Nathan Newman wrote:
> The sad fact is that MoveOn is proving that there's plenty of activist
> energy out there. The traditional left just was pushing unpopular dog
food.
-If your goal is just to replace the Republicans with Democrats, Moveon -is the group for you. If you are concerned about the future of the -planet and the fate of our grandchildren, you better be interested in -focusing more on radical social change instead of electing another rich -liberal into office. -The promising fact is that Moveon will be peddling unpalatable dog food -once President Kerry takes office.
I was at a conference a week ago, sponsored by the Nation and Mark Green's think tank, and it was a mixture of Kerry Dems and left activists, but when the MoveOn folks spoke, they talked about being ready to hold Kerry and other Dems accountable. Almost every serious activist Dem I see talking about the election recognizes that defeating Bush is only the first step. The next is rebuilding stronger activism to hold the elected Dems accountable.
But one reason many folks advocate contributing money to MoveOn or Americans Coming Together or other independent Dem activist groups, instead of just tossing the money to the Kerry campaign, is because it builds up that independent power.
The irony is that all sorts of people keep talking about building "independent politics" but can't recognize grassroots-controlled institutions when they see them, because they don't agree with their strategy. Moveon and Americans Coming Together believe that the strategy for this year is defeating Bush. But they are all quite clear that they will have a next round of strategy once Bush is defeated.
In that they differ from most of the Left who don't seem to have much strategy at all and aren't building membership to do much even if they had a strategy. Which are not unrelated, since many people want to see some strategy, some plan for social change, something more than pie in the sky, before they waste their energy joining.
Radical social change is broad-based social change. If you can't recruit mass numbers, you aren't radical. On that basis, Moveon is far more radical than most organizations out there.
Nathan