[Peace-discuss] Astroturf & "autocratic progressives"

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Wither the Autocratic Progressives?
	By David Sirota - July 8, 2008, 11:37AM

INDIANAPOLIS AIRPORT - Sitting in the airport getting ready to post for the TPM 
Book Club while waiting for a flight to D.C., I got this email from a friend in 
progressive politics:

     "I'm reading The Uprising now and I'm wondering how you think (the new 
Health Care for America Now (HCAN) coalition) going to work? Is this another 
AAEI? Or something better that will build real grassroots support? I like the 
idea of targeting Blue Dogs and putting organizers on the ground."

My friend is referring to the controversial chapter in The Uprising about 
Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI), which was also excerpted in In 
These Times.

The crux of the chapter is about how the antiwar uprising was hurt by a strategy 
that put a massive amount of resources into a top-down, Washington insider 
campaign whose major outside-the-Beltway activity was astroturfing, not real 
grassroots organizing - and whose strategy was a purely partisan one: namely 
using the war as a political weapon only against Republicans, regardless of 
whether that would actually help end the war.

The AAEI fiasco was an example of Autocratic Progressivism - the kind where 
organizations acting in the name of the progressive movement structured the 
operation in an autocratic, undemocratic, insular fashion - a "trust the Beltway 
elites" model that defies Saul Alinsky's most basic principles of organizing.

Two initial tidbits of news tell me that HCAN is going to be different.

First and foremost, grassroots groups seem like they are going to play an 
integral role in the national campaign from the get-go. For instance, I just 
received word that in my home state of Colorado, the Colorado Progressive 
Coalition is spearheading the launch of the campaign in state. I've also heard 
that Connecticut Citizen Action Group is going to be launching the campaign in 
Connecticut. These groups are the antithesis of astroturf groups - they are real 
grassroots organizations.

Second, there's this story from Huffington Post about how HCAN will, in fact, 
operate with a movement psychology - rather than a partisan one. Specifically, 
it will target pressure against anyone who gets in the way of real health care 
reform - Republicans OR Democrats. This is different from a partisan strategy 
that says pressure will only be brought to bear on one party.

Movement psychology is precisely what takes uprisings and turns them into 
full-fledged social movements. Partisan psychology - otherwise known as Partisan 
War Syndrome - is what destroys uprisings. It's fantastic to see HCAN taking a 
confrontational, movement posture right out of the gate. It suggests an 
understanding of how power and movements have worked - and not worked - in 
American history.

If the organization can preserve this movement posture and reject the Autocratic 
Progressives who populate so much of D.C.'s new self-satisfied "progressive" 
infrastructure, there's a solid chance that today's populist uprising can be 
channeled into a powerful movement for universal health care. Better still, it 
can serve as a new model for other corners of the uprising that I describe in my 
book.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/08/whither_the_autocratic_progres/