Yesterday I wrote about some of the reading and thinking I have been doing lately. Personally I am trying to find ways that allow me to maintain a little forward motion and not allow myself to get stuck in the morass because many of our leaders seem to have lost the courage of their convictions after so convincingly winning election in 2008.
As I was thinking, I began to really focus on the idea that pushed Obama over the top and that has really brought progressives back from the dead to be alive and angry in all the corners of the country.
Bubble Up Democracy...
When I hear the terms 'trickle down' and 'bubble up,' I usually think about the economy. "Trickle down" usually gives me chills as I think about how great all of these Reaganomic principles were going to be and how I saw so much loss in Georgia in the 80's as manufactoring jobs that had been the foundation of the rural culture faded and the people in town were forced to travel 30-40 minutes to other towns or subsist on the meager wages that were offered clerks.
When I hear "Bubble Up," I think about the way that hopeful books talked about how Barack Obama would change the way that our economy operated, creating greater opportunity for people of all backgrounds and from every part of America.
But, I'm more focused on "bubble up" when it comes to our democracy.
In 2008, we got a pretty good image of what a "Bubble Up Democracy" would look like as legions of volunteers signed up through the Barack Obama website to organize, fundraise, phone bank, canvas, and any other activity that you could think of that was related to getting Obama elected President.
That worked out pretty well....the principles and ideals were solid and the work was done by people of all stripes.
Now, we find ourselves faced with the similar problem of our political leaders losing their spine. This seems to be a common theme among Democrats from north, south, east and west.
The problem isn't entirely with their lack of spine; though that is a problem and one that is going to need to be addressed. The larger problem is that our elected officials show no spine and then we give up on the process, lose elections because we aren't motivated and then we begin the cycle over again.
That, my friends, needs to stop.
To me, "Bubble Up Democracy" needs to pick up where the 50 state strategy of Howard Dean's Democratic Party left off. Instead of focusing on just getting majorities elected to the House and Senate and just expecting them to do the jobs we obviously sent them to do, we need to build a coalition that continues to work on electing not just Democrats, but progressives. Instead of letting up when we have elected a 'moderate' or 'conservative' Democrat, we have to continue to work in our neighborhoods and states to push our progressive agenda. Because, let's face it...if we don't push all the time, we have seen what will happen.
So we have to push and push and push some more.
We don't just stop at the Federal level either. We push at the State level where we see how disfunction has become the norm in Sacramento, Albany, and many others. We push at the local level where when in New York City if the best candidate you can put forward for Mayor is Bill Thompson, you pretty much need to do something different.
That's the kind of work that I am pushing to do in 2010 and going forward. Pushing a progressive movement relentlessly. A progressive movement that continues to build from the streets and keeps refreshing itself at all levels of government from local, state, and all the way to the federal.
Who's with me?