Push, Pull, and Pivot: Bernie Sanders and the Movement

Posted on June 28, 2015 by Richard Moser

The fifth in a series of seven posts on Electoral Strategy.

Push, Pull, Pivot

The inside/outside strategy depends on our own capacity to view other wings of the movement — positions we may not initially agree with — as leverage.

The mainstream machine Democrats need to know we are considering supporting the dissident Democrats, unless.… The dissident Democrats need to know we are considering the third party, unless.… The third party needs to know that we are considering giving our time to social movement organizing, unless….

There is no threat of exit without somewhere to exit to.

It is, after all, what we do that matters, not what the politicians or candidates do.  Consider adopting the strategic sense of Martin Luther King.

In addition to the development of genuinely independent and representative political leaders, we shall have to master the art of political alliances. Negroes should be natural allies of many white reform and independent political groups, yet they are commonly organized by old-line machine politicians. We will have to learn to refuse crumbs from the big-city machines and steadfastly demand a fair share of the loaf. When the machine politicians demur, we must be prepared to act in unity and throw our support to such independent parties or reform wings of the major parties as are prepared to take our demands seriously and fight for them vigorously. This is political freedom; this is political maturity expressing our aroused and determined new spirit to be treated as equals in all aspects of life.[1]

Take King’s stance toward powerful political leaders. Lyndon Johnson passed more social legislation than any other president since FDR, including historic civil rights and voting laws, yet King remained critical of LBJ. Johnson’s pursuit of the Vietnam War and his failure to enforce civil rights laws was cause enough for King to withdrawal his support for Johnson’s reelection. Before Johnson decided not to run, King was assisting Robert Kennedy and giving Eugene McCarthy serious consideration in his independent bid for president. His willingness to negotiate hard with the Democrats is unmatched by current labor and social movement leaders.

Now, concessions are too often viewed as reason for uncritical support. Horse trading has too often replaced political struggle.  That, we are told, is the “give and take” of normal political life.  But, the crisis demands that we turn toward a “new normal:” making demands, eliciting promises and proposing programs based on threat of exit. There is no threat of exit without somewhere to exit to.

Activists are already busy supporting the candidacies of Bernie Sanders. Why would the Clinton machine move without a threat to its power?

Pushing Warren and Sanders

Warren and Sanders are the best potential candidates the two-party system has produced and if we work well and hard perhaps one can win the presidency. Every candidate that positions themselves toward the people and the social movements rather than the center weakens triangulation. While Warren seems to have stood down, Sanders is surging with a counter-strategy — moving toward the social movements and taking voters with him.

By standing up to the worst abuses of the corporate power Sanders have pushed the focus toward the concerns of everyday people and his popularity is a threat Clinton must try to contain.  Whatever the limits of Sander’s politics — there is a real educational value to his positions — adding content to the content-free elections triangulation tends to produce.

Even beyond reasoned debate, vigorous dissent can convert weakness to strength. Since triangulation has accustomed the somewhat de-politicized center to select candidates based on style, image and the appearance of integrity, some will move left by virtue of strong, courageous and ethical leadership, regardless of the issues.  Sanders is winning some of those voters already.

If pressed with enough skill and resources Sanders will force even a master triangulator like Clinton to lose support or make a gesture toward the people. In fact, Warren and Sanders have already forced incumbents, Obama, Clinton, Democrats and Republicans, to pay lip service to income inequality and political reform.

Its going to be really hard for labor unions to reject the routine advise of its political consultants to “always back a winner.” Yes, your organization may benefit from small concessions but we need to consider the long-term trade-off.  We get small short-term concessions as the status quo becomes ever more entrenched.

After all, triangulation is a modern version of the classic ruling class strategy: divide and conquer. They rule not simply through force but by selective concessions that demobilize the opposition by giving us just enough to keep us in line.

Activists engaged in the good work of promoting Warren and Sanders must confront the claim of that dissident candidates are “unelectable” in the general election. Again, we have Obama to thank for putting that one to rest. If a black man with an islamic sounding name, proposing what seemed like real change, can be elected President of the US then all bets are off.

The American people are ready for serious change.

Obama’s 2008 campaign is suggestive. He worked with regular Democrats when possible and built a parallel and independent organization when he was rejected by the machine. In 2008 Clinton was also the presumed candidate. Obama retained enough organizing wisdom from his youth and successfully tapped the longing for change.

Once elected, Obama returned to the fold and to triangulation, but we need to learn from every opportunity and be forewarned.

It’s what we do that matters.

Sanders supporters should look to the Green Party, social movements and welcome — yes welcome — the debate. Sanders supporters should also see that we all need the Green Party to have its own candidates, positions and campaigns.  Since turnout is essential in overcoming triangulation and reversing the rightward trend, Warren and Sanders would become better able to motivate the disaffected, non voter, and independent by engaging with, learning from, and leaning toward Greens, Ferguson, #BlackLivesMatter, Occupy, the peace movement and the progressive labor unions.

And if you think such a move is completely out of the question in American politics take a close look at the rhetoric,  policies and history of Franklin D. Roosevelt.[2] He moved in the direction of popular resistance. While FDR’s politics were far from ideal and the corporate state had not achieved its current supremacy, the strategic moves FDR made are still instructive. Mainstream political actors can realigned voter behavior and allegiances if faced with crisis and/or significant outside political pressure.

Whatever the fate of the Sanders’ candidacy, his choices are actually not our primary concern. Many voters, new or occasional voters especially, will be drawn into the contest and will learn important things from Sanders. What are we going to do with them and their new level of awareness? That is our concern.

If Sanders wins the nomination, then simultaneous support for Sanders and the Green Party makes the most sense given the IOS. Support two candidates simultaneously? Outrageous! Hardly. The corporations have been doing this for a century because it makes good strategic sense to do so.

Support means more than votes, in fact votes are the least of it. There is nothing to stop us from giving our money and time to both. We need the Green Party to pose a healthy challenge, raise the level of discourse and point out the weaknesses of the two-party system that will become evident if Sanders becomes President.

Unless scores of new like-minded congress members win, as occurred during the 1930s, Sanders will be facing the same deeply entrenched corporate power that Obama made peace with. While a few progressive Democrats may join the fight, the Green Party may, in time, become the source of a new congressional force. But, in the end, changing Congress and reviving representative democracy is the job of the social movements.

If Sanders does not win the nomination then activists should encourage Sanders supporters to pursue the change that they want.  If Clinton wins the nomination and moves toward the extreme center, a likely outcome given her history, then movement activists have two productive choices: encourage former Sanders supporters to rush to the Green Party or stay with Clinton trying to move her toward the social movements.

Those who maintain a critical embrace of Clinton are doing valuable work but they should also accept that the dissenters and the Green Party are their best allies in that effort. We need every pole of opposition and every threat of exit. That’s the politics of the IOS.

Without the Greens and dissident social movements, Clinton activists will be left to play the weak hands of moral or ideological argument against a machine long attuned to seeing only power.

Warren and Sanders have succeeded so far through passionate and well-reasoned criticism and by offering bold solutions to important issues. Rising expectations fuel social change.  Let’s learn that well no matter where we stand.

Next: The Third Party

[1]MLK Where do we Go from Here 607, The essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, ed. James M. Washington. See also Black Power Defined, 309 [2] See an under-appreciated anthology, New Deal Thought ed. Howard Zinn. The authors show the breadth of alternatives floated during this period of popular upsurge, organizing, and alternative parties.

Posted in Electoral Strategy for 2016 | Tagged | 1 Comment

Towards a Transformative Electoral Strategy

Posted on June 21, 2015 by Richard Moser

images-8The fourth in a series of seven posts on Electoral Strategy.

Towards A Transformative Electoral Strategy

Now here is the hard part: What strategy might enhance the existing one but that also, of necessity, starts from the conditions at hand? Those familiar with this blog will not be surprised to hear that the grand inside/outside strategy —one focused on social transformation— seems a coherent approach that aims to improve political competition but also engages the lesser of two evils voters, the non-voters and the protest voters. Starting from where we stand is the beginning of  strategy.

The inside/outside strategy, first and foremost, requires a shift in outlook and consciousness. The lesser of two evils, non-voters and protest voters need to start acting like we are all part of a movement. I realize this requires a lot of acting but the rightwing already sees us that way. And, we need to know that at no time in US history have significant oppositional movements been composed of people with a high level of ideological agreement.

Here we are: a movement with extremely diverse trends that is nonetheless capable of coordinated action — if not agreement on causes, ideas or ultimate solutions. We are capable of unity without uniformity. Act “as if” and maybe someday it will be so.

That elusive agreement is made all the more difficult by the fact that American social movements tend to be stridently moralistic, polemical and prone to sectarian division. In part, this is an inheritance from certain elements of our old but enduring religious culture. Now, we need an inclusive ecumenical approach.

Or to borrow language from recent struggles over sexual and gender identity: The IOS is a way to express a transpartisan and polyamorous love of politics.

There is no one road to revolution and no one revolution. We will have to agree to disagree. Polemic, ideological correctness, or class analysis will not build the ground on which unity will occur —at least ideological struggle has failed to do so for the last half-century or more. Unity is most likely to be found on the practical, strategic, truly political level of action. While ideas range widely without regard to real-world correlates, action reduces our options. In any one historical moment there is a limited range of action we can imagine as possible or experience as sustainable.

The vast majority of people in the social movements do agree on the need to create a more democratic system. But can we accept that to create such a system will require activism and action, courage and risk, all along the lines of the inside/outside continuum? Can people from as diverse positions as the labor lobbyist, the third party radical, out-and-out abstainer or local grassroots organizer find the hidden synergies between them?

Or more precisely can leaders sketch out a strategy to move us in this direction? Social movements have championed “diversity” but are we able to accept the tactical diversity within our own ranks? Can we turn our minds toward devising a strategy rather than simply supporting an issue, candidate or party?

Well its a long-shot but that is what social change is. If we continue to act in the same way what reasonable expectation do we have of a change in outcome?

In particular, the lesser of two evil activists and third party partisans can strengthen their hand by appreciating the latent power in all positions along the inside/outside spectrum. We need to convert that latent power into political leverage for our own position. Instead of static opposition between contending ideological positions we need the political skill to find practical political value in those positions we disagree with. Easier said than done but it starts by breaking the log-jam.

Mobilize Non-Voters and Independents

Almost every successful popular movement in US history has won victories by bringing new constituencies to bear on the political process —to educate and mobilize people previously passive.

The non-voters hold the greatest potential power. Will chastising and blaming non-voters move them to act? The record suggests that the paternalistic approach: “I don’t want to hear you complain, if you don’t vote, ” is a failure. It is much more useful to see non-voting as a product of the system itself.  To see non-voting as a strictly personal shortcoming is to let candidates off the hook for developing programs for the poor and political parties off the hook for organizing.

The tendency to blame the non-voter does not take into account how hard voting has become. Voter suppression laws raise the barrier particularly for poor and people of color. The states have a wide variety of prohibitions on voting for former convicts. Many are afraid to assert their rights even in states where registering to vote is allowed. Voter registration is now as important as it was during the civil rights movement.

Massive voter registration counters the zero-sum assumption inherent in triangulation by acting on the obvious: with at least 40% of potential voters staying home the pie can be grown. 70 to 90 million votes are at stake. There are plenty of potential voters for progressive Democrats and Third parties alike.

There is no spoiler, just our failure to contest power.

Voter registration efforts are widely supported, at least in the abstract, but are often focused on the white and affluent people most likely to vote in predictable ways. Voter registration seem to pale in comparison with efforts to turn out the trusted vote. As a matter of redistributing power voter registration is a more important first step because it threatens the logic of triangulation by shifting the appeal to the poor, young, black, latin, asian and working class people that are the majority of non-voters and precisely the people that are the most oppressed and exploited by the existing system.

Many electoral activists treat the non-voters as pariah instead as sleeping giant. Yet research suggests that most non-voters are simply discouraged, too busy, working too hard or sidelined by the cumbersome and anti-democratic election procedures.

Voter registration is one of the first meaningful bargain chips we can develop given our current resources and practices. Its just more of what we already do. Mainstream Democrats and Republicans will not like it. But, by investing serious resources in voter registration we can begin to become players not just supplicants.

Bringing millions of new voters to the ballot box is a powerful way of bargaining for candidates with better politics. Millions of new voters can only strengthen the progressive Democratic candidates and alternative parties.

We have plenty of demands to make if we have the courage to make them — but if those challenges do not have serious backing — then there is no compelling threat to mainstream or right-wing Democrats to move toward the people.  And we are stuck with whining instead of winning.

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The Civil Rights Revolution is the American Revolution

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Richard Moser

valle forge Sixth is a series of ten posts on MLK.

An American Revolution

And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream. And taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.[1]

King’s historical memory found the roots of revolution in the best of American political traditions. The student led sit-in movement renewed the civil rights struggle and launched the student movement. Reflecting on that King said,

Thus was born—particularly in the young generation—a spirit of dissent that ranged from superficial disavowal of the old values to total commitment to wholesale, drastic and immediate social reform. Yet all of it was dissent….This dissent is America’s hope. It shines in the long tradition of American ideals that began with the courageous minutemen in New England, that continued in the abolitionist movement, that reemerged in the populist revolt and decades later, that burst forth to elect FDR and JFK.

Today’s dissenters tell the complacent majority that the time has come when further evasion of social responsibility in a turbulent world will court disaster and death. America has not yet changed cause so many think it need not change, but that is the illusion of the damned. America must change because twenty-three million black citizens will no longer live supinely in a wretched past. They have left the valley of despair; they have found strength in struggle; and whether they live or die, they shall never crawl or retreat again. Joined by white allies, they will shake the prison walls until they fall. America must change.[2]

This is a powerful revolutionary vision; this resonates with struggles launched by Occupy, Ferguson, the Fight for 15, and Idle No More.  It also resonates with the illusions that avoid confronting the environmental crisis.

King’s revolutionary vision drew power by fusing radical dissent with our historical roots. Deep history allows for a playful and productive relationship between change and continuity. Great changes need occur but change can be understood as keeping true to the original promise of the American revolution.

Essential to making this historical bridge to the revolutionary past compelling was King’s insistence that American traditions were a sacred promise sworn but as yet unfulfilled.

For in a real sense, America is essential a dream, a dream yet unfulfilled. It is a dream of a land where men of all races, of all nationalities and all creeds can live together as brothers. The substance of the dream is expressed in these sublime words, lifted to cosmic proportions:” We hold these truths to self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ This is the dream.”[3]

King yearned for the day that the America could exert real leadership—leadership by example.   King urgently insisted that revolution was achievable in this world and in our time. That however would take a revolution of values and yes, it will mean working long and hard with “bruised hands.” In Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? King wrote:

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing to prevent us from paying adequate wages to schoolteachers, social workers and other servants of the public to insure that we have the best available personnel in these positions which are charged with the responsibility of guiding our future generations. There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer. There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum—and livable—income for every American family.

There is nothing, except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from remolding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.[4]

By embedding the social movements into the promises and ideals drawn from the American past King was able to teach revolution as affirmation not repudiation, as constructive not destructive, as something real — right here, right now.

The real America is still being brought into being by the social movements. Here is a revolution that recalls the best in the American tradition. A revolution that already has a foothold in the hearts and minds of everyday Americans. This is a revolution we can make.  This is a revolution we can win.

Next: The Revolution in Revolutionary Strategy

All citations are from, A Testament of Hope. [1] I See the Promised Land 286. See also 165, 302. [2] A Testament of Hope, 327-328 [3] The American Dream, 208. See also 89, 105 [4] Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community, 631. See also 526.

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A Revolution of Values

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Richard Moser

Fifth is a series of  ten posts on MLK.

A Revolution of Values

“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal opposition to poverty, racism and militarism.”[1]

King was perhaps the last American leader that could calmly and openly discuss revolution in a way that was convincing to millions of Americans and millions more around the world.

How did he do that? What was the meaning of the revolution King proposed?

King envisioned a revolution of values — of spirit and soul — but also a freedom revolution that would destroy the institutionalized structures of oppression.  This revolution took shape in current social movements but was also deeply rooted in the American past. King embraced the revolution in revolutionary strategy: nonviolent force could now replace violence because it was morally and strategically superior. His revolutionary vision took aim at economic exploitation and empire because those power structures stunted every other struggle and were the most intractable obstacles to creating a better world.

Non-violence led King to discover that the revolution was in the minds of the people. He wrote,

“As long as the mind is enslaved the body can never be free.”[2]

Hearts and minds became the King’s battlefield and so he advocated a revolution of values that would create a “people-oriented” rather than a “thing-oriented” world.[3]

[I]n order to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values….When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”[4]

King assumed that changes in consciousness, in values, in culture were the real revolution and the most important kind of political change. This view has the decisive strategic advantage of making the struggle for social transformation possible here and now — not in some imaginary future when a “revolutionary situation” occurs or when “objective conditions” permits.

Since King made the people — our ideas, participation, activism, consciousness, and courage — the primary strategic consideration, he found that all the raw materials and resources necessary for revolution already exist.  Even if unrealized and unfulfilled.

“Our challenge,” King said, “is to organize the power we already have in our midst.”[5]

Word. If there ever was one.

 

Next: King’s Revolution is the American Revolution

 

[1] Where Do We Go From Here?, 623

[2] Where Do We Go From Here? 582

[3] Where Do We Go From Here? 623

[4] A Time to Break Silence, 240

[5] A Testament of Hope, 319

 

Posted in American Culture, Martin Luther King, Movement Culture, Strategy | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Beloved Community

Posted on May 30, 2015 by Richard Moser

Fourth in a series of posts on MLK.

The Beloved Community

“But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.”[1]

The beloved community may seem a distant utopia but it was a rhetorical strategy of enormous and immediate use. The beloved community evoked a world based on community values of mutual aid and cooperation, the recognition of interdependence, shared responsibility and respect freely given.

This community would aim to achieve economic and social justice. Big love and non-violence would be the means to address conflict. The political appeal of the civil rights movement was greatly magnified by adopting rhetorical strategies that prefigured the wanted world. Unending criticism, even resistance and opposition to war, racism or the corporate power will only get us so far. We can look at the thousands of experiments in community building — in Detroit and around the country — to measure our progress toward the beloved community.

Let us learn this: movement building requires positive affirmations of the good life.

In human imagination, the greatest good is usually expressed in symbol or in narrative, not in critical discourse. King emphasized universal values and articulated the lofty aspirations of the beloved community because community is the social form through which shared understandings and identities take on tangible life as human activity. It is hard to even imagine — let alone build — a movement not based on a positive vision of community.

We need prefigurative politics that can give us a glimpse of a better world and we need to see that better world embodied, at least occasionally, even if partially, in the movement itself.

[E]nds are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process…the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.….[M]eans and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means.[2]

Our attempts to make means and ends cohere is a difficult and demanding political practice, but practice we must if we aspire to infuse social movements with prefigurative politics. It was that fusion that gave the last revolution its spiritual appeal and political power.

Only such a movement can appeal to the whole person and to all the people.

Next: A Revolution of Values

 

All citations are from, A Testament of Hope 

[1] Facing the Challenge of A New Age, 140.

[2] A Christmas Sermon on Peace, 255. See also 45.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Martin Luther King, Movement Culture, Strategy | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Our Choice: Fear and Fatalism or Confidence and Purpose

Posted on May 24, 2015 by Richard Moser

Third in a series of Posts on MLK. 

th-4

Confidence and Purpose or Fear and Fatalism?

“We shall overcome because the arc of a moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

We’re going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands.”[1]

Fear and fatalism are two of our greatest enemies. Denial and distraction are not far behind. It is hard to believe that age-old problems like race and war can be surmounted or the catastrophes of climate change avoided. Without a rhetorical strategy that can promote purpose and confidence, fear and fatalism will weaken our efforts.

King and the civil movement of the American South found their answer in the history of Africans in America and the spirit of black christianity.

There has been a persistent strain within all religious traditions that has embraced ideals of justice in the face of oppression. King’s God became the “God of Justice.” In America this “social gospel” has deep roots back to our national beginnings when the first revolutionaries proclaimed “Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God.” In the hands of African-Americans, Christianity became a practical theology of liberation. The Black church provided the resources and organization needed to launch the movement.

Despite his unequivocal devotion to the Christian God, King suggested that people of other faiths and non-believers can still sense, “Some power in the universe that works for Justice.”

I am quite aware of the fact that there are persons who believe firmly in nonviolence who do not believe in a personal God, but I think every person…believes somehow that the universe in some form is on the side of justice….There is something in the universe that unfolds for justice and so in Montgomery we felt somehow that as we struggled we had cosmic companionship.[2]

Now the fact that this new age is emerging reveals something basic about the universe. It tells us something about the core and heartbeat of the cosmos. It reminds us that the universe is on the side of justice. Its says to those who struggle for justice “You do not struggle alone but God struggles with you.”[3]

King’s God of Justice was not an apocalyptic power but a cosmic companion to those struggling in this world.

Faith alone was not enough because,“The battle is in our hands.”[4]

A voice out of Bethlehem two thousand years ago said that all men are equal. It said right would triumph. Jesus of Nazareth wrote no books; he owned no property to endow him with influence. He had no friends in the courts of the powerful. But he changed the course of mankind with only the poor and the despised. Naive and unsophisticated though we maybe, the poor and despised of the twentieth century will revolutionize this era. In our “arrogance, lawlessness and ingratitude,” we will fight for human justice, brotherhood, secure peace and abundance for all. When we have won these—in a spirit of unshakable nonviolence—then, in luminous splendor, the Christian era will truly begin.[5]

Inspired human efforts make revolution. And, the past points the way to the future.

(O)ur goal is freedom, and I believe we are going to get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of American is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be as a people our destiny is tied up in the destiny of America. Before the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth, we we’re here. Before Jefferson etched across the pages of history, the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here….For more than two centuries our forebears labored here without wages. They made cotton king, and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of the most humiliating and oppressive conditions. And yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to grow and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery couldn’t stop us, the opposition that we now face will surely fail.[6]

The history of the last revolution and all the reform movements that came before are raw material for our own story.  Perhaps it is our own revolutionary tradition that explains why, after all, we are still here.

Create whatever history or heritage we will, we should not fool ourselves — fear, fatalism, cynicism, denial, distraction — these are the real political problems we face. We must bring the grand narratives of history, religion, spirituality and the nature into play or they will be played against us.

Surely the earth itself is protesting against the endless drive for the maximum possible profits — should we not find cosmic companionship in that?

For King, deep purpose was not solely in the path behind but also in the path ahead: the beloved community.

Next: The Beloved Community

All quotes from, A Testament of Hope [1] Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution, 277, see also 111, 252, 301. [2] The Power of Non-violence 13-14. [3] Facing the Challenge of a New Age, 141. [4] Our God is Marching On, 229. [5] A Testament of Hope, 327. [6] Remaining Awake through A Great Revolution 277. also see, 111, 301.

Posted in Martin Luther King, Movement Culture, Strategy | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

How We Surrender To Or Resist Triangulation

Posted on May 17, 2015 by Richard Moser

6a00e552e19fa3883301053701fb0a970c-The third in a series of seven posts on Electoral Strategy for 2016 

The Ties that Binds Us

Triangulation is the two-party system’s master strategy for perpetuating its power. Both Democrats and Republicans are already minority parties.

As they continue to lose popular support they confront an increasingly challenging problem:  how to win elections without representing the interests of the majority of Americans. While the resort to voter suppression and election fraud signal their desperation and weakness, triangulation remains an effective instrument compelling compliance. While each of the movement’s existing electoral strategies accommodates triangulation in crucial ways new developments provide hopeful examples of how a counter-strategy might develop.

Lesser of Two Evils

While the leading segments of the labor and social movements often employ all sorts of creative and inspiring tactics and can master hard-knuckle negotiations with the boss, their electoral programs lack innovation or forceful negotiations. We act as if the New Deal coalition or the mid-century social contract is still with us, while both have been history since 1975 or so. [1]

The “lesser of two evil” voters in movement organizations are told by their lobbyists  to “get in early.” Early support for Democrats is supposed to enhance the power of the movement organizations. Has this worked? While this might produce valuable results in local or state elections, it has produced little on the national level.

Obamacare was the only important reform, but a better use of our resources should have won many decades ago. President Truman called for national health care in 1945. After many millions of dollars spent and decades of extensive GOTV efforts, we are over half a century without meaningful labor law or electoral reform.

The “get-in early” approach of the lesser of two evils unions and movement organizations assures the Democrats that they do not have to work for our votes and deprives us of any real opportunity for hard bargaining. It turns our leaders into beggars. We are weak and humble before the strong when what we need, with so much at stake, is daring and bold action.

From the perspective of the inside/outside strategy, the lesser of two evils voters who desire real social change undermine their own power when they lash out at third parties or dissenters. Every pole of power — all the opposition — is necessary for us to make credible threats of exit. The threat of exit says, “Meet my expectations or I take my business elsewhere.”  Triangulation insists there is no alternative for a reason: the threat of exit amplifies our voice and power.  If we have the courage to negotiate, then dissent and “voting with our feet” are indispensable resources. Unlock the exits.

Of all the many reasons that Gore lost the 2000 election, why were Nader and the Green Party singled out for all the shame and blame?  And why has this bit of mythology passed so easily into “common sense” as the election draws near? Spoiler arguments are not based on facts but fear and power.  The strategy of triangulation compels surrender only when there is no alternative.

And, it’s always easier to kick the dog than kick the master.

If Democratic candidates do not offer compelling visions or persuasive programs or do not invest in massive voter registration then the failure is theirs. Blaming third party candidates for Republican victories — while distancing ourselves from independents and non-voters — is a flimsy cover for our failure to organize and play directly into triangulation.

With 70-90 million non-voters and millions more independents there is no spoiler — just our failure to contest power.

If we want change we will have to take risks — we unlock the exits and we organize. Setbacks and losses will occur in any event and already have. I think the history of the last 50 years is clear: lesser of two evil voting has enabled corporate ascendancy and contributed more than its fair share to loss. Fear of Trump should not be an excuse for the simple-minded support of corporate Democrats, since those Democrats have contributed in significant ways to the rise of the Trump and the rightward shift in the Democratic party. Political machines — and the Democratic machine is the most powerful of our time — value their own power and control over the greater good of their party, nation or world.

Its a terrible dilemma but a vote for corporate, pro-war and drug war Democrats, to ward off the short-term attack from the extreme right, may well be winning the battle to lose the war. The human cost will be high in any event.  Will the people take losses in the struggle to resist the machine or will we take losses to enable the machine to continue? Sorry, but there is going to be hell to pay one way or the other.

Voters can restore representational democracy by voting only for candidates and parties that actually represent their views and interests.  Think of the current trend lines of climate change, mass extinction, income inequality, racism, and war — just for starters. What are the risks involved in maintaining conventional political wisdom, given the likelihood that if we continue to act the same, the same situation will be reproduced? Where in the historical record is a single example of great changes occurring without great risks?

As the crisis deepens we will likely approach a shift in the equation of risk. The dangers we face to make the big changes will become less threatening than the dangers we face in continuing on the current course. Perhaps we are already there.

The lesser of two evils vote has, after all, been the most popular and well-funded approach and we should recognize its contribution both in terms of local and partial victories but also in its failure to produce significant social change. The lesser of two evils can occasionally win important concessions but never touch the core structures of power, social control and exploitation: the corporations, the war machine, mass communications, mass incarceration and the coming environmental disaster. And, we have to face the facts that the lesser of two evils strategy shares responsibility for the rightward drift of American electoral politics.

Non-voters

Non-voters comply with one of the basic tenants of triangulation consistent with old style machine politics. Machines want only predictable and ”politically reliable” voters and prefer small voter turnouts. Triangulation prefers the few undecided centrists and writes off the non-voters and new voters as not worth the effort.

When progressives simply stay home the two-party system cheers because the non-entity of 40% of the American people have followed the game plan of the two-party machine. Keeping 40% of the voters away from the polls has been an amazing accomplishment for the elites—an accomplishment we should not be complicit in. The mobilization of non-voters is one of the most powerful latent threats against the existing electoral order. The radical non-voters lose the game by failing to use elections as a political opportunity to do education or to articulate why they think elections are a fraud.

The Third Party and the Movement

The third party voters have also accommodated triangulation by failing to come up with a compelling strategy that can convince people that a Green Party vote is not simply a protest but a path to power. Third parties need to debunk the spoiler argument and lesser of two evils, in discourse and practice, not internalized it.

Without a pathway to power the protest voter experiences only the pale imitation of resistance. A political strategy will win more new voters and new members to the alternative parties than fine principles alone. At least that is what the last 20 years suggests since many lesser of two evil voters usually prefer the Green Party platform but cannot bring themselves to “throw their vote away.”

Since Toward a Transformative Electoral Strategy was first published a year ago, the Green Party has created a powerful strategy well crafted to the conditions at hand.  With the leadership of Jill Stein, The Green Party has created “Plan B” to welcome disaffected Sanders supporters should Sanders not win the nomination.  The Green Party can continue the political revolution Sanders started. Stein has taken a giant step welcoming Sanders to run as president on the Green Party ticket.  Whatever Bernie Sanders does, Stein’s strategy will attract attention, new members and draw closer to winning the 5% necessary to gain the public funding that will make the Green Party a player in national elections.

The revolutionary edge of the Sanders surge — Revolt Against Plutocracy (RAP) — has revised the Bernie or Bust Pledge to include the Green Party.  Significant new alliances are being build between RAP and Popular Resistance, a Green ally promoting movement building.

As grievances from electoral corruption and media bias pile up on top of the already momentous political differences, movement activists are aiming for a massive demonstration at the DNC in Philly.

Just as important a wave of re-registration is occurring in the wake of California.   Democrats new and old are resigning their party membership and moving to the Green Party line, other third party, or independent.  Juneteenth, a day to celebrate freedom from slavery in the confederacy is now a day to break free of the Democratic party by re-registering Green or third party.  California voters, still waiting to have their votes counted, and others will form a second wave following the Democratic convention unless Sanders is the nominee.

Even triangulation cannot live forever. As the people of the US grow ever more diverse and discontented, the more narrow, rigid, protected and uniform has the system become. Triangulation is already unstable and will allow, even in the short run, motion in the direction of the people: first the failed promise of Obama, then the potential good of  Sanders or the Green Party.

Heed the persistent calls for independence and opposition.

[1]Richard Moser, “Organizing the New Faculty Majority,” p77-84. in Equality for Contingent Faculty: Overcoming the Two-Tier System. Ed. Keith Hoeller. See also “Autoworkers at Lordstown” Workplace Democracy and American Citizenship.” p289-292, in The World the Sixties Made, ends, Van Gosse and Richard Moser

Posted in Electoral Strategy for 2016, Movement Culture | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Triangulation: Strategy of the Two-Party System

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Richard Moser

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The second of seven posts on Electoral Strategy

 

Triangulation

While it’s still stunning to watch the DNC repeat the losing strategy of 2016, we should know this is part of a decades-long history of moving toward the right: aka Triangulation. It’s not that the Democrats don’t want to win, it’s just that they only want to win under conditions that suppress and demobilize challenges from their left. To achieve this they are forced to repeat the strategies pioneered by Clinton and refined by Obama.

One of the most powerful achievements of the two-party system has been to effectively limit political competition in a nation still widely regarded as a democracy. These limits are enforced by law and procedure but are also the results of the strategy of Triangulation.

Triangulation proclaims: “there is no alternative,” and works to enforce that claim. This strategy has demobilized a near majority of US voters into non-voters and induced a significant minority to knowingly vote for parties that do not represent their views or interests.

Triangulation took its most coherent form under the Clintons but it really describes the relationships between the Democrats and social movements since the 1970s at least.  The Republicans play the same game.

Triangulation is a war of position.

The Democrats position themselves to the right of the labor and social movements, and of the majority of Democratic voters. Democratic strategy targets  ‘swing voters” or “swing states” standing between Democrats and Republicans. Mainstream Democrats don’t bother with a direct appeal to the social movements or non-voters because that would risk unleashing forces of social change — and because they don’t have to.

The first Obama campaign was a partial and momentary departure from this and proved the potential for mobilizing occasional voters and new voters by what seemed a visionary call for change. Even conservative unions switched their Clinton teeshirts for Obama ones.

But most of the time the “progressive” votes are signed, sealed and delivered without real pressure or public criticism. Some political critics and activists even take a holiday during the election cycle for fear of damaging Democratic prospects. Others, like Chomsky, go so far as to advocate for “voting any blue will do” even before the primaries begin. They surrender the right to debate or make demands in the name of some clever tactic to defeat the right. In 2000 the call for “Anyone but Bush” failed, in 2016 Clintons pathetic campaign to both elevate and the “Not Trump” failed, and Biden is heading down the same path.

The Democrats tailor their appeal to the small percentage of voters undecided between them and the Republicans because it draws them, and us, toward the so-called “center,” and narrows the terms of political debate. Take the 2012 presidential election for example, when the war in Afghanistan and the environmental crisis were effectively non-issues. Now in 2020 the DNC once again attacks the left and focuses on “Never Trump” Republicans who will build on the already considerable influence of the neo-cons assimilated into the party by the Clinton campaign.

Mid-term elections, in particular, are revealing as to how triangulation strengthens the right-wing. Once incumbency relieves national Democratic leaders of any need to lean toward their “base,” triangulation comes in full swing. In 2014 for example, triangulation led to electoral disaster for Democrats and the lowest voter turnout in 70 years despite the record $4 billion spent on the election.

With few exceptions, 2014 offered the choice between pseudo-Republicans on the Democratic ticket and real Republicans. Voters choose the real deal and/or the demoralized voters stay home.

Triangulation sharply curtailed Obama’s possibilities. This is not a new pattern.  Triangulation did its share to contribute to the rightwing resurgence and entrenchment in 1994, 1996, 2010 and 2014.[2]

Michael Lerner’s analysis of 2010 points to the long term effect of triangulation.

We know, of course, that the Democrats did not have a solid majority in Congress, given Rahm Emanuel’s 2006 decision to back the most conservative candidates in the Democratic primaries in order to win in swing districts and take Democratic control of the House of Representatives (a decision he made while serving as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee). Democrats in the Senate followed a similar path. As a result, they won formal control and hence could be blamed for what ensued, but they did not have the votes to fulfill their promise to the electorate to cut off funding for the war in Iraq.

When machine Democrats steal the thunder from Republicans, as the Clintons were infamous for, the Republicans are pushed further rightward to redefine their appeal, mark their territory, and secure their voting base. By becoming another party of Wall Street, the Democrats have relieved the Republicans of much of their historic mission.

What’s a Republican to do? Move to the right!

It was after all the Clinton administration whose “tough on crime” stance outmaneuvered the Republicans and produced the largest increases in the state and federal prison population of any president in history.[1] Clinton militarized the police with as much zeal as his rightwing predecessor. Triangulation created the American gulag. NAFTA, too.  “Ending welfare as we know it” was a signature accomplishment of the Clinton White House as well as a priority for Republicans. Both parties lead their attack on the poor with moralistic calls for “personal responsibility.”

When Democrats protect big banks, Republicans are free to attack unions. When Democrats coddle big oil, coal, and gas, the Republicans resort to climate denial and gag rules.

“New Democrats” or “Third Way” Democrats” have dominated the party since the first Clinton administration. Their support for austerity measures and Wall Street deregulation has led to economic disaster and suppressed the vote. As Michael Corcoran aptly argues, Clinton continues to embrace the destructive legacy of pushing the Democratic Party to the right.

Obama continued the Clinton legacy.

There is no center

Here is how the Guardian describes the ideas of George Lakoff,  the cognitive linguist:

“[T]he left, he argues, is losing the political argument – every year, it cedes more ground to the right, under the mistaken impression that this will bring everything closer to the center. In fact, there is no center: the more progressives capitulate, the more boldly the conservatives express their vision and the further to the right the mainstream moves.”

Just how badly can public debate be twisted? If Obama can be attacked as an anti-war president or Biden as a leftist or Harris as a Marxist, then reality is no measure.

If there is a bottom to the depths we have not marked it yet.

So every four years we are served up a full course menu of Republican horribles. Stampeded by revulsion and fear, we are left with the choice of voting for right-wing corporate Democrats whose strategy then enables the further rightward drift of both parties. Or, so it has been for half a century. 

But, for many politicians in high places, finishing second in the richest, most powerful country in the world is not so bad. Two-party triangulation limits risk because the “loser” is guaranteed a comfortable place at the table.

The major party’s leaders really have no skin in the game.

As long as triangulation works to reproduce power unchanged, then the social movements largely miss out on the political opportunities that elections should present.

Next: How We Surrender to Triangulation

[1] Michele Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 56-57

[2] To see the similarities between 2014 and 2010 see Roger Hickey http://ourfuture.org/20141120/as-in-2010-dems-lost-without-an-economic-message-worth-fighting-for 2010 election was notable for low democratic turnout and the Democrats retreat from the stimulus, job creation, caving to the Republicans on budgets, and unwillingness to tout health care reform. It was long term triangulation at work to support right-wing Democrats.

It was the right-wing “Blue Dog” Democrats that lost big. See Amanda Terkel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/03/blue-dog-coalition-gop-wave-elections_n_778087.html See also: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/4/as_right_leaning_blue_dogs_lose

Almost as extreme was the 1994 mid-term elections with the Democrats adhering to triangulation under Bill Clinton. In 1994 and 1996 Congress was elected by less than 25% of the eligible electorate. See Kay Lawson, “ The Case for a Multiparty System,” p. 34 in Multiparty politics in America second Edition, Eds. Paul S. Herrson and John C. Green

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Every Four Years: Toward a Transformative Electoral Strategy

Posted on May 6, 2015 by Richard Moser

climate marchThis is the first post in a seven part series on Elections. 

Every Four Years

It’s not what they do that matters, it’s what we do that’s so important.  The people are the single most important part of the electoral system, not the party elites.  But, if we continue to do what we have always done, we will just get more of what we have always gotten.

Think of the current trend lines of climate change, racism, mass extinction, wealth inequality, and war, just for starters. What are the risks involved in maintaining conventional political wisdom, given the likelihood that if we continue to act the same, the same situation will be reproduced?

Where in the historical record is a single example of great changes occurring without great risks? As the crisis deepens we will likely approach a tipping point in the equation of risk. The dangers we face to make the big changes will become less threatening than the dangers we face in continuing on the current course.

Perhaps we are already there.

What is the existing strategy of labor and social movement activists for national electoral politics? How do progressive individuals and organizations that have their “eyes on the prize” relate to the electoral system? What do those that want to pursue particular issues, or aim higher for a more democratic system, do to further their political agendas?

Local and state situations vary so greatly that this preliminary discussion will look almost exclusively how we have engaged national electoral politics over the last half-century or so. History affords us a much-needed vantage point. Its time to summarize and imagine alternatives. This series of posts will look at contending approaches and propose a few ideas to move us in the direction of a transformative electoral strategy. The argument is toward a strategy, not just a candidate or a party.

A defacto electoral strategy has emerged over the last half-century and it includes three major related approaches: The lesser of two evils, non-voters, and protest voters.

Lesser of Two Evils

The first is those voters, activists and organizations that support voting for the Democrats to strengthen that party’s progressive policies — not because the Democrats represent a model champion of the people — but as the lesser of two evils.

Social movement activists pursue legislation and support candidates as a way of achieving specific goals. Many, perhaps most progressives, vote Democratic largely out of fear of the Republicans. They see no reasonable expectation that to do anything but vote for the Democrats can have a positive outcome or even reduce harm. Given the current situation and absent a clear alternative, this strategic option is quite compelling.[1]

The leadership of the labor and social movements are almost entirely committed to voting Democratic and to dedicating major resources to GOTV efforts. The vast majority of grassroots and rank and file activists are equally committed to the lesser of two evils. In truth there is almost no Democratic Party organization without them.

In the absence of a coherent strategy and/or massive reform movements then voting for the Democrats seems the only choice if you want your vote to defend past gains or to have immediate consequences.

Non-voters

The other large group are those that do not vote. We have no clear idea how may people cannot overcome the barriers erected by voter suppression practices and laws or how many simply abstain.  Reason and research suggest that many of these non-voters would vote Democratic, but their observation and assessment is that electoral politics do not matter enough to bother or that the Democrats offer little.

We lack real engaged knowledge of this large unorganized group since the Democrats tend to tailor their appeal to the middle ground.  The failure of the Democrats to  launch voter campaigns, registering and mobilizing the 40% or so of voters that stand aside suggests they like things as they are.

Obama’s first campaign was a success in part because it made modest but effective outreach to this large bloc of non-voters. The non voters tend to be younger, working-class and people of color and have the greatest latent power of any voting demographic.

An unknown number of the non-voters are radicals that think electoral politics do not matter, or are totally hopeless, or a distraction from other pursuits. The lack of a workable alternative strategy and the continual disappointments on issues of war, the environment, the penal system and corporate power makes abstention a sensible option for some radicals.

Protest Voters

A small percentage of US radicals vote for alternative or “third” parties, but this possibility is influential and very tempting among rank and file activists and ordinary citizens alike. The Green Party, particularly the candidacy of Ralph Nader, caused considerable excitement. The Green Party raised, not just issues, but the political question of the two-party system itself.

Over the years dissidents have voted for alternative parties, including the Citizens Party, Green Party, Working Families Party, New Party, and an array of socialist or communist parties.  Third parties have been most successful on a local level. But in the national arena, these might be considered “protest votes” because the voters have no expectation of victory. The candidates draw attention largely because of their stand on the issues.

A significant minority of US voters agree with them in principle. But these parties do not draw votes in keeping with the popularity of their political platforms, in part, because no clear pathway to power exists. How can the vote for a third party be seen as a long-term strategy to change the existing system? How would a larger independent party be able to gain a foothold given the existing rules governing elections? What are the gains short of victory?

Has Our Strategy Failed?

These three practices — lesser of two evils, abstention, and protest vote — have been the default strategy of social movement activists and radicals for the past half century at least. I think it is fair to say that this approach has been a near total failure in redistributing power back to the people.

While, important local gains have been won, they have only been concessions, never fundamental political reform. After all, these three practices have been the main approach during the same half-century that labor and the social movements have been on the defensive and the Democrats and Republicans have drifted to the right.

While the Democrats are by no means the same as the Republicans — and the differences can be compelling — they do agree on the key issues shaping American life: commitment to war and empire; and service to the corporate power as the dominant force in the political, economic and social life of the country. While the Democrats have moved on minor environmental issues neither party has shown the slightest inclination to take on the fossil fuel regime and the giant corporations at the heart of climate change. Other central issues of social control — such as maintaining a vast militarized penal system and corporate controlled media — are also bipartisan favorites.

Only in the highly regulated and restricted world of US electoral discourse could such policies be considered “moderate”. Instead these policies which drive us faster and faster toward unprecedented crisis are an expression of the extremism of the center.

How do the Democrats maintain their claim on the resources and votes of the labor and social movements under such conditions? The Democrats have a strategy: Triangulation.

Next: Triangulation

1. This long-standing political practice was forcefully summarized by Steve Bronner in his essay, ”The Right, The Left, The Election: The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and The Presidential Campaign of 2012.” http://logosjournal.com/2012/fall_bronner-2/ We owe Steve thanks for laying out the position so clearly and comprehensively. I take Steve’s essay as an important starting point because such positions carry the most strategic logic and largest following. I also see Bronner’s argument as compelling in the absence of another worthwhile strategy or transformative mass movement. Other important sources for this post were, Lisa Jane Disch, Tyranny of the Two Party System. Stu Eimer, “The CIO and Third Party Politics in New York: The Rise and Fall of the CIO-ALP”. Multi-Party Politics in America, Eds. Paul Herrnson John C. Green. Independent Politics: the Green Party Strategy Debate ed. Howie Hawkings; David Reynolds, Democracy Unbound: Progressive Challenges to the Two Party Systems.

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Non-Violence as Strategy: Love as Politics

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Richard Moser

Second in a series of ten posts on the strategies of MLK.

Nonviolent Strategy

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored…there is a type of of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth.…So the purpose of the direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitable open the door to negotiations.[1]

The Civil Rights movements’ primary strategic approach was, of course, non-violent mass civil disobedience. The major advances of the civil rights movement can be linked to the marches — sometimes in defiance of court injunction — sit-ins, freedom rides, attempts to vote or register, and demonstrations that landed thousands of people in jail and some in their graves.

King placed civil disobedience within a framework consistent with the inside/outside strategy. The disruptive nature of direct action and the seemingly more orderly process of negotiations may be tactically different but part and parcel of the same strategy. The outside game is the precondition for the inside game. Without outside pressure negotiations are reduced to begging and pleading or rest on puny legal claims.

If this is all we learned from King it would be enough.

It may seem simple, but despite tremendous efforts of a small number of people the level of direct action is not of sufficient scale or character to win major concession let alone transform the basic structures of power. The new civil rights movement is a sure sign that  things are changing. But, until we bring more people power to the table we will be left with reason, morality and truth, all necessary but far, far from sufficient to make history. The primary role of reason, morality, and truth is not to convince power but to help build a movement massive, daring and visionary enough to force change from the system.

The civil rights movement strongly suggests that such a movement will not be based on anger, outrage or criticism alone — although those are just and right. But it can be based upon Love. Blush. Nonviolence is how the civil right movement helps us to connect disruptive and militant political action with universal values of love.

Love as Politics

“Our white brothers must be made to understand that nonviolence is a weapon fabricated of love. It is a sword that heals. Our nonviolent direct action program has as its object not the creation of tensions, but the surfacing of tensions already present.”[2]

Love is a potent weapon. King states repeatedly that love does not mean the feeling we associate with friendship or romance and it certainly does not mean liking your enemy. The love that motivated the movement was grand redemptive love. Love was “agape” from the Greek. “Agape is understanding, redemptive, creative, good will to all men based on the mutual interests that derive from the interrelatedness of all people.” [3]

Love, by Kings definition, approaches the best understandings of “solidarity”— enlightened self-interest based on mutuality and interconnectedness. In King’s view, truly: “An injury to one is an injury to all.”

Gandhi’s innovation infused politics with love through the concept of satyagraha. Satyagraha is love-force or truth-force which the American movement revised into soul-force. While this big love is as difficult to grasp in its ultimate form as are other ideals, such as freedom or equality, we can glimpse love embodied in the civil rights movement.

Christ’s directive to “love your enemy” gathered new meaning as soul-force. The civil rights movement gave love to its enemies in the form of non-violent force: sit-ins, occupations, marches, strikes, picket-lines, boycotts. It is love because it is non-violence in the service of freedom and democracy; it is love because it targets the institutional structure of oppression,  not the person; it is love because it recognizes we are all —all— trapped and diminished by the system; it is love because it dreams redemption as inclusive community. Love is a dangerous and demanding taskmaster.

I realize that this approach will mean suffering and sacrifice. It may mean going to jail…. it may even mean physical death. But if physical death is the price that a man must pay to free his children and his white brethren from a permanent death of the spirit, than nothing could be more redemptive. This is the type of soul-force that I am convinced will triumph over the physical force of the oppressor.[4]

Speaking truth to power — without truth-force—has been a pitiful failure. Instead speak truth to power in the language of direct mass action and dedication to the difficult work of organizing. But, how can we endure the years of struggle it takes to give force to truth? King’s example: find something great and grand to give us purpose and confidence.

Next: Confidence and Purpose or Fear and Fatalism?

All King quotes and citation are from, A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King. ed James M. Washington

[1] Letter from a Birmingham Jail. 291-2.

[2]Playboy Interview: Martin Luther King, 349-350. See also p. 526.

[3] Love, Law and Civil Disobedience,46-47. See also 16-20, 256, 335

[4] Rising Tide of Racial Consciousness, 149

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