Netroots Nation – RI Future

January 8, 2016

David Sirota goes after Raimondo on hedge funds with new allegations

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It’s a new year, so there’s a new piece by International Business Times‘ senior editor for investigations, David Sirota, taking on Gina Raimondo‘s dismal record in pension reform. This piece isn’t getting a lot of attention locally, which is a shame because it actually explains the pension reform/hedge fund situation quite nicely. The accepted story among the most politicians is that pension reform was necessary. As Gina Raimondo said in the Wall St Journal (quoted in Sirota’s piece) “Don’t be mad at me. Be mad at people who made promises that were unaffordable.”

However that may be, we certainly didn’t need pensions locked into hedge funds that have, notes Sirota, “generated big revenues for Wall Street firms, but only middling returns for a $7.6 billion pension fund on which more than 58,000 current and future retirees rely.”

When retiree Diane Bucci and others began to dig into the poor performance of the hedge funds, “they learned of a federal review showing that roughly half of all private equity firms are charging hidden fees, and they saw a hedge fund industry whose returns have failed to keep pace with the stock market. When they dug deeper, they stumbled onto an even more disturbing revelation. What they found, they say, is evidence that some investors can obtain special rights that may let them secretly siphon money from the state pensioners’ retirement savings.”

Here’s the link to the full story, well worth a read:

Wall Street Fine Print: Retirees Want FBI Probe Of Pension Investment Deals

September 30, 2012October 2, 2012

Kos: Inside the Mind of Markos Moulitsas

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There are many dark and mysterious places on this planet. I assume they would also exist throughout the universe although I can’t be sure because when I bought my telescope as a kid, I assumed heavenly bodies meant those found in the house across the street.

Anyway, many would find at least some of these places interesting to visit or at least read about, others, maybe not so much. For example, there is no shortage of people who would find Netroots Nation a dark and mysterious place, better left alone, mocked, and avoided at all costs, while others flock to it in the hope of creating a better world.

I’m not talking about the men’s room at the Rhode Island Convention Center that ran out of toilet paper during this year‘s Netroots Convention, although the two of us sitting in adjacent stalls asking if we could each “spare a square” were convinced we were in some special exhibit allowing us to act out being in a sitcom.

When it comes to dark, mysterious places where one treads with great care, one candidate might be the mind of Markos Molitsas, founder and editor of the Daily Kos, the first significant, often controversial progressive blog, and principal promoter of Netroots Nation, the annual conference that brings progressives together to learn, network, and build an infrastructure to fight for progressive candidates and policies, and battle the evil Republicans (and sometimes, Democrats). Netroots, in case you have been hibernating the last few years, refers to political campaigning and advocacy via online technology (I.e. email, websites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblir, Mumbler, Bumbler, Fuckster, and too many others to name), as opposed to say grassroots (campaigning on grass) and cementroots (campaigning on sidewalks or campaigning for the mob, I‘m not sure which). Not sure if campaigning by phone is phoneroots or teleroots.

I asked Markos (often found holding court at his booth and taking pictures with attendees) on convention day 1 if I could interview him at some point and he was kind enough to do a 40 minute interview the next day, shocking for me since most people’s reaction when I ask is to run away or claim they would prefer to schedule a dentist appointment. So, without further or due, let’s bring you inside the mind of Markos Moulitsas and let you decide if it’s a place you dare to tread or embrace with open arms.

AS SOMEONE WHO HAS BEEN A KEY PLAYER IN THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT FOR THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS, WHAT DO YOU SEE AS THE MAJOR PROBLEMS FACING THE MOVEMENT AND HOW WILL THE CONFERENCE HELP ADDRESS THEM?

Markos: Nothing will ever get solved without growing a broad base of action and support and evangelizing the broader American public and electorate. Conservatives have spent decades building an infrastructure that allows them to develop a message, sell that message and get that message passed into legislation by various legislative bodies at the state, local and federal level. They’ve been doing this for decades – we’re looking ahead to the next election, constantly recreating the wheel. We need to continue building those institutions and organizations that do exactly what conservatives do.

Like I said, it’s creating a message, selling that message, and trying to get that message passed into legislation. Right now I’ve got to say the most effective at this in recent years has been the gay rights movement, the equality movement. They’ve been able to take something like gay marriage that had been considered pie in the sky just a decade ago. If you remember in 2004 when Howard Dean was running for President, he was considered too liberal because civil unions had passed in Vermont. Now civil unions are considered like weak sauce, now it’s all about gay marriage and gay marriage is now the majority position with the American public. In a matter of 8 years that’s insane among a movement about what is a very divisive social issue. So it can be done, it is done, so we have to learn those lessons and bond those lessons to the movement at large.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE SPECIFIC PROBLEMS?

Markos: Obviously each problem has its own solutions, but broadly speaking, it really comes down to creating the ability to, the foundation to be able to first, identify the problem, then craft the solutions. But as liberals we’re good at that, we always have solutions, we’re policy wonks. I don’t mean me, but broader people. If you want to talk about programs and solving the problem, pull out the pie charts, statistics, and spreadsheets, its all fantastic and makes a lot of sense at the intellectual level. We’ve done poorly at the emotional, gut level. That’s how you sell things. Coke and Pepsi, they don’t sell things by showing you things like the ingredient list, and saying everything’s great. You craft a campaign that speaks to lifestyle that hits at an emotional level. That’s how you get people to drink Coke and Pepsi.

Conservatives are very good at this, such as the inheritance tax, calling it a death tax. The ability to take issues, sometimes complex ones, and boil them down to two word, three word sound bytes. And as much as we’d like to scoff at that, it’s ridiculous and no one is going to buy it, people do because it’s easy to grasp, built on repetition, and they build a media machine that can blast it out and reach the entirety of the movement within a week. We have 30 million Rush Limbaugh weekly viewers that basically hit 30-40% or the Republican electorate on a weekly basis and there is nothing remotely comparable to that on the left.

IF YOU COULD GO UP TO GOVERNMENT CENTRAL AND CHANGE ANYTHING, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?

Number 1 is getting rid of the filibuster because you are creating a democratic Senate. To me, I’m less concerned about individual policy solutions. You want to get to the liberal problem so if you are going to talk about specific policy solutions we don’t have the mechanism to implement them so it’s almost pointless because we are not capable. So you create a Senate that is first of all, democratic, where majority rules and if Republicans grab control of the Senate, well good for them.

That’s what democracy is. I may not like it, but the people have spoken. I’m not going to be offended, I’m going to work like hell to make sure the next Senate looks a little different but if someone wins the Senate, they should be able to legislate. It’s just that simple. And we don’t have that so we don’t have accountability. We don’t even have visibility who is influencing legislation. There’s got to be transparency. To me, before we get into the issues or specific policy solutions, I’d be looking at creating a government that is transparent, it’s demonstrative, it’s democratic, and responsive to the will of the voters.

2. If I could waive the magic wand, it would be a Constitutional amendment reversing Citizens United. The effect of the money is pernicious but even before that, before a Constitutional amendment, if we can’t get 60 votes, we’re not going to get 67 votes in either chamber of Congress. So what do we do? We have to disclose that so if you are going to drop in millions of dollars, you should disclose who you are, you shouldn’t be able to hide because we don’t know if there is foreign money involved. You don’t know. Sunlight is always the best disinfectant. It doesn’t always work that way, I’d rather not have to disinfect in the first place, I’d rather have a clean kitchen that we wouldn’t have to clean up but since we don’t have that choice right now because of Citizens United, let’s at least find out who’s putting money into the election and make sure it’s legitimate money, not illegal foreign money. It’s not going to fix the problem, but there are plenty of billionaires like Sheldon Adelson who don’t care about anonymity but a lot of them do. If you want freedom of speech, I need to see you.

THERE IS A LOT OF DISCUSSION AT THIS CONFERENCE ABOUT DEMOCRATS NOT ACTING DEMOCRATIC. HOW IS THAT?

Markos: It’s a long term problem. The conservative movement really kicked off in 1964 when Barry Goldwater lost. Now we’re 50 years later and they are still cleaning house. So we look at this, here’s the problem. The modern progressive movement really kicked off in 2002 and 2003. We won in 2006 and 2008 and everyone thought well that was good. Exactly, we rocked it. The problem was that we didn’t win because we reached parity with other institutions, we won because George Bush was the worst President ever. So now the reality starts to set in, they get their shit together and they came back in 2010 and in 2012 it’s going to be a lot closer than it should be by all rights.

To me it’s a bunch of influences, some democrats aren’t acting democratic. Immigration might be a big issue and they may be anti-immigration. I’ll hate them.

ARE THEY AGAINST ILLEGAL OR ALL IMMIGRATION?

They’re against the Dream Act or against comprehensive immigration reform. I’ll hate them for it, but to me that’s not a solid Democrat, someone who has taken populist principles and filtered them out, because of Wall Street money. The Delaware delegation was bought and paid for by special interests. There’s a lot of them, a lot of the small state guys get bought out easy. So the issue is they started the movement in 1964, they didn’t win the White House until 1980 so you’re looking at 16 years. They didn’t win the Congress until 1994, and they’re still trying to clean house – they’ve gone off the deep end trying to clean house but they’re still engaged in that process.

We started in 2002, so 10 years in we’re in our first decade and we’ve made some progress. We have Al Franken, we have Sherrod Brown and Barbara Boxer was around already but she’s now solidified. We have the first nuggets of a better progressive Democratic Party but most of the Democrats have been entrenched for decades and slowly and gradually we’re going to clean house and clean it up but for the conservatives, they are in year 50 of purifying the party, cleaning it up, making it more ideologically and we’re just in year 10 so we’re way behind on a timeline. We can’t expect everything to happen overnight.

HOW MUCH OF A PROBLEM FOR PROGRESSIVES ARE THE PENSION ISSUES THAT ARE FOREFRONT AND CENTER?

Markos: To me, the unions are one of the last bastions of the middle class. They haven’t been decimated by corporate America and they are in the process of being eliminated, systematically eliminated by a group of people who want to hoard capitalism for themselves so unions make it harder to do that.

WHAT ABOUT PENSIONS BEING TOO HIGH, TAKING MONEY AWAY FROM THOSE WHO NEED IT, AND HURTING CREDIBILITY?

They are negotiated, it’s called a deal. It might be a tough sell. Being a teacher is a shitty job. One of the few perks you have is a pension. If you are working with my kids, you should be paid a lot more and you should be rewarded. If you want to pay them more for a smaller pension, do that.

WHAT ABOUT THE IMPACT ON CITIES AND TOWNS?

We have had recessions in the past. What you do is go in the red, then invest, then eventually you grow out of it. It’s the exact opposite of what’s happening in Europe and exact opposite of what’s been done here. You don’t cut back because you don’t grow when you cut jobs. Henry Ford wanted to cut wages, I mean this is one of the legends. Henry Ford’s like why are we paying people so much and the answer is who do you think is going to buy your cars. You have a system of people who want to slash and cut and by losing jobs by cutting the budget, you are eliminating the jobs and potential economic engine and growth that will allow us to get out of the red.

HOW ABOUT A PERCEPTION PROBLEM? A MEMBER OF THE SHEET METAL’S UNION WHO WAS IN WISCONSIN SAID UNIONS HAVE TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT THE PERCEPTION THEY ARE OUT FOR THEMSELVES FIRST

Absolutely, this goes back to the ability the of the right to sell their message. We don’t even have the ability to craft the message. They create the message they sell the message and they implement the policy. We can’t even agree on what the message is. much less sell it. That is a perception. it is amazing in fact, how much non union people supported collective bargaining the way they have even though it has been demonized the way it has. So people inherently understand that when you make a bargain or make a deal, you keep the deal, conservatives have done a fantastic job, they are all about keeping the bargain when it’s benefiting their own

YOU SEE THIS PRIMARILY AS A MARKETING PROBLEM?

Yeah, messaging and marketing, you can’t market without a message.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE PRESIDENT OBAMA?

Barack Obama did a lot when he was running for re-election. He talked about bringing the country together, mending the division. Everyone talked about that. George Bush talked about that but nobody means it. He actually believed it and meant it and it was a detriment. It’s one thing if you try to change the tone and you have an opposition that is willing to compromise and work with you but from day one they wanted to destroy Obama. Mitch McConnell said we wanted to destroy Barack Obama. So you have people who from the start are out to destroy you.

You cannot negotiate with people who are political terrorists who are out to destroy you. No negotiation.

Some millionaire and billionaire liberal donors had Grover Norquist speak to them, I’m not sure why, but they kept saying what if we gave you this, would you then agree on raising taxes, and he said no. But what about this, no. Finally he says, you guys don’t get it. There is no negotiation, it’s no. It will not happen. And they were still like, but what if, and that’s liberals. We want to come together when you have an opposition that’s out to destroy you,

SO LIBERALS SHOULD BE THE SAME AS THE TEA PARTY – NO COMPROMISE?

How can you negotiate with political terrorists? Yes. Absolutely. How do you bring down terrorists? You degrade their capability, you fight fire with fire. When they run up against a wall and aren’t getting anything they want, because you are actually winning a war of ideas; we rammed through the health care bill that we all wanted. I’m not talking single payer, I’m talking about the public options, which preserves the existing system that creates a government funded competition, We surrender, and surrender and surrender and when we still didn’t get a republican vote, we passed the bill with all the surrenders in it. We pull back and pass the original bill. Fine, you don’t want to negotiate, what’s the incentive to negotiate when we concede time and time again, and then if we manage to get something through, it’s the concessions.

DO YOU THINK PRESIDENT OBAMA GETS THAT NOW?

I don’t know if he gets it. My advice to him would be, you can’t concede to bullies, terrorists is too loaded a term, bullies, political bullies, you cannot concede to them when they are punching you. You’ve got to fight back. You fight back, you make them cry uncle, and that’s when they come to the table. If they don’t come to the table, what’s the loss because they are not at the table already. They are not going to work with you, they don’t like you. They think you are illegitimate, they don’t even think you are an American, much less think you have American values. How can you negotiate with them, it has been a failure.
To me, it was very telling that at the debt limit battle last year, when Obama kept caving and caving in to Boehner and they kept moving the goal posts well, we’ll do it if you do this, the Obama people and his supporters online kept saying we should be the grownups in the room. First we learned that being the grownup in the room wasn’t worth anything in 2010. That was the lowest point in Obama’s poll numbers because he looked weak. People don’t want someone who’s constantly, you know, it’s like the battered wife syndrome, they’re beating the shit out of him and he kept going back for more – it was embarrassing, so now he obviously struck a more strident tone but even now, when he’s supposed to be in rally-the-base-mode and the base is going to vote for him, they may do some work for him, but it’s not 2008.

WILL THE YOUTH COME OUT FOR HIM?

They’ve seen him absolutely cave in to Republicans time and time again. They don’t like the Republicans. It’s not like the Republicans are picking it up. So how are they going to get excited about the guy? In fact, they always talk about that maybe in the lame duck session, after the election, well that’s really going to motivate people to come out and vote.

WHAT’S YOUR MESSAGE TO DEMOCRATIC PARTY?

You need to recognize that you have an opposition that is out to destroy you. Until you re-opt in kind, if they stand down, it’s just like any war, right. You fight, maybe you hold your ground, may be you make some advances, that’s when they sue for peace. They aren’t going to sue for peace when you are on the defensive and retreating. They should. They are smart. We are not.

It would be political malpractice for them to negotiate with the Democrats right now, given our track record and ability to hold the ground on anything, we haven’t held the ground on anything. It’s embarrassing. Social Security should be the most basic — we should be treating it like Grover Norquist treats taxes, it’s non negotiable, it ain’t going to be on the table.

ANY MESSAGE TO THE UNIONS?

The unions know what their problems are. It’s a perception problem. Republicans have been trying to legislate them out of existence. This is systematic. The Republicans are trying to legislate them out of existence just like they are trying to legislate trial lawyers out of existence. They are looking at systematically hitting at every targeted constituency of the party — not just funding — they’re going after democratic constituencies. If they were Republican voters, we wouldn’t even be having this debate.

ARE DEMOCRATIC COMMENTATORS SAYING WISCONSIN WAS PRIMARILY BEING OUTSPENT, HELPING OR HURTING?

The reality is we were outspent 20 to 1. That was a big cause. Wisconsin was a procedural issue. 10% right off the bat said most don’t agree with recall no matter what, and many were progressive, good government types.

WAS IT A MISTAKE TO DO IT?

No, you always fight. You show fight. I think it was a mistake for Obama not to show up. How does he expect people to fight for him when he won’t fight for them?

WHAT DO YOU SAY TO PROGRESSIVE MAYORS SUCH AS ANGEL TAVARES THAT HAVE TO DEAL WITH UNION PENSIONS OR THEIR COMMUNITIES FACE BANKRUPTCY OR OTHER FINANCIAL PROBLEMS?

Not familiar with local issues. It’s just not in my realm of expertise. I’m an elections guy.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE COMING OUT OF NETROOTS?

To me the best thing I’ve gotten out of this conference, is — because I don’t get to go to the sessions, it’s just I’ve given up trying. I used to get disappointed every year. Finally i realized I don’t get disappointed if I don’t get the expectations. A Reporter talked to me and said, the Boston Phoenix guy, what’s amazing at this conference and kind of surprised me is that the sessions that deal with practical organizing and how to wage politics, as opposed to how bad things are — those sessions are packed. People aren’t coming here to be fed red meat, they are sold. They don’t need to be told how terrible the Republicans are or about the economy, this or that. They want to know exactly what they are going to do about it.

To me, that’s the message here. We are all here collectively building infrastructure. We all have little corners. Every booth here has a little corner of this progressive movement and are all doing their part to build the machinery Republicans have spent generations building, we’re ten years in, we’re still getting started, we’re not even teenagers yet, but

HOW DOES TODAY COMPARE WITH WHAT YOU INITIALLY ENVISIONED?

For one, I didn’t start this thing. Daily Kos media members started it. I get a lot of credit for this. It’s amazing when we started this in Vegas in 2006, a couple of unions came in as sponsors and we, the Netroots types, would look at them and go those are the dinosaurs that brought us to where we are today. And they would look at us as oh, a bunch of dorks with keyboards, they’re going to change the world. What are they going to do, hit George Bush on their head with their laptop. And it was such disrespect, distrust and dismissal.

And now, it’s — We may disagree on a race, but generally speaking, they know exactly what we bring to the table, we know exactly what they bring to the table. It’s all valuable, we know where we belong, we know where we fit, we’re a broader ecosystem, no dork on a computer is ever going to change the world, no labor organizer on the ground is ever going to change the world, collectively we’re going to be much better so every year the bonds grow tighter, the movement grows, we have a lot of great organizations filling in niches that haven’t been filled, and so for me, part of this conference is the activists learning the tools of the trade and part of it is all the networking that goes on between all these organizations that forges those bonds.

As long as I’m coming here, I’m meeting with other organizations who are figuring out ways because my role in this ecosystem is we amplify, we’re a megaphone. So we’re not issue based, but we’re movement based, so how can we help these organizations fill their mission how can we amplify and how can we help people get involved with what they are doing and their campaigns. So people here can talk all the policy in the world but I’m about how to get these people together and educated in the tools of the trade to wage effective activism in the 21st century.

Before we took the House and the Senate, people would ask what’s your position on this issue and I would say who cares. We’re in the minority. Let’s get the majority and I’ll point you to people who know about those issues. I’m not a policy guy, I’ve got my hands full working on the organizing.

WHAT DO YOU SEE GOING FORWARD?

Ultimately it comes down to building those institutions and building a mass movement. People always used to say things like how will Daily Kos and Netroots Nation, you’re just preaching to the choir. Absolutely, and if that was a bad thing, there would be no need for churches to exist. The first thing you do to build that movement is you build this church, the church of politics. And you use that to find your fellow travelers and come together as a congregation and learn and educate each other. But that’s just the first step. No church survives as its own little self. You have to spread out, you have to evangelize.

We’re at the phase now of building this congregation but we also have to be more aggressive in marketing and sending that message out, to the broader American electorate and parts of the movement. The gay marriage movement has been absolutely steller, the amount of movement we have seen on gay marriage in just the last decade is like nothing we’ve ever seen.

On any divisive social issue, there are lessons to be learned there from each other so we can replicate those successes through other parts of the movement.

WHEN YOU WRITE, HOW CONCERNED ARE YOU WITH WHAT YOU WRITE – DO YOU THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING BEFORE SENDING IT OUT THERE? ARE YOU BACK ON MSNBC YET?

Laughing – I’m not very careful at all and it gets me in trouble all the time. Am I back on MSNBC, no I’m not. Joe Scarborough reached out to me and wants to meet with me next time I’m in New York. (Markos made a comment regarding Scarborough’s dead intern issue – Google it if you don‘t know what I‘m referring to.)

Part of my brand is that I was the first person to write about John Testa in any publication in 2005, much less 2006. We were one of his biggest fundraising sources for his primary, we helped get him through the primary, we helped raise a lot of money through the general election, John Testa is somebody who without the Netroots, probably would not be Senator. Then last year he voted against the Dream Act which is sort of a core principle. You don’t punish kids. That’s the number one rule of anybody, on any issue, you don’t punish kids.

I emailed his Chief of Staff and said to him will you send John this message — tell him fuck you. Someone who wants to play the inside game isn’t going to do that. I’m not going to do that, it’s total bullshit. People know what they are getting with me. They know there’s no bullshit involved. I’m not playing any games, it is what it is. For people that like it, great. For people that don’t like it great. It makes my life more difficult a lot of times, but…

HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THE PERCEPTION THAT YOU ARE JUST COMING FROM THE LEFT. HOW DOES THIS AFFECT TRYING TO ATTRACT THE MIDDLE?

To me, that whole argument that there’s a big center is absolute bullshit, I just don’t buy it. People lean Democrat or Republican. The people who are persuadable are those not paying attention to politics, and I’m not going to reach them anyway. They’re watching American Idol, I’m not going to reach them.

People are swinging back and forth not because they are ideologically pliable, but because they don’t pay attention. The people who pay attention even vaguely are going to lean one way or another, even if they say they are independent. A lot of people in the tea party crowd say they are independent yet they are more likely to vote Republican than self identified Republicans. A lot of people who don’t like the Democrats but because they are weak and spineless say they are independents. But they are going to vote Democratic because the alternative is Republican.

WHAT ABOUT THOSE WHO MAY NOT VOTE?

If they are not going to vote, then they aren’t part of the equation at this point. I don’t worry about the middle because every time you get America to the left, as you did in 08, the radical middle doesn’t exit. A recent poll asked asked if Romney or Obama was too liberal, middle or conservative. Three percent think Romney or Obama are too liberal. A national poll with 3% margin of error. I don’t give a shit about those guys, it’s not going to be an issue for me. Even if they existed, I’m the church, this is where we come for the true activists, people who are fighting hard, to improve our country. The Daily Kos is where people come to connect, get educated, and find out how we can help and how we can get active to reach those goals.

It’s the politician’ job to try to reach the middle. In 2010 you had a perfect example. You had the example of a party who had zero intention of reaching the middle, swinging so hard right that Lynn Bennet got ousted and Orin Hatch is fighting to survive under serious assault and he won big.

People said this will show how extreme Republicans are, it’s going to activate them, motivate their base to be active. Since our side didn’t react, we ran away from the tea party, it deactivated our side. The appropriate response would have been to fight back, fight fire with fire, and instead of running away from them, had our politicians stood strong, we probably would have seen a very different 2010. Independents didn’t swing that election, it’s that they voted, we did not.

In Wisconsin, they had a better turnout than we did compared to 2008 where it was whoever turned out. It was impacted by some factors such as being in the summer and summer school was out, we had 80,000 less youth votes which could have swung the election because school was out. Tactically, there were tactical errors. There is also those saying recall not acceptable. People really voted against the concept of the recall.

WAS IT WORTH IT TO TAKE BACK THE SENATE?

People kept saying the Senate was not going to meet again but they would have been called into special session had they won. Basically we just shut it down. With Scott Walker as Governor, it was probably a good thing.

HOW DO YOU RECOMMEND PEOPLE GETTING INVOLVED IN THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT?

The whole concept of Netroots is what is Netroots. It was originally identified with blogging and is a word invented by a very good friend and blogging partner to mean waging politics online. In the old days, it was email and blogging. Today it’s Twitter, Facebook, just talk to people in a circle. I can go on TV and talk to 150,000 or 500,000 – I don’t know what ratings are, but I don’t make the same connection each individual makes with their professional circle. You are more influential with your 20 friends than I ever will be with 500,000 people.

So use your tools that you have to talk to your network. Use Twitter, Facebook is obviously a good place to talk about activism, everyone is on Facebook except me. I am but not really. And if blogging is your thing, then just blog or use Tumblir.

There are different levels, if nothing else talk to your circle, then get involved with organizations dealing with issues you care about, whether it’s the Sierra Club or join a bigger blog like the Daily Kos, you can do that if that’s your thing. I’ve never wanted to start the Daily Kos as a solution because it’s not, it’s a broad movement so whether its working with unions to try to organize or working with local labor, work with local democratic parties, or take them over if they’re not doing anything. Run for office. Gradually move up levels of activity. The number 1 thing you can do is become an evangelist to your local social circle.

CONCLUSION

So there ya go. Thanks to Markos for taking the time to enlighten us about what he and Netroots Nation are all about. There is little doubt that through efforts such as Netroots Nation and other political activities, Markos and the new progressive movement are having at least some influence on the political process. It will be especially interesting to see what the long term impact will be including electing progressive candidates and passing progressive legislation. Will they achieve victories here and there, make a significant lasting impact, or pretty much be a non-issue?

Few will deny the Tea Party is having at least somewhat of an impact on the political process today. But some, including Republicans, think their hard line, no compromise positions and sometimes extremist tendencies might doom their long term impact and/or hurt the Republican Party. Might the same happen to the progressive movement if they adopt a similar approach?

It’s tough to argue with the fact that many Democrats and progressives need to go to marketing or PR school. It seems like only yesterday when, when asked by Republicans whether they support the troops or want to win the Iraq war, they responded as if asked to describe the creation of the universe or the Taco Bell menu. Today, some Democrats seem to have taken a side job, becoming marketing reps for Chick Fil-A, and when President Obama tried to make the statement about the importance of government assistance with building infrastructure in many success stories, it seemed as if he consulted with Republican PR specialists to say it in the worst way possible. Right now, Democrats are struggling with how to answer the what is apparently the exceedingly difficult question of whether people are better off today than 4 years ago. You can tell it’s a difficult question when you notice administration officials taking a deep swallow and making a contorted face before answering, even before you have to listen to the often ridiculous, mumbling, inconsistent answers.

But if they pay attention at marketing school (assuming it’s a decent school) they’ll hear the point that your message isn’t just what you decide to develop or communicate. The strongest, often unintentional messages being delivered often result from what you say or do in the course of everyday activities, such as fighting against public employee pension reform. According to one union rep working in Wisconsin during that recent election and participating in a Rhode Island led workshop, and several others who spoke to me off the record, the ongoing exposure of public employee pensions and their impact on state and local governments, in addition to efforts to fight pension reform, are sending the message that public employee unions are out for themselves and their members more than the others they claim to support. Some of this concern comes from within the progressive movement, including private sector union members, who see the problem at best, as a major PR problem and at worst, a policy issue that needs to be addressed. In either case, many feel it’s negatively impacting on the ability to help the poor, middle class, women, children and seniors, pass progressive legislation, including increased taxes on the rich, and elect Democrats or progressives.

And while there are certainly Democrats bought and paid for by evil special interests, as we have seen with gay marriage, voter ID, illegal immigration, health care reform and other progressive issues, progressives are sometimes all over the place as to where they stand, and the extent they are willing to fight for or even publicly support them. Is it a mistake to think that the problems are mostly about marketing and message or that those not having certain positions or that are moderates or swing voters should not be considered progressives or ignored.

No matter which side of the political or ideological spectrum you are on, or if you think politics is little more than great or not so great entertainment, the one thing for sure is that it will be interesting to watch how this plays out and who the ultimate winners and losers are – not so much the politicians, special interests, or consultants but, lest we forget the main objective here – the rest of the public.

August 14, 2012August 15, 2012

Progressives Help Providence Economy

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“Providence seems to be bucking the bad economy,” according to a recent editorial in the Providence Journal. The Projo bases this finding on the fact that June hotel occupancy in the Capital City was the highest its been since October of 2004.

“An important barometer of economic activity, hotel-occupancy rates, topped 80 percent in the capital city for the first time since 2004, a very encouraging bit of news,” according to the Journal.

And who does Rhode Island have to thank for this economic shot in the arm that was lauded by the anti-progressive Providence Journal editorial page and the business-friendly Providence Business News: progressives, of course!

The big draw to Providence in June, of course, was none other than Netroots Nation, the annual conference of progressive activists and journalists that descended on the city early in the month and the event brought thousands from across the nation right to downtown Providence for a weekend that not only packed the hotels but also the bars, restaurants and other downtown amenities.

“Netroots Nation certainly played a role in Providence having its highest hotel occupancy since 2004 but its economic impact is only part of its importance,” said Martha Sheridan, president and CEO of the Providence Warwick Convention and Visitors Bureau. “In addition to boosting the local economy, it shined a national media spotlight on Providence and gave the city a prominent role in the political discourse that was taking place.”

I know many of the Netroots attendees were just as happy with Providence as the city was to have them here spending their money, so maybe we should make this a bigger part of the solution to Rhode Island’s economic woes: invite progressive people here to spend their money. Really, it’ll work. Progressives love Providence. The mix of old and new architecture, its hip restaurant and nightlife scene and all the other great things going on in and around the city make for the perfect progressive playground.

In fact, maybe we’ve been going about this economic development thing entirely wrong … maybe instead of cow towing to those who want the state to slash taxes, we should start catering more to those who know the value of the public sector and all the good it grants on society.

Special thanks to Providence Mayor Angel Taveras and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who worked hard to bring Netroots to Providence. If not for their efforts, not only would I probably not have gone but, more importantly, the city wouldn’t have got this nice summertime economic boost.

June 26, 2012June 26, 2012

Solidarity, For Now? The Many Costs of Labor’s Decline

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When I moved to RI in 2003 from Washington, I was rather stunned to hear many of my liberal friends repeat the media meme that organized labor was too powerful in the Ocean State [note: I will use the term ‘liberal’ rather than ‘progressive,’ because in my experience people on the left my age and younger tend to substitute the latter for the former, without knowing the meaning of either].

My surprise stemmed from two sources: the extent to which liberals of my generation (I’m 45) underestimate the vital importance of unions for the enactment and preservation of liberal measures and attitudes, and the extent to which these same liberals had completely misread the situation in their own state.

On the latter, read Scott McKay’s brilliant take-down of the ‘union rules RI’ meme on NPR. As he notes, would the tax equity bill have gone down to defeat if unions truly ruled the roost?

Just under 18% of Rhode Islanders are represented by labor unions; it was 26% in 1964, and 22.5% in 1984. In other words, the trend is the same here as everywhere: downward.

The national trend, since the passage of Taft-Hartley in 1947:

The breakdown by state, since 1964:

There are many reasons for this decline. Economic change, the shift of American industry and population to the South and Southwest, the restrictive nature of our labor laws, McCarthyism and red-baiting, poor and sometimes corrupt union leadership. Unions were also victims of their own success; by helping to create the post-war middle class, many of their white constituents (and their children) decamped for the suburbs, and resisted seeing the struggles of the black (and eventually, Latino) working class they left behind as similar to their own, rather than a threat. In other words, the American original sin of race infected — had long infected — even its most transformational social movements and institutions. Perhaps our individualistic and materialistic culture has also become indifferent — even hostile — to the sensibility of solidarity, upon which the labor movement depends.

All of these things have mattered, but the most important cause of labor’s decline, ultimately, has been the political success of corporate resistance, particularly since the early 1970s (on this, read Elizabeth Fones-Wolf and Jefferson Cowie, as well as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson). Many of my peers (and my students) seem to assume that unions are a thing of the past, and that the victories they won — like the end of slavery and the enfranchisement of women — are now written in stone, and we can move on. In other words, progress gave rise to unions, and then tossed them on the scrap heap of history (with the American Anti-Slavery Society, The Women’s Party, the NAACP, and affirmative action) when they had fulfilled their role. Events in Wisconsin (and, of course, the Occupy movement) may have finally awoken at least some of these folks to the possibility that if the ship of history has moved in this direction, it may be because someone is steering it there.

As a labor historian and former organizer, I also had a hard time getting my head around the idea that unions could actually be too powerful — both because I can’t imagine that being the case anywhere in 21st America, and because I can’t imagine that being a negative thing, on balance. I would love to have to grapple with that problem, here and nationally.

Walter Reuther, vampire-killer…or life raft?

So why does the decline of labor matter, in Rhode Island and nationally?

Well for one, it is hard not to be struck by the apparent correlation between the decline of union power, and the emergence of increasing inequality, economic insecurity, and wage stagnation for large portions of our population since the early 1970s. From 1940 until the early 70s, the economic benefits of the productivity of the American economy were widely shared, leading to what economists have called ‘the Great Convergence’: a shrinking of income inequality, combined with a strong and steady increase in the standard of living for the vast majority of the population.

But since then?

So where did all that money go? Did it go to those wealth-sucking and budget-busting public employees that Scott Walker keeps going on about? Did those tax-and-spend liberals devour all of it, so they could rain manna on their special interest constituencies?

Um, no.

Is it any wonder why vampire stories seem to have captured the cultural zeitgeist?

Here is a longer view, depicting both the Great Convergence (during which union density rose from below 10% to over 40%) and the Great Divergence. Note that the line on the right has moved further upward since 2007, to the highest point it has ever reached:

The inability of American workers to capture their fair share of the productivity of the economy since the early 1970s has very little to do with human capital. Why had they been able to capture it previously? Why have they struggled to do so since?

We are all grown-ups here; let us not be so naive as to think that the price of labor is actually and solely determined by supply and demand, and that if a worker ‘accepts’ a job at a particular wage, its because that’s the one she wanted/needed, or because its the only one the employer could afford to pay. I don’t live inside an economic model. And if I did, it surely wouldn’t be this one.

The Great Convergence was about power. And the Great Divergence is, too. American capitalists didn’t suddenly lose their moral bearings, and their interest in the rest of us (and, perhaps, their own souls — eye of the needle, and all that). Corporations seek profits. That’s what they are supposed to do. Unless you are a Marxist, that’s what you want them to do. They are good at it, and in the ugly process of pursuing their prey, they often do things that benefit others. But that isn’t the goal. Remember Aaron Feuerstein, the owner of Malden Mills in Lawrence MA? When his factory burned down in the early 90s, Feuerstein kept his entire workforce on the payroll until the mill had been rebuilt and reopened. An act of tzedakah, surely; but if Malden Mills had been publicly owned, his shareholders could have sued him — and won. People on the left just exhaust themselves trying to shame corporations into doing the right thing, and think that they are somehow offering a radical critique of our political economy by vilifying (and anthropomorphizing) corporations. But they aren’t. The only way to make our economic system compatible with the public good (and public goods) is to establish and maintain what John Kenneth Galbraith once called countervailing powers — institutions, in other words. Government, and unions, in other words. Without a strong regulatory state, a redistributive tax system that maintains social mobility, and real representation for workers, there is nothing standing between the sheep and the shears.

If we stick with the vampire analogy above, unions are like garlic. They don’t kill the vampires; they can still do their thing, and live for ever. But the garlic does keep them in their place, scares them a little, and prevents them from tearing our throats out. Nowadays, Republicans and many Democrats seem to assume that the vampires can do the cost-benefit analysis, and will take only what they need. And garlic is too expensive anyhow.

How is that working out?

Of course, this analogy has its flaws. Why not just kill all the vampires? Or perhaps those who are just too big to feed? Or maybe we can tax the vampires, to pay for the garlic?

Let’s try the rising tide analogy instead.

The top 1% making out like bandits might not matter to most of us, as long as the rising tide is lifting our boats too. I actually think it does matter, because inequality even within prosperous societies (indeed, especially within them) tends to have all sorts of negative effects on individual and social well-being. There is even some evidence that inequality hinders economic growth. But most Americans have never begrudged the rich their wealth. Plenty of folks got rich during the Great Convergence, and passed it on to their children. We don’t reshuffle the deck with each generation, after all. But the game never seemed rigged, at least to white Americans. They had unions, and their power at the bargaining table, and within the Democratic Party, ensuring wage growth tied to profits and productivity, job security, access to health care, and a humane retirement. Nationally, progressive taxation paid for both a safety net and a massive expansion in the infrastructure of public education (K-12, and higher education), providing opportunity for the next generation. There was, or at least appeared to be, social mobility.

The problem since the 1970s, of course, is that the rising tide has increasingly just left most of us wet. You can assume that the little green line on the right, below, dips down after 2008. Indeed, average hourly earnings were lower at the end of the first decade of the 21st century than they were at the beginning — and were lower than in 1972:

And when we put it all together, we get this:

Is the decline of organized labor responsible for all of this inequality? Of course not. Most scholars attribute between 20% and 30% of it to declining unionization — but those estimates are only based on the direct role of unions in labor markets, and thus underestimate the impact.

There is little doubt that weakened power for workers has affected wages, benefits and working conditions across large sectors of the economy, and for families and communities with no affiliation with (or affinity for) labor unions. Unions in a given industry have always raised the compensation levels for even non-union workers in the same industry. If that’s true, the reverse is also true. If employers no longer have to fear union campaigns (or the enforcement of already-weak labor laws), they can structure their workplaces with impunity. They have done so. Today, the middle class increasingly experiences the same sort of economic and job insecurity that the working class did a generation ago.

Another equally critical consequence of organized labor’s deterioration has been the decline in its political power, and its agenda- and narrative-shaping capabilities. The diminishing presence of labor’s perspective as well as its power no doubt contributed to the “policy drift” of which Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have written. The problem, they argue, isn’t simply that government at all levels took steps that exacerbated inequalities and shifted risks onto working people, their families and their communities. That did happen, and the effects have been catastrophic. But these sins of commission were compounded by sins of omission too: Congressional and regulatory actions that might have been taken to shore up and even boost living standards and opportunities were not taken. Power can make things happen. Power can also prevent things from happening. Mainstream American political discourse was almost completely lacking in any kind of meaningful and widely heard critique of the neo-liberal agenda, until very recently. The DLC-dominated Democratic Party has been a vehicle for that agenda, not a critic of it.

Its the solidarity, stupid

People across the political spectrum are frustrated by the lack of any kind of countervailing power to that of capital (particularly financial capital). We don’t have a socialist or social democratic party in the US, unlike much of the rest of the developed world. And contrary to Tea Party fantasy, we don’t have a socialist president, either; after all, he swung and missed at the biggest eephus pitch since FDR’s first term, when he unwisely declined to use the federal government’s post-crisis leverage and break up the biggest banks.

As a result of this narrow political spectrum, there is very little pressure from inside our political system to create and maintain a broad distribution of the material conditions necessary for effective freedom in the modern world. When our uniquely American version of this countervailing power did exist — from roughly 1936 to 1972 — inequality shrank, social mobility increased, public goods were funded and widely distributed, the economy grew, productivity increased, and the nation finally grappled (however inadequately) with the legacy of slavery. And that countervailing power existed because the Democratic Party (outside the South) acknowledged the importance of seeding and nurturing the institutional roots of that power: unions. Indeed, some in the GOP even acknowledged this, though those folks are long gone now.

Conservatives today, ironically, offer only more insecurity. That is what Scott Walker is offering in Wisconsin, and what Paul Ryan (and Mitt Romney) are offering nationally. I say that this ‘offering’ is ironic, because there is very little that is conservative about it. Following Edmund Burke, conservatives have generally seen society as an inheritance that we receive, are responsible for, and have obligations to, and that if human beings seek to sharply change or redirect that society, they invite unintended and destructive consequences. In other words, what is and has gone before is by and large better than anything human beings might create in its place. Liberals, like John Stuart Mill, tend to see the societies and institutions into which we are born as human constructs, which can be unmade or remade in the light of reason. In this sense, American conservatism isn’t conservative at all, unless one wants to argue that all it is, in the end, is an ideological defense of privilege. Certainly its historical origins are in the defense of privilege, and the argument that inequalities are in some sense ‘natural’ or divinely ordained. After all, if today’s social inequalities were handed down by 1) God; 2) human nature; 3) the market), who are we to challenge or change them?

In another sense, as Mark Lilla has argued, we are all liberals in America today: “We take it for granted that we are born free, that we constitute society, it doesn’t constitute us and that together we legitimately govern ourselves.” Conservatives, in other words, have largely accepted the liberal argument for democracy that emerged out of the French Revolution — that the preservation of individual freedom requires political inclusion on an equal basis. For many American conservatives, particularly in the South, this is a very recent conversion; and as the state-level movement for voter ID laws makes clear, there is still a great deal of backsliding on the issue. The incarceration state that both liberals and conservatives have constructed in the last few decades has also disenfranchised millions of people, in most cases permanently. And because many conservatives are so prone to accept the legitimacy of ascriptive forms of solidarity, immigration tests their fealty to full popular sovereignty. To put it bluntly, the conservative commitment to full political equality is weak at best, and weaker still when the issue is race or national identity (or when vote suppression has partisan benefits).

But, for all that liberals and conservatives do have in common (with conservatives as reluctant junior partners in the larger project), they do still differ in their understanding of power, and of freedom. I was once a conservative; after all, I worked on behalf of William Buckley’s Young Americans for Freedom at the 1984 GOP convention. I was a conservative, because I thought freedom was the greatest American virtue, and that Communism and big government were the greatest threats to it. I still think freedom is the greatest American virtue, but now I have a more nuanced (and, i think, more accurate) understanding of its material and institutional preconditions in the modern world. Both liberals and conservatives are willing to tolerate various forms of inequality, and both generally adhere (at least in theory) to the belief that basic facial equality in law and politics cannot be compromised. But liberals also worry that social inequalities (income, gender, race, and increasingly sexual orientation), if left to fester and expand, will undermine political equality (and economic growth). Conservatives tend to see these social inequalities as the consequence of nature, culture, morality and effort — and even when they don’t, they worry that any attempt by government to ameliorate them will do more harm than good. My worries are now liberal worries, though what I seek to protect hasn’t changed since my YAF days.

I’m not sure I want to go so far as to say that liberals are now the true conservatives, though it seems that way at the moment. American liberalism is still a bit too attached to an ontological individualism for that to be true. It still holds too much to the idea that society “doesn’t constitute us,” which is surely incorrect, and leads Americans to a certain kind of blindness about morally unjustifiable inequalities (particularly with regard to race).

As I noted above, we do not restart the game with each generation. I think white Americans of modest privilege are particularly blind to this. When I ask white students in my classes on the history of race relations to tell me about how their whiteness has affected their lives, they stare vacantly into the middle distance for a brief moment, and then try to claim some sort of victimhood (‘the black students won’t let me sit with them!’), instead of trying to unpack their own privilege. Many white Americans today (left and right) cling so desperately to the idea that they have created all that they are and have, that when the persistence of racial inequality is pointed out to them, they condemn the messenger for racial divisiveness. Read this recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, for example, which condemns Attorney General Eric Holder for pointing out that voter ID laws will have a racially disproportionate impact, and that in some places, that impact may have been intentional (Really?). Of course, Americans with even more privilege often react the same way when economic inequality is pointed out to them. The wages of whiteness do still pay, but not nearly as well as stock options, bank bonuses and trust funds do. Ignorance of the former breeds ignorance of the latter, even among liberals, until the idea that society ‘doesn’t constitute us’ is re-examined. As Thomas Geoghegan has argued, post-60s liberals and Reagan conservatives — and even the left, such as it is — seem to share the same Emersonian individualistic conceits. They have the sensibility of scabs.

But as we move toward a more Green Liberalism (is that what we should call it?), I think the traditional liberal/conservative lines will blur. The potential common ground will ultimately rest upon a solidaristic recognition of contingency, and human interdependence. This recognition is, I think, a fundamentally conservative one. And I’m OK with that. What is sustainability, after all, if not a fundamentally conservative concept? There is, of course, an available and very powerful conservative critique of the excesses of capitalism (and capitalists), but it has no purchase anywhere on the American right anymore, theologically or otherwise. Solidarity for the American right seems to be entirely ascriptive nowadays, as the insecure white middle and working classes run to the barricades to defend the very economic ideologies which are stressing their families, weakening their communities, bankrupting their country, and poisoning their trust in political and social institutions. The virtue of solidarity for the left was always learned in and articulated by the labor movement (and, to an extent, the church and synagogue). Where is it supposed to come from now?

A revived labor movement, that’s where. My lefty friends, the path to sustainability starts with solidarity. And solidarity starts by once again empowering Americans to collectively represent themselves at their work places. Geoghegan wrote about this two decades ago, and Richard Kahlenberg has taken up the cudgel more recently: the right to join a union is a basic civil right, and should be treated as such.

Geoghegan:

“I can think of nothing, no law, no civil rights act, that would radicalize this country more, democratize it more, and also revive the Democratic Party, than to make this one tiny change in the law: to let people join unions if they like, freely and without coercion, without threat of being fired, just as people are permitted to do in Europe and Canada.”

Yes.

Now, of course, we must play defense (Wisconsin). The evisceration of collective bargaining rights is not only a violation of a basic and internationally recognized human right (see Article 23 of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights). It also threatens to destroy — perhaps permanently — the delicate balance between capitalism and democracy that Americans have struggled to establish since the Civil War. Contrary to the arguments of Scott Walker and others, the winner will not be the economy, or government budgets. The winner won’t even be capitalism, which will ultimately be undermined and delegitimized by the present trend, much as it was during the Great Depression. The lesson of the economic and political history of the developed world since World War II, quite simply, is that without some sort of institutionalized mechanism of countervailing power to that of capital, the liberal democratic mixed economy that has lifted so much of the human race out of perpetual misery will be in mortal danger.

‘Interdependence’ has become a truism these days, trumpeted equally loudly by those who believe that economic globalization will save the world, and those who believe it will make it uninhabitable. But there is little doubt that both experience and empiricism tell us that for each to rise, we must in some ways converge. As the epidemiological studies of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have shown, the more unequal a society is, the less healthy and happy it is for everyone in it. Inequality affects our health, our communities, our susceptibility to violence, our sense of social belonging and political efficacy, and the well being of our children. Studies of early childhood and cognitive development have provided empirical proof for many of philosopher John Rawls’ arguments about the extent to which even seemingly ‘innate’ inequalities of talent and effort are constructed by and derived from circumstances outside of us.

We are, in other words, constitutive of one another to a degree that most Americans might find unnerving to acknowledge. More broadly, there is so much about us that is situational, contextual, and contingent — the ethos of possessive individualism which has so dominated the American mind for much of our history is, quite simply, an unsustainable conceit that we can no longer afford. It is not rooted in ‘human nature.’ For most of our (pre)history, cooperation has been far more functional socially and individually than competition has been. That remains the case.

Individualism, as the old union saying goes, is for scabs.

The essential virtue of the 21st century, I believe, is empathy — which I take to mean, the implicit recognition of interdependence. The civic manifestation of empathy is solidarity. And solidarity can take many forms. It can be a kind of ‘ascriptive solidarity,’ defensively assembled along the socially constructed lines of race, language, and faith. There is a long history of this in our country — what Gary Gerstle once called ‘racial nationalism’ — and it persists strongly in the present. But solidarity can also be rooted in an inclusive acknowledgement of human interdependence. Virtually everything that liberals want to see in the world — indeed, what many conservatives want to see too — ultimately returns to the need for solidarity. If that solidarity is to be of the inclusive rather than the ascriptive kind, to be blunt, we need unions. As Geoghegan argued in his classic book “Which Side Are You On,” it was this idea of solidarity that always made unions so oppositional in the US, even when the 60s New Left naively dismissed them as part of the Establishment. When we lose the labor movement, we endanger that sense of social solidarity, upon which so much of what works in our way of life depends. The virtue of empathy, perhaps, requires good people — individuals making the choice to be empathetic. Solidarity, however, requires institutions within and through which people can practice that virtue. As Aristotle argued, in order to be a virtuous (empathetic) person, one must do empathetic acts. But as I’ve argued above (and as Rawls argued in Theory of Justice), we need the institutional framework of our society to be just, if this is to happen. The most important institution for this is liberal democratic government itself. But as long as we choose to pair that institution with an economic system organized around markets and commodities, which inherently twists, dissolves and melts empathy and solidarity into atomized air, and which treats every American worker as ‘at will’ (you can be fired for virtually any reason at all, or no reason), unions will be necessary.

In the summer of 1934, after a wave of union organizing and localized general strikes had swept the country, President Franklin Roosevelt took a trip to Madison, Wisconsin. While there, he called for a politics of solidarity that “recognizes that man is indeed his brother’s keeper, insists that the laborer is worthy of his hire, [and] demands that justice shall rule the mighty as well as the weak.”

77 years later, a protestor held up a sign in that same city: “SCREW US, WE MULTIPLY.”

So there, Scott Walker.

June 11, 2012June 11, 2012

Linc Chafee Was MIA at Netroots Conference

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Oh man wasn’t Netroots Nation AWESOME? So EPIC! And what a great job our elected officials did, coming out to meet and greet all those folks in attendance! Not just at the conference itself, but also at the many fundraisers and after parties and happy hours, going all the way back to Wednesday.

Let me tell you, I sure was star struck. I ran into Senator Whitehouse on at least five separate occasions. Mayor Taveras was also making the rounds. I definitely got to say “hi, neighbor!” to Congressman Cicilline a few times, and I even got face time with Representative Langevin. So cool!

Even Senator Reed made an appearance.

But where, oh where, was Governor Lincoln Chafee?

Of course, I realize that he is incredibly busy. With crazy schedules and all kinds of important meetings, I get that. And maybe the fact that three out of the four politicians mentioned above are up for re-election this year has something to with their attendance.

I mean, come on, Senator Reed doesn’t have to worry about anyone voting for him until 2014.

Then again, neither does Angel Taveras—yet I found myself shaking his hand a few times: at Drinking Liberally’s happy hour on Wednesday night, at the “Welcome to Providence” block party on Friday, and randomly outside the convention center one afternoon.

But hey, that makes sense, right? Even if he’s not up for re-election, he’s the mayor of a city hosting a convention of a couple thousand progressives from all over America who are estimated to drop some $6 million into the local economy. You gotta get out for that, right? It’s part of being a good host, and shaking hands with the people is what mayors do.

The mayor of my hometown of Warwick, back when I was growing up, he definitely knew that. Of course he’s not a mayor anymore, now he’s the Governor….

….of a state that just hosted a convention of a couple thousand progressives from all over the country who are estimated to have dropped some $6 million into our local economy.

I’m sure he was around.

Sorry I missed you, Linc!

June 11, 2012June 12, 2012

Netroots Nation: A Review

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Preparing for my Netroots panel discussion on revitalizing local political blogs, I was corrected by moderator Andrew Villeneuve of the Northwest Progressive Institute when I introduced myself as having come to the blogosphere from the mainstream media.

“You mean the traditional media,” he interrupted. “We are the mainstream media.”

While it’s a debatable claim, it was certainly one of the underlining theme of Netroots Nation, the annual meeting of the progressive movement that took over Providence for the past few days. The idea is that lefty activists and journalists already enjoy a sizable slice of the media market, as well as a mandate from the American people, and they can be used to overcome the overwhelming advantage government-shrinking, big monied interests have in the political process.

“The big corporations want to take over social security, medicare, even our elections. The Republicans want to hep them, and they are hoping that with enough spin and propaganda they can get away with it,” Rhode Island’s own Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said in a keynote address on the opening night.

“But you,” he continued, “the online opinion makers who make Netroots Nation so great – with your blogs and your email lists and your Facebook pages and your tweets and and your videos – you can fight back against this tide of money, of spin, of extremism. You can help make sure that this remains our great democracy of, by and for the people.”

Sheldon, as he is known to his legions of fans on the far left, is a star in the Netroots community, as he is to liberal Rhode Islanders. He’s not only an up-and-comer in the Senate, he’s also one of the most solidly progressive politicians in Washington D.C. In a subsequent speech on Saturday he dubbed Roger Williams, Rhode Island’s founder who came here seeking religious liberty, the nation’s first progressive.

He was very accessible throughout the event, and even through an open-bar party with Providence Mayor Angel Taveras. Netroots officials and attendees were impressed by the Ocean State’s hospitality and downtown’s amenities. It was one of the many open bar parties in downtown Providence during Netroots.

But the real action happens during the day, when bloggers, congressional staffers and community activists hustled around the Convention Center, heading off to the many different panel discussions. Everything from building a better online community and using new media tools, to progressive messaging, to specific public policy discussions – income inequality, tax fairness, corporate greed, collective bargaining and public education were all popular and insightful topics.

Highlights included powerful speeches from progressive rock star Elizabeth Warren, who is of course running for the US Senate in Massachusetts, and up-and-coming progressive rock star Darcy Burner, who is running to represent Washington state in the House.

“This is a war we can win,” Burner told an inspired lunchtime crowd on Friday.

Both Burner and Warren, in their keynote titled ‘The War on (and for) Women” talked about how the female vote will prove to be among the most critical this November. So did state Rep. Teresa Tanzi, a staunch progressive from Wakefield, who gave a keynote address on the same stage as did Whitehouse, Warren and Burner – not to mention Paul Krugman, Van Jones, Mayor Angel Taveras and Congressman David Cicilline.

Gov. Linc Chafee was noticeably absent and Congressman Jim Langevin was noticeably present. Joy Fox, Gina Raimondo’s communications director, was seen at a few panels and Anthony Gemma had staffers at several. Gemma rode the progressive party circuit hard throughout the weekend.

“You need to join me,” said Tanzi, imploring more people to run for office, though I don’t imagine she was talking to Anthony Gemma per say. She predicted 2012 will be the year of the progressive woman. “Take the next step, run for office. Yes, you. The one with the family, the job, the crushing load of schoolwork, the fuller than full plate. You! Anything less than full participation will not be enough.”

“I need you standing beside me when the doors close to the public, and the negotiations begin,” she said. “I need you sitting beside me, after the debate ends, the votes are taken and a proposal becomes law. I need your voice to be the voice of all the women, families and children who are voiceless and invisible.”

Tanzi proved why she needs progressive allies in the State House on Thursday, just two nights earlier. When Capitol Police removed Occupy Providence activists from the gallery for mic checking on tax equity, Tanzi was alone in sticking up for the protesters’ rights.

Willingly or not, Netroots may have reinvigorated Occupy Providence. Not only did they sleep out on the sidewalk next to the Providence Journal building all weekend, but five activists were also detained in the Providence Place Mall. They weren’t arrested, but they were handcuffed and trespassed from the shopping center for one year. One activist went to hospital because he sustained what he called a sprained shoulder.

Netroots certainly didn’t reinvigorate the progressive base for President Obama – who will need us if he is to prevail against the right, and its near monopoly of money in politics.

In past years, the White House has sent a representative to speak at Netroots … this year, instead, Obama made a statement and played a short video, on the jumbotron screen. On Twitter, it was debated whether the president’s remarks were “warmly” received or “politely” received by the crowd of progressives who generally feel let down by the president. I’d have to say warmly, at best. Political staffers buzzed with rumors of Vice President Joe Biden making an appearance, but in the end it didn’t materialize.

Van Jones, whom the right wing misinformation machine pressured out of his job at the White House, didn’t so much defend his former employer. Instead he made the case that the left’s apathy could be the greatest asset of the right in the 2012 election.

“We like this president but we’re not in love with him like we used to be,” he said in the closing comments of the conference. “We feel that if all we do is support the president or support the Democrats that won’t do what we want. Then we look at the Tea Party. And for those of us who are no longer comparing Obama to the almighty but instead to the alternative, that don’t look too good either. The last election was a hope election. This one should be a fear election.”

He added, “We have to be as sophisticated as the machine we are fighting, we have to be as sophisticated as the system we are trying to change. We have to do two things that are hard, so we have to be twice as committed as we were in 2008. We have to both re-elected the president and re-energize the movement to hold the president accountable to progressive values.”

There were great Rhode Island political tales told as well – some good and some bad. In a particularly depressing panel called “When Democrats Aren’t Democrats: The Story of Rhode Island,” local progressive activists told their stories about how Rhode Island’s legislative record undermines its reputation as a liberal bastion.

Kate Brock, of Ocean State Action, talked about how she couldn’t win even a slight tax increase this legislative session. Steve Brown of the ACLU, told the now-infamous story of Rhode Island’s voter id law. Ray Sullivan, of Marriage Equality, admitted frustration at not being able to pass a same sex marriage law in a state with a supportive governor and a gay Speaker of the House. Paula Hodges, of Planned Parenthood, said she is often on the defensive in heavily Catholic Rhode Island.

It was interesting, I thought, that moderator Pat Crowley of the NEA-RI, didn’t speak more about the pension cuts that passed that legislative session, but the local delegation was buzzing after Ted Nesi put otherwise progressive state Rep. from Providence Chris Blazejewski on the spot about his vote to slash retiree benefits. Here’s hoping Ted will either post on this, or perhaps share Blazejewski’s response in the comments or by email.

But one of the most uplifting moments of the four-day event was the panel titled “Working Rhode Island: How We Built a Progressive Movement in Rhode Island” was about how all facets of the progressive movement – from organized labor to marriage equality – learned to band together to battle back against the pervasive conservative idealogy now ingrained into our political narrative. AFL-CIO President Goerge Nee said former Gov. Don Carcieri disgraceful treatment of the left during his tenure makes him one of the great organizers in Rhode Island history.

For obvious reasons, my highlight of the three-day, three-long-night event was the panel I sat on about revitalizing state and local blogs. We talked about how to make progressive online journalism sustainable – what tends to happen, the other panelists and attendees said, is not unlike the history of RI Future in that a new editor will put some hard work into it for a while but then suffer from a lack of operating capital and need to focus on more profitable endeavors.

Local progressive blogs will become increasingly important as right-wing think tanks (stink tanks, Netrooters tended to call them, teasingly) begin to fund blogs with conservative biases.

The outcome of our panel: we are going to organize a national network of local progressive blogs and websites … hopefully we can learn some stuff from one another, share story ideas and maybe even some resources. The idea is to keep the spirit and purpose of Netroots alive throughout the year – work together to see if we can help each other make the change we should all want to see in the world.

June 11, 2012June 11, 2012

Iran: the Progressive War?

Iran 2012: Iraq 2003 All Over Again? presented the neoliberal case for the imposition of economic sanctions on Iran. The panel was moderated by Karen Finney and consisted of Democratic strategist Bob Creamer, Alireza Nader from the Rand Corporation, National Security Network executive director Heather Hurlburt, and Rhode Island’s own Senator Jack Reed. Reed was quick to point out (to some applause) his 2003 vote against the authorization of force in Iraq. But still it’s no surprise I suppose to see him defending the administration’s plan for projection of U.S. power via sanctions on Iran, a strategy he described as a “peaceful” alternative to outright military force. What was odd for me was that the discussion focused entirely on justifying economic sanctions on Iran without a single panelist to the left of the empire lite position of the Obama administration.

Essentially panelists sought to convince progressives that although sanctions in Iraq led eventually to the disastrous invasion and occupation, this time it will be different. War weariness, a faltering domestic economy, a changed Middle East, and the “one extraordinary difference, unilateralism,” as Senator Reed put it, make it different than 2003. Certainly there are some differences, but I couldn’t help but think the panel should have asked, Iraq 1990 All Over Again? As the Times put it in 2003:

For many people, the sanctions on Iraq were one of the decade’s great crimes, as appalling as Bosnia or Rwanda. Anger at the United States and Britain, the two principal architects of the policy, often ran white hot. Denis J. Halliday, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Iraq for part of the sanctions era, expressed a widely held belief when he said in 1998: ”We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that.” Even today, Clinton-era American officials ranging from Madeleine K. Albright, the former secretary of state, and James P. Rubin, State Department spokesman under Albright, to Nancy E. Soderberg, then with the National Security Council, speak with anger and bitterness over the fervor of the anti-sanctions camp. As Soderberg put it to me, ”I could not give a speech anywhere in the U.S. without someone getting up and accusing me of being responsible for the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children.”

I asked exactly that question when given the chance. I traveled a bit in the Middle East in the 90s and was approached by an Iraqi who begged me to tell people back home the effect the sanctions were having on Iraqi civilians. “You’re killing the children and old people,” he said with the hope that if Americans only knew we’d stop. That’s a difference now too. Americans can no longer claim to be unsure or blissfully ignorant. We now know the effect these sanctions will have on the civilian population.

As Madeline Albright said it, “this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.” Heather Hurlburt, a speechwriter for Albright, similarly defended the calculus of the collective punishment of civilians as preferable to war. But these rationalizations conveniently omit the effect the sanctions and the Clinton administration’s eventual signing of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 had in laying the groundwork for the Bush invasion. By 2003 the die was cast, and progressives could do little to stop it. The question now, will we do it all over again? Just don’t say you couldn’t have known.

June 11, 2012June 11, 2012

NN Panel: No Such Thing as Progressive Security Policy

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Hastings, Gharib, Lord, Perriello — Left to Right: Michael Hastings, Ali Gharib, Dr. Kristin Lord, Tom Perriello

That’s my takeaway from the Netroots Nation panel Intervention, Isolation, and the Future of Progressive Security Policy (watch the full panel in that link), which was moderated by Adam Weinstein of Mother Jones; and featured Tom Perriello (fmr. U.S. Representative for VA-5 and now president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund), Dr. Kristin Lord (here on her own behalf, but from the Center for a New American Security), Ali Gharib (of ThinkProgress), and Michael Hastings (a reporter for BuzzFeed and contributing editor for Rolling Stone whose coverage of Afghanistan forced the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal). Like the Occupy Our Homes panel, this was a last-minute decision

Mr. Weinstein opened up with a question about what a progressive foreign policy looks like if President Obama wins a second term. To which nearly all the panelists argued that the President had not pursued a foreign policy based on progressive grounds but on realist grounds. However, they mainly argued for intervention on humanitarian grounds. At which point Mr. Hastings was given a chance to speak, and said: “I didn’t know there was a progressive security policy.” He made the point that to be included in the national security conversation, you have to be either a neocon or a liberal hawk, and folks like Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich see their views sidelined by establishment thinking.

There was quite a lot of talk about “humane intervention”. When do we do it, when don’t we. Mr. Gharib pointed out that the Libyan intervention, and the pursuit of such wars via air strike avoid the responsibility for post-war order. Dr. Lord thought that the Libyan intervention had turned out to be the right call, though she was opposed at the time. Mr. Hastings said that the problem with “humane intervention” is that it’s only deployed when the principles align with strategic interests; witness the reluctance with Syria versus the active response against Libya. Mr. Perriello said that ultimately a large military interest will always trump a humanitarian interest.

The problem to me with the “humane intervention” argument is that it essentially ignores the views of the American people: 76% of Americans would cut the national defense budget. It’s pretty clear that Americans are consistently tired of focusing on military intervention. And yet, even as we have claimed that our military is advancing democracy around the world, our own government has been hesitant to advance democracy through other means: the Arab Spring caught us almost completely by surprise. I can think of no statement about Tunisia. I do remember the pathetic response to crackdown on the Egyptian Revolution by Hosni Mubarak. Instead of threatening to remove military support, the United States called for cellphone and internet service to be turned back on. Instead of saying we supported democracy, we said we supported “stability.”

Progressives have been incredibly acquiescent to the whims of a president who has a kill list, has assassinated American citizens while expanding the definition of “militant” to include anyone who happens to be shot, expanded a secret drone war, and who threw more troops into Afghanistan with no real purpose. When Mr. Hastings says he wasn’t aware there was a progressive security policy, it’s not because he hasn’t looked hard enough. It’s because when you scratch the surface, there’s nothing there.

June 10, 2012June 10, 2012

How Sports Shapes Our Politics and Why it Matters

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Still think sports and politics exist only in exclusive hemispheres?

On Thursday, June 7, the Smith Street entrance to the Rhode Island Statehouse was dominated by a two-story Green Monster-green banner congratulating the Boston Red Sox on the 100^th anniversary of Fenway Park.

Inside, state officials were struggling to deal with the aftermath of that day’s bankruptcy filing of 38 Studios, the video game company that Curt Schilling, whose hero status in New England seemed enshrined in granite after pitching the Red Sox to one big victory after another en route to two world championships, brought to Providence…thanks to a $75 million loan guarantee offered in 2010 by the state Economic Development Corporation and supported by the vast majority of state officials at the time.

Would an entrepreneur who had not helped end the Red Sox’ 86-year world championship drought have been offered such a deal? Would an African-American athlete (other than perhaps Magic Johnson) have been the recipient of such largesse at R.I. taxpayers’ expense?

Sports and politics do bleed, clash, and intersect not only on the large stages of society, but also on smaller ones such as the local pro and college teams you follow, and even youth sports, as a quartet of journalists and activists made clear at Saturday’s Netroots Nation 12 forum “How Sports Shapes Our Politics and Why it Matters,” NN’s first sports-related panel

While the sports world may sometimes seem to be another arm of establishment power (athletes and coaches preaching God, country and family, Schilling supporting conservative causes and NBA legend/Nike pitchman Michael Jordan’s famous reason for steering clear of politics, “Republicans buy sneakers, too”), there is something else bubbling beneath the surface, said Dave Zirin, Sirius XM host, author and contributor to ESPN’s “Outside the Lines,” who boasts of being once called “state-run media scum” by Rush Limbaugh.

The sports world has given birth to radicals in the past, he said, most notably Muhammad Ali, whose resistance to the draft made him an international celebrity well beyond that usually accorded a world heavyweight champion. While many athletic superstars have arrived since, notably Jordan, Tiger Woods and LeBron James, none have pursued influence beyond world championships and multimillion-dollar endorsement deals.

“It says something about how successful the people who run sports have been at disassociating sports from radical politics,” Zirin said.

Which is not to say progressive politics and pro sports don’t co-exist. This year, he said, the NBA has seen players respond to the Trayvon Martin murder (including Carmelo Anthony’s “I am Trayvon Martin” Facebook photo) and the Phoenix Suns’ protest of Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration crackdown by wearing their “Los Suns” jerseys for home games.

Then there is the “It Gets Better” campaign, born of the rash of suicides among LGBT teens, managed by Eden James, campaign director for Change.org, a website promoting online petitions that has become a go-to source for fans ranging from those wanting coaches fired to seeking apologies from players who have made sexist, homophobic or racist statements.

The series of videos designed to promote acceptance of the LGBT community began last year with a San Francisco Giants fan who wanted to see his team take the lead on the cause. With the support of 6,000 online signatures from Giants fans (and several mayoral candidates), the team produced a video with messages of support from several players and coaches.

“We asked members to start petitions to their own teams. It’s what we call a wildfire petition, taking a national issue to local targets,” James said.

Sam Maden, a 12-year-old Red Sox fan from Nashua, N.H., whose gay uncle Chris had recently died, saw the video and started a petition to the Red Sox to create one of their own, said James.

“The Red Sox weren’t originally interested in a video, but after Sam got national coverage, they realized it might be a PR issue. It became a tipping point,” said James, noting that a number of other teams have joined the Red Sox and Giants in producing “It Gets Better” videos (but the New York Yankees don’t have one yet).

Even though Title IX, which brought about the explosion of growth in girls’ and women’s sports, is celebrating its 40^th anniversary this year, gender equality, identification and sexuality issues in sports still haven’t gone away, said Diane Williams, a teacher and coach at Williston Northampton School in Massachusetts, a former high school and college athlete, and current member of the Pioneer Valley Roller Derby team.

“I’ve heard about young girls not playing sports because they feared being perceived as gay,” she said.

The “lesbian question” has long hovered over the promotion and marketing of the most successful women’s pro sports league in the country, the WNBA. For every lesbian player like Sheryl Swoopes who has come out, there are many whose sexual identity remains under speculation.

“The WNBA has worked to portray a particular identity for its athletes,” William said. “If you were gay, they’d say, ‘That’s great, but please don’t ruin it for us.’ ”

Dr. Eddie Moore Jr., director of diversity at Brooklyn Friends School, wrote his dissertation on a study of African-American football players who attended small colleges in theMidwest, who found many people whose encounters with their race came only via television. He said he was struck by the response of one player in particular: “They believe the myths and stereotypes about you.”

Displaying Forbes’ list of the top 10 most hated athletes (with only two whites, the NBA’s Kris Humphries and NASCAR’s Kurt Busch) and statistics that 97 percent of the nation’s newspaper sports editors are white (94 percent men), Moore said much of what readers and viewers learn about athletes “is told from a white male supremacist viewpoint.”

When athletes’ troubles make the media, he said, “The frame isn’t ‘white athlete,’ it’s ‘nigger.’ Is this frame possible influencing the way in which you do your work?

Sports talk radio is not always distinguishable in viewpoint from news talk radio, admitted Zirin: “It’s a wretched sewer designed to police athletes who speak out.”

But those who sometimes find sports talk shows like WEEI’s morning “Dennis & Callahan” indistinguishable from conservative talk radio perhaps shouldn’t push the next button so soon, Zirin advises.

“It’s one of the few areas where people of all political stripes tune in. It’s an interesting place to challenge ideas beyond the politically segregated world we live in.”

The forum was moderated by Charles Modiano, sports media critic and editor of POPSpot.com.

June 9, 2012June 10, 2012

NN12: Local Blog Panel Today with Yours Truly

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Want to know how to make your local progressive news website sustainable? Come to the panel I’ll be speaking at today at 3 pm called Revitalizing State and Local Blogging. I’ll be joined by moderator Andrew Villeneuve, of the Northwest Progressive Institute Phillip Martin of the Burnt Orange Report, Laura Packard and Angelica Rubio … and we’ll be talking about how to keep your blog up and running.

It will stream live here:

Watch live streaming video from fstvnewswire at livestream.com

Here’s Netroots description:

“Since the historic 2006 and 2008 election cycles, state and local blogospheres all around the country have been fragmenting and decaying to the detriment of the progressive movement. This panel will examine the challenges that surviving blogs face; discuss short-term projects that would help state and local bloggers strengthen their audience, reach and income through the rest of the 2012 cycle; and explore what can be done to sustain the Netroots community at the state and regional level long-term.”

Hope to see you there.

June 8, 2012June 8, 2012

Senator Whitehouse Addresses Netroots

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Rhode Island’s most progressive voice in Washington D.C., Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, was one of the opening speakers at Netroots Nation last night. Another was Providence Mayor Angel Taveras, one of the most progressive voices in-state. Here’s the video of Whitehouse’s speech … when we get some of Taveras, we will post that here too.

June 8, 2012

Progress Report: Budget Bill, 38 Studios, Netroots

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It’s hard to imagine a more news-packed day than yesterday for Rhode Island: 38 Studios filed for bankruptcy and is now being investigated by state and federal authorities, the House passed the state budget plan after a marathon session that ended just after 3:30 this morning and, oh yeah, thousands of progressive activists were downtown for Netroots Nation.

First the budget … as expected floor amendments were raised to add income tax increases to the richest Rhode Islanders and, also as expected, they failed. We were hoping leadership would have at least allowed for a floor debate on this important issue for Rhode Islanders, but to no avail.

At around midnight, Occupy Providence marched from the Convention Center to the State House to make its feelings known on the proposal. “We successfully mic checked the legislature on the Cimini tax bill and got thrown out,” one activist texted to me late last night. “We made quite a scene.” House Speaker Gordon Fox had the protesters removed for the Gallery.

For a complete recap on all the budget activity, check out Dave Pepin’s highly entertaining live blog of the session.

Meanwhile, while the state’s press corp was preparing to cover said budget proceedings, Curt Schilling and 38 Studios were filing for bankruptcy … one has to wonder if company officials planned the filing for such an otherwise already busy news cycle but more likely it was related to the state and federal investigation into the fiasco.

The Projo had a nice story on the opening day of Netroots in which it didn’t use scare quotes to diminish the term progressive.

Even more interesting though is that the Projo also runs a pretty fair editorial on the Wisconsin recall in which they laud the results, but add, “We say that while realizing that the ultimate aim of some anti-union folks is to leave corporations with untrammeled power. They would do this by severely limiting the rights of working people to band together to further their economic goals. They’d attack unions by, for example, imposing the sort of “right-to-work” laws that are common — not coincidentally — in the lowest-wage parts of America.” Must be Ed Achorn had the day off.

June 8, 2012June 8, 2012

Netroots Nation: Day One

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About 8:00 AM, I got my media credentials (thanks to Bob Plain) and I headed upstairs to the Convention Center Rotunda to hear Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead and friends discuss the news that day. Mainly it was focused on Scott Walker’s victory in the recall election. And mainly, it was sort of the smarminess that happens when like-minded people congregate in one area and talk about things. The other side becomes “insane” or some other insult. On the other hand, what was I expecting?

At 9:00 AM, I went to Data Driven Design for Progressive Organizations: 10 Engagement Metrics You Probably Aren’t Tracking. Hosted by Nikki Serapio, Manager of New Media for the organization Advocates for Youth, it was an unobjectionable training on what are some good metrics for organizing. As Mr. Serapio himself told us, the title is misleading in that anyone who tells you what the 10 most important metrics are for engagement on a website or via social media is deceiving you; either intentionally or unintentionally. While it wasn’t the most inspiring training I’ve ever been to, it also was informative. Definitely something that will help me in both my professional life. I feel more valuable as an employee for having attended.

At Lunch (not an actual Netroots Nation thing) word came in about 38 Studios. While I’d been playing reporter over at the convention center, real journalists will be covering a marathon session at the State House. Plenty of advocates and lobbyists will watch as well as it drags on into the night.

The Rhode Island Caucus is an incredibly interesting event. You have people from all over; RI Future contributors, union members, political campaign members, Rhode Island Progressive Democrats of America. I’m happy to hear that my Occupy Americans Elect idea has gotten a bit more mileage than I was expecting. One of the two representatives of Anthony Gemma’s campaign point out they’re the only black and Latino people in the room. That’s not technically true, but the point is ultimately correct. Rhode Island is much more white when compared with the rest of the country, and we’re definitely delayed when it comes to integration. The other Gemma campaign member makes another good point when she says that fingering blame between communities isn’t going to create a solution when a Progressive Democrat says that attempts have been made to reach out to black and Latino youths. These two Gemma folks are young, and one says that the older generations are more unwilling to work together (Rhode Island also skews older than the U.S. average). Ultimately, I wasn’t overly enthused with the progress made at this, nor did I really understand what the purpose was for this “caucus”.

My final panel of the day was Why the Fed Is the Most Important Economic Issue You Know Nothing About was not as engaging. Moderated by Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute, it featured Karl Smith (who is an economist at the University of North Carolina), Matthew Yglesias (of Slate‘s Moneybox blog), and Lisa Donner (Executive Director of Americans for Financial Reform) this was probably a draw mainly because of Mr. Yglesias (popular in policy wonk circles) and because the Federal Reserve is such a hot issue. Unfortunately, everyone but Ms. Donner shied away from stronger critiques of the system, mainly focusing on how the Fed was too focused on the dangers of inflation. Ms. Donner really hammered away at the need for a Volcker Rule and perhaps even stronger legislation, and even brought up the state bank idea that’s been bandied about.

The inflation bit was interesting, paraphrasing William Jennings Bryan, Mr. Yglesias said “you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of 2% inflation targeting.” He also rightly made the point that fiat money is frightening to people; it’s not easy to realize that money itself is backed only by faith in it. It really is a confidence trick. That said, the idea of returning to a gold standard isn’t any less of belief-based system, it’s just believing in a shiny mineral instead of a strong government.

Ultimately though, even the Beyond Occupy panel was more visionary. It seemed like these speakers were especially trapped in the system that existed, and with the exception of Ms. Donner, were unable to see beyond it. And ultimately, people in the audience stood up and called them on it. That was probably the most electrifying moment, when an older gentleman stood up and criticized the panel for talking blithely about unemployment without taking into account the way people actually suffer in unemployment.

I ran into some Occupy Providence members around. One was unhappy with my post criticizing Occupy’s targeting on Thursday, pointing out that a budget day action had long been planned. He also felt that the politicians on Smith Hill will bailout 38 Studios. I feel like bankruptcy means that they haven’t bailed out 38 Studios (since you bail people out to prevent bankruptcy) and that the criminal investigation of 38 Studios by both federal and state authorities means this thing is about to get politically toxic. Smith Hill may soon become a gallows. On the other end of the spectrum, another Occupier told me not to worry.

So at the end of Day 1 of Netroots Nation, what’s the feeling? Well, that the good outweighs the bad.

June 8, 2012June 8, 2012

Occupy Goes Home: Making Me Love OWS at NN12

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Occupy Goes Home Panel — People crowded around to talk to the panel when it concluded

I hadn’t meant to attend this discussion, but I’m glad I did. Occupy Goes Home: The Occupy Movement and the Foreclosure Crisis was hands down the best thing I attended on Thursday, and blew the rest out of the water. Moderated by Sarah Jaffe (Labor Editor at AlterNet), it featured Matt Browner-Hamlin (from Occupy Our Homes), Nick Espinosa (of Occupy Homes Minnesota and the activist who famously glitter-bombed Newt Gingrich), and Rachel Falcone (of Housing is a Human Right and Organizing for Occupation).

This was perhaps the best argument for what Occupy needs to be, and the panel was really tight in relaying a strong message about the nature of the financial system effecting regular people and the seriousness and impact of debt. They pointed out that nearly the entire room was carrying some level of debt (myself included), whether it was on student loans or on mortgages. They pointed out that nearly all foreclosures during the crisis have been fraudulent or used fraudulent documents (a Nevada law that forbade robo-signing and punished people for filing foreclosures with fraudulent documents dropped foreclosures by 93% according to the panel, just to give you an idea of the rampant fraud).

I was overjoyed to hear that Guilford County, North Carolina was leading the way against foreclosures under the leadership of its Register of Deeds, Jeff Thigpen (I graduated from Guilford College). I really heard echoes of that early democratic finance movement in American history after the Revolution, especially in the actual resistance to creditors by various means. The idea of debt being something we’re all very ashamed of, but also a very universal experience in America is a powerful concept. And to tie it into this fraud-based foreclosure, well, a panelist made the point that this undercut nearly 500 years of jurisprudence in the Anglo-American tradition.

Ultimately, in terms of electrifying discussions, this was it. There was a very real, personal edge to this: Mr. Espinosa’s mother is facing foreclosure herself. I think also, it was a glimmer of success and a very powerful issue that Occupy touched on during its long months away. The question moving forward is whether it can return itself to prominence on a whole host of new issues in America, or whether the 2012 elections and the looming debt ceiling showdown (part 2!) will prevent it from being much an issue.

This was also a panel that provided actual solutions. Perhaps because it wasn’t so high up in the clouds, it really provided a sense of what needs to be accomplished. There are laws that can be advocated for, or passed by those in government (one person was a member of a county government and asked whether there was legislation to help prevent abuse by banks). Yes, they had criticisms of the whole system (the failure of the federal government to hold the banks accountable loomed largest). But they never failed to have a response to a question; even one about media coverage. The solution? Create your own media. And they’re right, because a sort of counter-media (to coin a phrase) is developing around this country; one of live-streamers, bloggers, and social media.

The final proof for me? When the panel ended, a mass of people surged forward to shake the hands of the speakers.

June 8, 2012June 8, 2012

Netroots Asks: ‘What Does A New Economy Look Like?’

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I stumbled across our editor Bob Plain at Beyond Occupy: What Does a New Economic System Look Like? which took place at 10:30 AM. Bob was unfortunately trying to coordinate with David Pepin on the budget live-blogging, leading to some furtive discussion on his cellphone that eventually attracted a few stares before Bob went outside. The panel discussion itself was somewhat disappointing. I was hoping for an articulated view of a new economic system. It was moderated by Jenifer Fernandez Ancona of the Women Donors Network; and features Sarita Gupta (Executive Director of Jobs With Justice), Simon Johnson (Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund), Colin Mutchler (CEO and co-founder of LoudSauce), and Erica Payne (Founder and President of the Agenda Project).

As I said, if I was expecting a sort of map of how a new economic system is supposed to look, this was not it. Despite an early statement about this discussion being titled “Beyond Occupy” due to the fact that Occupy changed the nature of discussion but needs to articulate a vision, no such vision came forward. There were some interesting turns of phrase. Mr. Mutchler seemed to have the clearest vision of what an economy should be organized around: happiness. A commenter from the audience seemed to support that, but undercuts their own authority by saying that happiness is in the Constitution; it’s not. Ms. Ancona said that ultimately what happens are two competing views of the economy: that of the right which views it as a natural force and that of the left that views it as a human-created force.

Watch live streaming video from fstvnewswire at livestream.com

Most surprising was the fact that labor was de-emphasized here. At one point, Ms. Ancona turned to Ms. Gupta and said, “I don’t think I imagine a future with labor.” Ms. Gupta was somewhat tepid in her response, saying that the labor movement in America was too concerned with its specific members and hadn’t grown out of a class conscious movement. Which is both right and wrong. But it’s about what you’d expect; the “netroots” is largely non-union, who understand a union in theory but don’t feel the need to associate with the labor movement. It goes to show, “progressive” is a wide-open term.

While ultimately a “new economic system” doesn’t come forth (Erik Loomis of Lawyers, Guns and Money criticized this discussion as “5 people talking about the greatness of slightly reformed capitalism” on his Twitter feed), I think Mr. Mutchler was the most on the ball when he said that we’re living in an era where institutions (like big banks and even democracy) are breaking down; but that below the surface, new innovations are taking place. But there was no real takeaway here.

June 7, 2012June 7, 2012

What Do We Do When We Win?

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As we kick off Netroots Nation 2012, we have some progressive wins to celebrate: halting Keystone XL, defeating SOPA/PIPA and a nasty anti-union bill in Ohio, changing the economic conversation in the country and gaining advances on marriage equality, to name a few. But throughout the past year, we’ve also witnessed some aggressive and reckless conservative attacks on the middle class, immigrants, women and voters as a whole. You’ll find many of these issues addressed throughout our programming this year.

Heading into the 2012 election cycle, the stakes are higher than ever. Conservatives aren’t going to back down, so there are real consequences in every race, from the Presidential all the way down the ticket. And while we may still have to play defense, we need to be more proactive about taking the offensive position.

What I’d like to challenge you to think about this weekend is this: What do we do when we win?

If you look around today the movement that’s gained the most over the past 3 years is the LGBT movement. And it’s worth examining how that happened.

Back when the vast majority of us were celebrating our hard work from 2008 (literally, Netroots Nation hosted a “Yes We Can” party for 900+ people in DC for the inauguration), the LGBT movement went to work. Bloggers were hitting the not-yet-formed Obama administration on their selection of Rick Warren to give the opening prayer at the inauguration. Activists were getting arrested at the White House pushing for DADT. Donors shut off the ATM until they saw tangible results. And even when the community made progress, they didn’t quit—they moved on to the next fight and focused their efforts in a concentrated way. They worked at the state level, and they worked on influencing federal agencies. It wasn’t an easy fight (and it’s still not over), but their work has resulted in tangible and positive outcomes for LGBT individuals across the country—and likely the highest level of progress of any community over the past few years.

There are some lessons we can learn from them and other successful endeavors over the past year:

It isn’t just about the presidency
Sure, there are things presidents can do that other branches can’t, and sometimes things a president says matter a great deal. Obama’s support for marriage equality is a good example of that (no conservative president would have signed the repeal of DADT). But if your theory of change starts and ends with “Make the president do X,” it’s probably flawed.

Drive the agenda by focusing on Congress and State Legislatures
We have to drive the agenda in other ways too: by focusing on Congress, by pressuring federal agencies and by working to retain our majorities in State Houses across the country to make sure we aren’t constantly fighting the right. And while re-electing Obama is an important part of fighting for a progressive future, it alone is not enough.

A tale of two bills
One bill we passed and one we didn’t may provide some insight and inspiration for future campaigns.

The first is a bill we didn’t pass–the American Clean Energy & Security Act, or ACES. House Democrats burned a lot of political capital trying to pass something that even divided many within the environmental movement. But in the time since the bill failed, activists worked locally to block 166 new coal plants–something that wiped out 60 to 70 percent of the emissions that were predicted to be reduced with the ACES bill had it passed.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill did pass, however, yet got largely dismantled by Wall Street in the days and months after its passing. This piece in Rolling Stone gives some background on how bankers are all but nullifying the law. This should serve as an example of how we must stay on guard even after a bill passes to ensure that hard-won progress isn’t undone by the opposition.

Greatness isn’t achieved by asking for permission
If there’s one thing the Occupy movement has taught us as activists, it’s that you’re not protesting if you have to ask for permission. Many of us forgot that somewhere along the way; but thankfully, this fearless approach to activism is popping up again and again.

We all have different roles in this movement
Some of us play the inside game; others are born to push boundaries. Some are meant to build bridges, develop infrastructure and collect resources. To be effective as a movement, we have to understand that just because someone doesn’t have the same role as us doesn’t mean they’re the enemy.

So as you’re out there attending one of the 70 panels or 30 training sessions, chatting in the hallway with friends or having an intense brainstorming session over drinks, keep some of these lessons in mind.

June 7, 2012

Netroots Itinerary, Day 1

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Of course everyone talks about the parties and the networking opportunities, but the real action at Netroots Nation is in the panels and speakers. Each day of the big progressive get together I’ll be posting a little bit about some of the panels and speakers I’m looking forward to sitting in on. Look for posts on these throughout the day and for a complete list of all the action, click here.

8:15 a.m. – Morning News Dump with Lizz Winstead, Shannyn Moore and Cliff Schecter: This is the first official event of the conference, and it’s being held every morning, so it makes sense to start here …. Netroots bills is as “sorta like ‘Morning Joe,’ minus the guests who have gotten everything wrong for the past 10 years. Each morning these three will also welcome some of your favorite bloggers and politicians as well to give you a download of the days news before you hit the Netroots ground running.”

If you don’t know who Lizz Winstead is, read Dan McGowan’s profile of her from when he was an RI Futurist.

9:00 a.m. – Data-Driven Design for Progressive Organizations: They can’t all be about saving the world, and the first panel I’ll be attending is more geared towards making RI Future more useful to you the reader. “We’ll share 10 often overlooked web, social media and email metrics you can use to improve your social bottom line (in terms of actions taken, money raised, etc.).”

10:30 a.m. – Beyond Occupy: What Does a New Economic System Look Like?: Okay, Occupy Movement, you got the nation’s attention … now what do we do with all that energy? This panel will help us imagine a new economic paradigm. “In this session,” according to Netroots, “we will explore how Occupy has changed the game in the fight for economic justice and how progressives might start to invest in earnest in building a real alternative economic and political system that works for us.”

Noon – Organizing Tools Shootout: Seems like I’ll be able to learn a few new tricks here, too. “Data and online tools are a big part of progressive organizing, and keystones in building from the netroots base out wider into our communities. New tools like LoudSauce, DS Political and POPVOX and many others are the building blocks of the shift from top-down and broadcast models to a distributed, participatory and more deeply democratic future.”

2:00 p.m. – Rhode Island Caucus: “Connect with activists in Rhode Island and discuss issues facing the state,” is how Netroots describes these sessions designed for people with regional ties to meet up … for us Ocean Staters, we usually do it at the State House before and after the legislative session; today we’ll do it at the Convention Center.

3:00 p.m. – Whose Law Is It Anyway? ALEC’s Influence on State Legislatures and What We Can Do About It: After all the ALEC reporting we did recently, how could we miss this one. “The American Legislative Exchange Council has been behind virtually every major right-wing state law in the past two years, including union-busting, teacher-bashing, voter suppression, attacks on immigrants, privatizing basic public services and gutting environmental and health regulations. Learn more about ALEC, who backs them and what you can do to stand in their way.”

4:00 p.m. – Not sure which one of these I’ll hit up, but the titles seem pretty self-explanatory: Social Media Strategy for Advocacy or Investigative Reporting for Bloggers with Joe Conason. Though this one could be fun too: Emerging Movements: The Face of New Progressive Online Communities.

6:00 p.m. – Phew, finally a little break … a dinner reception courtesy of Planned Parenthood.

7:00 p.m. – Opening keynote featuring Eric Schneiderman: “We’ll kick off Netroots Nation with an opening keynote from New York’s Attorney General and the man the American Prospect calls The Man Banks Fear Most, Eric Schneiderman. Other speakers will include: Providence Mayor Angel Taveras, environmentalist Bill McKibben, Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards, NEA’s Lily Eskelsen, and Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin.”

And if I’m still standing after all that, I might just take in some political comedy at 9:15 or the legendary Netroots Karaoke Party, this year sponsored by SEIU and held at The Dorrance starting at 9:30.

June 6, 2012June 7, 2012

Netroots, Occupy Should Protest State Budget Bill

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Sometimes the stars align for good things to happen. Here’s hoping such is the case with the seemingly-destined convergence of progressive events to play out in Providence Thursday afternoon.

Netroots Nation will be in the middle of its first day inside the Convention Center. Occupy Providence will be protesting economic inequality outside on Sabin Street.

And, meanwhile, just up the hill at the State House, they will be ensconced in the biggest and most important night in local politics, debating the budget bill. This year’s spending plan – in spite of a high-profile campaign led by elected officials, organized labor and community activists – will likely not include income tax increases on Rhode Island’s richest residents.

It’s ironic to say the least. While literally thousands upon thousands of activists in and around the Convention Center will be pondering new ways to foster progressive change in America, less than a mile away local leaders will be ignoring calls for progressive change to Rhode Island’s tax code.

Imagine if Netroots and Occupy joined forces on Thursday and marched up to the State House to call upon the General Assembly to balance the state’s ailing budget by asking those who have benefited the most to pay their share?

Progressive legislators put forward bills this session that would have rolled back the tax cuts instituted under the previous governor Don Carcieri, a Tea Party supporter. But despite being supported by almost half of the House of Representatives, leadership didn’t like it and they never made it out of committee.

On Thursday, there will likely be tax-increase amendments proposed that will finally, if nothing else, force a floor debate on the issue. And given that very few politicians want to roll into election season saying they supported tax cuts to the top 2 percent of Rhode Islanders, a vote could be closer than otherwise expected.

Imagine if Netroots and Occupy could turn our State House into something like what happened in Wisconsin?

It would be a statement not just to the powers that be here in Rhode Island, but across the country. What media outlet could resist Occupy and Netroots in sleeping bags on the marble floors as the supposedly liberal legislature sided with the affluent?

The annual budget debate is famous for going all night. Reporters and legislators often see the sunrise on Smith Hill before the bill is finalized. Tax equity will be one of the most hotly-debated topics of the night.

Imagine of Netroots and Occupy could work together to tip the scales towards a more progressive Rhode Island?

June 6, 2012June 6, 2012

Occupy Providence Picks the Wrong Target

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In case you haven’t noticed, there will be two different types of occupations in Providence this week. Netroots Nation will be inside the convention center and Occupy Providence will be outside.

David Segal has a piece on this site pointing out why that’s perfectly legal. And it’s good Providence has such a strong protection for protests.

Yet I have to disagree with Occupy Providence’s tactics here. Reading through the Occupy Providence Google group, you can see the ambivalence towards Netroots Nation displayed by Occupy Providence’s most vocal members. A few think it’s nothing more than establishment, Democratic Party hacks (in this telling, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is a “staunch militarist” and this article in the Phoenix is proffered as proof of Netroots Nation’s lack of ideological alignment.

Others believe that the bloggers attending will be more than neoliberal sheeple, capable of calling the President out on his failures over the past two years and supportive of fighting Wall Street.

Regardless of where you believe Netroots Nation falls on Occupy’s wonky sellout scale, the occupation’s location doesn’t connect well with the demands being made. They are as follows:

No taxpayer bailout of 38 Studios.
Tax the wealthiest in Rhode Island and nationally.
Solidarity, not austerity, locally, nationally and internationally.

The attendees of Netroots Nation will be in a position to deliver a total of zero of those demands. The first is next to inapplicable to the vast majority of conference goers. Indeed, a taxpayer bailout of 38 Studios seems unlikely. Going into an election season, no RI politician wants to be seen as throwing more money into 38 Studios’ burning, sinking ship.

Congratulations Occupy Providence, your first demand is met.

The third seems intentionally vague. (Solidarity with what?) However, anti-austerity forces will find their man in Paul Krugman, though some in attendance might’ve moved passed him to Modern Monetary Theory which posits that national debts don’t matter (this school of economic thought seems to be strongest at the University of Missouri-Kansas City of all places).

So this leaves us with the second demand: tax the wealthiest. While a few of the politicians in attendance may have the chance to act on that demand come next January, for Rhode Island, the pressure needs to be applied Thursday at the State House. As the House of Representatives takes up the budget bill, a document which will impact the lives of all Rhode Islanders; Occupy Providence will be in the wrong place, protesting people who will only be impacted for a few days. Thursday, at least, should be devoted to the General Assembly. Then Occupy Providence can head over to Netroots Nation for a weekend protest of the convention’s enablement of the great Democratic Party sellout.

June 6, 2012June 6, 2012

Sheldon, Taveras, Cicilline Eagerly Await Netroots

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sheldon netroots — Senator Sheldon Whitehouse announced Netroots Nation 2012 would be held in Providence at the 2011 event In Minneapolis.

With literally thousands of progressives from across the country descending on Providence for Netroots Nation, it’s important to recognize the local progressives who brought the annual conference of lefty activists and journalists to the Ocean State: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Mayor Angel Taveras.

The three lobbied hard to host the 2011 event in Providence. But Netroots felt it couldn’t come as employees of the Westin Hotel were mired in a contract dispute with management. But when the labor dispute was resolved, the conference agreed to pay Providence a visit.

“Providence is a beautiful city. It is as blue as the waters of Narragansett Bay,”Whitehouse said in announcing the news that Rhode Island would host the 2012 event at last year’s in Minneapolis. “You progressives will feel right at home.”

So far, so good. I met with Mary Rickles of Netroots on Tuesday and she said the city has been great to them so far, and the local amenities have been outstanding.

Taveras isn’t surprised the Netroots crowd is already enjoying the city. “Providence is the perfect place to host Netroots,” said the progressive mayor, noting that their stay will likely only get better.

“I can’t wait to see the bloggers reaction to Waterfire,” he said. “They are going to promote in nationally.”

Waterfire, for those new to the area, is a downtown tradition that centers around a series of seemingly floating fire pits in the Providence River.

Whitehouse agreed, saying Netroots is “a chance for Providence to come out as a hip, attractive destination.”

While both recognized it as a great opportunity for the city, they also said it is a great opportunity for local progressives.

Taveras, who will give a welcome address to the conference, called it an opportunity for “the great minds and great thinkers” from all over the country to co-mingle with us local progressives for “an opportunity to talk about the future of our city, our state and our country.”

Whitehouse said Netroots Nation is important too to his fight in Washington D.C.

“If you look at it from 50,000 feet when you look down what you see is immensely powerful special interests,” he said. “One of the most effective way of fighting those special interests is through the grassroots, internet community that Netroots represents.”

Whitehouse will speak on two panels at Netroots: one on tax fairness and another concerning Citizens United. Fitting, in that he authored the Buffett Rule bill in the Senate and is also sponsoring the DISCLOSE Act, which would require Super-PAC TV political ads to list those who paid for the message.

Another progressive Rhode Islander, Congressman David Cicilline, will also play a key role in Netroots Nation’s visit to Providence. He’s participating on two panels: one on gun safety and another on reinvigorating the manufacturing sector of the economy. He’s also giving the closing speech.

“I think it’s going to be a lot of good communication, incubating new ideas and learning how to challenge the staus quo,” he said. “The only thing better would be if everyone stayed here and became Rhode Islanders.”

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