Progressive Democrats Alliance
Boston, Thursday, July 29, 2004
Thank you.
There are so many things that I do not have to say to the people in this room. I don not have to go on and on about the danger our democracy faces right now. I do not have to lay out the case for the Bill of Rights or the environment or fair trade or world peace. I do not have to reason with you as to the case against torture or dictatorship. I do not have to speak to you about how we must not split our vote this year.
I don't like preaching to the choir, and we know our songs of freedom and justice and peace and fairness and sustainability.
So let me tell you something you may not have thought about.
Our present emergency is upon us because our civic society has been dumbed down by dumbed down newspapers, radio and television news, by dumbded down schools, and by a corporate-run economic rat race that keeps people so busy trying to make ends meet that they have no time nor energy left for the civic affairs of their town or nation. You certainly know all this, and we celebrate the rise of independent media and the use of books and now films to fill in some of the gaps. But the gaps are awesome, and democracy cannot long survive when the people are not well informed, interested, and supplied with sufficient time and resources to participate.
But there is another thing that has been dumbed down over the past two or three generations, and that is the art of politics itself.
If the politics of a century ago can be likened to a banquet, the politics of today is like a fast food burger.
I am going to try to sell you on the idea of a richer politics, so let me tell you what it used to be like. Everybody used to be involved. You went to your Elks Club or your Women's Club, but you went to your party meetings, too. You worked your neighborhoods. You talked up your issues and candidates. It was a fairly constant thing, not just during the election season. Why? Because democracy is a lifestyle, not a fringe benefit of paying your taxes. Self-governance is a lot of work, but it's where you make your best friends and have your deepest satisfactions, after your family.
Just before I declared for the U.S. Senate last month, I was on a 20,000-mile road trip to register voters. There were many housing projects and low-income neighborhoods where the people had seen nobody dropping by to talk politics since the last election. The Democrats only come around, we were told, every few years to ask for their votes, but they weren't there to listen to their problems, help them craft political solutions. These people were of the opinion that, if the Democrats won or lost, their own lives wouldn't change much. That is stripped down politics. That is downright exploitive politics, when you come around begging for votes for your concerns, but you don't give a crouton in return. Oh yes, if your man or woman is elected, things will be better for everybody. But that is the top layer of the cake, and right now there is no cake under that frosting. We have to put it back by being involved all year long, every year, and in every neighborhood that needs political help. That is movement building--not just stumping for candidates.
You will go to your home tonight, or to your hotel room, and you will turn on all the lights and have a nice, hot shower, and watch television and not even think about the electrical power that makes it all happpen. If you follow the electrical wires far enough away you will find West Virginia and Kentucky communities that are being ravaged without mercy by big coal companies, protected by corrupt politicians. The coal companies cut off the top half of whole mountain ranges, dump the rubble in the once Eden-like valleys, and leave the mess to the people there. Every time it rains now, their homes flood. Giant pools of toxic sludge are everywhere, and when their dams break, toxins spill for miles. One recent spill in Inez, Kentucky, released more goo than the Exxon-Valdez, but this is probably the first you heard of it.
Now, if you are worried if West Virginia and Kentucky go to the Republicans, you might ask yourself first: where the hell have you been when they have so needed your help? Where have you been, as the residents of Cabrini Green in Chicago, or the slums of Ft. Myers or Miami or New Orleans or Los Angeles have needed your organizing help and your voice added to theirs?--for they love their children too and want decent lives. Do you think politics is just about raising money for candidates? Politics is about creatively serving the needs of your people, and the election is just the report card for how you are doing and how many people you have helped and how many people are following your leadership because you were there for them.
So don't let this new progressive alliance be another can of Betty Crocker icing for a cake that isn't there. Organize not just to win elections, but to deserve to win elections.
The Bill of Rights Defense Committee provides a good model for how we can move national issues through town and city councils, and then through state legislatures, to move toward national policy. Organizing at the town level is a good place to begin with a wide range of issues. In every case, the people who need change need to speak for themselves, and we, as political leaders, need to encourage them to do so, and show them how to make their voices effective.
If we can help people in distressed situations solve their problems, they will be there to speak out on the larger issues that concern many of the people in this room. But few people will speak up about global warming until they have a warm house for their own children. Building a national constituency for change requires that we work together to solve a wide range of personal issues for people first.
A good example can be found with my friends at Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement: people come to them for help with predatory mortgages, and stay to become involved in campaign finance reform and other large-scale issues. Solve their personal problems--or even just try to--and they will march with you. It is true everywhere, and it is the key to an enriched progressive movement. It is hard but infinitely rewarding work.
As we bake this cake, let us have bold strategies. Let us imagine a plan for the creation of Responsible Communities, where we go to our town councils and then our states to set goals in a wide variety of areas. Resolved, that our town shall use fifty percent renewable energy within ten years. Resolved, that our state budget shall spend five dollars in prevention and education for every dollar spent on police and prisons. And so on. The Bill of Rights Defense Committees have shown that anything is possible when people show up and make their demands.
The new meet-ups that have become possible and popular this year are a powerful force for change, but only when they go further than being a gathering of like-minded citizens; They must become organizing units for bringing in people who are not yet like-minded. They must become organizing units for people who will do more than sit around and share their feelings about politics; they must be platoons that go out and get real politics done.
This is an amazing moment in all of our lives, and in the life of our great nation. Never has our democracy been so challenged, and never have so many patriots of every age risen up to take their part in its defense. In the last two years, never have I been less proud of my government nor more proud of its people. This is a great time. We need to renew the spirit of our great American Revolution town by town, neighbor by neighbor and I tell you it is happening and you and I are well a part of it.
Let's do it right. Let's do deep politics that starts and ends with the needs of our people, so that we can do our part in the larger issues of the planet with this great Continental Army behind us.
Thank you.