Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

More Like This

Mother Jones:
It was the kind of meeting that conspiratorial conservative bloggers dream about. A month after President Barack Obama won reelection, top brass from three dozen of the most powerful groups in liberal politics met at the headquarters of the National Education Association (NEA), a few blocks north of the White House. Brought together by the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Communication Workers of America (CWA), and the NAACP, the meeting was invite-only and off-the-record... [L]abor officials, environmentalists, civil rights activists, immigration reformers, and a panoply of other progressive leaders discussed the challenges facing the left and what to do to beat back the deep-pocketed conservative movement. At the end of the day, many of the attendees closed with a pledge of money and staff resources to build a national, coordinated campaign around three goals: getting big money out of politics, expanding the voting rolls while fighting voter ID laws, and rewriting Senate rules to curb the use of the filibuster to block legislation.
The piece frames this as a matter of radical outrage in spite of superficial Democratic victories, but I would frame it instead as a matter of shared interests and real opportunities becoming more palpable and more plausible precisely because of this very string of Democratic electoral victories, multiplying progressive reforms (compromised though they all inevitably are), and the amplification of left rhetoric via the netroots, Occupy, and more mainstream outlets like MSNBC. The tide hasn't just turned, it's starting to come in.

No comments: