Walking and Chewing Bubble Gum
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")
Karoli at Crooks and Liars has a nice slideshow of the Occupy Ventura protest happening just a 20 minute walk from my apartment over the weekend (it's unknown what will tonight once the park permit expires.) Ventura is a relatively small city and a minor part of the massive Occupy movement that has become a global phenomenon, but it's a nice reminder of how universal the movement really is. I've attended the general assembly, spent some time down there yesterday and will do so again today.
But I'll also be managing a phonebank today for our local Democratic endorsed city council candidates down at our local Dem Party headquarters. Why, you might ask? What could be more important than solidarity with the movement at this critical time?
Well, there's the fact that even as Occupy Ventura is taking place, vote-by-mail ballots are already on the coffee tables of every permanent absentee voter in the city, ready to decide its fate. Our seven-member council is evenly divided with 3 Dems, 3 Republicans, and 1 conservative-leaning Decline-to-State. The seats of two of the Dems and the DTS are up for grabs. And the local Tea Party is doing everything they can to take those seats over. Particularly frightening are Carla Bonney, stealth tea partier extraordinaire who believes that Google Earth represents a violation of her 4th Amendment rights and would move to take the city off of Google Earth, and conservative Bill Knox who wants to replace the unionized fire department with a volunteer fire department. No, I'm not kidding. I've also been fighting alongside my awesome local Assemblymember Das Williams to keep these people from privatizing our libraries, a move that will likely go through if the council falls into Republican hands. So our local Dem clubs and our local Ventura Dem Central Committee have endorsed three great dems (Danny Carrillo, Cheryl Heitmann and incumbent Carl Morehouse), and we are supporting them with phonebanks, door-to-door walks and slate mail to likely voters.
Why mention all this local backyard stuff? Because it's an object lesson in why it's necessary to walk and chew gum when considering political activity. Yes, it's true that the reason Ventura and nearly every other city in America is in dire financial straits is that America has collectively failed to hold Wall St. and the plutocrats accountable. Political change in my backyard and across the country cannot truly take hold unless something is done about that, and it will take in part a popular uprising to do it.
But it's just as true that no matter how long and aggressively the Occupiers hold their ground here in Ventura, if a lack of interest and enthusiasm in local elections leads to a conservative Republican sweep of the city council, the libraries will be privatized, the open spaces turned over to the hands of developers, the unions will be crushed underfoot, the professional firefighters will be replaced by undertrained volunteers, and city services will be further slashed once again, in turn reducing the public's faith in local government.
And yet, one of the challenges I face locally is that several local influential Democrats, including former Assemblymember Pedro Nava and even a member or two of my own Central Committee, are actively supporting and/or endorsing the conservative-leaning Decline-to-State, weakening the position of our endorsed Dems and facilitating the further erosion of progressive power in the city. They are doing this partly out of personal friendships, and partly as an intentional slap to the face of the local progressive movement of which I'm a part.
I have taken a lot of heat here and elsewhere from all sides: critics from my left flank argue that I am foolish to continue to believe in the necessity of the electoral process to create change, and foolish to support Democrats at all; critics from the "Third Way" side argue that I should be less forceful in asking that influential Democrats actually support Democrats, and that they should be able to openly support more conservative politicians without repercussion; still others feel that I should be less critical of elected Democrats and be a better "team" player. Obviously, it's logically impossible to make everyone happy--and that's just on the supposedly left-of-center side of the aisle, to say nothing of conservatives.
In the end, what I'm really trying to do is walk and chew gum at the same time. As a progressive, it's my obligation to do all of the following: - support populist movements like our local chapters of Occupy Wall Street
- phonebank, walk, fundraise and recruit volunteers to do what's necessary to keep the nutcases who want to privatize libraries and fire departments out of office
- rout out and reduce the influence of "Third Way" Dems who can't even be bothered to support regular Dems, to say nothing of more progressive candidates
- continue writing here and elsewhere on the insanity of the conservative movement, and on the fecklessness of elected Democrats who do not hold to progressive principles.
It's a constant struggle to try to do all of those things almost entirely in an unpaid capacity, in addition to the boring mostly non-political work that actually puts food on the table. It's a lot of balls to juggle. But each of them is critically important in its own way, and each piece of the puzzle is necessary for the success of the movement.
The protests won't do any good if conservative bozos win elective office, but electing Democrats won't do much good if there isn't an angry populist movement and a solidly progressive Democratic infrastructure to back them up and hold them accountable if they backslide. It's the only real theory of change that makes any sense to me, and that doesn't smack of magical thinking.
Fortunately, I believe that we as progressives can walk and chew gum at the same time.
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