“I may not be a White progressive, but I’m the progressive that you need.”
-Summer Lee, Democratic nominee for state representative in Pennsylvania’s 34th district, to Netroots Nation 2019 in Philadelphia, PA
This is about the enhanced value of the evolutionary change of organizational leaders in the progressive movement. Our common goals of dignity and justice for all have not changed. Our commitment to opportunity and education have not changed. What has changed, necessarily and organically, is the people we have chosen to lead are now more aligned with those goals and commitments.
There is no Democratic Party without the Progressive Left, and there is no Progressive Left without people of color. The sisters and brothers who are the backbone of our growing movement are not only the future of the Left - they are our past and our present as well.
Like most ideological social and political movements, progressives have evolved faster than the party to which we are attached. The Democratic Party has a sordid, racist, slave-owning, Jim Crow loving past, but we had a revolution and evolved into the party where change is what helps us grow. Still, as our journey has taken us down Freedom Road, the un-ignorable rocks and pebbles of some of the ugliest parts of the Democrats’ past have embedded themselves in our old, worn rubber tires. Unable to adapt to the inevitable changes progress always brings, the vestiges of racism work their way to the outer wall, clinging to the valleys between the treads and creating a bumpy ride.
At a Netroots Nation panel, this year, Ohio Senator Nina Turner told a story of a White, pro-choice, progressive activist getting in her face when she announced in 2016 that she would be endorsing Sen. Bernie Sanders for president instead of Hillary Clinton. “After all we’ve done for you,” the woman concluded, her finger pointing up to the taller Turner. This was 2016, not 1968. I do not have to break that down for my friends on the Left. Y’all get it. As activists in a movement, we are working to make our country better for everyone, regardless of race, creed, religion, gender, gender identity or any other delineation that is ripe for oppression by the fearful and ignorant.
And we roll on.
In the 1990s, the Clinton-backed Democratic Leadership Committee (now defunct) glommed itself onto the Democratic Party tire like a retread, claiming we had moved too far too fast and saying this masking would balance us and help us win the elections the way Republicans do – by reaching out to the big money on Wall Street and in corporate America. They did win, but that may have had more to do with the way George H. W. Bush was failing than the success of the Clinton machine. After all, the 1994 midterm elections were a distinct reversal of fortune for Democrats, handing the House of Representatives to Republicans for the first time in 40 years.
We rolled on, finally blowing off that DLC retread and replacing the tire with the appropriately shaped “O” logo of Barack Obama, but the resentment of Clinton-ites remained embedded in the party, and they supported Obama mostly reluctantly. It was a foreshadowing of 2016’s Hillary/Bernie battle, and the disgusting reaction of the Democrat who attempted to chastise Sen. Turner.
Revolution becomes evolution, and we roll on.
The leaders of our movement have earned their seats at the table, the one to which the late Rep. Shirley Chisholm said one might need to bring a folding chair if they shut you out. But Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) told a large Netroots audience, Saturday, that just having a seat at the table is not enough. “I don’t want to bring a chair to an old table,” she said, “This is the time to shake the table. This is a time to redefine the table.”
Shaking things up is what we do, and it means many will detach themselves from our movement and fall away, unable to take the friction of empowering the people of color leading the new American majority. The Republicans may come and suck them up, and that’s okay, because there are plenty of Americans who understand the urgency of inclusivity and will rush to keep air in the tires of progress, and we roll on.
There will be disagreements. There will be passionate arguments, but in the end we must come together to acknowledge that we achieve more for Americans when we choose to empower more Americans.
“I’m appealing to all of you to recognize that our destinies and our freedoms are tied,” Rep. Pressley insisted, adding, “[W]e have to continue to resist and be mobilized and be together.”
That is how we roll. All aboard. It’s going to be a bumpy ride, and I am okay with that.
-PBG