“Progressive” Climate Groups Have Surrendered Without A Fight – At The Most Important Political Moment, There Will Be No Street Heat
Strategy Memo Reveals That Groups Will Not Mobilize ANY Direct Action or Protest
Groups Will Support Dems & “Boldly Negotiate”
“Progressives” Will Play Inside Baseball On Infrastructure & Reconciliation Bills
[Update: 9/7/21 – At least someone gets it (Washington Post Op-Ed):
Maybe Ms. vanden Heuvel can talk to climate activists? ~~~ end update]
Today, The People’s Party is holding a Labor Day protest event to “Occupy Congress”, in response to a host of issues that the Progressive Democrats have failed to respond to, including the end of federal unemployment insurance supplement – on Labor Day! – and Congress’ and the Biden administration’s failure to act to extend the eviction moratorium, or provide a living wage, medicare for all (during a deadly pandemic!), student debt relief, or house the homeless, among other things.
As Howard Zinn’s “People’s History” documents, all progressive change comes from the bottom up, in response to Movement protest and direct action tactics: strikes, protests, and direct street action (going back to the beginning and including violence).
We didn’t get the original New Deal – the model for the Green New Deal – by “supporting democrats” and “boldly negotiating”.
I preface this post in mentioning that Occupation tactic – which I strongly support – in order to contrast it with the lame strategy and tactics of the “progressive groups” working on climate and Green New Deal issues.
We are now facing a critical political moment in Congress as a result of the September 27 legislative deadline created by Speaker Pelosi’s surrender to right wing Democrats on the so called “bi-partisan Senate infrastructure bill”.
Biden and the Democrats have not been bold. Many others have written about that. Everyone knows that Senators Manchin and Sinema oppose the reconciliation bill and have effective veto power, while progressive Democrats and even House Speaker Pelosi have pledged to link the two bills together as a package.
A showdown is clear. Something has got to give. Here’s the progressive media setup:
Under these political conditions, it should seem obvious that progressives, climate activists, and Green New Dal supporters should be mobilizing their millions of members and supporters and descending en mass on Washington DC – like the People’s Party Occupation.
But that is not going to happen. There will be no “People’s Climate March 2.0”: Remember that?
And we know it’s not going to happened because of the strategy memo of the so called “progressive groups, specifically: Indivisible, Working Families Party, People’s Action, Sunrise Movement, Justice Democrats, United We Dream, Center for Popular Democracy, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, Our Revolution, Social Security Works
That strategy memo is written to “Progressive movement organizations and progressive Members of Congress” and it is curiously titled: “ Moving Forward: Passing an Inclusive Reconciliation Bill
“Inclusive”? Identity politics – aka “Progressive Neoliberalism” – is now driving the climate movement wagon?
The memo lays out the battle over the next month leading up to the September 27 vote on both the infrastructure bill and much larger $3.5 trillion “budget reconciliation” bill.
The infrastructure bill is a traditional highway pork bill, loaded up with many billions of new subsidies to fossil and privatization and deregulation and cover for more forest logging.
Progressives are supposed to swallow this crap in exchange for the so called “budget reconciliation bill” which supposedly has the climate and Green New Deal elements. But that bill has not even been drafted and “progressive Democrats” have not made their demands clear.
What does “No Climate – No Deal” mean?
Wow.
The progressive strategy memo obscures all this.
The progressive groups – despite Congress’ and Democrats’ repeated prior failures – feel that progressives in Congress “have done an incredible job” – while they celebrate passage of an empty and meaningless budget reconciliation Resolution!
After these delusional platitudes, the strategy memo sets the political stage thusly:
Now, all eyes are on the reconciliation bill and progressives need to up their game. We are in a powerful, but precarious place—we passed the budget resolution with all our progressive priorities still on the table, but still have a race to the finish line as major corporations invest millions in a major lobbying blitz. In order to continue the success progressives have seen so far we must:
The “must do” elements include:
- Resist the urge to cannibalize other priorities
- Support progressives to hold their bloc
- Keep up the pressure on conservative Democrats
- Support progressives in policy negotiations with committees and leadership
- Start preparing for amendments NOW.
I see absolutely no strategy with respect to mobilizing public support – it’s all inside baseball.
Just as bad, the memo’s political analysis begins with a false premise: “money is tight”:
There is no way around it–money is tight, and it’s going to take work to make sure that all our priorities are funded sufficiently to be set up for success.
In other words, Progressives remain beholden to austerity Neoliberal politics.
The “pay-go” financing issue, which AOC claimed to have negotiated and eliminated (a false claim, it only applied to COVID relief), is now disguised with the term “pay-for” – pure Orwell.
Leadership will start pitting priorities against one another in an attempt to whittle down the package or compensate for some committees with jurisdiction over payfors failing to deliver. We must not let this happen. Instead, we should hold onto cross-issue solidarity as one of our most important assets in this fight, and be bold in demanding payfors that begin making the rich pay their fair share.
Any “political pressure” the progressive groups may mount is targeted on “conservative democrats”, not the progressive democrats (doing an “incredible job”) who have repeatedly caved in prior negotiations.
And the final bullet assume that that House will pass the Reconciliation bill BEFORE the Senate.
We must execute on sharp strategy to improve the bill before it goes to the Senate.
Before it goes to the Senate? What?
That’s not how I understood the procedure: I thought the Senate – where it is much tougher to hold a majority – was supposed to go first and Pelosi would not move the House bill until the Senate passed Bernie’s reconciliation bill (whatever that is).
Am I missing something? By having the House go first, they are surrendering to Manchin and Sinema!
The memo concludes on an optimistic note:
This is a winnable fight, but it will take strong alignment, sharp interventions, and bold negotiations to get our progressive priorities across the finish line.
Yes, this is a “winnable fight”, but you have surrendered your leverage and chosen to lose without even mobilizing your troops and having that fight.