Richard Flacks: You must take over the leadership

from the blog of sociologist Richard Flacks (Univ. of California at
Santa Barbara)

step by step
step by step the longest march can be won


you must take over the leadership
Posted by rflacks on: August 31 2010



"You must take over the leadership".  B Brecht

A few weeks ago, I got the following comment from Kerry Candaele,
asking questions that I think are on a lot of our minds:

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              Why the left was too cooperative, has not built a
populist movement that can push Obama our way, and did, in large part,
support the president's agenda? Why so much passive going along?
Mystified by the man and his hope agenda? Back on our heels in order
to keep Democratic seats in centrist districts? Too much "organizing"
on line? In my own neighborhood--the westside of Los Angeles--when
teachers get let go and libraries close down, what to the PTAs and
liberal individuals in those schools do? Call for selling of cupcakes
and lemonade on the school grounds. Participatory democracy at the
baked goods table, instead of 50 buses filled with angry voters on the
grounds of the state capital with a progressive agenda in hand. And
now we have Jerry Brown, for whom we will all vote, running on who
knows what. What happened from November until today?
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Since the start  of the Obama years, progressives keep saying that
pressure from the left is essential if reform possibilities are to be
achieved. Kerry Candaele questions  are daily more urgent: why hasn't
such mobilization been happening?

First of all, however,  the assumption that the left is thoroughly
demobilized isn't really valid. In just the last few months, tens of
thousands marched for immigrant rights in Washington on March 21.
Twenty thousand people reportedly participated in the US Social Forum
in Detroit at the end of June. In July thousands converged on Phoenix
to protest SB 1070 as thousands more demonstrated locally across the
country. Last spring, large numbers of students in California
mobilized against budget cuts, and public employees marched on
Sacramento. None of this action was given significant coverage in the
mainstream media, while tea party theatricals were of course widely
featured. The march immigrant rights Washington rally was probably
much larger than the Beckfest but got no media notice. The Detroit
Social Forum was entirely unmentioned.