It’s inspiring to read Marshall’s contribution—it’s sweep through history from de Tocqueville to Alinsky is breathtaking; his optimism about the hope for a Democratic Renewal is inspiring. May it be true (and I also think it is). He ends by addressing, “what has changed that may be giving organizing a new lease on life, especially in electoral politics?” and suggests four reasons:

1. close elections that mean organizing makes a difference
2. the Internet and organizational connectedness combined can matter
3. labor’s recommitment to organizing
4. people’s ability to enter into relationships with one another to articulate common purposes and act on them.

All this is true. And more. So for this commentary, I’ll note a few other things that are part of the flowering (explosion?) of organizing and where it leads with a democratic promise—in other words, can we win for progressive change?

For the last 30 years, we have been on the political, organizational and policy defensive. We counted victories, mostly, when we stopped bad things from happening (or only being ½ as bad as they could have been)—and it was right to celebrate that. It was a period of right wing movement that controlled the debate and most of the major levers of power in the country. So even though the country was nearly evenly divided in its interests/opinions, the right wing was in power. We had to struggle hard just to keep up with where we had been.

We are now, hopefully in a new period.

The prime reasons for this are:

a) real (objective) conditions (brought on by the excesses, unchecked power and arrogance of the right wing, corporate influence on economic, social and international policy) have driven people to look for (and fight for) an alternative. The war in Iraq, Katrina, Terri Schiavo, the corruption (Abramoff, Foley), the lies (all of the above) and the lack of addressing most people’s concerns as opposed to their own concerns surpassed the limit of public tolerance.

b) the right wing control (hegemony) is fracturing and it is not clear that it can be put back together. While the progressive forces have always been more diverse (by race, class, interests) and often less willing to march in unison, the division of the right that have also been there (but were subjugated to combine conservatism and winning) have come unglued. The economic conservatives and the social conservatives and those pursuing an international expansion have come into conflict with each other. A majority of people are turning against the right. What they turn to is not yet clear.

We cannot will a movement into existence, but we can be ready for when that time arrives—and we have prepared leadership, built organization, developed insights about how to work and how to work together. And now we have an opening. Less forged around a vision of what should be than around an aversion to what should not be.

It is now, when there is this opening, that the extraordinary work which has been taken shape over the last 30 years really will pay off. Still we don not know if it is enough to win and be progressive.

1. Strategic insights that combine winning and being progressive and the realization that there is a tension between the two and a need for the two to go together. There is a progressive alternative that is worth fighting for (you do need to stand for something based on moral values to attract real support) and you need to be serious about winning to turn the promise of being progressive into a reality and not just a dream (and the perfect can’t be the enemy of the good). We realize that we need to a) really improve people’s lives, b) give people a sense of their own power and c) change the relations of power and structures of power. This is one of the reasons that building organizations matter. So to be a progressive means we need to be serious about winning. And to make winning worthwhile, it needs to be about things that matter to people and reflects our moral values.
2. We’ve learned to play an inside and outside game as we did on stopping Social Security privatization, which was the first effective stopping of the Bush juggernaut and the first indication of this new democratic promise. There union (AFSCME and AFL-CIO and others) and community and state based groups (USAction) and MoveOn and think tanks (Campaign for America’s Future) and others came together working with the Democratic leadership with common message, common purpose and common strategy. And now the campaigns are multiplying on the budget, on the war, and other key issues.
3. We learned to build both on issues and elections. Before 1980 progressive organizations were rarely involved electorally. The NAACP continued to do voter registration (thank goodness) and ACORN began to engage in local electoral politics and the League of Conservation Voters moved to electoral work. But most other progressive groups were not moving in this direction, while the right wing had learned from the organizing of the progressive forces from the 60s and combined it with electoral impact from the start. Now we have serious combining of electoral and issue organization—America Votes moving a coordinated get out the vote operation in key states; Progressive Majority identifying and supporting new kinds of true progressive candidates as a farm team for the future, and many, many other efforts and organizations in the same vein.
4. We learned more technical skills and put them in the service of our organizing—targeting, messaging, using voter files, basing more of our work on research for what is needed and analyzing the results to see that we build on what works and not only on our wishes.
5. The internet and blogosphere and new media are part of the new architecture of this new era. We no longer are only consumers of the corporate media, but can create our own methods of communication, combine with our organizing and add to our action.
6. and the emerging movement, built on and also beyond all of the step by step approaches, is the immigrant rights movement—a powerful promise of the future and a contested ground for our politics and our values.
7. The flowering of many diverse kinds of organizations over the years—by geography, by issue, by constituency, by function (think tanks, and communications and organizing and elections)—is paying off as we find ways to come together. Unions, often ignored by earlier progressives, are exercising their muscle and are more understood as a core of any effective democratic revival. Women, transformed by the movements of the 70s, are a strong voice for a change and organizations from EMILY’s List and Feminist Majority and Women’s Voices/Women Vote and other groups engage women and their concerns. African American political power is a key progressive center, still needing to struggle for an equal opportunity in this society. Young voters have, for the first times since they got the right to vote, been increasing their participation because of the changed reality and the myriad of groups ranging from Youth Vote to USSA. GLBT community understands that their interests lie with others for progressive change and the lists go on and on. And we are understanding more the need to reach out to mainstream America, to suburban, exurban and rural areas, if we are to meet the challenge and build real majorities.
8. Donors have been coming together to also function strategically, seeing the many parts that are needed to be both progressive and winning.

Yet we also face enormous obstacles.

The right still may come back together, distancing themselves from the economic conservatives and build on the worsening conditions.

We may still fracture over differences on important issues—like how to end this dreadful war, how to set new priorities when so many needs are unmet.

Will the contradictions of our progressive forces divide with the strains of unaccountable corporate power still wielding its influence on issues about the daily concerns of people’s lives from health care to college tuition to what is of value. Will we ourselves succumb to the view that guided the right wing that we are on our own or will we unite around the concept that we are in it together?

Yes, there is a promise of a democratic revival—hopefully, not even a revival, but a building of something new based on the work that has been going on for those 30 years, on the values that have endured and on the new wisdom we have gained to walk through the new opening and face the challenges that still lie ahead.