This Saturday, a broad coalition of progressive organizations will hold a massive One Nation Working Together rally -- actually kind of a revival -- aimed at allowing progressives to emerge from a defensive crouch, stand up straight and mobilize our forces to do battle in the decisive midterm elections.
Due to a navigational error, the U.S. 4th Infantry Division landed on the wrong inlet on Utah Beach in Normandy on D-Day in 1944. For hours they were disoriented and pinned down by German defenders. Then the only general to accompany the amphibious assault, General Ted Roosevelt (son of President Teddy Roosevelt), personally rallied his troops from the beach, over the seawall and established a beachhead that was critical to the successful invasion of France that ultimately ended World War II.
Saturday's rally is aimed at energizing thousands of latter-day General Ted Roosevelts who can fan out across America and do the same for the progressive forces that can be successful on Nov. 2 if -- together -- we stand up straight, take the offensive and refuse to be pinned down by constant attacks from the right.
The president's speech to 27,000 in Madison, Wisconsin, last Monday night fired up all present. It was a great start. But this weekend's rally organizers plan to communicate one central message to the thousands of activists who will gather in Washington Saturday: The President and other Democratic political leaders are not the only ones responsible for rallying our forces. We are all the generals who will rally our troops off this beach. It's up to us to take the leadership to prevent the Big Business, Wall Street-dominated, Tea-Party Republicans from reclaiming right-wing domination of American politics.
For forty years the right was on the offensive in America. At least when Bill Clinton was president, Democrats had a team on the field, but in so many respects the right-wing offensive continued until their crushing defeat in November 2008.
For the last 18 months, the progressive forces have once again been on the offense. But the entrenched corporate interests didn't roll over and play dead. They fought tooth and nail -- they lied, they bit, they poked eyes -- and did everything in their power to stop change.
Progressives won a lot in the last 18 months. We stopped the Great Recession caused by the Republican's policies from turning into the Great Depression. Over the intense opposition of the insurance companies, after 60 years of trying, we passed health-care reform that will finally make health care a right in America -- and begins to hold those big private insurance companies accountable. We passed landmark legislation to rein in the recklessness of the big Wall Street banks that collapsed the economy and cost eight million Americans their jobs. We created a consumer agency that will be launched by Elizabeth Warren -- a true progressive champion for the middle class.
Along the way Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Act to ensure women get equal pay for equal work. It expanded the State Children's Health Insurance Program. It completely reorganized the Student Loan Program to end wasteful bank subsidies and guarantee that every kid can get financing for his or her higher education. It passed a budget that massively changed the spending priorities of the federal government.
We did all of this in the face of constant, unrelenting fire from corporate interests.
But as any progressive can tell you, there is so much left to do. We can't stop now. We can't let the furious, intense opposition from Wall Street, the insurance companies, Big Oil and the far-right fringe discourage or dispirit us. We can't allow them to successfully take over one or both Houses of Congress. That would bring any opportunity for serious progressive change to a screeching halt.
We have to get off the beach and get back on the offense.
Sometimes the day-to-day back and forth of politics can cause us to forget what's really at stake and the massive gulf between progressive and right-wing values -- the difference between our vision of society and the vision of the other side.
We have to remember the fundamental difference between the right's belief in the unbridled pursuit of individual interest and our commitment to the common good; selfishness versus commitment to others; division versus unity; fear versus hope; that we're all in this together, not "all in this alone."
For the first few years after my wife, Jan, and I were married in 1980, her great aunt lived with us during the week. Jan and I both worked, so Aunt Sylv looked after the house and was very involved in raising Jan's two kids and my daughter.
Sylvia Lazar was a warm, wonderful woman who by that time was in her 70s. She'd come to the United States as a teenager from the Ukraine and still spoke with a thick accent.
Silvia had grown up in a Ukrainian shtetl -- a small peasant town where the family purchased water each day from a salesman who carried two buckets from the river on a yoke over his neck. Oxen and horses were the principal means used to transport goods and people. Life in her shtetl was very much as it had been for hundreds of years.
Her family moved to the United States by way of Canada in the early part of the last century to escape anti-Semitism and find a better life.
By the time she died in the mid-1980s, the world around her had been completely transformed. In the place of oxen, she had flown on jet planes, lived in air-conditioned homes with running water and indoor plumbing. She lived to see the development of antibiotics that forever changed the treatment of infectious disease. She watched a television as men landed on the moon.
Worldwide, life expectancy had skyrocketed. The standard of living in the developed world had exploded.
But Sylv had also lived through two great world wars that had killed tens of millions. She had seen six million of her fellow European Jews systematically slaughtered in the Holocaust. She'd seen pictures of the explosion of the atomic bomb and lived through an accelerating arms race and cold war between America and the USSR that included her homeland.
She watched with all Americans as the world approached the edge of the nuclear precipice during the Cuban missile crisis. And she had cheered on her niece Jan, who become active in fighting the growing environmental crisis brought on by exploding human economic activity.
Over the tiny span of one lifetime, Sylvia Lazar had been witness to the qualitative transformation of society its culture and technology. She had seen both the breathtaking possibilities and the horrific dangers unleashed by the accelerating march of technology and human history.
Whenever I think how hard it is to make social change, I think about Aunt Sylv.
In the thick of political battle, it's often difficult to see the qualitative change. But all you need to do is back up a little distance from the everyday struggle to see how quickly our world has been, and is being, transformed before our eyes.
Only 155 years ago, America was ending its great Civil War. Human slavery was abolished in America a mere eight generations ago.
That century-and-a-half represents .002% of the seven million years of human evolutionary development. It represents only 1% of the 13,000 years since humans made the critical evolutionary advance -- agriculture.
Politics is fundamentally the means through which human societies make choices about their futures.
Radical conservatives like to argue that the world is a dangerous place -- that the tough, hard-nosed, survival-of-the-fittest, individualist values are necessary to protect our survival. They claim that only by standing up fiercely for our own individual self-interests will we be successful at defending America and the values of "Western civilization." They claim that radical conservative values are tough, and that progressive values are soft.
But progressive values are the farthest thing from "pie-in-the-sky," "soft," "unrealistic," "head-in-the-clouds" precepts for action. In fact, right-wing values are mainly rationales for allowing the rich to become richer and the powerful more powerful. In fact, progressive values allow us the best opportunity to survive and succeed in the future world that is simultaneously bristling with unprecedented danger and beckoning with undreamt-of opportunity for our children and future generations -- if we go there together.
It's time for us all to remember that there is a lot more at stake this fall than who gets to wield the big gavel in the House of Representatives.
For everyone who was inspired and energized by the 2008 campaign, who believed that they were making history: You were right. We took a lot of ground, but the war is far from over. Now it is time to saddle up and report for duty once again.
Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.
Stuart Whatley: Pulpit Politicking Returns for 2010 Election Cycle
Rabbi Arthur Waskow: Justice Still Denied: My Mini-Sermon at the 'One Nation Working Together' Rally
Now you're in recess without extending current tax rates for 98% of the American People, until AFTER the elections and I don't understand why. It's a reasonable and sensible proposal: keep the current rates up to $250,000. Even zillionaires get the same break for the first $250K! You're the MAJORITY in both houses AND you have a President willing to sign such a bill.
You claimed you didn't have the votes. Did you recess so Democrats siding with the GOP and the obscenely wealthy AGAINST us could get re-elected? WHY? What possible incentive might they have for bucking their corporate handlers AFTER the election? Were you hoping to save GOP moderates from being ousted by their radical brethren? Again, WHY? Are THEY going to help hard-working Americans instead of their wealthy pals? Or...
Are you "playing" us with the threat of a GOP dominated Congress to turn out the vote? Have your political consultants convinced you that's the "winning strategy"? Fear works for the Republicans; why not the Democrats?
I WANT to understand; 98% of us WANT to understand. Save the emails about the GOP "holding our tax cuts hostage", if you're not offering us a binding plebiscite on November's ballot. If that's not an option, then We, The People, have no options. Do we? Have options?
Congressmen/women are Democrats.
Ideology is the driving force of right wing propaganda that serves big business just as it did in germany. It is known that H!tler negotiated with the captains of industry, received financial support from them and promised them anti-strike legislation. Liberals/progressives are not anti labor, republicans and f@scist are anti labor...goebbels said that propaganda is an essential function of the modern state, right wing propaganda has been privatized in keeping with the neoliberal anarchy capitalism espoused by all repulicans/tea baggers and too many democrats. What we see today is republicans blaming democrats and unions for causing the nations ills, just like the n@zi's did in germany. The middle class has been manipulated by right wing propaganda to vote against their own self interest, manipulated to support the privileged class and turn on unions.
"Once upon a time, back when America had a strong middle class, it also had a strong union movement.
These two facts were connected. Unions negotiated good wages and benefits for their workers, gains that often ended up being matched even by nonunion employers. They also provided an important counterbalance to the political influence of corporations and the economic elite."
Right wing ideology and right wing propaganda have replaced truth and dialogue in America...
"In the early decades of the twentieth century, the numbers of child laborers in the U.S. peaked. Child labor began to decline as the labor and reform movements grew and labor standards in general began improving, increasing the political power of working people and other social reformers to demand legislation regulating child labor. Union organizing and child labor reform were often intertwined"
http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child_labor/about/us_history.html
More recently, union forces have come to represent the American worker in the global economy, and to a lesser degree, the entire US economy, as they oppose powerful plutocratic organizations such as the "US" Chamber of Commerce, who often allies with Republicans. In what would probably be a shocker to most Americans, the leader of the powerful "US" Chamber recently said it would do no good to replace a Chinese worker with an American worker.
So unions are on the side of the American worker, the middle class, and the economic recovery. What we have to realize in the upcoming rally is that their will be what are viewed as more radical elements, but they are still our friends. Didn't Glenn Beck's rally include radicals? Most certainly.
Ultimately, who is more of your friend--the US communist fighting for your job, or the Chinese communist who will *take* your job (and wreck the US economy), being so empowered by the "US" Chamber, in alliance with Republicans?
Check out who the sponsors are and who will be attending. You will find a link to Endorsing Organizations and unless you are a Communist, Socialist or Marxist you may be surprised.
Sponsoring organizations such as the Communist Party of USA (CPUSA), International Socialists Organization, Democratic Socialists of America, Chicago Democratic Socialists of America, National Council of La Raza and Sojourners (Socialist Organization) just to name a few.
There is also a link on the “Young Communist League’s” web site promoting the rally and asking people to join them!
Many unions and several of the less innocuous organizations are attending. George Soros (scary dude) has several of his organizations attending.
Obama’s campaign organizing committee, “Organizing for America”
has just released an email invitation for people to attend this weekends “One Nation Working Together” rally on 10-2. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/120925-obama-organizing-group-pushes-liberal-march-next-weekend
KIDS, SUCK IT UP & REKINDLE YOUR INVOLVEMENT. I'VE VOTED SINCE '72 AND USUALLY 4 LESSER OF 2 EVILS. THAT'S JUST HOW OT IS. CITIZEN UP & DO WHAT MUST BE DONE!
Ms. Huffington, is there any support from you for this march?
Why does the Jon Stewart march given more coverage and support?
Are we scared of being labeled pro labor? Are unions now had become taboo and to be scorned? Is it too hot or too radical to consider?
This is really baffling.
Ed Schultz is the only one pushing and supporting this March among the progressive talk show hosts.
Is there anything I am missing here?
Come on, educate me, please.
Its pro socialism
Can't you see, it is the DC plutocratic machine (Republican Congress and lobbyists such as the "US" Chamber of Commerce) who reside as a thin layer, calling themselves capitalists...while there is the huge communist Chinese machine underneath?
Here we have these bodies leaving tax breaks for outsourcing open--for decades--thereby enriching other economies, including communist China, at the expense of ours?
Finally--and most perplexing--why is Obama a "communist" as suggested by the plutocrats, when it is the plutocrats themselves who have an agenda to nurture the world's largest communist economy?
The boogeyman that scares you every night ?
Your president has given billions to these "plutocrats" so maybe your problem is with him.
I will be there Saturday marching with teachers, health care workers, union members, unemployed, environmentalists, anti-war, blacks, whites, latinos, gay, straight, men, women, and more groups of people than I can possibly name. The point is - these are real people marching in support of issues that are important in their lives. Those who come here and inaccurately describe the event, or attempt to distort the intentions of those attending, are simply spreading fear. The truth is - the vast majority of people marching on Saturday are normal, everyday Americans. There is nothing to fear, unless of course you're afraid of normal, everyday Americans.
- Did you say the same about the 8/28 rally? Because I could have written this word for word about that event and the normal, everyday American's who attended and were smeared and called hateful and racist and violent for simply standing up for America and the American ideals of Faith, Hope, Charity and Honor.
I think the involvement of Unions, Communists, Socialists, NOW and all the other radicals speaks volumes about the nature of this rally and the people who will be attending. I wish you all well, I'll be watching, but open your eyes to the money behind it all. 8/28 was paid for by donations from normal Americans, and excess was donated to the SOWF. Millions of dollars to charity. We put our money where our mouths are. This rally and it's organizers can not say the same. Its about POWER, not PEOPLE.
The US Chamber of Commerce has strongly opposed two job-creating bills--the Currency bill and the Insourcing bill, yet the Chamber and opposition (mostly Republicans) have not been held accountable.
Our country is being sold to communist China by the DC Plutocrats (exploiting Chinese workers and the environment in the process). This is a profound economic and national security risk to America. Why can't this message be communicated effectively at the rally? The public can easily get their minds around this simple theme--"Stop the Sellout of America to China by Republicans!"
I propose the rally also visit the premises of the US Chamber of Commerce--located directly across from the White House. I'm sure the union contingent of the rally would strongly support this. Each and every Congressperson who opposed the two bills should be named aloud.
So you've got a march...now get a cohesive, sexy message, and something to fire up the union guys.
...with the Communist Party USA and a virtual cornucopia of socialist organizations.
Yeah, this is great by any standard.
So did we adopt China's political system so we can treat everyone the same, or did they adopt capitalism to turn into an economic powerhouse?
Well stated, sir.
see you Saturday.
at what point will say we have arrived?