BUILDING A NEW PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT

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“The poor are dispersed in jobs which are difficult to organize because of scattered, small units, seasonal employment, etc., and where the potential membership is so impoverished that it cannot even finance a basic union structure at the outset. Where these workers have succeeded in creating their own organizations—in the hospitals of New York and the fields of California, for instance—they have done so by being a labor-oriented civil rights movement and not just a union. The people belonged to minority groups and as such, they were able to appeal to a broad segment of the community, to the rest of labor, the churches, the middle-class liberals, the idealistic young and so on.”

These words were written by DSA’s founder and ideological mentor, Michael Harrington in his 1968 iconic book, Toward a Democratic Left: A Radical Program for a New Majority. He was referring to the early struggles of 1199 hospital workers who are now part of SEIU’s United Healthcare Workers East and West.

I came to DSA (it was DSOC back then) in the 1970s as a young labor activist working in an 1199 nursing home. I joined DSA precisely because of Mike Harrington’s vision of a non-sectarian, majoritarian left, with the labor movement at its core. And I joined because, as Michael used to say, good is not the enemy of perfect. He believed–as I do–that incremental change is vital if we are ever going to achieve power for working people. As democratic socialists we don’t believe in the big bang of revolution, but rather in the gradual struggle that is sustained over generations and that has real impact on people’s daily lives.

It’s tragic for so many reasons that Michael died too young; his voice and his wisdom are sorely needed. How he would marvel at the election of Barack Obama and the promise that this victory affords all of us on the democratic left! He is sorely missed. But were he alive, I would hope—and expect, that he and others who are informed by this vision of democratic socialism would join with us in SEIU as we seek to take advantage of a moment most of us have spent our lifetimes only dreaming of.

With our country poised for massive, progressive change, we finally have the chance to build a broad democratic left majority with labor at its core. But to do that, we have to be bold and creative, not stick to outmoded ideas, and we must challenge even some of our most fundamental ideas so that we can grow a labor movement that has shrunk precipitously in the last decades.
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FULL ARTICLE
http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/building-a-new-progressive-movement-with-labor-at-its-core/#more-1944