The drupal software used to create their website is opensource.
We just need some webspace, and some people willing to do promotion on the other blogs like metamars does only in a less condescending way. We also need someone to start a youtube and facebook group for us. http://drupal.org/
I thought the green tea party would be a good name. No you don't have to be a green, or a democrat. You just have to be a progressive. Our goal will be results on things like government supported universal healthcare, ending the wars, and civil rights. We don't advocate violence, but our main concern is not civility, either. Our slogan would be something like "real change!" or "results not hope!" I don't think the ofaers or the kossacks could coopt something like that.
Let's work together on this. Many people here have different talents. I have already created one drupal website for my linux disto u-lite. http://u-lite.org . I don't have the time to write though, and I know nothing about making youtube videos.
Lord knows I'm not village party shill, so it would be real grassroots, unlike the tea or coffee parties!
Oh, I guess in order to get attention on this blog one needs a music video!
The first week of March has seen a number of commentaries in the American media, mainly from liberal pundits, worrying over the declining public standing of President Obama and the growing signs of disarray in the Democratic Party.
Midterm Momentum Is All GOP's November Is Looking Grim For Democrats, And It Could Still Get Worse by Charlie Cook, via nationaljournal.com, Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2010
Whenever someone asks if the 2010 midterm elections will be "another 1994" it makes me roll my eyes. No two election years are alike -- the causes, circumstances and dynamics are always different to anyone who takes more than a casual look.
But 1994, and for that matter 2006, were "nationalized" elections, elections where overarching national dynamics often trump candidates, campaigns, local political history and natural tendencies.
Often in these elections, inferior, underfunded or less-organized candidates and campaigns beat more amply funded and better-prepared candidates and campaigns.
The primary difference between this year and previous nationalized elections is that this one looks so bad for Democrats so early.
These kinds of years also see states and districts that normally fall easily into one party's column inexplicably fall into the other's hands.
There is no reason to believe that 2010 is not just as nationalized as 1994 and 2006 were, or for that matter 1958, 1974 and 1982. To be sure, the causes, circumstances and dynamics are different, but the trend line is the same for each. At least today it is.
In Part 3 Cohen talked about the struggle for power and direction within the Democratic Party from the days of the Viet Nam War to the present, and wound up with "Frankly... I would love to see a primary challenge to Obama when he's up for re-election... Because unless you build a base through elections and then you hold the officials accountable, then you'll never get anywhere."
Here in the conclusion of the interview Cohen expands on those ideas and fills in some of the outlines to draw a rough set of guidelines or roadmap of how to get from where things stand now with the Democrats as out and out corporatists to a world of the kind of progressive populism they have been well known for at various points in history, and how it is going to take a no more Mr. Nice Guy approach from progressives and a lot of very hardnosed and fearless aggressiveness, of the kind that I think Muhammad Ali meant when he noted so many years ago "He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life."
Lately there has been a spate of diaries at such web sites as FireDogLake and "Open" Left wherein lay members - typically under attack from site moderators, who act as Democratic Party hacks and gatekeepers - have sought ways to bring back the Progressive Party, or join the Greens, or build up some other institution, that will allow progressives to act together as a cohesive political unit. (I posted an entry there myself, only to end up being attacked by site moderators, threatened with banishment, and ultimately banned when I refused to back down against their incessant bullying.)
Fellow FDLer TalkingStick points out the wisdom of studying the teabaggers for ideas about how we progressives can rebuild our own movement.
Mason calls for progressives to join him in building a Progressive Party from the ground up, apparently not aware that it already exists in states such as Vermont and Washington, and as Green Party affiliates inMissouri and Wisconsin. He is joined in this effort by MadHemingway, who posted the 1912 platform the Progressive Party ran on.
FDL members are not alone in Left Blogsylvania in expressing their utter disgust with the Democrats; at "Open" Left, such lay members as Arthur Lukas gripe about where progressives are and asks where we should go from here. Even at the Daily Obama, whereupon I also post, a poll I put up asking if it is time for progressives to break away from the Democratic received a fifty percent yes-vote.
Such discontent is often met by moderators and site owners with derision, insults, threats, and banishments of the "offending" members. Nevertheless, it has grown more difficult for the access-bloggers to bully progressives into submission, a lesson FDL's Jason Rosenbaum refused to learned after the beat-down his contemptuous post before the Massachusetts special election received. In short, no one on the left is buying into the Big Lie that Democrats are any different from Republicans in terms of substantive policies, nor are we responding to threats and insults anymore for "failing" to be bullied into supporting Democrats no matter what.
This discontent and refusal to be bullied has created an opening for progressives seeking to organize the left back into a cohesive and more importantly, effective movement in opposition to the far right. There are angry voices aplenty, people outraged by the betrayals of the man they though they were electing president in '08 and the endless capitulations to the GOP made by Democrats. Here we have an advantage.
The only thing lacking in the new political environment is effective leadership among progressives. We will not find it among the self-appointed "leaders" of the 'netroots, the access-bloggers like Chris Bowers, Markos Moulitsas, and the aforementioned Rosenbaum whose only real goal is to gain access for themselves - and only themselves - to the inner circles of "serious" political power and corporate media recognition. It is therefore up to us to take on leadership roles and organize the left.
If we can take charge, we the progressive base, then we can finally begin the work of taking back America from the fascist elements that have usurped it for their own ends to the detriment of everybody else. The Full Court Press is one tool for doing that, and it's a very good start.
Journalism professor Jeff Cohen of FAIR and the Park Center for Independent Media on the struggle within the Democratic Party, starting from the Viet Nam War:
There's no doubt that there's an awakening. What concerns me is that the liberal base, the Democratic Party base, has never been more educated, in my view, and that's because of the independent media. The democratic base is against an imperial foreign policy. The democratic base is for real medicare for all, or at least the strongest public option that would really hurt private insurance. There's an understanding of history, and again it's largely because the independent media is giving us the news in real time, every day when we click on the computer and we watch Real News, we watch Democracy Now.
What hasn't translated is while we have this boom in independent media on the Internet, we don't have a boom of independent politics.
What I believe are needed are new groups, that will be on the Internet, mobilizing the millions to make the kinds of demands of the Democrats that the right wing base, which has clearly transformed the country, the right wing base in the Republican Party not only took over a major party, they haven't let up on that party until their agenda is put in place, whereas on our side we don't have that.
What needs to happen, this is what a few groups are doing, Progressive Democrats of America is one, the idea is we need to take over that major political party.
When people talk about change, and then they deliver only for insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and Wall Street, you vote them out. You primary them. You know this is what the right wing has done for decades. It's what they're doing now.
What we get from MoveOn historically and other groups is apologies for democratic office holders who have faked left with their rhetoric and then governed for big business. And what we need is to primary these people.
Frankly... I would love to see a primary challenge to Obama when he's up for re-election.
Because unless you build a base through elections and then you hold the officials accountable, then you'll never get anywhere.
From today's meeting between President Obama and Senate Democrats today comes this gem . . . .
"If the price of certainty is essentially for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place for eight years leading up to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression -- we don't tinker with health care, let the insurance companies do what they want, we don't put in place any insurance reforms, we don't mess with the banks, let them keep on doing what they're doing now because we don't want to stir up Wall Street -- the result is going to be the same," he said. "I don't know why we would expect a different outcome pursuing the exact same policy that got us into this fix in the first place."
Middle class Americans, Obama said, "are more and more vulnerable, and they have been for the last decade, treading water. And if our response ends up being, you know, because we don't want to -- we don't want to stir things up here, we're just going to do the same thing that was being done before, then I don't know what differentiates us from the other guys. And I don't know why people would say, boy, we really want to make sure that those Democrats are in Washington fighting for us."
From today's meeting between President Obama and Senate Democrats today comes this gem . . . .
"If the price of certainty is essentially for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place for eight years leading up to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression -- we don't tinker with health care, let the insurance companies do what they want, we don't put in place any insurance reforms, we don't mess with the banks, let them keep on doing what they're doing now because we don't want to stir up Wall Street -- the result is going to be the same," he said. "I don't know why we would expect a different outcome pursuing the exact same policy that got us into this fix in the first place."
Middle class Americans, Obama said, "are more and more vulnerable, and they have been for the last decade, treading water. And if our response ends up being, you know, because we don't want to -- we don't want to stir things up here, we're just going to do the same thing that was being done before, then I don't know what differentiates us from the other guys. And I don't know why people would say, boy, we really want to make sure that those Democrats are in Washington fighting for us."
First, if someone were calling you a "radical," ask them to define their terms. The term has such a wide variance of meanings as to be applicable to essentially opposite things, and some things in between, allowing for an absolute lack of accountability in its typically inflammatory usage.
The etymological "root" of radical is the Latin word radix, meaning root, connoting some essential, fundamental, or basic origin.
Cohen here goes into much more depth about the history and the evolution of the corporate influences that took took both Democrats and Republicans to the far right in a long attempt beginning in the late 1960's and 70's at taking over the Republican Party, at marginalizing the left, the antiwar movement, and progressives, and then a corporate movement beginning in the 80's to coopt the Democratic Party, and how we got into the current political situation.
Jeff Cohen is a media critic and lecturer, founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, a national center for the study of media outlets that create and distribute content outside traditional corporate systems and news organizations, where he is an associate professor of journalism.
Cohen also founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986.
Here Cohen talks with Paul Jay of The Real News about the larger significance and social context of the Massachusetts election, about the message of "change" that has been a staple of Democratic candidates for decades, and about the the term "swing voter" and what it means in the context of today's politics, and concludes that the key attribute of swing voters is that they are not ideological at all, and that if Obama and the Democrats don't deliver real change they will simply vote against them.
In other words it seems that people like your average (if there is such a thing) DD'er are representative of a very large segment of the population, and hold the future of political parties in their hands, from what Cohen is saying here.
He also tackles the question of why it is that Democrats seem to be never able to deliver on their messages of change, and comes out with some very interesting observations.
At what point do progressives stop being Democrats' whipped dogs and start acting like a movement capable of putting the Dems in their proper place as the party of the people? David Sirota wrote today about Obama's latest call to increase war spending beyond its already ludicrous proportions.
How many of the extreme right-wing and criminal policies of Bush-Cheney has Obama adopted? How many of those extreme right-wing policies has he exceeded? Last month, knowledge that Obama has gone a step further than Bush, authorizing the executive branch to murder American citizens on the flimsiest of rationales. This sh__ has GOT to end.
There has never been a better time for the emergence of a strong third party as a permanent entity. Objective critics of the "system" have now understood that it is rotten beyond repair. Corporate "persons" rule in this two-party setup. "Reforms" are hopelessly inadequate. It should not be necessary to elaborate. What is necessary is revolutionary transformation rather than "change" as a mere campaign buzzword.
As it is, truly progressive members of Congress who identify themselves as democrats are eclipsed - virtual nonentities really - by the Democratic Leadership Council which long ago took its place beside the GOP in the corporate sphere. Simply consider the media effort to "disappear" presidential candidate Kucinich following his unexpected strong showing in the first ABC "debate", going so far as to cut him out of a widely-distributed photograph of the democratic presidential hopefuls, and then barring him from a future ABC "debate". Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are allowed exposure primarily to the extent that they appear more "centrist" and "bipartisan".
Past efforts at anything "independent" or third party (e.g. the Green Party) have been grassroots efforts and failures for that reason. The only way for progressives to have a voice that can be heard throughout the country would be through a recognized Progressive Party, and that would have to emerge from within Congress - from within the Progressive Caucus, as well as the Congressional Black Caucus the values of which are so similar to that of the progressives.
If a contingent of true progressives - that might include such representatives as Kucinich, Grijalva, Lee, Conyers, Baldwin - were to hold a press conference and announce the formation of a Progressive Party with platform to match, the earth would move. There would be a rush of support from progressives, the Green Party, unions, democrats who understand the betrayal from the DLC stranglehold, minority groups, independents seeking change and even from some "moderate" Republicans. And there would surely be renewed interest from the millions who have long since turned off in disgust over the systemic rot that has by now become utterly transparent.......
I fundamentally agree, that recent efforts to form new parties have been a failure is because they were grass roots. The republicans gained prominence more quickly because they cannibalized the disintigrating whig party for candidates. Abe Lincoln was a former Whig.
Put pressure on the progressives to quit the party. Then we will get more leverage on them and they will quit dismissing us. The party will already have elected members, so they can't claim we are fringe.
I don't believe a grassroots movement is possible with blogs like kos, anyway. I don't think kos is grass roots. Kos is a partisan operative and a major player. Most of that blog is dominated by professional wonks, very closely aligned to known candidates. They are netwonks not netroots.
MSNBC's Ed Schultz talking at the AM950 Blue State Bash on Saturday night to a crowd of progressive talk radio fans in Minnesota lets go with both barrels at Robert Gibbs, at Barack Obama, at the "people who have infiltrated the Democratic progressive movement", and at the whole delusional idea of bipartisanship.
"I told him he was full of sh*t is what I told him," Schultz said. "And then he gave me the Dick Cheney f-bomb the same way Senator Leahy got it on the Senate floor. I told Robert Gibbs, I said, 'I'm sorry you're swearing at me, but I'm just trying to help you out."
"I'm telling you, you're losing your base," he continued. "Do you understand that you're losing your base? And that the American people don't want public option, the American people want single-payer!?'"
For all the recent flurry of speculation and analysis regarding the Democratic Party's shockingly sudden decline in power, one particular metric has never been adequately explored. Though it is certainly demoralizing that in merely twelve months a feel-good sugar high of optimism has given way to despair, airing our grievances should quickly give way to building strategies for the times going forward. We have learned quickly that party identification can never be taken for granted and that the American people want results, not gridlock. 2008 was seen by many (and indeed, me, for a time) as a realigning election along the same lines as 1980, but it seems that Obama's coattails are really only his for the riding and that personal charisma and stirring rhetoric are subordinate to results in the grand scheme of things.
A year ago, when Obama was inaugurated, when the new Congress began with huge Democratic majorities, I thought the Bush/Cheney years were finally over. But they're not over. Nothing has changed.
I've supported Democrats for 40 years. Despite all their betrayals, I felt I had no choice. I told myself they were the lesser of two evils. I told myself incremental change is better than no change at all. But nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change if progressives keep supporting the Democratic branch of the Corporate Fascist Party.
During the Great Depression, Woody Guthrie traveled across America and saw the injustice, poverty, and despair of a nation suffering the consequences of economic and social injustice. In the city square, in the shadow of the steeple, by the relief office he saw his people. They were hungry, they were out of work, they were out of hope. As he was walking that ribbon of highway, he saw what America is, but he also saw what America can be. He never stopped hoping that someday, America would become a land of economic and social justice. So he wrote This Land Is Your Land, as an anthem of what America can be.
His story is our story, his anthem is our anthem, his land is our land, his cause is our cause. Woody Guthrie told the truth about America because someone had to. He told it across this country, as he walked through the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling, with a guitar on his back and the truth in his soul . . .
When Obama needed the votes of progressives to get elected, his message was Change We Can Believe In. But now that he no longer needs us, now that he has power, he has a very different message for progressives . . .
That blunt message is echoing from one end of the Beltway to the other, from the White House to Capitol Hill, it's echoing from K Street to Wall Street and across the corporate media airwaves. Corporate power must not be challenged. Don't even think about it. Byron Dorgan got the message. Chris Dodd got the message. Robert Wexler got the message. We all got the message.
2 AM and she calls me 'cause I'm still awake,
Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?
I don't have to tell you what her latest mistake was, I don't have to tell you when she made that mistake, I don't have to tell you because she wasn't the only one who made that mistake. 100 million other Americans made the same mistake on November 4, 2008, they believed the lies, they voted for liars and frauds and career criminals up and down the ballot.
So here we are.
"Pragmatic" progressives tell us we can't jump the track, the corporate media tells us we're just cars on a cable, the "Christians" tell us life's like an hourglass, glued to the table, so go to church unless you want to be damned to Hell for eternity like the Muslims and the Jews and the heathens in Africa and Asia. Well we've seen this movie before, we know who the killers are, we know who the victims are, we know who the warmongers are, we know who the hypocrites are, we know how it ends, we know how it always ends, but no one can find the rewind button, no one can ever find the rewind button.
This is just a ramble -- some reflections on the arguments going on within the progressive movement. I think we need to move on and think things out carefully rather than moving from news item to news item. What we see is a whole, a system. This system is very robust and we shouldn't pretend it is not.
The Liberal age was from 1933 to 1980. The Reagan Era signaled a radical shift in U.S. politics. Reagan and his operatives were able to leverage the latent chauvinism, racism anti-intellectualism and class-hatred of the white working-class into a new (old) vision of America and American Exceptionalism. To be called a "liberal" was nearly as bad as being called a homosexual. Liberals were seen as people who deliberately set out to destroy families and all traditional values and thus were existential threats. This was hard for most liberals to understand since they, in the best American tradition, just wanted to make sure we lived in a decent society were people were treated fairly and civilized behavior was encouraged. Interestingly liberals also favored traditional Christian virtues like charity, gentleness towards the sick, poor, disabled, as well as people in classes that were traditionally excluded from mainstream America like African-americans, Native peoples, women and so on. Liberals tended not to get this visceral hatred and what was behind it and what was the ultimate goal of the neo-Conservative movement (it was not a Conservative movement at all but a radical neo-fascist movement).
Eleven months after President Obama took office, many Progressives are feeling understandably shortchanged. We were led to believe that finally a candidate with authentic liberal credentials had a legitimate shot at the White House, and so we embraced pragmatism when the most liberal candidates dropped out of the race. To be sure, there were several voices screaming out that Obama, if elected, would be far more indebted to the center then he ever would be to the left. These were loudest in the blogosphere, by far, and a few of them have recently exercised the cathartic, but ultimately hollow right to say I-told-you-so. This song and dance has historical antecedents that stretch back decades, but it would be best if there were no need to repeat the process once more.
I think we may have put the cart before the horse. I think we might have assumed that reform could be accomplished purely by political means, instead of reform being reached by grassroots mobilization that forced government's hand. Recently we have become aware, once more, that the American political system is not designed for sweeping change. The rules of the Senate were instituted to ensure that those with sober contemplation, not rash passion, ultimately won in the end. We can lament this fact and rightly decry it as anti-democratic and elitist, but the truth of the matter is that this is how the system works. I don't think that the President failed us nearly as much as the system did. In mentioning this, I'd much rather focus on going forward than licking our wounds.
I understand why we placed our trust in Barack Obama. We recognized the destruction wrought by eight years of neoconservative rule and with it the disconcerting notion that government predicated on evil can level its opponents and eviscerate easily. That it is much more difficult to build up rather than ruin is perhaps the toughest lesson of all. But with it comes the realization that established precedent is nearly impossible to reverse when passed. We may be unhappy with the scope of the bill, but we would be wise to celebrate that if someday Republican rule returns, it will be difficult for them to dismantle that which will be signed into law shortly. We should not accept this as any final word on the matter, but neither should we refuse to note how an eighteen-round fisticuff with the American mentality ultimately turned out in the end. This country was forced to confront some of the most massive fault lines that lie deceptively harmless most of the time, until seismic tremors threaten to shake us apart.
Any worthy social movement promising transformative change begins among an oft-quoted small group of thoughtful, committed citizens. The Civil Rights Movement, Women's Rights, and our latest struggle for LGBT marriage equality fomented and were codified from well outside the Beltway. Though ultimately legislation was proposed and passed by means of the Legislative branch, the energy and forward momentum swept up a million unsung heroes whose names may be lost to history or relegated to obscure footnotes, but whose bravery and achievements cannot be understated.
While it is touching that during the Presidential Election we temporarily shelved our skepticism as a result of being star-struck, we should not have failed to recognize that leadership comes from everywhere and every corner, not just the occupant of the White House. We focused our entire attention and hung our hopes upon the success or failure of one person, and while it is true that one person can change the world, his or her leadership ability must be augmented by other leaders. These inspirational individuals are frequently not pulled from the ranks of public service. Their occupations vary, just as those who desire change pull from all walks of life and all vocations. It is more leaders and more passion that we need.
Dr. King may have been the towering giant of the Civil Rights Movement, but Ralph Abernathy, Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, Fred Shuttlesworth, and many others less well-known filled out the inner circle that produced progress on a scale that is still difficult to fully comprehend. Along with the notable names are a million others who are the pride of their city or town, but little more than strangers in other places. I hardly need note that none of the public figures I have outlined were members of the House or the Senate. Reformers are rarely beholden to the political game because it requires a kind of willingness to bend to the prevailing will and howling winds of popular sentiment, else one find oneself out of power. So long as this is the case, real reform measures will be stymied or watered down during the process of deliberation.
I almost need not mention that Congress is meant to work for us, but that it only pays attention to our concerns when we articulate them with force, clarity, and with united purpose. When we are united behind a cause, not a personality, and especially not a party, then the sky is the limit. Making our dreams a reality requires more than one election cycle and we ought to really contemplate why it took a once-in-a-generation candidate to patch up the variety of competing interests and disconnected factions of the Democratic party to achieve a sweeping victory.
Instead of cursing our fate and gnashing our teeth out of betrayal, we should re-organize, but this time around the issues that our elected representatives either will not touch, or will whittle away to ineffectual mush. We have before us a fantastic opportunity to change our priorities and establish successful strategies. Legend has it that right before they put the rope around his neck, the labor leader Joe Hill stated, "Don't Mourn! Organize!" Liberalism is alive and well and if we learn from this experiment we will not have failed. The new birth of freedom long promised is ours for the taking, provided we grasp hold of it. We will live to fight another day.
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
