Cross-posted at Democratize the Progressive Movement

As it dawns on progressives that health care without a public option is likely to soon pass Congress, there has been some much-needed soul-searching on the left. From a segment on the "progressive divide" on MSNBC’s Countdown to the talk about "pragmatists" vs. idealists" to Glenn Greenwald’s critique of liberals’ negotiating strategy, there has been a great deal of introspection.

Some have gone further in trying to diagnose the challenges facing the progressive movement. Jane Hamsher writes:

"Whatever Barack Obama wants to do will be the farthest left any piece of legislation gets, and if anyone should try to challenge from the left, the unions and the liberal organizations and party blogs would rise up to condemn them and whip them into line — even if it means completely reversing themselves and devolving into total incoherence…

…Interests groups are seeing their memberships dissipate. Blog traffic is dropping. The biggest blow to choice since the passage of the Hyde amendment 35 years ago will go down without any opposition from the choice groups, who are soaking up foundation money while choice as an issue dies the death of the anti-handgun initiatives."

And here is Miles Mogulescu on Huffington Post:

"Progressives need to have a sophisticated and nuanced relationship with elected Democrats. After the 2008 elections, too many progressive organizations demobilized believing their job was simply to take orders from the White House to support Obama’s agenda, whatever it was. That was a mistake.

It’s equally a mistake for progressives to overreact in the opposite direction and think they can abandon electoral politics and do nothing to prevent the Republicans from regaining power. What’s needed is a powerful grassroots progressive movement to force elected officials to do the right thing more often and to counter-balance the power of big money in politics.

The periods of progressive change in American politics, like the Progressive Era, The New Deal, and the Great Society, have come when strong progressive movements have forced elites and elected officials to enact somewhat progressive legislation."

So, Mogilescu is pointing out a problem with progressives’ mindset (we can’t simply take orders from the White House to support Obama’s agenda) and Hamsher is pointing out some structural problems with liberal organizations that share that wrong-headed mindset.

But this critique needs to be taken one step further by asking why progressive organizations – as the major mobilizing tools we have at our disposal – fall into this trap, thereby dividing our movement between "idealists" and "pragmatists."

For some groups, like Organizing for America, the answer is obvious: they’re controlled by the White House and the DNC and will always play the "pragmatists" because by definition they have to support Obama. That means right from the get-go, we’re already at least somewhat divided if any progressive organization stands to the left of OFA.

Other groups, like Democracy for America or Daily Kos, have one visible spokesperson (Howard Dean, Markos Moulitsas), or have staff make mostly top-down decisions that their members are enjoined to carry out (MoveOn). If those individuals or organization staff take a specific position, it is presumed that the groups they represent do likewise. If Jane Hamsher or another high-profile liberal takes an opposing position, there is a presumption that that person represents a separate faction of the left (which is in most cases true).

Unless all of these prominent people can agree, this seems like a recipe for division, right? Yet it doesn’t have to be this way. What is missing here is a process for sorting out where most liberals stand and more importantly, what strategy they want to use to advance their beliefs.

When Richard Trumka speaks for the AFL-CIO, we know that he is speaking on behalf of that federation’s unions, and if he screws up and stops representing their viewpoints, he ultimately has to answer to members who can vote to elect different leadership. There is no similar democratic mechanism in the wider progressive community; we unfortunately have no process by which to speak with one collective voice as a social movement.

What is most troubling is that the more democratic, decentralized and effective organizing conducted by unions is constantly under assault by corporations and is therefore on the wane, while the less effective and sustainable top-down organizing model used by mainstream progressive groups is on the rise.

Progressives may not realize the full extent to which unions carry the water for the movement as a whole, from funding candidates to backing causes to getting out the vote. But it will become increasingly apparent as private sector union membership declines. In 2009, the labor movement suffered a 10% drop in private sector membership due to the recession, a loss of more than 830,000 members, which took them from 7.6% of the private sector workforce to 7.2% in one year, according to the Wall Street Journal. (I don’t think this reflects poorly on unions’ organizing abilities. It is instead a reflection of what happense when corporations direct their fury toward effective progressive groups – see ACORN).

Which means we need to get serious about deciding whether the new top-down organizing model can pick up the slack. I would argue that the top-down infrastructure in place can neither unite progressives nor create an effective groundswell of support for progressive legislation.

We’ve had a good test run with health care, and it appears that liberals were not very successful at controlling the terms of the debate or mobilizing effectively. The reason is because many people simply don’t want to be engaged in organizing efforts over which they have no control. Empowering individual members means giving them a voice and a vote, and promoting people-to-people organizing instead of centrally-controlled email marketing strategies. In short, we need to do what every successful social movement has done by relearning the art of democratic local organizing and authentic empowerment of regular people.

Here is my vision of what’s needed:

  • A democratic, decentralized network of local chapters (progressive alliances, progressive councils, etc.) in which individual members vote on leadership, goals, strategies, actions, and recruitment tactics through a clearly-defined structure and process.
  • A national umbrella group that provides coordination, assistance and networking support, and that makes decisions based on a voting process that represents the individual chapters.
  • A broad-based focus on progressive issues at the federal level – not just local or state concerns – and a fundamental commitment to democratic procedure and organizational growth and effectiveness.
  • Concerted efforts by these community-based chapters to reach out to members of other local groups (unions, Sierra Club chapters, community organizations, MoveOn councils, Democratic clubs, etc.) and encourage them to become members of the chapters and take part in the voting process.
  • National leadership to encourage the growth of this network and support the concept of democracy within the progressive movement.
  • A redirection of some of our resources from advertising and electoral campaigns to building democratic, locally-based, progressive infrastructure.

What’s your vision?

[Please send stories of democratic local organizing from your community to michael.karpman (at) gmail.com or post them - or your vision of the way forward for progressives - in the comments section. And if you agree with this post, please share it where you can.]