Progressives on the March to Take Over Congress

Progressives on the March to Take Over Congress

Progressives on the March to Take Over Congress

The Occupy movement won’t run candidates to push its issues. Here’s who will.

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Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

Progressives are on the move once more. Wisconsin lit the spark, as workers, students, teachers and farmers occupied the state’s capitol in February and launched recall elections that sobered conservative Republican Governor Scott Walker and his legislative allies. Occupy Wall Street turned that spark into a conflagration that swept the nation. Last week, in Ohio and Maine and even Mississippi, voters overwhelmingly rejected efforts to trample worker rights, constrict the right to vote and roll back women’s rights.

These electoral victories have led pundits to wonder whether Occupy Wall Street will imitate the Tea Party and stand candidates for office. But Occupy is a protest movement—one that has transformed the landscape of politics, by forcing the country to face the reality of entrenched inequality and power and address what should be done about it. It will take others to fill the space that it has opened.

Progressive Majority (PM), the only progressive organization dedicated to the recruitment and support of candidates at the state and local level, is leading the effort to turn that protest into power. It has just launched Run for America, joining with partners such as Moveon.org, US Action, People for the American Way, Rebuild the Dream and the New Organizing Institute in an audacious drive to recruit, train and support 2,012 candidates in 2012 for state, local and national office. In barely two months, PM President Gloria Totten reports that more than 1,000 activists have signed up to run. The energy of Wisconsin and Occupy Wall Street is finding its way into the electoral process.

Progressive Majority’s initiative is a good example of how movements transform politics. Now marking its tenth anniversary, PM has elected hundreds of progressives to office, helping to flip six state legislative bodies—from Washington to Minnesota—and some forty local governments.

In 2010, while PM’s candidates fared better than most, progressives shared in the beating voters delivered to Democrats. Dismay at the rotten economy, enthusiasm among followers of the Tea Party and a deluge of conservative money swept through the elections. Republicans not only captured the House of Representatives, they picked up state legislatures, winning a total of 675 legislative seats, a tidal wave larger than any since 1938.

But Republicans mistook Tea Party passion for majority opinion.

Editor’s Note: Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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