Progressives: Don't Mourn, Organize

[undeterred]

Sunday 24 January 2010
by: Michael Winship, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Tragic events continuing out of Haiti make all the bad news for progressives this week wither in comparison. Nonetheless, over these last few days, for liberals in particular, there has been no joy in Mudville - aka American politics.

...

But this is no time to run and hide. As the historian Simon Schama wrote in the January 19 edition of the Financial Times, the President "may actually need to respond to the unrelenting pressure from zombie conservatism, ravenously flesh-eating and never quite dead, not by turning on more consensual charm, but by taking the gloves off. With his bank levy - 'We want our money back,' he said - Mr Obama has belatedly begun to fight. Whether he can trade enough punches with the right before the November mid-term elections remains to be seen, but my hunch is that President Composure is up for a brawl."

To do so, he will have to speak out forcefully and counter the bulldozing effect of megabucks with solid community support. A report last week by David Corn on the Mother Jones Web site was not encouraging, suggesting that the volunteer army of more than 13 million activists and donors that sparkplugged Obama's presidential campaign has been too often ignored or misused by the White House.
An investigation commissioned by the crosspartisan group blog TechPresident.com found that as far as advancing a progressive agenda goes, the effort that arose from the Obama campaign, Organizing for America (OFA), "focused more on supporting and thanking allied Members than pressuring resistant Democrats or Republicans." In other words, too many e-mail offers of OFA tee-shirts and wool hats and not enough boots on the ground canvassing and lobbying.

This is no time to go wobbly, as Margaret Thatcher famously told George Bush the First. But given the events of this week, perhaps even more appropriate are the pre-firing squad words of that most famous Wobbly, radical and labor activist Joe Hill: Don't mourn, organize.

http://www.truthout.org/progressives-dont-mourn-organize56326

[DKRC]

1. K&R

:kick:

[undeterred]

2. kick!

:kick: