Jerry Rose November 5 at 4:58pm Reply• Report
After the elections: time to change our socks
This to those Friends--well over a thousand---who have participated so heartfully in the just-completed elections, which I think we can say in honesty were rather disastrous for the progressive political cause in America. Electoral victories for progressive populist candidates and even on ballot initiatives were few and far between, though these campaigns were far from "wasted" because they helped to build the momentum toward an ultimate triumph of "the people" over the military/corporate interests which dominated the results of this election.
What now? For my suggested answer, I'd like you to go to the article I've just posted on Principled Progressive: "Now That the Election is Ended, Let the Politics Begin."
http://sunstateactivist.org/ssablog/?p=540
This message is to ask our Facebook friends across the nation and world to begin the process of organizing local chapters of a People's Caucus that, in the brief opportunity furnished by a hiatus in frequent elections, can create a center for carrying into everyday political action the agenda of Voices for the People which is the vision of Campaign Corner. Without "candidates" in each state and perhaps each community, we need "convenors," men and women who will step forward, with the assistance of the Corner, to start the process of post-election "service" of, by, and for the people in your locality. If you're the first to offer your services as a convenor, you'll get that job, to be assisted by later volunteers from your region, maybe divided by, say, different parts of your state (up and down state, etc.)
So yes, the election is over, but your City Commission meets tomorrow, a Public Service Commission is holding a hearing on a new nuclear plant in your town. Yes indeed, "politics" goes on---will you be going on, or waiting for the next election to get involved?
Jerry D. Rose
www.facebook.com/campaigncorner
NOW THAT THE ELECTION IS OVER, LET THE POLITICS BEGIN
sunstateactivist.org
Political pundits and garden variety political junkies (like me) are still poring over the results of Tuesday’s election, which appears on its face and may be underneath the skin as well to have been a terrible beating for the progressive cause in America. Angry and upset Americans have endured a c
Alan L. Maki November 5 at 8:38pm
Most elections in this country have been a disaster for liberals, progressives and the left... for working people in general and for the entire world.
Obama's election was the biggest disaster of all for liberals, progressives and the left.
Liberals, progressives and the left should make sure Obama is a one-term president and either "primary him out" and/or run a progressive against him in the 2012 Election... this Wall Street flim-flam man and con-artist who is a health insurance salesman posturing as a president is nothing but a warmonger and war criminal just like George Bush.
David Bell November 6 at 5:52am Reply• Report
Alan,
Which progressives would you suggest run against Obama?
I'm still uninsured!
Jerry Rose November 6 at 6:33am Reply• Report
How about a ticket of Feingold and Grayson? Both lost their seats in Congress to GOP/Tea party forces. Who better to stand up for the Democratic Party to those forces to which Obama will no doubt kow-tow? (Already he's said maybe no repeal of tax cuts for wealthy, no carbon emissions standards, and that's just in the first 4 days. Man give him time! Jerry Rose
Alan L. Maki November 6 at 11:11am
@David... I think it should be an interracial ticket to start with; a man and a woman. I also think a cabinet should be announced so people see what they are really going to get and I think this ticket and its cabinet should reflect full political diversity of liberal, progressive and left.
I also think that this "team" needs to make a commitment to the American people that if they are not successful in getting Obama "primaried out" they will run on a third party ticket.
I'm not sure specific names are all that important at this point... rather, I think liberals, progressive and left activists have to agree to sit down and hammer out a very simple and basic program that a wide section of the American people who tend to be liberal, progressive and left can relate to with ending these dirty wars at the very top of the agenda explaining that there can be no progress on solving social/economic problems without ending these wars and advancing the idea we need to tax the hell out of the rich in order to began real wealth redistribution.
Hammer out such a program and then find out who is willing to run on that program. This crap of we are supposed to kiss the ass of any politician looking to get a soft job in politics at are expense has to end.
If Feingold or Grayson or anyone else wants to run on a platform developed by the people let them come forward and put their name to the platform and state their willingness to run on the platform with the intent of fighting to fulfill this platform once elected... there should be a clear clause in this platform that all aid and support to the Israeli killing machine needs to end.
Such a platform should explain that the way to create jobs is the government becoming the employer of first choice by creating the kind of universal public social programs we need... like health care and child care... we have to state flat out that we are not going to put up with waiting for small business or private enterprise to solve the unemployment problem. Between national public health care and child care programs some 15,000,000 people can be put to work and their work will be socially useful labor.
I don't think it is so much "who" runs representing liberals, progressives and the left... it is more a question of what who runs is representing.
While a true progressive like someone like George McGovern would be great (he is too old) I am sure that if the American people saw a cabinet that reflected diversity in race, gender and class along with real liberal, progressive and left track records just about any liberal would be ok to run for president... Finegold or Grayson would be ok with me... as would Cynthia McKinney or Cindy Sheehan.
I have been traveling quite extensively talking with people... it seems a lot of activists would like to see some kind of "open letter" distributed across the country... kind of an open letter to the American people in the form of an "Appeal to Reason from liberals, progressives and the left" articulating the role of government, talking about the need to defend the entire U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights and not pick and choose what sections to support and call for the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights to become more than mere words on a piece of paper as all too often is the case with the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
We need to point out that the military-financial-industrial complex leaves behind the biggest carbon footprint of all and ending this insanity is more important than changing out light-bulbs.
Things like the need to start enforcing affirmative action along with a moratorium on ending home foreclosures and evictions needs to be addressed.
Liberals, progressives and the left comprise the largest voting block in this country... if the votes end up being split by three or four or even five parties such a liberal, progressive left electoral coalition has a good chance of being very successful sooner, rather than later... but, if we don't act in this manner we remain the captives of Wall Street... caught in the two party trap and without any power to defend our interests, our lives and our livelihoods.
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