“In past economic crises, populist fervor has been for expanding the power of the national government to address America’s pressing needs. Pleas for making good the nation’s commitment to equality and welfare have been as loud as those for liberty. Now the many who are struggling have no progressive champion. The left have ceded the field to the Tea Party and, in doing so, allowed it to make history. It is building political power by selling the promise of a return to a mythic past.”

Ralph correctly lauds the work being done by so many:

“Hello!  There are plenty of distinguished progressive champions lobbying, rallying, exposing, suing and organizing at the national, state and local level.  Yet they have been mostly left out of the mass media, on television and radio and in the news, feature, style, opinion and book review pages of major newspapers, including The Times.”

In his letter he finishes (or at least this was the published version) with:

“After all, mass media coverage matters greatly for social and political movements.”

In the 70’s when we were working with Ralph, I used to comment that we had to be careful because “if you lived by the press, you died by the press,” which in the crypto speech of organizers meant that if you counted on the press to build your base, then you had to also beware that when the press tired of your act, you could lose your base as easily since they controlled the gateways.  We should never denigrate the huge value of advocacy and advocates, but this is the peril of speaking to and speaking for a base, which is unorganized and not organizational.  Frankly, it was why the right knew how important it was to kill something like ACORN as a membership organization with a clearly defined base and to weaken and destroy unions for the same reason.

And, this is where Ralph is kinda wrong and speaking to our old times 30 and 40 years ago, rather than the new times where we currently organize.  Now there are more outlets for more voices both in established and informal media including the internet, so that frankly the monolithic press is dead, drowned in thousands of voices, including advocates, though still a powerful and incoherent follower of the herd once it is stampeding.  Though Ralph is right that the media amplified a lot of small sounds from the Tea Party, he is wrong to not understand that their unquestioned ability to organize and evolve a national base with deep grassroots in lots of communities and actually contend for power is something for which progressives have no answer and no current match.  Having fought at the hustings, they also sometimes lost, but also sometimes won.

It hurts me to say that despite their rudeness and their wrongful finger pointing, the Times is right that we have failed to organize a deep, grassroots base willing and able to contend for power across the country and not simply around Pennsylvania Avenue and Congressional watering holes.  Until we are willing to organize deeply and aggressively at the local level, contend for power win-lose-or-draw, and meet and match the challenge of the Tea Party at that level, any protests about unfairness are about as powerful as writing a letter to the editor of The New York Times.

Needless to say that’s just more “speaking truth to power,” and powerless by definition.

New Orleans       

But, upon reflection, a more honest answer, though probably more confusing and less useful to the fine students of Lafayette, would have been to say, that “yes, I support the ‘party,’ just not the principles and the politics.”  I’m a party-guy, just not a Tea Party guy.

I’m frankly bored by all of these articles in the wake of the mid-term election that argue in such lofty terms that the Tea-people will have to move to the center and get their “govern” groove on.  I think the real fight is going to emerge between the Republican Party pols that sucked up to the Tea-people to get elected and hope their movement runs out of steam and caffeine, dying in the cup so to speak.  This is all of the big whoops of the established structure trying to pretend that compromise is all that counts and their way is always the best way, because they believe it’s the only way.  No listening there.

The movement stories about isolated and angry citizens who found their voice in the Tea Party and a life defining cause by channeling their anger and alienation into the movement and the elections, should not be forgotten.  Those are activists and organizers who I can guarantee anyone who will listen, will NOT be happy as Republicans.  They need their own party.  They need a Tea Party that is a real party fighting (win or lose) for votes from a local base, rather than simply another caucus in the elephant herd.

There are states where that is easy and they can even fuse with the Republicans, like New York, Connecticut Vermont, South Carolina, and, perhaps even Oregon, just as the Working Families Party has done in some of these same states.  There are states where it is harder, but in every state, the rules still allow distinct parties to be built, and whether progressives or tea-people, these are real alternatives despite the fact that the work is hard and the road is long.  We simply need more parties that just the Rep-Dem Party that rules now with the favor of big money, daily pundits, and the more powerful Business Party that funds and focuses the whole shebang, but doesn’t have a separate ballot line on election day.

The prevailing wisdom seems to most clearly support the “Me Party” or what Dharmendra Kumar, who directs ACORN International’s work in Delhi famously referred to in the Indian context as the many “parties of one.”  Individuals who believe they are a “brand” or have sufficient wealth to be able to run in state after state as a “Me Party.”  The New Yorker speculated at length on whether or not Mayor Bloomberg from NYC was once again testing the waters to run as an independent for President as a standard bearer for the Me-Party.  I think the Me-Party is the largest in the United States right now no matter what Halloween mask the candidate might be wearing.  A Rand Paul in Kentucky or a Mario Rubio in Florida may be tea-people one day, libertarians the next, or whatevers most of the time, but the press continually tries to document their movements to the “center” while they try to brand themselves with the Me-Party label and run from the rest.

It would all be easier if politicians rather than constantly shucking and jiving, coalesced with like-minded and stood and fought accordingly.  Let there be a Blue Dog Party or a Right Democratic Party with a rural and southern base.  Let there be a Tea Party where they have the muscle.  Let there be a Libertarian Party with its small base and in fact I think there is one, but since it can’t build a base it ends up having to infiltrate the Republicans.  Let there be Progressive Party for whoever is comfortable there.  Let there be a national Working Families party to merge the people of labor, left, and liberal persuasion.  In fact let there be a Liberal Party for whoever is out there willing to say they are liberals and let it stick to them.  Let the Republican Party and the Democratic Party figure out what they really are and even what they really are not.

All of this would make it easier for citizens to both decide how to be active and how to choose, rather than this mush in the middle where no one can make heads or tails of truth or fiction, policy or program.  All of that would be better than the Me-Party which has been in ascendancy for the last several decades.

So, yes, I understand the Tea Party and support their right to be a party rather than a short grass prairie fire or a milquetoast caucus with the elephant band.  Good question, young man!

New Orleans

Nick had some small questions for the introduction of a book he was finishing for Perseus which he described as something of a homage to Alinsky.  He wanted my opinion on Alinksy’s legacy.  We talked about the several times that Alinksy had done sessions with my staff at Massachusetts Welfare Rights in early 1970 and various other things that we dispatched quickly.

More interesting to me was my quid pro quo. I wanted to ask Nick a couple of questions from his time about Alinksy’s real views from his perspective as opposed to the views that have been carried forward by the acolytes to the present.

One was whether Alinksy’s hostility to “movements” as opposed to “organizations” was tactical or fundamental.  Von Hoffman replied quickly that in his view there had been a lot of false attributions in his name.  He claimed that he had not heard Alinsky make this argument, and told me a story, that I thought I had read in an Alinsky biography, about when he was organizing The Woodlawn Organization (TWO) in Chicago and some of the TWO leaders wanted to invite some of the Freedom Riders to come to a meeting.  He was not too excited because in the past when they had pushed for similar meetings and they were lucky to pull 25 folks.  This time there was a huge crowd!  Nick said that he was talking to Saul, who was in Carmel (CA) later that night after the meeting, and told him about the meeting and that there was a real movement afoot.  Saul asked him to send him a memo, because this was worth attention.  Nick claimed he had never heard Saul movement bashing, and expressed surprise based on this story.

Of course I had heard Saul on this rant myself and it is well reported, but von Hoffman’s insight was valuable, because it might reveal something closer to Alinsky’s real opinions and curiosities rather than how he felt he had to handle his business in public.  Nick also told me there had been a serious debate, led by Saul, about putting the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) out of business and retooling to a wider range of projects, including an attack on the Daley machine in Chicago, but with his death that didn’t happen obviously.

Similarly I thought from the Alinsky book on John Lewis that his view of movements should have been different from his arguments there, but I also assumed the labor federation structure had fueled the “organization of organization” structure used in the Alinsky organizations in the 1950-60’s particularly.  Von Hoffman also pushed back on that and argued that Alinsky would have been much more open and flexible about the ACORN structure and membership base, and cited the work done with Fred Ross and the Community Service Organization (CSO) in California.

All of this led me to my second real question about the why Alinsky organizations were so apolitical and anti-political despite the discussions about power.  My theory had always been that if that were really Alinksy’s viewpoint, it came from the environmental experience in Chicago and the power of the Daley democratic machine then.  Von Hoffman scoffed at all of this.  He believed the only reason any of the Alinsky or IAF had to strictly with funders and the ease of getting funding to a tax exempt organization.  He said he and Saul talked about politics all of the time and none of what ACORN had done in terms of moving political action would have been anything but applauded by Alinsky.

Who knows at this point?  It’s nice to have someone like von Hoffman looking after the Alinsky legacy and willing to broaden Alinksy’s vision and work to encompass much of what has grown up and proven successful in the last almost 40 years since his death.  I hope someone does as much for me 40 years after I’m dead!

It was such a pleasure to have the conversation after all of these years with Nick.  I remember what he actually wrote about ACORN decades ago when he was a columnist, but didn’t bring it up, since he had already joked about not remembering much of what he had written in the past himself.  One thing about the right’s new – and perverse – interest in Alinksy’s books, is that it probably made room for something that von Hoffman would get to write now with this new audience, so that’s a contribution I should thank the Glen Beck people for myself.

207 turns out to be in Maine, so once there’s a spring thaw, I’ll start looking for this volume, and Nick was delighted that I was interested in an excerpt in Social Policy, so this is all good.