Who’s Got the Power?

I think you’ve actually hit on what’s wrong with “progressives” and we’re getting crushed on all these issues, although not implicitly. I will preface and say that this is something that’s a wider problem than we admit to ourselves, but to not wrestle with it is to continue on a losing path…. so hope you’ll entertain the thought. At times, and I mean recent ones, I’ve been guilty of the same.

The list of organizations you mention, while good and being folks that do good work, are not focused on building long-term people powered organizations. HCAN is a coalition that popped up to gather the “big players” in the “progressive” movement to work on hc. First of all, that was a strategic mistake on tons of levels. I’ll mention two.
1) It implicitly leaves out everyone else .... from student to youth groups, radical to revolutionary groups, small and grassroots organizations (especially those critical of the D-party)
2) the groups that compose it are not necessarily known for their focus on building a politicized membership ready to mobilize or take action at the drop of a hat. I dont want to hear that regular people are too busy, we take action all the time, but it takes a hell of a lot of political education and development to do that.

We no longer have time to wait for any of these “long-term” plans, there’s a ton of folks that have known this would happen all along and have said as much. How about the “progressive” movement start asking its more revolutionary elements what to do… its time for some new voices and some new ideas…. its time to get militant…. so lets ask those that know a thing or two about that.

If the problem is corporate power, then lets take it to the corporations. Can you identify the top 10, focusing on the worst corporation strangling each “progressive” issue (like labor, hc, energy, war, environment, food, water, education, etc…)
It will take building and supporting organizations that are ready to mobilize and fight…. lets get offline already and start talking to our neighbors and friends (even the ones we dont always like)

Posted by carlosinhp on Aug 17, 2009 at 12:58 PM

The Democrats and Repubs have gone corporate.

Posted by Adam Smith on Aug 18, 2009 at 12:32 AM

The quote unquote , so-called progressive movement or political ideology identified as progressive is getting the beat down on so many issues because they or I should say we(Blackhorse considers himself a progressive)are not organnized.
Progressves has a lot going for them,namely common sense and very solid ideas and solutions to social problems, but we do not effectively organize. It’s like the power structure is playing hard ball, and we are off somewhere playing whiffle ball…...

Posted by blackhorse on Aug 18, 2009 at 4:56 AM