Progressive Politics

Two of my favorite bloggers/activists--Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller, both formerly of MyDD--have officially launched their new community blog--Open Left--along with Mike Lux, whom I've never heard of before. Matt Stoller explains the name:

Why Open Left? Why not just netroots?

Good question. We've never been comfortable with the term 'netroots'. It's a term without a coherent meaning, sometimes pointing to liberals that organize in online communities, sometimes meaning anyone online who does so. This term doesn't describe who we are, because there is no divide between online and offline at this point; insiders use email and blogs, and outsider activists run campaigns and have in-person conferences. The term 'Open Left' is a much wider and more descriptive way of understanding the larger political dynamics at play. It is not the use of the internet that matters, it is the expression of traditional left-wing American principles on open systems that is the institutional innovation at work here.

This has been a long time coming. The internet itself expresses certain values that go back to very early American philosophers, and its communal and networked structure combined with its rampant capacity for individualism is uniquely situated for our moment in history. The third important left wing movement in modern American history is nearly ten years old, it's time we recognize what's going on.

Thus, OpenLeft.com.

I'll be very interested to see how this effects MyDD and its readership. One thing that I've been thinking about a lot over the past few years, and espescially since Mike and Co. left Music for America, is that we have to look at staffing of progressive institutions that are a part of, or provide services to, the movement in a new way. This movement has arisen partly because of the political climate, and partly because of the rise of networked technology. And since the network is really a mixture of connections between people and through technologies, the network (or movement) might "abandon" an organization or site when the person (in network terms, the connecting node) who was connecting that org or site to the broader movement leaves. In this case I believe that Jerome Armstrong and MyDD are entrenched enough within the movement that this may not have much effect at all on MyDD's readership. I guess we'll see.

Update: Well it didn't take long for things to get a bit testy. Check out Jerome's response to Open Left forgetting to put MyDD on its blogroll. Jerome is also tiring of all of this "movement" talk and doesn't seem too happy with the choice of Clintonite Lux. Hmm... This could get interesting...

This blog is drawn from some writing I have in the mix for an upcoming article and was also prompted by a Future Majority post this past week titled Consensus, Millennial Politics, and the Common Good.

Bergerc84 kicked things off with the following line:

Peter Levine blogged about consensus today, and it got me thinking about Millennials, their affinity for collaboration, and how this impacts the current political environment.

His thoughts became my muse as well. Will a new generation that is prone to collaboration bring an end to decades of hostile culture wars, bitter partisanship, and relentless political gridlock? Will we too spend the vast majority of our political energy engaging in back-and-forth diatribes over the hot-button issues of abortion, gay marriage, gun control, and global warming? Or will our generation finally rise above, forge a working consensus, and move our nation forward?

We need a political infrastructure for young people that will both cultivate future progressive leaders and drive new and diverse youth towards higher levels of progressive political participation. Below is a working list of the broad challenges associated with current progressive youth politics:

• Progressive Political Programs Focus Exclusively on Youth Activists: Political programs and leadership training’s engage a small number of politically savvy young people and fail to mobilize new youth to participate in progressive politics
• Progressive Youth Activists Are Not Diverse: Progressive youth activists lack significant economic, ethnic, and regional diversity, as the same student activists are recycled between a few progressive groups

• Missing Strategic Management or System to Disseminate Information: Progressive political organizations often lack defined objectives and benchmarks to measure success; and they do not effectively share research and best practices to benefit the broader progressive community
• Absence of a Progressive Identity and Infrastructure to Connect Young People: Unaffiliated, small, and self-funded progressive groups or individuals are not easily connected to a larger progressive political community
• Progressive Activism and Democratic Politics Remain Miles Apart: Party leaders, activists, elected officials, and young people do not connect their support for progressive issues and values with support for the Democratic Party

What should be added or removed from the list? Many of the Dem/Progressive organizations that focus on youth and are financially secure have lacked vision and strategic capacity to address these critical problems. These challenges require action from our generation and the progressive community.

This is a rough articulation of a problem I’m grappling with, and its quickly shaping up to be its own chapter in my book (though it wasn’t part of my original outline). I need a lot of help teasing this out, so comments are very much appreciated.

As I’ve been considering the place of - or more frequently total lack of - organizations whose mission it is to reach out to, engage, and elevate young people of color in our politics, I’ve started to think a lot lately about the divide between two major progressive constituencies: those who understand political activity through the vocabulary and history of social justice movements, vs. those who consider themselves to be part of a new progressive movement.

This new progressive movement seeks to work within and transform the system. It is party-based and electoral. During interviews for my book, a couple people pointed out to me that a lot of political terminology and basic concepts that we in this movement take for granted - including the term progressive - are either alienating or just nonstarters among a lot of young people of color. Instead, young people of color understand politics through a language based in community organizing, human rights, civil rights, and social justice. That is a language the progressive movement rarely embraces. Worse, its a language that the Democratic Party - our chosen vehicle of change - almost never embraces.

For the most part, it’s a racial divide (though not exclusively so). In the past, the civil rights movement offered a common mission and language. But identity politics is reaching its limits as a vehicle for accomplishing change, and we can’t remain siloed anymore. At the same time, asking people to drop identity politics altogether is totally unacceptable. That model developed for a reason - to address structural and outright biases in our system. These problems persist, and you can’t deny that a rightful place in our political conversation.

So, in the words of Led Zeppelin, “Where’s the bridge?” This is a problem for the progressive movement in general, but, as the most diverse generation in modern American history, it has particular relevance to any discussion of Millennial politics.

I’m at this open-source conference, which excites my radical blood, and there have been a couple things that crossed my radar lately which I want to talk about, but I haven’t had time to distill my thinking. In a post down below, Mike was talking about the likely forward movement in youth organizing, saying something along the lines of, “it’s not as sexy as Revolution!, but it’s important nonetheless.” This is true, but I miss the sexy parts.

Two posts I want to discuss soon:

• Along the lines of our Faith and Politics thread, Zack Exley reports from within the evangelical Revolution, and it’s very interesting stuff.
• In a recent post on MyDD, everyone’s favorite bomb-thrower Matt Stoller discusses turning away from the National Security State in pretty radical language.

I’d like to blog more about these themes and my own Big Revolutionary Thoughts soon. Is this of interest to others on the site?

After working a few shows in NYC, and getting compliments from the bands and their staff sent through Music for America’s staff, I decided that I would be better off working in my home state, Pennsylvania, which was a much more important state. Unlike New York, PA is still competitive for Republicans, and there was no guarantee that Kerry would carry the state. It just so happened that MfA was sending out their staff on a field trip, and they were going to Philly. I figured this would be a great way to get started in Philly, and also a great way to get to know the MfA staff a little better offline. I offered the three staffers- Mike Connery (who you can find here on this site), Franz Hartl (the Political Director), and Taya Mueller (the Volunteer Coordinator) a place to stay, took a week off from work, and soon all four of us were in Philly checking out the scene, talking to local media types, and trying to get a feel for who in the city could help us get things done.

Almost every time we told someone what were doing and asked them “Who do you think we should be working with in the city?” the answer was the same- Sean Agnew. “Damn,” I said to Taya after the fifth or so person dropped his name. “We gotta find this kid.” We tried unsuccessfully to track Sean down, but it didn’t really matter at the time- we were busy working shows, meeting with activist types, and registering kids on some of the city’s campuses.

At the end of a busy day of working Temple’s campus, I sat on my parents porch with Franz throwing back a few beers. “So,” Franz asked me. “What do you want to do with your life?”