Winning Hearts and Minds: A Plea to My Fellow Progressives

Waking up on the morning after the election, I saw a political landscape that was superficially transformed – a Democratic majority in the U.S. House and Senate, a DFL majority in the Minnesota House and Senate, pundits trumpeting the rejection of Bush war policies and of the right wing in general, progressives of all stripes claiming victory.

 

What does this prove? Not much. We don’t really know why people voted the way they did. Even the near-unanimous media conclusion that opposition to the war in Iraq motivated voters fades under closer scrutiny. Polls show that more voters named corruption as their top issue (67% said the war was “extremely” or “very” important, compared to 74% for corruption.) Even more – 82% — cited the economy as “extremely” or “very” important.

 

The new Democratic majorities just elected are just as confused. They include anti-immigrant Democrats and homophobic Democrats and pro-life Democrats. Even on the issue that supposedly sparked their victory, many take inconsistent and timid positions. What kind of message is “we have to reconsider our options in Iraq?” What common ground is there between us and this new Democratic majority?

 

My concern is what we do now, as peaceniks and progressives, as immigrants and allies, as people concerned about Venezuela and Oaxaca and Iraq and Darfur, as well as New Orleans and Minneapolis and Owatonna.

 

For years, I have heard the choice described as one between activism (protest, especially in the streets) and electoral politics (elections, lobbying, legislation.) Activists identify more with grassroots organizing (though there are disagreements about what that means), with demonstrations and marches, with boycotts of corporations, with strikes (whether student, labor or general), and with protest of all kinds. Young people are more often activists, though there are plenty of gray hairs in the crowd.

 

Progressive participants in electoral politics tend to believe that this is the best, if not the only, way to effect real change. They may hate the idea of compromise, but they acknowledge practical necessity. Usually, but not always (witness the Green Party), they look for candidates who can win, even if those candidates share only some of their principles. They believe that the first step to effectiveness is getting a voice in the halls of power, whether that means the city council or the U.S. Senate.

 

The activist critique of electoral politics talks about selling out and compromised convictions and ineffective wheeling and dealing with corrupt, unprincipled opponents. The political critique of activism talks about preaching to the choir and alienating the majority. Historically, advocates of progressive electoral politics and left-wing activists view each other with suspicion, even when they agree on the same principles or goals.

 

Today, in 2006, we can come together. We must come together. 

 

During 1964’s Freedom Summer, proud black college students put their suits and ties away and donned SNCC’s inelegant uniform of farmer’s overalls to work for voter registration and civil rights. Despite cultural and political differences, white northern students and black southern students, atheists and ministers, Jews and Christians, unreconstructed macho men and angry feminists, socialists and New England aristocrats (not that these two groups are mutually exclusive), all worked together. Not without arguments. Not without battles. But, in the end, they transformed the face of the country.

 

They did not finish the job of building Dr. King’s “beloved community,” but they began. Four years later, bearded, long-haired college students up north went “clean for Gene” and donned suits and ties to stump for presidential peace candidate Eugene McCarthy. They did not finish the job either. We inherit both their shining (and less-than-shining) examples and their work.

 

That work starts with learning and teaching. Immigration activists concerned with deaths on the border and life in the shadows and anti-genocide activists concerned with Darfur and environmental activists concerned with water as a part of the global commons and anti-free-trade activists and anti-racism activists and human rights activists and labor union activists – we all need to teach and to learn from one another and to make the connections between “our” issues. And we need to learn and practice the respect that allows us to have different issues and differing means of working on these issues – from education to lobbying to marching in the streets.

 

We also need to teach and to learn from the non-activist majority. We need to go to them, in churches and synagogues and mosques, in union halls, in libraries, in living rooms and at kitchen tables. We need to educate people who are instinctive allies but who don’t have the facts. We need to educate people whose racism or conservatism or militarism is based on misinformation. Most of them do not know the facts and do not understand what is at stake. We need to connect with their minds as we communicate our key messages – over and over again, to one person after another. We need to win their hearts, by telling personal stories, by making personal contacts.

 

We can come together. We must come together. The stakes are too high for us to form the traditional, circular leftist firing squad, attacking one another’s lack of purity or lack of pragmatism. The nation and the world need, and we can offer, strong voices and strong messages, and an example of overcoming differences and reaching across divides to work together for the common good.