It is relatively late in the game for both Democrats and the “professional left” who are trying to jolt the party into moving decisively on their central concerns. With many experts predicting the loss of one or both houses of Congress in the upcoming mid-term elections, Democratic strategists may be more preoccupied with minimizing losses than with charting bold new paths.
Opposed to this hunker-down mentality, and partly as a response to the high visibility of the “Tea Party” phenomenon over the past year, a number of progressive organizations joined forces to hold the “One Nation Working Together” march last Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Billed by its organizers as a counterpoint to the anti-government pitch of the Tea Partiers, its line-up of speakers included a number of liberal stalwarts who argued forcefully for government intervention to create jobs, protect civil rights and promote fairness and justice.
“This march is very much in the tradition of the 1960’s marches,” said NAACP National President Benjamin T. Jealous. “It’s a march for jobs and justice. It’s a march that’s been organized by the civil rights community in concert with a broader range of faith, labor and student organizations. In that respect it’s really wider than the 1963 march or the 1995 (Million Man) march.”
Among the featured speakers were Rev. Jesse Jackson of Rainbow/PUSH, Rev. Al Sharpton, Van Jones of Color of Change, singer Harry Belafonte and comedian Paul Rodriguez. Among the 400-plus groups in attendance were the Services Employees International Union, the National Council of La Raza, the U.S. Students Association, the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights, the AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club, and the National Urban League.
The four hour program – made up of speeches, poetry, musical performances and readings of historical speeches – was broken into three segments, highlighting jobs, public education/ civil rights, and justice. There were also several smaller rallies launched from various locations in the city including marches for immigration reform, health care, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights and youth marches.
“I really was impressed with the number of youth participants, and it wasn’t just the NAACP,” said Texas NAACP Secretary Linda Lydia. “It was truly a rainbow representation of folks who were there at the rally. It wasn’t a message of hate and divisiveness. It was one of coming together, and making a better country.”
With an estimated turn-out of 175,000, Jealous hailed the rally as “the most diverse march on Washington this country has ever seen.” This self-consciously inclusive posture was intended to stand in direct contrast to the racially-tinged polemics of the Tea Party rallies that have captured the national media’s attention since the movement’s inception last year.
“We need America to deal with the issue of jobs,” said Rev. Sharpton, receiving one of the loudest ovations of the day. “We bailed out the banks. We bailed out the insurance companies. And now it is time to bail out the American people.”
But despite the rally organizers’ best efforts, it is unlikely to receive the wall-to-wall coverage of the first Tea Party rallies or Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” march in August. It also remains to be seen whether the energy of the march will translate into sustained activism through the November elections.
As one strategy against the loss of momentum that often occurs once marchers go home, organizers are attempting to use new media and communications technology to create a corps of volunteers who will carry the energy of the rally back to their communities.
“One of the big things we’ll be doing throughout this march [is there will be] people on the jumbotron imploring the crowds to text ‘ONE 62227’ which will give us a very large list of cell phone numbers that we’ll then sort by zip code,” said Jealous. “On buses people will be asked to sign up on lists. The whole goal here is to have people signed up to be volunteers when they get home.”
Jealous promises a range of actions in the spirit of the “One Nation” march throughout the rest of October, from larger regional events to very small gatherings, all of them designed “to get folks to engage in the election and to focus on it early because, frankly, folks who believe in civil rights have to catch up and get engaged or we’re going to get run over this fall.”
A central goal of the event was to challenge the conservative narrative about the economy. Even President Obama himself has rankled his progressive base by co-opting Republican talking points about the overriding need for deficit reduction, which can only come at the expense of the full-bore public spending most on the left believe is needed.
Jealous and Deepak Bhargava of the Center for Community Change see a way forward in proposals such as those of Rep. George Miller (D-California) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), with their heavy emphasis on job creation. But as fiscal austerity becomes the new cause célèbre for politicians and political commentators, and with President Obama having exhausted much of his political capital in the battles over healthcare reform and rescuing the financial industry, arguments for aggressive job creation—and the spending necessary to make it happen—face an uphill climb.
The economic argument is simple. Americans who are put to work will go out and make new purchases, boosting business confidence, hiring and investment—leading to yet more jobs. A growing economy will then generate the tax revenues needed to close the deficit.
As economists fear a possible double-dip recession and a second round of home foreclosures, this latest chapter in the ages-old debate about the proper role of government could prove fateful. Among Republicans and conservative Democrats, one finds incessant warnings about imminent collapse unless drastic measures are taken to slash federal spending.
But for those who took part in the “One Nation Working Together” a different message rang forth: that the government can and should move aggressively to create more jobs and expand opportunities. It is anyone’s guess whether the message was delivered in time to be of any use to the embattled President—or his dispirited supporters.
"This is an important moment in the progressive movement,” said Leah Daughtry, national campaign director of One Nation Working Together. “As each person returns home and continues to rally others as we head to the ballot box on November 2, we re-commit ourselves to our common future.”
© Dallas Examiner. All rights reserved.
© Dallas Examiner. All rights reserved.
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