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lynn woolsey
How to Build a Grassroots Power Base
Nov 12, 2012
Millions of Americans are eager, even desperate, for a political movement that truly challenges the power of Wall Street and the Pentagon. But accommodation has been habit-forming for many left-leaning organizations, which are increasingly taking their cues from the party establishment: deferring to top Democrats in Washington, staying away from robust progressive populism, and making excuses for the Democratic embrace of corporate power and perpetual war.
It's true that many left-of-center groups are becoming more sophisticated in their use of digital platforms for messaging, fundraising and other work. But it's also true that President Obama's transactional approach has had demoralizing effects on his base. Even the best resources--mobilized by unions, environmental groups, feminist organizations and the like--can do only so much when many voters and former volunteers are inclined to stay home. A month before the 2010 election, Obama strategist David Axelrod noted that "almost the entire Republican margin is based on the enthusiasm gap." A similar gap made retaking the House a long shot this year.
For people fed up with bait-and-switch pitches from Democrats who talk progressive to get elected but then govern otherwise, the Occupy movement has been a compelling and energizing counterforce. Its often-implicit message: protesting is hip and astute, while electioneering is uncool and clueless. Yet protesters' demands, routinely focused on government action and inaction, underscore how much state power really matters.
To escape this self-defeating trap, progressives must build a grassroots power base that can do more than illuminate the nonstop horror shows of the status quo. To posit a choice between developing strong social movements and strong electoral capacity is akin to choosing between arms and legs. If we want to move the country in a progressive direction, the politics of denunciation must work in sync with the politics of organizing--which must include solid electoral work.
Movements that take to the streets can proceed in creative tension with election campaigns, each one augmenting the other. But even if protests flourish, progressive groups expand and left media outlets thrive, the power to impose government accountability is apt to remain elusive. That power is contingent on organizing, reaching the public and building muscle to exercise leverage over what government officials do--and who they are. Even electing better candidates won't accomplish much unless the base is organized and functional enough to keep them accountable.
Politicians like to envision social movements as tributaries flowing into their election campaigns. But a healthy ecology of progressive politics would mean the flow goes mostly in the other direction. Election campaigns should be subsets of social movements, not the other way around. Vital initiatives to break the cycles of capitulation and lack of accountability will come from the grassroots.
* * *
"Bringing the vibrancy and democracy of activist movement culture to a political campaign is necessary but complicated," said Torie Osborn, a longtime progressive organizer in the Los Angeles area, whose dynamic grassroots campaign for the state legislature nearly advanced to the November ballot. "Activist protest culture is spontaneous, often angry and wildly uncontrollable. Campaigns have to be rigorously disciplined and controllable."
The mismatch takes a toll. "Ultimately one shortfall of our heartbreaking 1 percent loss was that our volunteers did not show up in force until the very end," Osborn told me. "Our field program counted on a 'movement' turnout, but our experience was that the energized volunteers didn't really want to do what the campaign needed. They wanted to be on Facebook, to blog, to go to events, even drive around and put up lawn signs, but not the voter-contact work of walking and phoning--at least not at the scale we were counting on."
Osborn's assessment tracked with my simultaneous experience as a candidate for Congress in California's North Coast district, a mostly liberal area north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Our campaign drew on my four decades of activism and several years of groundwork, including hundreds of speeches and other public appearances in the district. I'd been a member of the state Democratic Party's central committee since 2007, and our campaign had traction inside the party--despite the fact that its hierarchy was hot-wired for my main opponent, Jared Huffman, a five-year state legislator who had boosted his career with major donations from big corporations.
During my run for Congress, I participated in Occupy demonstrations in more than a half-dozen cities across our far-flung district. (Because of my long record as an activist, some local Occupy organizers set aside their aversion to allowing a candidate to speak.) A deft organizer of some of those protests, Pat Johnstone, coordinated much of my campaign's fieldwork. "From the beginning, Occupiers have expressed concern about being 'co-opted' by progressive groups," she observed. "Occupy provided a renewed vision of what is possible when we rise up together. However, the success of any movement depends on building and sustaining capacity. Partnerships and coalitions are an important part of that growth. How strong can any grassroots movement be without the strength of numbers?"
Early on, I announced that our campaign would not accept money from lobbyists or corporate PACs. Instead, we kept our eyes on small donors. I spoke at more than fifty house parties, and we developed a large e-mail list to update supporters while asking for contributions and volunteers. The campaign drew in hundreds of volunteers and more than 7,000 individual donors, raising $750,000. We approached fundraising as an outgrowth of grassroots support--not the other way around.
Our organizing approach and my unabashed progressive positions paid off as our campaign fought for support from unions. The first breakthrough came from the legendary longshore union ILWU, which followed up its endorsement by hosting a fundraiser. I also received solo endorsements from AFSCME locals and the UAW, along with a dual endorsement from the California Federation of Teachers and a triple endorsement from SEIU California. Another major victory came when our campaign jolted expectations by depriving Huffman of a pre-primary endorsement from the California Teachers Association. Those hard-won victories were partly the result of my strong pro-labor commitments, like unequivocal defense of pensions. But sadly, the progressive California Nurses Association stayed out of the race. And the bulk of the labor establishment--including the building trades, the big labor council in the district and the state labor federation (AFL-CIO)--lined up with the garden-variety liberal Democratic politician making his way up the ladder.
I was fortunate to get support from several progressives in Congress. Strong endorsement letters went out from Representatives John Conyers and Raul Grijalva. Days before the June election, Representative Dennis Kucinich campaigned alongside me. But in the district it was a different story with retiring Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, whose fervent antiwar politics have lost steam when approaching endorsements. In 2010 she went far out of her way to help Jane Harman, a leading pro-war congresswoman and Blue Dog Coalition member, fend off a primary challenge from an antiwar progressive. This year, thirty-six hours after primary election night (with 40,000 votes still uncounted and a small margin between me and the runoff), Woolsey endorsed Huffman--who has never indicated that he will challenge the military-industrial complex. The takeaway: we need to build an independent progressive power base instead of relying on any politician.
After campaigning nonstop for eighteen months, I received more than 25,000 votes in the primary (15 percent) and missed getting into the November runoff by 174 votes. (Huffman finished in first place, with 37.5 percent.) With just two Republicans among the dozen contenders in the "top-two open primary," one of the GOP candidates slipped through to the fall ballot. If I'd gotten past the primary and consolidated progressive support, I would have gone into the general election with an initial base of about 30 percent. At that point, I would have had to pull quite a populist rabbit out of the hat to win.
"Technically, our campaign has ended," I wrote to supporters after the protracted vote count. "Politically, it's continuing--with plans to build an ongoing coalition on the foundation of what we've already done together." Dozens of people involved in my campaign quickly went to work on other ones with heightened skills, knowledge and abilities to draw in volunteers. Meanwhile, our campaign is morphing into a coalition for the long haul (GrassrootsProgress.org), aiding efforts to elect progressives to local office within our district as well as to Congress elsewhere in the country.
* * *
Overall, progressive insurgencies did not perform well in House primaries this year. A few bright spots appeared when David Gill beat the Democratic machine in a central Illinois district and liberal challengers took out centrist incumbents in Texas and Pennsylvania. But even with high-profile support from national netroots groups, progressive candidates--notably Ilya Sheyman in Illinois, Eric Griego in New Mexico and Darcy Burner in Washington State--lost by sizable margins. Each contest had its own dynamics (Burner was outspent six to one by a self-financed opponent who dropped $2.3 million, whereas Griego had a money advantage), but the pattern is grim.
Yes, progressives are usually underfunded, and money matters a lot. But it's hazardous to internalize Mark Hanna's timeworn dictum, "There are two things that are important in politics. The first thing is money, and I can't remember what the second one is." We forget the second thing at our peril. In a word, we need to organize.
For progressives, ongoing engagement with people in communities has vast potential advantages that big money can't buy--and hopefully can't defeat. But few progressive institutions with election goals have the time, resolve, resources or patience to initiate and sustain relationships with communities. For the most part, precinct organizing is a lost art that progressives have failed to revitalize. Until that changes, the electoral future looks bleak.
In my race, basic progress ended up reflected in vote totals to the extent that I was able to reach out and talk with people over the course of years. Yet many of the shortcomings of my campaign were related to fieldwork. Votes slipped through our fingers when we didn't do adequate follow-up with contacts made long before election day. As our campaign grew, so did the dilemmas of time, staff, volunteers and money. By any measure, we ran the strongest grassroots campaign in the race, but it wasn't grassroots enough.
Fragmentation of core constituencies was another problem. From the outset, it was obvious that half of the twelve candidates didn't have a snowball's chance of getting through the primary. With rhetoric that sounded leftish, those six candidates received a combined total of 8.6 percent of the primary vote, while I lost by 0.1 percent. Huffman was no doubt exceedingly grateful to these anemic "protest candidates"; he could go on a cakewalk to the November runoff against a GOP candidate in a heavily Democratic district.
My counsel to prospective candidates: do not launch a campaign unless you can give it your all and plausibly consolidate most of the progressive electorate along the way. Do thorough groundwork for a long time. Keep meeting people and adding to your database of contacts. Listen and learn about political microclimates. Work on building coalitions. Encourage volunteers and treat them with respect. Insist on meticulous, accurate and principled work from staff. Remember that better process is much more likely to result in better decisions; when disagreements flare within the team, strive to assess the clashing outlooks. Keep your eyes on the prize: not only winning but also making progressive activists and groups stronger for the long haul.
A campaign with resonance should keep evolving after the election. Donor files, e-mail lists, working relationships, infrastructure, public good will and more can sustain and expand alliances. High-quality compost from one campaign should invigorate the growth of others.
Winning or losing an election can hinge on the decisions of just one group or even one individual. We may not feel powerful, but an internalized sense of powerlessness represents another triumph for a system that thrives on vast imbalances of power. Let's get more serious--and effective--about gaining progressive power in government, shall we?
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House Adopts 2013 Pentagon Budget Increase
Jul 27, 2012
Viewing the recent House of Representatives debate on the 2013 Defense Appropriations bill (HR 5856) was as disorienting as if living in an alternate reality with little acknowledgement that while the federal deficit continues to increase, some of the country's once-great cities are in the throes of critical demise. Spending like drunken sailors with no thought of tomorrow, Congress added more than $3 billion beyond what the Obama Administration had requested. The $519 billion spending bill, which was $1 billion over the Pentagon's 2012 budget, was approved on a lopsided bipartisan 326-90 vote with eleven Republicans voting No and 101 Democrats voting Yes.
The Federal government's appropriation process of spending American taxpayer funds began in 1789 when the House Ways and Committee, initially granted broad authority over the essential functions of revenue, banking and all general appropriations, made its first appropriation commitment of $639,000.
By 1865, the oldest committee in Congress split its functions and created an Appropriation Committee with nine Members adopting a $1.3 million appropriation reflecting the costs of the Civil War. In what became a measure for monitoring US war expenditures, appropriations dropped in 1866 to $520,000 with the war's conclusion -- just as appropriations rose in 1899 to fund the Spanish American war at $605,000, dropping to $485,000 by 1902 at the war's end. Gearing up for a more substantial battle, appropriations to fund WWI grew to $18 billion in 1917 before dropping to $2.9 billion in 1927. After WWII and with the rise of the military industrial complex, the Pentagon portion of annual appropriations continues to dominate the US budget.
Immediately prior to consideration of the Pentagon's 2013 budget, it was with little irony that Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tx) introduced the Sequestration Transparency Act requiring the President to report proposed $1.2 trillion program cuts over the next ten years to Congress -- if sequestration becomes automatic on January 2, 2013. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md), ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, responded that while Democrats agree to eliminate sequestration, now referred to as a 'fiscal cliff' for domestic spending cuts, increased tax revenues from the country's top 2% would be required. While the STA was presented as a reasonable request seeking information, the Act may be little more than a guise to identify potential military cuts. With a two-thirds vote required, the STA was adopted on a 414-2 vote.
At the same time, defense contractors were on Capitol Hill wringing their hands in front of the House Armed Services Committee predicting doom and gloom if the Pentagon budget was cut 10% as required by the Budget Control Act of 2010 -- just days after former Vice President Dick Cheney visited Congressional Republicans to further drive the point that cuts to the military would be "devastating" with a loss of "1.5 million jobs. " According to Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), Cheney advised Republicans to "keep the money flowing in a predictable way so you can plan for the next war."
Back on the House Floor, opposition to the Defense Appropriation fell to a handful of reliable Democrats and one senior Republican, all veterans of previous legislative battles, undaunted by the prospect of defeat as one amendment after another was ruled 'out of order' or beat back in a Republican controlled House.
Standing guard throughout the debate was Rep. Bill Young (R-Fl), Chair of the Appropriation Subcommittee on Defense who challenged multiple amendments with a fatal 'point of order' thus denying each a debate and an up-or-down vote. One such amendment was Rep. Walter Jones' (R-SC) attempt to bring the Afghanistan Security Agreement approved by President Obama several months ago to Congress. While the Agreement was submitted and approved by the Afghan parliament, it has never been introduced in the U.S. Congress and never debated or voted on. The Agreement would extend US military presence in Afghanistan until 2024.
While Rep. Barbara Lee's (D-Calif) amendment to freeze Pentagon spending at 2010 levels until a financial statement validates the Pentagon as audit-ready with trillions of taxpayer dollars missing and Rep. Ed Markey's (D-Mass) amendment to defund a new nuclear weapons facility that would cost taxpayers almost $6 billion were both deemed 'out of order," Rep. Steve King's (R-Iowa) amendment banning federal funds from violating DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) on military bases sailed through and was adopted on a 247-166 vote.
Retiring at the end of this Congressional Session did not stop long-time Pentagon critic Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif) from offering numerous amendments pointing out the need for "shared sacrifice" from the military as domestic programs are taking "a hit." Woolsey's amendments included a $1.7 billion military cut comparable to Republican budget cuts to social service block grants which lost on a 91-328 vote with 14 Republicans voting Yes; a $293 million cut (representing the cost of one day in Afghanistan) comparable to Republican cuts to women's health services lost on a 106-311 vote with 19 Republicans voting Yes; and another that would cut $181 million comparable to Republican cuts to Federal Transportation Administration infrastructure projects lost 114-302 with 28 Republicans voting Yes.
If Democratic amendments such as Rep. Markey's amendment to reduce land based nuclear missiles (ICBM) to 300 that would have saved $360 million or Rep. Mike Quigley's (D-Ill) $988 billion cut for one DDG51 destroyer the Navy did not request or Rep. Steve Cohen's amendment to cut $175 million to build roads in Afghanistan where there are no cars or similar amendments were adopted, American cities like Stockton, California, cited by the FBI as tenth on its "most dangerous city" list and with a budget shortfall of $26 million, would not need to declare bankruptcy.
Amidst the crime, neglect and dire poverty of American cities, the Pentagon budget remains supreme as the majority of States rely on Federal aid for their main source of revenue, the country's civil engineers cite chronic underfunding and delayed maintenance as it rates the nation's crumbling infrastructure (bridges, drinking water, schools, roads and transit) a solid D Grade.
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Should the Democrats Be Taken Over? Can They Be?
The election result in November will be as consequential as who wins the World Series
Jul 08, 2012
By this fall, the two major political parties in the United States will have spent around $10bn this election cycle to persuade an increasingly skeptical US public that there is more than just a stylistic difference between a Republican and a Democrat. Naturally, this campaign will focus primarily on the superficial (is Mitt Romney too weird to be president? Is Barack Obama too cool? And who loves America/Israel more?), as maintaining the facade of electoral choice requires obscuring the broad areas of bipartisan agreement: bailouts for the rich, prisons for the poor, and drone strikes for the poor and foreign.
And some still dare to call it democracy.
While partisans on both sides claim that the coming election is the most important ever, the truth is that for most in the US, and certainly for most outside it, what happens this November will be as consequential as who wins the World Series. Sure, one team's fans will be happy, for a time, but yesterday's champions soon become tomorrow's overpaid stiffs. But with the game played in Washington, those watching from the cheap seats risk losing more than $8 on a watery beer - they risk losing their homes to a foreclosure or Hellfire missile.
Almost four years after hopes of change were once again dashed by excuses for continuity, it's hard to deny the stacked reality of electoral politics. It doesn't much matter which party or candidate you bet on, the house always seems to win - for the simple reason that everyone's on the house's payroll.
Done with 'democracy'
The sorry state of US democracy has caused many here to write off electoral politics as a waste of time and energy. For some, this has manifested itself in apathy, but increasingly direct action and the boycott are taking the place of the ballot box. Since their politicians have failed them, activists around the country are now helping block dozens of foreclosures, sending a message to capital that it can't seize the commons without a fight. But so long as state power is a thing to be reckoned with, those desirous of radical social change ought to exert at least some energy trying to capture that power for the people.
"When Democrats run, they talk liberal, they talk populist, and as soon as they get elected they govern for the elites," says Jeff Cohen, a long time left-wing activist and founder of the media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).
Rather than challenge the Democrats' corporate, pro-war agenda, Cohen charges traditional left-wing constituencies with capitulating to that agenda in the name of being a lesser evil. The logic goes that so long as there's some Republican, somewhere, saying something terrible, any terrible Democrat can count on labor unions, environmental groups and MoveOn.org turning out the vote come election day.
What if they didn't?
"Those are the groups that have the power to change the Democratic Party and the country," Cohen argues. Rather than serving as the useful idiots of corporate Democrats: "If there were movements ready to primary such elected officials and you beat one or two of them, that sends a strong shockwave through the rest of them."
That's easier said than done. With the help of gerrymandered districts and the sway of financial interests and military contractors, a good lobbyist-approved politician is more liable to publicly denounce motherhood and Jesus than they are to lose an election. Even in an electoral wipe-out, there's a better than eight in ten chance one's congressman will keep their job. And there's a smaller chance that one will even get the opportunity to vote for a candidate running on a platform of peace and social justice, much less one from a major party; even fewer will have the opportunity to support a candidate who follows through on that platform.
"Chances for a left-wing insurgency within the Democratic Party at this point are very slight," says Noam Chomsky, the MIT linguist and libertarian socialist. But, he adds, "that's no reason not to try". Though the focus of the radical ought to be on changing the culture that enables power - the necessary direct action and education that set the stage for a social revolution - voting for reform-minded candidates "should take about five minutes, and then we go back to the important work on the ground to change the conditions in which the mostly farcical election process proceeds".
That was the thinking behind the campaign to elect Norman Solomon, a prominent anti-war activist and author running to replace retiring California Congresswoman Lynne Woolsey, one of the more progressive members of Congress. Cohen, a long-time friend of Solomon, says the campaign was launched with the intention of signaling to the Democratic Party that leftists would no longer be content simply caving to its corporate leadership - that they were there seeking to "empower these social movements and these mass groups of people that object to US corporatism", not exploit them on behalf of corporate Democrats.
"I'm talking about representing these social movements and taking over," says Cohen. And that, he argues, requires taking over one of the major parties, as "you have to deal with the political system you have".
Counter-insurgency
In the narrow terms of electoral politics, that may very well be true. Of course, trying to take over one of the corporate parties comes with its own set of problems, the most problematic being that one is fighting on capital's turf, where the money one raises is a lot more important than the values one holds. Indeed, you don't get far in Washington - or even get to Washington - clinging to tedious principles like "murder is bad" or eccentric notions about empty, soul-crushing consumerism not being the sole purpose for one's existence on this planet we call Earth. In the US political arena, it's about the money, not the morality.
Solomon found that out in one of the most left-leaning districts in the country. Despite years of preparation and endorsements from prominent leftists such as Chomsky and Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Solomon finished third in the June 5 primary. Behind a Republican. Despite doing his best to be a good party Democrat - his campaign told me Solomon was a "strong and steadfast supporter" of the president - he was crushed by the party establishment's preferred empty suit.
Perhaps that's for the best.
"Good men," as Emma Goldman once observed, "if they should be so fortunate as to make it into the halls of power, would either remain true to their political faith and lose their economic support or they would cling to their economic master and be utterly unable to do the slightest good." Indeed, politics leave no alternative.
But even the rogues often prove not to be rogues for long. Senator John Kerry, for instance, went from being one of the country's most outspoken anti-war activists to one of the Senate's most reliable militarists, backing every major war in the past 20 years. Dennis Kucinich, good ol' Dennis Kucinich, backed a health insurance mandate he one week earlier pledged to oppose, not because he changed his mind on its merits, but because he claimed he had a "higher responsibility" to "my president and his presidency". Barack Obama, the guy he pledged his devotion to - well, we know his story.
In a statement conceding his defeat, Solomon pledged to continue his fight to "overcome a status quo of perpetual war, extreme Wall Street power, chronic inequities and environmental degradation". Given the enormity of the task, it's probably best that he continue that fight outside the halls of Congress, where the real power lies: in the hands of the people. The difficult task lies in convincing the people they have it.
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