grow and be more influential, do not look for the most effective arguments, but instead look for where the greatest in-gathering activity is taking place--look to see where progressives are taking the step to make themselves visible and build on that visibility to mobilize.
Now, it would be unfair to lay out this set of definitions and distinctions without pointing out my own stake--where I side.
My sympathies, my identity, my sense of what matters as a progressive, is not rooted in the 1960s, but in the 1930s. I recognize the importance of what the progressive protest movements in the 1960s and 1970s did, but I see the progressive policy movement of the pre-WWII era as the kind of example that can build the strongest Left-wing politics and has the greatest potential to build a viable American future.
Furthermore, I think the truly successful progressive protest movements of the past era--the Civil Rights Movement of the South--was successful precisely because it stood on the shoulders of the policy movements of the 1930s, and because those protests never strayed too far for too long from crafting and pushing policy.
And where us should our politics begin if not with what we admire most?
That is why I am ready personally and call on others to begin in-gathering around core progressive economic ideas that we hold as fundamental--full employment, guaranteed minimum income--with a goal of making ourselves visible again, articulating the big policies we want to see enacted, and then crafting ways to mobilize for them.
But I also see that my choice is not the only choice. And so I am ready to support without reservation the decision by protest movement folks to begin anew their own ingathering--to call out injustice not just by amplifying their opinions in public forums, but by making themselves visible to each other and then mobilizing.
Two paths. But in many ways, we all face the same choice. And if the laziest slaves to comfort among us (ehem...) are ready to gather together again--then there's only one question left to ask: Why aren't you?
