Progressive Politics

Kansas Minority Leader Paul Davis is a young elected official who recently took on a leadership role in the Kansas State Legislature. We are grateful to have his perspective both as someone who is still young and someone who is leading the House Democratic Caucus in the heartland. -Sarah

During the 2008 campaign, President Barack Obama frequently reminded us that progress is always possible if we walk down the right path and refuse to give up. This has been the motto of House Democrats in the Sunflower State for several years. Outnumbered by Republicans two to one, Democrats in Kansas are forced to do business differently. We take tremendous pride in being the largest voting block of the Kansas Legislature as a result of our inclusive, progressive approach to public policy. We must work harder and smarter, be more open to compromise, and vigilantly watch for vehicles to advance our most important priorities. This is not always easy, but when you are on the right side of the issue, opportunities eventually seem to surface.

As the minority party we do not control the calendar, so most of the accomplishments for House Democrats in Kansas come in the form of creative amendments and thoughtful, vigorous debate on the floor. Our legislature wrestles the same issues year after year, which is why some of our most noteworthy victories in the House result from the new ideas of our young members and first termers. Of course we do not win every battle, but every victory builds a more prosperous state and strengthens our resolve to send more Democratic lawmakers to the Kansas Legislature.

We must keep working on behalf of our progressive principles, because history proves that these are the true values of Kansas families and communities. This state expects its government to provide for our children’s education, be good stewards of our environment, make health care more affordable, stand up for working families and protect our must vulnerable citizens. Sometimes small steps in this direction become the foundation for future improvements.

For example, after 20 years of work, today we finally approved an increase in the Kansas minimum wage. This is an enormous victory for our caucus and for the 20,000 Kansans currently working for the shameful minimum wage rate of $2.65 per hour. In addition to raising the state minimum wage, House Democrats have continued their work this year as steadfast protectors of Kansas public education, both for K12 students and for post-secondary education. With the help of Governor Sebelius, we held off devastating cuts to K-12 education earlier in the session and have placed significant pressure on the majority party to keep public schoolchildren high on the priority list in the wake of the 2010 budget crisis.

In the face of overwhelming challenges, it can be easy for young progressives to forget what makes our state great. But we have a heritage that should make everyone proud to be a Kansan. Whether it be our pioneer determination to enter this country as a free state, Amelia Earhart taking flight across the Atlantic, Clyde Cessna and Walter Beech giving birth the aviation industry or Linda Brown and her family who went all the way to United States Supreme Court to seek justice and end segregated schools, Kansans have been at the forefront of what makes America a country of noble, globally celebrated ideals. These noted Kansans did not give up when faced with obstacles, they persevered. Our challenge is to keep working to promote what is right and just for Kansas and its citizens- despite our red state status.

Ad astra per aspera.
(translation: To the stars through difficulty)

bumped by Sarah

When I first heard that Mike Lux was going to be speaking in Lawrence, I, admittedly, didn’t know much about him. A progressive powerhouse, Lux served in President Bill Clinton’s administration as National Constituencies Director. While this was well before my political involvement began, I must pay my respects to a man who helped paved the way for young activism.

Lux is traveling around the country to promote his recent book “The Progressive Revolution.” In the book, he offers a historical look at America’s progressive revolution and how key events like desegregating schools and establishing social security helped shaped our country.

At the event, Lux pointed out that even the sheer idea of a democracy was a progressive movement for our country. Shifting away from the established political norm is always a scary idea for some, but it is leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. that take us on a path to abandon outdated views and strive for a bright future.

The most interested part of the evening for me was Lux’s discussion about the important role blogs play in the political process. With back-door deals and vote trading serving as common practices for politicians, it is essential our representatives are held accountable for every vote they cast while in office. Blogs are able to create a 24/7 news cycle, assuring that a story doesn’t die after the newspapers are recycled.

“Two things that I feel are vital to moving politics forward and government into the 21st century are accountability and transparency,” said Chad Manspeaker, who serves as Treasurer and Labor Caucus chair for the Kansas Young Democrats and attended the event. “We need to know what our representatives are up to and have open lines of communication with them. Those that believe that new media is a passing fad will soon find this fad passing right by them.”

Living in Kansas, I am fortunate enough to have a superb example of this in the blog Kansas Jackass. While I wish all politicians would work with the utmost transparency, this is not the case. Kansas Jackass works to assure that our elected officials can’t hide anything from their constituents.

Lux also delivered promising news for the attendees of the event, who, for the majority, were under 30. Obama’s Office of Public Affiras has appointed David Washington to serve as a liaison for young people and foundations. By making this selection, the administration is showing that they recognize the youth population is ready to be an active part of our nation’s recovery.

Further Lux said that they consider young people a critical part of the issues narrative. As such each agency will have young people within them that can give a youth perspective to issues. While these individuals may not know the ins and outs of the youth agenda, hopefully their prospective will provide something new past administrations have not tapped into.

Also discussed at the event was the importance for elected officials to embrace new social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. Two State Senators were present at the media, but neither are tweeting. However, Rep. Milack Talia is among those who are utilizing the micro-blogging service to update followers about votes being cast in the House. I would encourage all others to follow his lead and incorporate these sites into their communication strategies.

It was very inspiring for me to hear a seasoned political veteran talk about our country’s need to continue on a progressive path. When Mike Connery returns from his honeymoon, he will posting a full review of the book “The Progressive Revolution”, which can be purchased here.

Bumped. Nate is the Executive Director of the Roosevelt Institution, the first student run think tank. --Mike

"We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob," Franklin Roosevelt declared in 1936.

Powerful words. It's hard to imagine a modern presidential candidate railing against financial institutions with such verve and vigor. But his central insight only gains relevance with time: government indifference towards markets provides shelter for financial speculation and greed. It was unregulated speculation that spurred the Great Depression, unchecked greed that drove us to the current financial crisis. Our government always has had and will always have a critical role in bringing such forces to heel.

But Roosevelt knew that it was not only the policies of the indifferent government that posed such a great danger. It was a deeper set of philosophical beliefs. "Above our market places," he went on, "stand the altars of our faith--altars on which burn the fires of devotion that maintain all that is best in us and all that is best in our Nation." We must always put values above money, recognizing that the economy serves society and not the other way around.

In his recent speech in Colorado, Obama struck a similar tone. "The American economy has worked in large part because we have guided the market's invisible hand with a higher principle," he argued, "America prospers when all Americans prosper."

The speech goes on to list a series of smart policy prescriptions for coping with the current crisis. Legislation that shores up both our families and our markets is a must. But, in light of the financial meltdown, we must also take a hard look at the philosophy underlying our economic policies. The conservative movement's narrative about the role of individuals and the market led us this mess. We need a new narrative, a new progressive economic philosophy, to lead us out. Our policy ideas alone will not capture the American public's hearts nor provide the answers to all our problems; our ideas must be linked to a picture of the nation and the world we hope to achieve. We need a narrative that energizes our ideas and builds the political will for meaningful change.

The progressive movement is slowly writing this narrative. Just this week, a coalition of think tanks and activist organizations released a major publication with a bold set of progressive values and a unified vision for what our country can achieve. New Progressive Voices: Values and Policies for the 21st Century features top intellectuals and leaders describing the America we must build in compelling language. In it, Andrea Batista Schlesinger of the Drum Major Institute describes how a strong middle class is integral to a stable democracy, while Deepak Bhargava of the Center for Community Change emphasizes community values over individualism. Larry Mishel explains how to build shared prosperity, and Miles Rapoport of Demos envisions a participatory democracy capable of true self-governance. The messages are compelling, clear and advocate the kind of transformation we so badly need.

But as important as the individual essays was the effort by leaders to come together and find common ground. This kind of effort to build a coherent progressive narrative will help us not only win elected office and pass legislation, but will fundamentally change the tone of the debate in America. And fundamental change is badly needed--the incremental policy reforms advocated by centrist democrats just won't do the trick. FDR concluded his 1936 speech, "That is why the recovery we seek, the recovery we are winning, is more than economic. In it are included justice and love and humility, not for ourselves as individuals alone, but for our Nation."

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?”