Views » August 5, 2008 » Web Only

Does a Nationwide ‘Progressive Movement’ Actually Exist?

By Ken Brociner

George W. Bush will go down in history as one of this country’s worst presidents ever. But there is at least one thing we can genuinely thank him for: He has succeeded in bringing moderates, liberals, and progressives closer together than at any time in decades. But do the many political connections created since Bush took office actually add up to something that can be called a (or “the”) “progressive movement”?

The short answer is - it depends on who you ask. Over the past five or six years, I have been struck by the wide range of answers to this question within progressive circles. Some progressives believe it is premature to talk about the existence of a singular “progressive movement” - as opposed to the existence of a number of separate but related progressive movements. Some even dismiss the importance of the question to begin with - considering the issue either irrelevant or of secondary importance.

The question of whether or not we constitute “a movement” cuts to the very core of just who “we” are at the present moment. How we answer it is bound to shape the programs and strategies we develop in the months and years ahead.

I recently interviewed a few leading intellectuals and activists to find out whether or not they believe it is accurate to say that today - less than four months before the 2008 election - “a progressive movement” actually exists.

Bill Gamson is the co-director of Boston College’s Media/Movement Research and Action Project — and one of the leading scholars in the field of social movement theory. In an email interview last week this is what he had to say:

“Is there a field of actors – formal organizations and/or networks — who are trying to mobilize people for collective action to challenge and change social, political, and economic inequalities? Of course. Sometimes they work in coalitions and sometimes they work independently. Do they always work together harmoniously with a common strategy? Of course not. But that doesn’t make them less of a progressive movement.”

Offering a strikingly different perspective was Charles Knight, the president of the Commonwealth Institute, an independent, public policy research center in Cambridge, Mass. Knight, who also co-directs the institute’s Progressive Strategies Studies Project, said he sees ” a progressive political tendency,” but not a movement.

“But I would agree that there are movement elements within progressive politics today,” Knight said. “Still, while referring to a ‘progressive movement’ does give people a feeling of being part of something bigger, it’s important that progressives have a sense of our own history, and that we not throw around the term ‘movement’ too loosely.”

I also spoke with Fred Berman, a leading activist/organizer in the Boston area. Berman, one of the leaders of the Progressive Democrats of Somerville (which is affiliated with Democracy for America), spends most of his time working on issues like regional development, affordable housing and government accountability. He told me: “I do feel connected to people and organizations that are working on particular issues on a local, state, or national level. But that feels very different than being part of an overarching national movement.”

Todd Gitlin, a longtime activist and professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, has written several important books that discuss progressive movement building, including, most recently, The Bulldozer and the Big Tent. When I asked Gitlin what he thought about the current state of progressivism, he said: “It’s a wish more than an accomplished fact to say that there is a single progressive movement. There are movements, plural, some moving more vigorously than others…. Insofar as there is a single movement, it’s a reaction to the depredations of the Bush years.”

Is there any way to synthesize these different viewpoints? I think there is. For four out of the last six years, I have attended the Take Back America (TBA) conferences, now held every spring in Washington D.C. TBA brings together progressive politicians and leaders, activists, and organizers from the peace, labor, civil rights, economic justice, environmental, women’s, gay rights and netroots movements. But each year - from lecterns, in panel discussions and in the corridors, one hears constant references to “the progressive movement.”

This has never felt like a political line or wishful thinking to me, but rather a perfectly appropriate way of capturing the essence of what is happening right then and there, during three jam-packed days of speeches and discussions. Sure, the 2,000 or so people who attend each year are not reading from the same playbook on a year-round basis. And most people in attendance have individual organizational allegiances of one sort or another. But that feeling of being part of a national “movement” that so many people get from attending the TBA conferences is something quite real. I know I can practically “taste it,” and I doubt I am alone in this.

Other activists find that same feeling of connectivity when they attend mass anti-war demonstrations, the annual Netroots Nation conference, or national meetings of their labor unions - especially when representatives of other movements show up to offer solidarity.

Throughout this decade, progressive groups large and small have significantly increased their connections to each other in all sorts of ways unimaginable just ten years ago. One excellent example of this is the recently formed Health Care for America Now coalition that includes many of the leading unions and progressive organizations in the country, such as ACORN, AFSCME, SEIU, MoveOn, USAction, and The Campaign for America’s Future.

Obviously, the Internet has been a big part of these new connections - but the stolen 2000 election, the war in Iraq and Bush’s many other disastrous policies have also been instrumental in bringing progressives together.

Even if there are only fleeting moments when many of us can feel - in our bones - that there really is such a thing as “a national progressive movement,” the fact is that those moments are real. Which raises this question: How can we hold onto and enhance those feelings of nationwide connectivity?

Clearly, one way is to expand “the movement” (what it was universally called in the ’60s) itself. The idealism and mass participation in the Obama campaign provides us with an enormous opportunity to do just that. We also need to create more effective relationships, links, and coalitions between the various components of the progressive movement.

But equally important is that we expand our collective awareness of the existence of a national movement. To some extent, what this really boils down to is how we think, write, and talk about ourselves. The more frequently we refer to the progressive movement, the more we actually solidify its — and thus our — existence as a nationwide entity.

Back in the 1960s, the lines were more clearly drawn than they are today. Both the counterculture and the New Left (which constantly overlapped) felt as if they were practically at war with “the system.” There was no need to promote a sense of there being “a movement” forty years ago — it was in the very air one breathed. But the situation today is very different: opposition to the war in Iraq hasn’t generated anywhere near the kind of cataclysmic revolt within American society that the war in Vietnam did. And nothing today approximates the ’60s mass rebellion of youth - when millions openly rejected the cultural and social norms of “mainstream America.”

Still, it seems clear that - thanks to the Internet and new connections between progressive organizations - “a movement” has come back into existence since Bush took office.

Perhaps it’s a matter of seeing the proverbial glass as half full. For what is to be gained by insisting it is still half empty? By looking at our movement positively, we not only boost our spirits, but help to foster progressive unity rather than fragmentation. After all, if we are “a movement, ” than we need to act like one.

As the Jefferson Airplane so aptly put it back in 1969, “We can be together… we should be together.”

• subscribe to print magazine

• stay in touch with our email newsletter

  Subscribe to our regular weekly e-mail newsletter. It's packed with updates on recent and upcoming stories, events, campaigns and things every progressive should be informed about.

   

• email this article to a friend

  Your Name Your Email Recipient Email

  Personal message Thought you might be interested in this article from In These Times.

   

  Please help us prevent spam by verifying the word you see in the image above

  Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.

• Reader Comments

  Unwittingly, I think your last paragraph points to a major problem with building a “progressive movement”: I mean, who the heck are the Jefferson Airplane? I’m almost forty and I recognize the name from my older brother’s record collection, but how is anyone younger than me going to have a clue?

  The point being that the younger generation seems to have a very different perception of politics than folks my age and older. Many of them see themselves as “unaffiliated political freelancers”, forming their own opinions independent of any larger “movement”. They’re justificably skeptical of organized politics. It’s just too unwieldy, too bureaucratic, and unable to respond quickly to changing conditions. Their political independence is an asset to be preserved, not a problem to be solved.

  And let’s face it: the older generation of progressives engages in an awful lot of America-bashing. Many younger progressives have a hard time identifying with this. Too much nihilism, not enough hope.

  So the prospects of forming a cohesive “progressive movement” seem slim. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Time will tell…

  Posted by marcello09 on Aug 5, 2008 at 10:51 AM

  The fourth-to-last paragraph also provides a useful insight into the problem. The image of a “movement” being “in the very air we breathed” has long stood as both a beautiful ideal and as not-entirely-realistic nostalgia.

  On the other hand, the overall historical success of “progressive” politics might explain the current lack of a galvanizing critical mass.

  For example:  The draft having been abolished (plus plenty of propaganda), national feelings about war might be less visceral because fewer parents and children have to face the raw reality of war. Abortion (and birth control, divorce, etc.) having been legalized (despite recent erosions), images of dead fetuses may create a more compelling mass sentiment than do images of women (no longer) legally condemned to pregnancy. The Mayor of Chicago having officially courted gay-lesbian-bi-and-transgender votes (which, when Da Mare says it, remains hilarious), gay pride carries political clout.

  All of these remain “progressive” causes. On the other hand, what about kids getting killed and ill-educated in the ghetto? The May 1 06 marchers? No Child Left Behind?

  What do all of these causes have in common? Do their leaders speak to each other? Do the people spoken for even know each other?

  Posted by francis frank on Aug 5, 2008 at 8:12 PM

  Progressive.  That has a nice positive ring to it.

  The Progressive movement in the United States was active in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Republican President Teddy Roosevelt was a leading Progressive reformer.  Some of the adherents of Progressivism had unsavory aspects, such as racism and euthanasia.

  Communists became active in the United States about this time, but no one wanted anything to do with Communists, particularly after the murders and starvation in Ukrania and Russia starting in the 1920s.  Communists ran for office in the United States, but no one would vote for them.  The Communists changed their name to Socialists, but no one was fooled, and the followers of Marx could not get elected no matter what label they used.

  After WWII, Henry Wallace, businessman, politician, mystic, and Communist, hijacked the Progressive label for his run for the presidency in 1948.  He lost.

  So then, in a stroke of brilliant larceny, the Marxist began to call themselves – Liberals!  Liberalism, the philosophy of the Enlightenment, the basis of the Constitution of the United States, hijacked by Marxists, those dark and bloody fools that ruined Russia, China, Korea, and Cuba, and every country they touched. 

  But now the Marxists have destroyed the Liberal label, and in a desperate search for a suitable replacement, they have gone back to calling themselves Progressives?!?  Oooo-K!

  The Leftists have a long history of nominating Marxist slugs to the presidency, and losing: McGovern, Dukakis, Mondale, Gore, and Kerry.  The only two Democrats voted into the presidency in the last forty years, Carter and Clinton, were not Marxist ideologues.

  This year, the Dims had an opportunity to nominate another Marxist slug, Hillary, but they chose to gamble on an unknown with no accomplishments, unsavory associates, and a resume that would fit on the back of his driver’s license.

  Do you ever get the impression that Dims are insane?

  Posted by scorp on Aug 9, 2008 at 6:20 PM

  For years, I have asked people online what they mean by progressive.  I have not asked people this question offline as much, simply because the progressive movement seems to thrive mainly online or in a small group of self-interested political insiders. 

  The flower power of the 1960’s may only have been experienced in a few select communities, but the essence of breaking free from the restraints of a suburban male-goes-to-work / woman-stays-at-home society was widespread.  The progressive movement, so far as I can tell, seems to emphasize that computers are our friends and we should live life tied to them.

  Now, I cannot but link Obama and the modern progressive movement. That is not good.  I have yet to figure out what Obama means by change, just as I have no idea what progressives want.  For me to be part of the movement, I need to know what is being changed.  Otherwise, it is merely a cult.  Throw out the magic word (eat the magic mushroom, vote for the magic candidate) and all will be revealed.

  From what I can piece together, progressives are for more cars, cheap gasoline, excessive personal consumption, societal controls, more governmental controls over individual choices, greater national debt, and reduced economic freedom. Thus, I most decidely am not a progressive and will not support so-called progressive candidates.

  Posted by SillyLeftist on Aug 10, 2008 at 8:01 PM

  Perhaps the best evidence that there’s not much of a “progressive movement” (whatever exactly that is—the term seems to be constantly shape-shifting) in America is the lengths Obama goes to make people think he’s not connected with it.  If McCain & co. are even reasonably successful at exposing Obama’s true ideological sympathies, I doubt he’ll have a chance in what is essentially a center-right country.

  I’ve always been a little hesitant to link Progressives/Democrats with Marxists, but it’s getting really hard to discern much difference anymore.  And the fact that it’s nearly impossible to discern a difference between the Communist Party USA platform and Obama’s is not exactly encouraging.

  But this may be more of an Internet/media illusion than reality.  I think that a majority of even those on the left in America are nowhere near the thinking of the CPUSA or are hostile to the concept of private property, for instance.  If they are made aware of just how “progressive” Obama really is, they will help to prove that indeed there is no significant progressive movement in America.  Sadly, I have very little confidence in McCain’s ability and/or willingness to point it out effectively.

  Posted by Natalie on Aug 11, 2008 at 12:28 AM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 7 posts.

Also by Ken Brociner

• Old Dreams, Present Opportunities
  I have been doing a lot of soul searching as this momentous… morePosted on November 3, 2008
• Internationalism and the Progressive Movement
  One of the finest traditions of the American left has been its… morePosted on October 5, 2008
• Dogmatic rhetoric is self-defeating
  Martha Biondi and James Thindwa's viewpoint, "Earth to Ken Brociner," does start… morePosted on July 13, 2008
• What Progressives Can Learn from Obama
  One of the trademarks of Barack Obama's presidential campaign has been his… morePosted on June 24, 2008
• McGovern, Obama, and ‘transformative’ change
  One of the most common complaints among progressives is that we don't… morePosted on May 25, 2008