21st Century Progressive: How Do We Get There?

1:03 pm EST September 14th, 2011 | Liberals | 13 Comments

One of the things I admire about the modern conservative movement is that they have an internally coherent value system they use to gauge conservative politicians by. It doesn’t make sense outside of conservatism, but they have what they believe is a value system that conservatives should abide by. On the left, any such system is – at best – a haphazard hodgepodge. We need to change that.

But first, let’s go back and look at what worked and what hasn’t worked.

There are, for my purposes here, three distinct progressive movements in the last century worth looking at that had long-term effects.

The Original Progressive Movement. This movement, at the turn of the century and extending into the 1920s has a huge legacy – including but not limited to worker’s rights, environmental conservation, and most importantly women’s suffrage.

The Civil Rights Movement. The most successful progressive movement of the last century, this changed the face of America and the world.

The Vietnam War Protest Movement. In my view, this is the most problematic movement. It was undoubtedly a mass movement, but I believe its legacy is one of more failure than success. The popular conception is that people massed against the war and it ended. In fact, the war raged on for years while the protesters continually upped the ante. It didn’t work. The war didn’t end until casualties began to mount.

The perceived success of the Vietnam War protest movement has, I believe, hobbled a lot of progressive movement in the 20th and 21st century. People believe the idea that you a mass of people will simply convince those in power to concede. This doesn’t work in America.
While mass protest movements are unusual in the Middle East and had success, they are – as currently constructed – practically useless in America where corporate clients can just as easily assemble a “protest” as Code Pink. To the average American, they are “priced in.” Someone is always protesting about something and no matter the inherent value, the impact is negligible.

The protest movement faced a test in the war on Iraq and it failed, miserably so. The protests against the war did not change public opinion; they did not create a threat for elected officials to be afraid of. The protests against the Iraq war were a failure.

I don’t believe all mass protests are a lost cause; they just have to work differently. The protests in Wisconsin got national attention because they were not rote and they involved organized labor. It isn’t an everyday occurrence for people to occupy a state capital. That said, they didn’t break the back of Gov. Scott Walker’s assault on labor. Conservatives got the laws they wanted on the books.

We have to throw away the idea that simply protesting – the simple act of “getting out into the streets” without a real message or plan of action — will effect change or should be the central organizing activity in a progressive outreach effort. It doesn’t work, it probably never really work, and it won’t work.

We need to go back to what worked, the early progressive movement and the civil rights movement, and refine what did work and combine it with 21st century persuasion and engagement techniques.

There has to be a core idea, most important of all. I think the left has failed at this, partly because liberalism has often gone with what I deride as the “cumbaya” approach: the idea that if everyone has input, ideas can be rolled up together into something that can be sold.

That doesn’t work. There is a reason why past progressive movements solidified around leaders with defined ideas and goals. You had Mother Jones organizing labor and against child labor. You had Martin Luther King arguing for passage of the civil rights act. You even had the President, Theodore Roosevelt, agitating against the trusts and in favor of federalizing massive tracts of land in order to protect them.

There are some current progressive campaigns that have their hearts in the right places, but insist on asking everyone for input and produce a laundry list without a core.

We need goals, and we need targeted measures of success. It isn’t about what “feels right” or “feels good” but rather “what is accomplished?”

There is also the idea about what it is to be a progressive. I think it means we believe in forward thinking solutions that make life better for the most possible people. I don’t think it means being opposed to profit or personal enrichment, nor do I believe it is solely about one’s pet causes.

For myself, a Progressive America means one in which everyone has a decent shot at the American dream, that we can enrich ourselves and our communities without engaging in practices that suppress others or harm the world around us.

This seems to me an idea – with possible modifications — that a political movement could coalesce around and enact as a litmus test for leaders on multiple levels. I believe the way to get there is to integrate what has worked in the past, and bury what didn’t work – despite a collective belief otherwise – while constantly adding on new technologies and techniques as their success is proven.

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13 Responses to “21st Century Progressive: How Do We Get There?”

NewsNag says:

September 14, 2011 at 3:11 pm

I think you misunderstand what the anti-Vietnam War movement did and was supposed to do. No mass movement enacts major change by itself. Sure casualties mounted, but if the American people hadn’t been persuaded to turn against the war by the high and sustained levels of protest against the war, with the antiwar counterculture absorbing into itself almost all popular media programming including the news media, then an overall additional 30-50,000 casualties might not even have helped bring the war to an end. The war ended because Americans didn’t want to fight it any more, over and above casualties. The sustained protests and escalation of protest tactics kept pressure on the psyche of the American people, and that pressure gradually changed their minds.
Felix Helix says:

September 14, 2011 at 3:49 pm

I agree with NewsNag that even if a protest movement does not directly accomplish its explicitly stated goals — i.e., “end the war NOW” — it does make a difference, perhaps a major difference, in less direct ways. Imagine if there had been no anti-Vietnam War protests. How much longer would we have stayed in Vietnam?

However, Oliver is also right: marching in the streets is not enough. It’s not that we shouldn’t do that (though if we’re going to do that, it needs to be less of a cathartic parade and more of an obstruction — which means it needs to be sustained), it’s just that it needs to be accompanied by other forms of pressure. And just what are those other forms of pressure? That’s the real question. Oliver says “integrate what has worked in the past” — okay, so what exactly *has* worked? Inquiring minds want to know.

Off the top of my head I’d say: sustained media coverage and punditry (we need lots of OUR bobbleheads on the news shows, and we need to find ways to keep our protests unignorable by the easily distracted, novelty-hungry media); significant financial backing from forces with deep pockets (without, of course, compromising our values) as well as widespread grassroots financing (which Obama perfected); sustained phone-calling and letter-writing to elected officials; and staunch support of any politician who is willing to speak out forcefully against the forces of darkness and follow through with corresponding action.

What else you got?
NewsNag says:

September 14, 2011 at 6:17 pm

Hit em in the pocketbook, Felix. Boycotts, bad publicity of any kind, Facebook pages devoted to their shame, protests outside their offices and livelihoods, and more. Rule of thumb: They can’t handle the truth and want to hide the truth, so bam hit em with the truth and hit everyone else with that truth as much as possible, sustain it, crank up the pressure, wash, rinse, repeat.
Jaim says:

September 14, 2011 at 9:35 pm

Too late. Both parties are bought and sold by corporate interests. Obama is out greasing Wall Street dicks as we speak.

Sorry Oliver, but the USA is dead.
Christopher Foxx says:

September 14, 2011 at 11:16 pm

It’s always a good idea to go back and re-read your own stuff carefully.

“People believe the idea that you [sic] a mass of people will simply convince those in power to concede. “
Christopher Foxx says:

September 14, 2011 at 11:17 pm

Just to point out one.
Frank DiSalle says:

September 18, 2011 at 3:30 pm

On the other hand, there’s this:

Unfortunately, we have a president of the United States who has been a member his entire adult life of what McCloskey — borrowing from Samuel Taylor Coleridge — calls “the clerisy.” These are the intellectualoids who never lost their instinctual scorn for commercial activity. Can you imagine Barack or Michelle Obama routinely urging college students to contribute to hope and change by entering the innovative economy’s great swirl of creative destruction?
Unfortunately, special interests will always pursue anti-innovation trade and regulatory policies to protect their fiefdoms.
Frank DiSalle says:

September 18, 2011 at 3:32 pm

Sorry Oliver, but the USA is dead.
Does that mean you won’t be returning? {One can only hope}.
The Dark Avenger says:

September 18, 2011 at 9:26 pm

Gersh, a post from Hot Air denouncing Obama.

How surprising and original, Frank.
Frank DiSalle says:

September 19, 2011 at 12:25 am

You, of course, are unable to refute it. How totally unsurprising and tedious…
The Dark Avenger says:

September 19, 2011 at 2:14 am

Remember, You Asked For It:

The problem may be larger than the clerisy’s antipathy to competition.

Right, like, say, having someone who used to be the CEO of an organization later becoming VP at a time when said someone was in a position too reward said organization with no bid contracts and the like.

Well, they’re starting to sound like my kind of people

They want to stifle scientific debate when it suits their politics

Like the folks who leaked the e-mails in a failed attempt to discredit some researchers who were involved in the AGW issue?

Or the folks who don’t want to have evolution taught unchallenged in the schools because it’s ‘atheistic’?

They have little regard for property rights

Yes, they believe women should have control over their bodies, which clearly belong to either the State or the Catholic Church, depending upon where you live, of course

They will stifle medical innovation

Like having a universal health care system, as is the case in most 1st World Countries

They indiscriminately bemoan materialism

Kinda like that guy that lived about 2000 years ago, who talked about peace and love and other hippy nonsense?

They never wanted welfare reform

Nah, they just want people who can’t afford health care to die in the streets, just like in the good ol days.

have been busying themselves rolling it back

To before the 20th Century, back to the Gilded Age, that sounds about right.

You’ve convinced me, Frank, where do I sign up to join?
Frank DiSalle says:

September 19, 2011 at 1:53 pm

That’s the longest tu quoque I’ve ever seen …

You obviously did not read the article, or having read it, failed to understand it. But that’s OK … It’s from hotair.com, so you don’t need to read it, right?
The Dark Avenger says:

September 19, 2011 at 2:52 pm

That’s the longest tu quoque I’ve ever seen …

and read without your lips moving.

It’s also the most French you’ve ever used correctly in your life.

Two accomplishments today, Frank, and I hope you hit the trifecta.

You obviously did not read the article, or having read it, failed to understand it.

You perhaps think that I’m going to take calls from a right-wing site to honor science seriously that prints this kind of rubbish?:

Two stories have dropped that may blow big holes in the anthropogenic global warming argument — one of which is literally sky-high. Forbes reports on a peer-reviewed study that uses NASA data to show that the effects of carbon-based warming have been significantly exaggerated.

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/07/28/sky-high-hole-blown-in-agw-theory/