I wish I'd made it to this year's Yearly Kos convention. From what I've read of it here on dkos, it sounded like an unprecedented opportunity for rank-and-file progressive Democrats to participate in the kind of discussions of party vision and strategy that usually take place only in rarefied Beltway circles. We need a lot more of that kind of dialogue to bring about the Democratic Party we all dream of.
Yesterday I attended an event that brought to my attention a dimension of the work we have ahead of us that may not have been so extensively covered at the Yearly Kos convention, however, and that I believe deserves greater prominence in "netroots" conversations in general.
The event I attended was the delegates' meeting of a network of Los Angeles-area progressive organizations called "One L.A." One L.A. is a project of the Industrial Areas Foundation, a community-organizing group founded by "Rules For Radicals" author Saul Alinksy in Chicago in the 1940s. Since its founding, the IAF has multiplied into 56 local organizations around the country. Alinsky's organizing philosophy was a major source of strategic inspiration for the United Farm Workers under Cesar Chavez in the 1960s, and many of his innovations are now methodological staples in American labor and community organizing.
In one of the opening speeches of the meeting, a local pastor described One L.A. to the audience of close to a thousand people as "the Disciples' dream." It is also, happily, an example of the right wing's worst nightmare. One L.A. is comprised in large part by immigrants (hundreds of translating devices for Spanish and Korean speakers were on hand at the meeting), and though strictly non-partisan, it is uncompromisingly progressive. It is also in large measure faith-based: not only is the organization's constituency a deeply religious one, many of One L.A.'s organizers are themselves clergy members. One L.A. represents a progressive, vocal, well-organized community of low-income L.A. residents, rooted in a growing and politically assertive immigrant population, with a strong church network and powerful allies in the labor movement and the Democratic Party.
One would imagine that with this kind of depth and breadth, an organization like One L.A. would tackle the major issues of the day - and indeed, the biggest issue of all in Southern California, immigration reform, would not have galvanized half a million people to march in downtown Los Angeles without the participation of groups affiliated with One L.A.
Yet most of the issues that One L.A. champions are modest, even mundane: air quality, speed bumps, improved lighting in high-crime neighborhoods, affordable housing, playground construction. However trivial in the greater scheme of things, these issues represent the problems that touch low-income communities (and middle-income communities, for that matter) most closely and often with devastating effect. To One L.A.'s constituency, these are issues more immediate and pressing than domestic eavesdropping or the influence of corporate lobbyists on Congress - however critical those issues also are.
On One L.A.'s to-do list for the coming year, for instance, is a repeal of a 30-day municipal hold law that requires the city to seize and impound vehicles driven unlawfully for a whole month, and release it with a payment of $1,000. In its enforcement, the law targets low-income drivers and immigrant drivers in particular, and it is this population that is most vulnerable to its punitive effects. For a middle-class family, losing the family car for four weeks is a major inconvenience; for a low-income family already on the brink of economic chaos, the consequences can be catastrophic.
Even more important than the issues themselves, however, is the process catalyzed by them. When low-income people learn to make the government work for them - to compel the government to work for them - in a thousand little ways, they come to discover the latent political capacity inherent in their otherwise disempowered communities. They learn that contrary to appearances, they have a stake in the political process, and they have the power and the interest to hold elected officials accountable to them. At the One L.A. meeting, delegates shared the stage with Mayor Villaraigosa, and they made specific demands of him, which he then responded to with a frankness and honesty that seems almost alien to the political process most people are familiar with.
In its bastions, the base of the Democratic Party has always been built upon this kind of politics. Working people organize, a plethora of local issues important to them become endowed with potential political profits for candidates, elected officials respond to the political landscape before them, relationships and institutional bonds are formed between community leaders and politicians and a political party is built where before there were only individuals. The foundation of the national party is found in these local apparatuses. This is the case today as much as it was in the days of the urban Democratic political machines of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Clearly, the way in which Democrats handle the major national issues that the actions of the Bush Administration have thrown into such sharp relief are central to our success in this year's mid-term elections. But it is important that we also bear in mind that those issues are not necessarily the ones that shape the everyday lives of Democratic base voters (and those voters that should belong to our base). How our party organizations and local elected officials respond to the thousands of issues and problems that face our constituents where they live, work and play is an equally salient variable, and a Democratic message and vision that mobilizes a truly massive base must resonate at this molecular level of political engagement. The Democratic Party, of course, has a major advantage in this respect: we are the party that believes that problems can be solved through collective action, and that government is our primary means to do so. Our opposition has no convictions that will fix broken streetlights and put more buses on the roads. Let's play to that advantage. However bold and broad our message is for '06, let's ensure that it also has the depth to speak to voters in the lives that they choose - or are forced - to live everyday.