Planting Liberally

In full-blown panic about an almost certain loss at the polls, conservatives are now trying to win the post-election narrative - they're trying to claim that, despite the election results, the country is still conservative.  The new watchword for conservatives is "center-right nation" - as in Jon Meacham's absurd piece in Newsweek which claimed that despite what looks like a wholesale rejection of conservatism at the polls on Tuesday, "America remains a center-right nation".  David Sirota has been doing yoeman's work beating back this meme, dedicating his column to Obama's FDR-style mandate, and running a Center-Right Nation Watch at OpenLeft.

The narrative of this county as a center-right one, despite what the polls may say on Tuesday, appears to be an important one in the post-election narrative.  It will be bolstered by exit polls which show something like 28-33% of the electorate identifying as "conservative", and 17-22% of the electorate identifying as "liberal", with the rest of the electorate identifying as "moderate".  According to the Roper archive of exit polls, ideological self-identification numbers have been hovering in that range since 1976, so if the numbers are substantially different than that on Tuesday, then we know that there's been genuine ideological movement.  Even what looks like a near-loss to conservatives - say, a 26-24% conservative-to-liberal self-identification gap - would actually be a huge victory for progressives.  Failing that kind of self-identification parity, progressives usually argue that we are a nation of "operational progressives", never mind the labels we give ourselves.  That is, that on many issues - especially economic issues - polls show that most people support the progressives point of view.  Campaign for America's Future and Media Matters made this argument most recently with an exhaustive review of recent polling in June 2007.

From the point of view of Election Night and the week following it, though, I think it's better not to bicker and parse over in this way.  We are almost certain to lose that game, since the simple numbers (the ideological self-identification numbers) are least in our favor.  Instead, I think the best approach is to promote the Democratic base as the new center of politics.

The basic idea is to promote the Democratic base, its enthusiastic support for Obama, and its incredible electoral power.  Point to Obama's repeated record-smashing small-dollar fundraising numbers.  Point to the historic crowds Obama has drawn in swing states like Missouri and Colorado in the last couple of weeks.  Point to the untold numbers of zany pro-Obama videos flooding YouTube.  Point to the unprecedented Obama ground game, and the dramatic turnaround in early voting, which is emphatically pro-Democratic this year, as compared to an even split with Republicans in 2004.

I've actually chosen these nuggets of evidence fairly carefully, and the common themes among them are: 1) they've already been reported by traditional media in the recent past; and 2) the Obama campaign is, itself, quite likely to refer to some of these nuggets in its post-election messaging.  In other words, these are the nuggets that are most likely to allow us to "close the triangle" on the post-election narrative.  The point is that we should amplify these elements of pre-existing conventional wisdom.

While this isn't exactly a logical counterpoint to the notion that this is a center-right nation, the argument is powerful for its evokation of progressive imagery.  In some way or another, many voters have already seen the proof of the progressive base supporting Obama - the footage of large Obama crowds, the Obama Girl videos, the long lines of early voters, the thirty-minute ad made possible by millions of donors, and even the incessant door-knockers bearing literature.  In addition to being powerful imagery, and imagery capable of closing the triangle on the post-election narrative, a great deal of this imagery "feels" historic, in that it is nothing like what many people have seen before; it matches the theme of an historic election.  If that image of an exuberant, powerful, massive progressive base is indelibly linked to the election results, conservatives will have no chance with the "center-right nation" canard.

The book launch for Dispatches from the Religious Left is coming up on Tuesday, Oct. 14.  In anticipation of the event, I'm running a series this weekend on a few essays from the book.  Yesterday I wrote about PastorDan's essay on the role of the Religious Left (PastorDan responded here), as well as Rev. Debra Haffner and Timothy Palmer's essay on a theology of sexual justice.

The third part of the book is dedicated to "getting from here to there", and is a bit more nuts-and-bolts-oriented than the first two parts.  It includes the essay my wife and I wrote on new media, which focuses on helping religious organizations find their voice online.  However, since that material is probably pretty familiar to many blog readers, I'm instead going to focus on the contribution by Frederick Clarkson (who is also the editor of the book), titled "Three wheels that need not be reinvented".

Fred's main argument is that the Religious Left must get more involved in electoral politics.  By way of contrast he points to the Religious Right, which actively participates in party primaries, registers voters, and maintains high-quality voter lists that persist from one cycle to another.  All of these ingredients help the Right exert power far beyond its numbers, and Clarkson argues that the Left must respond in kind in order to realize its vision.  His chapter profiles three progressive political organizations in Massachusetts, and offers them as organizing models for Religious Leftists.

The first organization is Neighbor-to-Neighbor, a statewide organization whose goal is to register voters in low-income communities in order to boost turnout and elect progressive representative.  The organization has a "Working Families Agenda" which it uses to engage and register voters throughout the year.  At election time, these efforts are reinforced by personal contact.  In this way, Neighbor-to-Neighbor keeps its constituents engaged across election cycles, and is able to build a high-quality voter list which forms the basis for electoral efforts.

The second organization is Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts, an alliance of volunteer-run chapters throughout the state.   PDM was founded in the wake of Robert Reich's unsuccessful bid for governor in 2002.  Reich's run was a rallying point for progressives in a very un-progressive year, and in some ways helped pave the way for Deval Patrick's dramatic upset victory in 2006.  PDM's goal is to elect progressives in Democratic party primaries - which, in many areas in Massachusetts, is really where the election is held, since voters overwhelmingly back Democrats in the general election.

The third organization is MassVote, née BostonVote.  MassVote encourages non-profit social service agencies to register and mobilize their constituents, in order to build support for their programs within state government.  The organization has developed an innovative set of resources to conduct this kind of registration and mobilization at low cost, and within the rules for electioneering by non-profits.  This last point should be emphasized: the organization doesn't encourage its member agencies to engage in partisan activity; instead, agencies do non-partisan voter registration and education work.  That work brings more progressive voters to the polls, and elects progressive representatives; but that's incident to the target voter population, rather than the result of any particularly partisan activity.  (Disclosure: A few years ago MassVote was a prospective client for the company I worked for at the time.)

Clarkson wants the Religious Left to adopt some of these models and integrate it into its own work - while following IRS rules.  As MassVote clearly demonstrates, it is possible to create a progressive electorate without stepping outside the boundaries of 501(c)3 regulations, simply by targeting non-partisan voter registration, mobilization, and non-biased education efforts at progressive voter populations.

Fred's essay is a good starting point for prodding religious organizations to participate in electoral politics.  However, I think the Religious Left will need to build some infrastructure - both theoretical and organizational - in order to realize this vision.

For starters, we will need to create and promote what I call a "theology of participation" - an argument that democratic participation by our congregations is not just ok, but in fact necessary.  Many liberal congregations are already committed to social justice in a variety of ways, so I don't think this will be a particularly hard sell.  On the other hand, some liberal congregations are also instinctively allergic to politics in the pulpit, and congregants might become incensed at anything which appears to violate the spirit of separation of church and state separation.  Religious leaders who want to register and mobilize their congregations should be clear about a few key points: first, that democratic participation is a profound act of bearing witness to one's value system; second, that it is a way to support the church's social justice mission; and finally, that the congregation is not endorsing any party or candidate, and that it is up to individual congregants to decide which candidate or party will best support social justice.

On top of this theology of participation, congregations will need to layer a set of practices to encourge participation.  These practices begin with voter registration drives.  They also include basic education, especially for local elections.  Congregations should ensure that their members know when the election is as well as the meaning of various offices on the ballot is.  Finally, within certain boundaries, congregations can help their members learn about the candidates who are running for office.  This last step will require a great deal of delicacy, as it's entirely easy to cross the line from voter education to candidate endorsement - even without intention.  Some congregations may want to eschew this step entirely, or may want to simply encourage their members to obtain a copy of the ballot a week or two before the election and to educate themselves.  (Or to organize their own ballot parties.)

On top of this level of activity within congregations, the Religious Left should build organizations which can aggregate this activity and harvest the results across election cycles.  Congregation-organized voter registration drives should be harvested into long-lasting and well-maintained voter lists.  Those voters, in turn, should be engaged about important issues year-round, and should be targeted for mobilization at election time.  This kind of work is too far outside the mission of individual congregations.  And it is not particularly well-suited to single-issue groups like the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.  So new, multi-issue issue groups will need to be built.

In some ways, this three-tiered approach to voter registration and mobilization - beginning with theological foundations, proceeding to routine practice, and culminating in aggregation and professional cross-cyclical efforts - is just the beginning.  As a movement with a broad commitment to social justice, the Religious Left can, and should, be heavily involved in building progressive power outside of the voting booth.  In particular, the Religious Left should incubate labor organizing and community organizing efforts; leaders should encourage their congregations to support these organizations in meetings and on picket lines, and should offer meeting space or other resources where necessary.  Not only are these efforts non-partisan, but they are profoundly faithful acts of social justice, which will have a strong foundation in the theological tradition of the vast majority of Religious Left congregations.  (Indeed, many liberal congregations are already doing this kind of work, and have been doing it for a long time, much to their credit.  I'm merely arguing for more of this kind of work, and for liberal congregations to be more pro-active in seeking out and supporting this kind of capcity-building social justice work, where it makes sense.)  In most cases, this kind of work will ultimately result in more power for the progressive movement, but that is just the natural result of empowering marginalized people, rather than an explicit act of partisanship.

Fred Clarkson has been arguing for a more electorally engaged Religious Left for a long time.  He's seen the Religious Right's efforts to build power in Republican Party committees and primaries in person.  The kind of voter registration and mobilization efforts he advocates for - and many others - are long overdue.

Chris Bowers posed a striking historical theory at Open Left this week: compared to Europe and Canada, the US has been a basically progressive country for most of its history, and the past 30-40 years of conservative dominance is a historical abnormality. He also suggests three causes of this conservative dominance: the Cold War and its resulting military-industrial complex, high rates of religiosity, and the American apartheid state. The election of Obama, so goes the theory, will seriously chip away at the apartheid state, and will thus help chip away at the era of conservative dominance.

Bowers's theory directly conflicts with the famous Schlesinger thesis, which argues that we have cycled back and forth between eras of conservative and progressive dominance which have lasted about 20 years each. On balance, I think the Schlesinger thesis is a bit more accurate, for a number of reasons.

• Bowers's thesis doesn't account for the government's policy towards Native Americans and African-Americans. The US was far behind the rest of the Western world in abolishing slavery, and its aggressive and brutal expansion into Native American territories compares similarly to European imperialism in the 19th century. So on these two policies - which were the foundation of the country's existence, remember - the US was no more progressive, and in some ways even more regressive, as its European counterparts.sed in the 19th.
• The culprits Bowers names are not one-sided in creating conservative culture. Many churches, as Chris readily admits, formed the foundation of the abolition and civil rights movements, and supported labor unions. The military, for all its problems and its undoubtedly conservative pull, has a progressive undercurrent, both in its capability (so far vastly underutilized) to protect marginalized people throughout the world, and in its capacity to socially promote marginalized people at home. The apartheid state remains, of course, a massive force of conservatism, but it has been around since the country was founded (with a brief hiatus during Reconstruction, perhaps), and in fact it was slowly receding during the recent period of conservative ascendance.
• On top of that, these culprits aren't unmatched. In the same time that we took a sharp right turn, more and more people graduated high school and went to college, and more and more people delayed marriage or eschewed the traditional heterosexual nuclear family altogether. Both of these trends probably made us more progressive as a culture, on the whole. And if the military-industrial complex made deeper investment in the safety net impossible, Social Security and Medicare demonstrated the feasibility of such grand investments in a very tangible way.

Of course, I don't deny the fact that the country has taken a sharp conservative turn in the past thirty or forty years; that is obvious. My point is that sharp conservative turn isn't so much an anomaly as it is a continuation of a very long historical trend, identified by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

I also think it's plain that there are structural features of the Constitution which virtually guarantee this kind of cyclical ideological history. Lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices, the staggered nature of the election of each third of the Senate, and the capability of dissidents to gather strength in state and local government before running for federal office, are all a part of this cyclical nature of our ideological history. Technology, which can make the governing ideology obsolete overnight and make radical ideas suddenly pragmatic, also plays a part.

I'm been very interested in the Schlesinger thesis over the last years, and particularly in the last few months, as it appears more and more likely that we really are on the verge of another progressive cycle. It's certainly exciting to be able to see that happening, and to be a part of that moment. More than that, if the theory proves true, then we are due for two or three decades of progressive dominance. That's a very long time, and there's a lot we can do with that kind of time and power. The question is, what? What would we do with the country if we knew we had two or three decades to play with? Medicare-for-All? A renewable energy economy? True racial and sexual equality? A dramatically smaller military? A democratic China?

As fun a game as this might be, it's also a bit depressing. After all, if Schlesinger is right, we're due for a countervailing conservative resurgence in 20-30 years. If that's true, then what kind of buffers can we create against that future time? More than that, what can we do to keep our own progressive moment going as long as possible? How will we guarantee that we don't overreach and end up, as JFK put it, inside the tiger?

I have some thoughts on some of these questions, and perhaps I'll write them up separately a bit later on. But if you have anything to chime in, I'd love to hear some thoughts.

Full disclosure: My company worked on a small technical/design project for Chris and Open Left last year.

A very long while ago, I wrote the first piece in a series on progressive grand strategy, laying out the kinds of questions which a progressive grand strategy would have to address. In that piece I addressed the goals and assessments required of a progressive grand strategy; the goal is to eventually address all six components of a fully-articulated strategic plan (goals, assessments, tactics, resources, dynamics, and evaluation), as described in Finding Strategy, a report published by the Progressive Strategy Studies Project. This series is, taking the very long-term view, a follow-up to my initial review of the Finding Strategy report last summer. (In the interest of full disclosure: one of the authors, Wolfgang Brauner, is a personal friend.)

PSSP responded to my analysis of the goals of progressive strategy on their blog shortly thereafter, and today, (finally!) I'll spend a bit of time responding, and hopefully moving the conversation down the field a bit.

Perhaps the most noteworthy element of my initial post was a distinction between political goals (winning elections and policy battles) and cultural goals (spreading the progressive worldview through ideological institutions like unions, churches, media, schools, etc.) Brauner likens this distinction to the original distinction, in Finding Strategy, between electoral, movement, and movement-electoral strategies, defined respectively as strategies whose primary goal is winning elections, building a movement, and doing the two simultaneously. (Or similarly, to Paul Wellstone's observation that successful political chage requires organizing, policy, and electoral politics.) That is an interesting comparison, and it does indeed work pretty well, so long as the definitions are broadened a bit, to include regulatory, legislative and electoral goals under the broader rubric of "electoral" goals, and to include the growth of institutions like liberal religious congregations and labor unions under the rubric of "movement" goals. There are some ideological institutions in which the language of movement-building doesn't make a lot of sense - schools and media, most importantly - but on the whole it's a good comparison.

In particular, this comparison reminds us that it's possible to pursue political and cultural goals at the same time. That's hardly news, I suppose, since labor unions do that all the time, most clearly in the case of the ongoing effort to enact the Employee Free Choice Act. Along similar lines, there's a fashionable consensus in the progressive blogosphere that campaigns should be about movement-building, in the sense that successful or not, they always leave behind a corps of citizen-activists who know how to run a campaign and are prepared for the next election season; Democracy for America, to name one organization, deliberately embodies that consensus.

Unfortunately, progressive strategic discussion usually looks at movement-building only through the lens of community organizing and labor organizing. Those are two important paths to movement-building, certainly, but we ignore other social movements and cultural institutions - including religion, schools, the family, and media - at our peril. Think about where conservatives have had their greatest success (churches) and respectable if not stunning success (schools and family) - success in establishing the conservative worldview in those institutions is responsible for a large part of the mess we're in now. And remember, these are the institutions that most progressive strategists ignore wholesale.

Brauner also refers to another strategist, Steve Lukes, who categorizes power according to a tri-partite system: decision-making power (control of government); agenda-setting power (including think tanks, pressure groups, and media); and ideological power. That system is much more akin to the distinction I made between political and cultural goals, and in fact I think it's a better one. I disagree with Brauner in his assertion that progressives are weak at every level. Assuming that Obama wins the presidency, and I think that's a reasonably safe bet, then by this time next year, a realistic assessment will be that conservatives hold a large, but not overwhelming, amount of decision-making power; progressives hold a small but growing amount of decision-making power; and moderate Democrats hold the balance of decision-making power. It's also clear that conservatives have a very large advantage in agenda-setting, but progressives are not quite as far behind as we once were. The ideological power struggle is considerably more complex, since there are some institutions where progressives clearly are doing very well (like college campuses), while in others (like the workplace or religion), they are doing very well in some places and poorly in others.

If, as Lukes and I seem to agree, ideological power (or progressive cultural goals, take your pick) is really the most important way to gain power, how is that to be done? Brauner attempts to investigate this question with a constructivist approach to culture, proceeding from a definition of culture that reminds me suspiciously of the theory of recursive computing:

the key idea is to understand culture not only as a structure of cognitive and normative expectations that shape perceptions, communication, and behavior, but also always as a form of observation that not only observes what social actors do, but also observes how they observe, and how the way they observe any phenomenon determines what they observe

I think one could proceed from first principles in that way, but I'm perhaps too untrained in social sciences to really comment usefully. While I think my approach, which approximates "culture" as the collective creation of a set of well-defined ideological institutions, is simpler, I'll also allow that it is too simple - it conveniently sweeps under the rug the question of how ideological transformation happens at the individual level.

While it's great to suppose that growing unions and enlarging the membership rolls of liberal churches will result in progressive ideological change, it's not so easy to do that. An individual's pre-existing ideology, from "me-first" attitudes in the workplace to stuck-in-the-mud religious traditions, inevitably get in the way. Brauner's constructivist approach, I think, gets at this question from first principles, rather than from the position of an in-the-trenches organizer. I can't say that I have any kind of real answer to this question, but I do think that most people whose job it is to chage ideology at the individual level - including union organizers, ministers, professors, and so on - have figured out a variety of tricks that work in their own contexts.

In any case, these are problems at the tactical level, and I'm not enough of a domain expert to write intelligently about them (which isn't to say I am a domain expert on very much else I write about.) There are plenty of other problems to tackle: what are the high-level operations which are needed to achieve ideological transformation? How can these operations be made to work constructively together with decision-making and agenda-setting operations in order to create a smoothly coordinated movement? Perhaps most importantly, what are the institutional and monetary resources needed to support these operations, and how on earth do we gather those resources?

Fortunately, there's more than one part to this series, and I will address those issues in the (hopefully near) future.

Yesterday's blog post about the Progressive Strategy Brain got me thinking about a problem which the authors of Finding Strategy (PDF) have discussed in the past: what would a grand strategy for progressive power look like?

In addition to giving blog posts like this one a really cool-sounding title, grand strategy is a coherent composition of several different strategies which together address all of the different forms of power relationships in society. It's quite a tall order, which would explain why no one has really developed a grand strategy for progressive power. (Full disclosure: As I mentioned yesterday, one of the authors of Finding Strategy is a personal friend.)

I don't pretend to have the answer to this question, but I'd like to piece together some thoughts on what such a strategy might look like. As Finding Strategy argues, strategy consists of six components: goals, assessment, tactics, resources, dynamics, and evaluation. Today, I'd like to focus on the first two components; I'll delve into the other four in follow-up posts. Follow me across the jump for more.

 

Cultural and political goals, and decomposition of each

The first key to forming a grand strategy is categorizing various forms of power relationships, in order to get a good picture of the terrain. On the whole I think progressives tend to focus on expressly political power relationships, i.e. power relationships engendered directly by the government, and ignore cultural power relationships.

Political goals

Political goals can be neatly decomposed according to the structure of government, for example: winning the presidency; electing a progressive Congress; stocking the judiciary with progressive judges; watching the bureaucracy and persuading it to enact progressive regulations; electing progressive governors and state legislatures; experimenting with progressive reform in the state houses; etc. When thinking about expressly political forms of power, I would also include the internal machinery of the party apparatuses, even though they're extra-constitutional.

Progressives have strategists who focus on all of these goals, although some goals gain a lot more attention than others; in particular, I would argue that we are far more concerned with the presidency, Congress, and the Democratic Party than we are with the judiciary, the bureaucracy (which I would argue is a different beast than the presidency, though clearly affected by it), and state- and municipal-level goals. There are some great strategists working to change that, like the Progressive States Network, but there is still plenty of uneven focus.

Cultural goals

Cultural goals can't be decomposed quite as easily, because there is no "constitution" for our culture (and thank goodness for that.) I think one useful way of looking at cultural goals is to think about the different kinds of ideological institutions which dominate the interaction between culture and politics. These institutions include religion, the workplace, schools, the media, and family and other personal relationships.

Each of these institutions shapes the worldview of its membership or audience in various ways. Consequently, any strategy which attempts to expand progressive power in a comprehensive way must address the problem of spreading the progressive worldview through these institutions. For example, what kind of efforts are needed to spread the progressive worldview through religious institutions?

Of course, this is a very old problem, and various thinkers have already addressed it in a variety of ways already. The union movement is a massive effort to establish progressive power relationships within the workforce. Religious institutions have undergone a series of transformations which stretch back to well before this country was founded, many of them attempts to establish more progressive theologies and more progressive intra-church relationships. And so on.

A savvy grand strategy would address ongoing efforts in each of these institutions and would attempt to bolster or complement them in some way. Thus, at a minimum, a progressive grand strategy should seek to:

• Strengthen and enlarge the union movement
• Enlarge the membership of progressive religious institutions, and address the religious needs of those who are not being served by the religious landscape as it stands today
• Expand the availability of college education, and bolster the prevalence of the progressive worldview on college and high school campuses
• Create a more progressive media landscape, by reducing the barriers to entry for progressive media makers, and moving conservative and centrist media to the left
• Encourage family dynamics and personal relationships which support a progressive worldview, e.g., progressive parenting models

Moreover, a grand strategy should seek out other forms of power relationships and emerging ideological institutions. For example, is it possible that some online social networks are now taking on the role of forging ideology? Is it possible that the astronomical rates of incarceration has made prison a kind of ideological institution? More than that, is it possible that progressives have overlooked longstanding broad-based institutions, like the military, which might have an important role in ideological formation, yet fly below the progressive radar screen? If that's the case, then what should progressives do to ensure that their worldview is established and nurtured by these institutions? (Or, in the case of prison, what should progressives do to minimize the number of people who get incarcerated?)

This decomposition provides, I think, a good structure for progressive grand strategy. Progressive grand strategy has, on one hand, a goal of winning political victories, in all of their various constitution and extra-constitutional forms; and on the other hand, a goal of spreading the progressive worldview through a variety of cultural ideological institutions.

Assessment

A progressive grand strategy must assess the terrain of power relationships in society in order to transform those relationships. There are a few different pieces to this kind of assessment.

The first is an assessment of the challenges progressives face when they try to spread their worldview through ideological institutions, and the efforts to overcome those challenges. In my description of cultural goals above, I've implicitly identified some of the ongoing efforts. I think a full assessment would have to look at the challenges progressives face in more detail. For example, why is it that conservative religious traditions are not losing adherents as quickly as progressive religious traditions? What are some of the difficulties unions face when they try to recruit new members, or to retain solidarity within their ranks? And so forth. Naturally, many of these assessments have already been undertaken, and perhaps only need to be collated and updated a bit.

The second is an assessment of the challenges progressives face when they try to win political victories. This is hardly untrodden ground for progressives. We spend a lot of time assessing these challenges, and to our credit, we have done a good job of overcoming some of them. There are some pitfalls to beware of, such as our tendency a) to assume that a Democratic victory is a progressive victory (although I do think it's safe to say that almost all progressive victories are Democratic victories) and b) to assess challenges to progressives through the lens of various campaigns, like the 2008 presidential campaign or the 2006 Congressional campaign. Individual candidates can sometimes overcome certain challenges, but that doesn't mean that the structural problems behind those challenges have disappeared. Nevertheless, on the whole I think progressives know quite a lot about what they're up against in the realm of political campaigns. In the past I've tried to compile the assessments I've seen in various progressive publications into one large, master list; see my very old, and perhaps first, post on liberal entrepreneurship (under "So what is liberal entrepreneurship", item 2). That list is probably due for a major update sometime soon, and I'd certainly love to hear about other attempts to synthesize assessments of challenges to progressive political victories along these lines.

The final area of assessment concerns the effects of cultural institutions on our political landscape. For example, what would a major increase in union density do to increase progressive electoral fortunes? How would a gradual demographic trend away from conservative evangelical churches and towards liberal Christian churches or minority religions reshape the framework of our political discourse? And so on. Prorgressives tend to view these questions through the lens of specific campaigns and electoral victories, which means that, except for our efforts in media advocacy, we spend a lot of time worrying about the growth of cultural conservatism, and very little time working to expand cultural progressivism. I believe we need a deeper understanding of cultural progressivism. A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece on the cultural dimension of transformational politics, which suggests a simplistic, but I think useful, mathematical formula which expresses the relationship between cultural institutions and politics:

You might think of the ideological landscape designed by cultural institutions as a kind of sum of products. Take the number of members an institution has, multiply by the granularity of its ideological impact, and then multiply again by the emphasis that institution places on ideological transformation. Add that number up for all cultural institutions, and you have the total amount of ideological impact exerted by cultural institutions.

This formulation is entirely too neat, and woefully inadequate to fully capture the nuanced interplay between cultural forces and political life. Any formulation would be. But I think it's a start, and I'd be very interested to hear critiques or alternative formulations.

What's next

In my next post on progressive grand strategy, I'll discuss tactical plans and resources required for progressive cultural transformation and for progressive political victories. That will, I think, give a little more perspective to my nearly obsessive focus on liberal entrepreneurship. I also hope to tie together strands of thought from a variety of disparate realms, including both culturally and politically progressive efforts.

In the meantime, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this emerging outline for progressive grand strategy, and some of the assessments I've compiled above.

Last summer I highlighted a report on the state of progressive strategy called Finding Strategy: A Survey of Contemporary Contributions to Progressive Strategy (PDF). At the time I didn't do much more beyond summarize the report and promise follow-up at a later point, which, I grudgingly admit, I didn't really do.

However, the Progressive Strategy Studies Project (PSSP) has recently released a new companion tool for the report, so I thought I'd revisit this discussion. The tool is called the Progressive Strategy Brain, and it's explained in an introductory blog post at the Progressive Strategy Blog. The brain is a visualization tool which allows users to navigate a library of about 4,100 articles or entries related to progressive strategy. The screen is split in two vertically, with the top half depicting an interconnected web of concepts centered on a single, active concept, and the bottom half providing text and description of that concept. You can click on any concept in the top half to make it active. While some entries have very sparse text and merely exist to depict a relationship between other concepts, others include a full report's worth of HTML. The tool is still evolving, and PSSP hopes to update it every week. The software which runs the whole show is called The Brain. (Full disclosure: Wolfgang Brauner, one of the authors of the original report, and of the Progressive Strategy Brain, is a personal friend.)

Clicking around inside the Progressive Strategy Brain is quite fun, as you can navigate between all sorts of interesting topics, individuals, organizations, and even abstract ideas. There are a few interesting jumping off points, though, such as Finding Strategy (2006) strategists (a list of strategists listed in the original report), Progressive Challenges (challenges which face the prorgressive movement), Progressive Strategy Types, and Progressive Strategy Literature.

I think this is a fascinating tool. PSSP has managed to make a lot of very interesting content available in a very accessible and interesting format. I do have a few quibbles. There are some places where I'm not entirely sure how the relationships between concepts are created. The taxonomist in me would also love a way to impose a little more structure or categorization on top of the web. And I hope that as time goes on, the organization opens up the Brain to outside contributors (although I imagine the constraints of the software might make that difficult.) But on the whole, I think this is a great effort which calls attention to, and helps us organize our thoughts on, our conception of strategy for the progressive movement.

What I'd love to see in the evolution of the progressive strategy brain, and in the larger discourse on progressive strategy generally, is increased attention to non-political goals. Put another way, I'd like to see progressive strategists broaden their horizons, to pursue goals that include transformation of non-political, cultural institutions. After all, transformational politics includes both cultural transformation and political transformation. We need strategies for cultural transformation, and particularly transformation of the ideological institutions which usually regulate the interaction of our culture and our politics - religion, the workplace, schools, personal relationships, and the media. Progressives don't talk much about transforming those institutions (except insofar as doing so can produce electoral results), and that shortage of strategic discussion shows in the PSB's entry on progressive ideological infrastructure.

Eventually, I'd like to see progressives develop a series of strategies for transforming these institutions and creating a more progressive culture. I'd like to think that I've nibbled at the edge of this problem in the past, with a variety of series on creating progressive TV and strengthening the labor movement, and I hope to continue in that vein. I'd love to see others take up the reins and develop strategies for progressive change within other ideological institutions. That kind of strategic development is the first step in the development of a grand strategy of progressive power, which would tie together progressive cultural and political transformation.

I'm tempted to draw up an outline of what such a strategy might look like, especially given the great work which has gone into PSB. In fact, I might take a crack at that a bit later on. For now, I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on the Progressive Strategy Brain, and the state of progressive strategy generally.

On Thursday Digby wrote a fascinating post at Campaign for America's Future on the difference between transactional and transformational politics. The post pointed out the difference between "transactional" politics (what can I get in the political marketplace?) and "transformational" politics (how can I change the marketplace?). Digby argues that elected officials should be doing two jobs at once - getting the best reforms they can in the current environment, while working to change that environment so that it is more favorable to progressives.

I think it's important that we recognize the difference between these two forms of politics, and also that we push our elected officials to strive for political transformations even as they try to get the best "deal" on each political "transaction" they make. Indeed, that is perhaps the central purpose of the progressive blogosphere.

However, I think we should also think more broadly about political transformation and the other forces, besides the machinations of Democratic politicians, which might create political transformation. In particular, we need to be aware of the cultural institutions which frequently shape our political environment, and we need to push those institutions to create political transformation as well. Follow me across the flip for more details on how, in my opinion, cultural institutions shape our political environment, and what (in somewhat high-level terms) needs to be done about those institutions to create the kind of progressive political transformation we seek.

 

There are a number of cultural institutions which shape the broad strokes of our political ideology. These include the media (including both news media and entertainment media), educational institutions, the workplace and labor unions, religious institutions, and our familial and other personal relationships. In the past, I've referred to these kinds of institutions as "ideological conversion machines", and that term has its origins in some theories advanced over the past couple of years by Chris Bowers, and originally by Louis Althusser, who coined the term ideological state apparatus. Regardless, all of these institutions shape our ideology in a number of different ways, ranging from overtly political messages (sermons about feeding the poor, say), to more subtle values-based messages (like a steady stream of workshops on diversity at college, say), to experiential learning (like learning the importance of solidarity by participating in a strike), and so forth.

Interaction with these sorts of institutions shapes a person's political ideology. Some institutions tend to make their members more liberal (many labor unions, for instance), while some institutions tend to make their members more conservative (like many evangelical churches.) In fact, this relationship is also somewhat circular, as many people gravitate towards the institutions which tend to reinforce their own ideologies.

The ideological forces at work in any given cultural institution can also be variably granular. That is to say, while some cultural institutions will push their members towards a generally liberal worldview and impart in their members progressive values, others will push their members to take sides and become active in a particular issue or electoral campaign. While it's hard to paint such a large and abstract a group of institutions with a single brush, I think it's fair to say that most cultural institutions have an ideological impact which is less fine-grained but more long-lasting than the impact exerted by politicians, pundits, and others whose job it is to actively participate in political discourse.

Moreover, ideological forces across cultural institutions are not uniformly emphatic. Thus we might imagine two different union locals, both theoretically tied together by the ideology of solidarity, but one considerably more strident in fighting workplace policies and therefore, perhaps more likely to make the notion of solidarity real to its members. Or we might imagine two different colleges, both on paper as supporting diversity, but one considerably more aggressive in recruiting and accepting a diverse student body, pushing its students to socialize across racial and ethnic lines, etc.

In fact, you might think of the ideological landscape designed by cultural institutions as a kind of sum of products. Take the number of members an institution has, multiply by the granularity of its ideological impact, and then multiply again by the emphasis that institution places on ideological transformation. Add that number up for all cultural institutions, and you have the total amount of ideological impact exerted by cultural institutions.

Of course, our political environment is far too complex and nuanced to be expressed by such a clean and crisp mathematical equation. Real life gets messy. Cultural leaders claim to hold certain values, only to undermine them through their actions. Or cultural leaders hold views which don't cleanly fit into any neatly-defined political ideological category (for example, a vast number of clergy.) More than that, many institutions have an internal tension between the "official" ideology of their leaders, and that of their members, and these tensions create countervailing ideological forces. And so on.

But I think this conceptual mathematical formula is valuable to us, because it points us towards pressure points where we can imagine changing the cultural forces which create our political ideological environment. In particular, it suggests that we can do any of the following things to create a more progressive political environment:

• Bring more people into progressive cultural institutions, like the labor movement, liberal religious groups, etc.
• Make progressive cultural institutions more engaged in fine-grained political fights over concrete issues
• Make ideological transformation and higher priority for more progressive cultural institutions

Actually, that's only haf the equation.  The flip side of promoting progressivism is demoting conservatism, by doing some or all of the following:

• "Steal" members from conservative cultural institutions
• Encourage conservative cultural institutions not to engage in fine-grain political debate
• Reduce the emphasis on ideological transformation within conservative cultural institutions

I don't particularly like this second half of the equation, since it can get pretty ugly.  To see what this looks like in practice, consider the conservative movement's long-term effort to bust unions, or consider that nasty little group, the Institue for Religion and Democracy, which works to destabilize mainline Protestant denomination and to "pick off" congregations from denominational bodies.  It's remarkably odious stuff.  There are ways to demote conservatism that are not quite as ugly though - for example, encouraging evangelicals to focus less on political action, or encouraging them to break ties with the Republican party.

Regardless, the larger point is that there's a cultural dimension to political transformation, and that therefore, political transformation requires cultural transformation, including at least some of the steps I've outlined above.  This is not the kind of thing that politicians should be doing, nor do I think they'd do it particularly well. (Although Jimmy Carter has been busily proving me wrong with his pan-Baptist reform group.) Rather, it is the kind of thing which ordinary people, grassroots cultural activists and leaders, must be involved in. I also think (and this has been a central assertion of my blogging and, recently, my paid professional work) that it's the kind of thing entrepreneurs and activist businesspeople can and should take part in, by using market forces to create cultural change.  I also think there is an important role for the blogosphere to play in this project, by cultivating and nurturing ideas for cultural growth and by critiquing cultural institutions and pushing them to be more progressive.

This kind of cultural transformational work is massive, complex, difficult, and not the stuff of overnight revolutions. Conservatives discovered that it took decades to weaken the hand of center-left mainline Protestant denominations and labor unions, to build up an orchestrated massive media machine, and to win the trust of a growing group of religious conservatives. We will no doubt find that organizing religious liberals, rebuilding the labor movement, and increasing the impact of our own nascent media machine will take a very long time. Fortunately, some of this work is already being done; colleges are creating a new generation of very progressive Millenials, labor unions have undertaken a massive program of political mobilization that is very successful, and religious liberals are starting to organize themselves (more on that later.) But we have really just begun, and there's plenty left to do.

On Monday, Chris Bowers at OpenLeft wrote about the importance of a long-term trend of growing racial, ethnic and religious diversity in the demise of the conservative movement.  Chris's main thesis are that identity and ideology are one and the same, in the sense that the cultural institutions which produce one's identity are the same as those which produce one's ideology, and that Democrats should stop thinking about political positioning in terms of classic left/center/right ideological terms.  The upshot: Democrats must eschew Republican tactics, messaging and policies in favor of embracing pluralism and diversity.

There's a lot to agree with in his post, although I do think he misses a few key points.  First and foremost, I believe he's only partially correct in claiming that the ideological self-identification is essentially meaningless.  While it is true that a clever ad campaign can move ideological self-identification numbers tremendously, it's also true that self-identification numbers have been remarkably stable in exit polls for many years: about 20% of voters self-identify as liberals, while about 33% of voters self-identify as conservatives.  It would appear that about half of the country self-identifies ideologically in a very stable way, meaning that ideology is not quite dead - it's just dead for about half of the electorate, and probably a pretty good share of the non-voting adult population.

Second and perhaps more importantly, while it's true that "all of the major institutions that produce someone's cultural identity ... are the same institutions that produce someone's ideology", each institution pulls the identity and ideology levers in different ways.  For example, while it's almost certainly true that educational institutions play a role in ideological formation, do they really do much for identity creation?  Contra-wise, the role of family life in ideological formation is murky at best, while family life plays a central role in identity creation.

At the end of the day, I think while Chris is largely right, there is a clearer line between ideology and identity than he supposes.  Probably, what this means is that there are many people who vote an identity, a pretty sizable group that votes both an identity and an ideology, and a small number who vote against an identity/ideology.  That obviously has implications for electoral strategy, but I think it also has implications for what I'd call (for lack of a better term) our cultural strategy - our strategy for engaging and shaping cultural institutions in order to keep our base growing and strong.  In particular, this means that our cultural strategy should not only include efforts to strengthen and create cultural institutions which form the progressive ideology/identity, it also means that the strategy should draw clear lines between cultural movements and progressivism.

On Monday, the New Progressive Coalition released its signature product, the Political Mutual Fund.  The mutual fund provides progressives with an easy way to donate intelligently to organizations which are pursuing a sound strategy towards a larger goal identified by NPC.  For starters, NPC has identified three large-scale goals which progressives can "invest" in: Victory in 2008 and Beyond, Health Care, and Energy Independence and the Environment.  To be selected for investment within a mutual fund, an organization must meet a variety of criteria. 
It must have a strategy consistent with NPC's goals; it must be effective; it must fill a gap in the political landscape; it must be innovative; it must provide a good "return", according to quantifiable metrics; it must have potential for growth and for changing the landscape; and it should have a good track record and a high-caliber staff.  Individual investors should not plan on getting their money back, except in progress made towards political goals.

The launch of the political mutual funds has been successful, with coverage at the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, DailyKos, ABC, CBS, Time, USA Today, CNN and Forbes.  In terms of real dollars, the three funds combined have so far pulled in just north of $100,000.  The mutual funds together include 37 progressive organizations, including Energize America, the energy legislation group begun on Daily Kos.  There is a relatively low barrier to entry; to join in the fun, progressive investors should chip in a minimum of $50, plus a 2% administrative fee.

The political mutual funds are the culmination of about two years of organizational soul-searching, market research, and some fairly intense grappling with the progressive political landscape.  When it first began, NPC's mission was to serve both progressive organizations (by providing them with resources, both monetary and otherwise, to help them succeed) and progressive investors (by giving them a chance to invest in effective organizations, and to participate in more meaningful ways as well.)  NPC devoted considerable resources towards studying the progressive political landscape.  It divided the alphabet soup of progressive organizations into six sectors: Advocacy, Electoral, Idea Generation, Infrastructure & Capacity, Leadership Development, and Media.  Inspired by the use of return on investing metrics in the world of financial investments, NPC developed the theoretical framework of a "Political Return on Investment" metric within each sector, measuring things like legislation passed per dollar invested.  Along the way, NPC shifted its focus; instead of creating a marketplace where investors would invest in, partner with, and mentor progressive organizations, NPC decided to create a pseudo-financial instrument for investors to "consume".  The political mutual fund is that instrument.

With the launch of the political mutual fund finally upon us, the progressive movement now has a broad-based mechanism which will allow individual investors of relatively modest means to participate in meaningful and intelligent movement-funding.  But what does the rest of the landscape for funding the progressive movement look like, and what is missing?



The movement-funding landscape
In a way, the political mutual funds are a blend of two radically different donation models.  One model, the ActBlue model, is familiar to most MyDD readers.  This model favors ad hoc social small-dollar giving.  Social networks, blogs, and other groups play a role in recommending candidates and organizations who deserve support via ActBlue, but aside from these sorts of peer-to-peer recommendations, very few donors thoroughly vet the recipients of their donations before making a contribution.  There is a very low barrier to entry - donations can be made for as little as $5, and the average ActBlue donation tends to be around $100.  Donors tend to be focused mostly on supporting candidates, and consequently donations tend to be higher during election years.

Another model, the Democracy Alliance model, is characterized by a very high barrier to entry, and a very thorough vetting process.  The DA expressly bills itself as an effort to build progressive movement organizations, and does not appear to participate in much electoral political work.  Membership in the alliance is on an invite-only basis, and donors must contribute a minimum of $250,000.  The vetting process for organizations funded by the DA, as well as the DA's larger strategic vision for building the progressive movement, have never been made public.

By way of contrast, NPC's barrier of entry is set very low, but not quite as low as ActBlue's; NPC mixes electoral work with movement-building work; and NPC has a rigorous vetting process and movement-building strategy, both of which are clearly outlined on its website.

Along different axes, there are mutual funds which focus on corporate social responsibility of various formats, including recent partisan arrivals like The Blue Fund and more traditional, non-partisan mutual funds, like Domini Social Investments.  These funds are financial instruments which purport to provide a return on investments, but have a secondary goal of supporting socially responsible corporate actors through their investing philosophies.  Furthermore, there are venture philanthropists who seek to invest in non-profit causes but want to see quantifiable results for their donations, and social entrepreneurs, who seek to create sustainable enterprises which create positive social change, and a variety of venture capitalists who invest in social enterprises.

While these various approaches to giving sound very similar, they are each fundamentally different from the other.  Socially responsible mutual funds give money to for-profit companies whose main goal is to sell a product or service, and which operate in socially responsible ways.  Social entrepreneurs seek to create social change through for-profit mechanisms, and are frequently not traded publicly (and are therefore usually incapable of receiving investments from socially responsible mutual funds). Venture philanthropists seek to apply the metric-driven approach of for-profit investment to the non-profit world, but ultimately their money goes to apolitical non-profit groups (rather than the blend of politically relevant non-profits and directly political PACs supported by the Democracy Alliance, NPC, and ActBlue.)

Despite comparisons made in the popular press, the Democracy Alliance, New Progressive Coalition, and ActBlue are not socially responsible investors, nor are they social entrepreneurs, nor are they venture philanthropists.  They are movement-funders, who are concerned with explicitly building a political movement by supporting political actors of various stripes according to a variety of metrics.

What's missing
What the Democracy Alliance, NPC, and ActBlue have achieved in the past four or five years is nothing short of astounding.  While Democracy Alliance (internally) and NPC (transparently) have developed sophisticated models necessary for evaluating the landscape of progressive movement organizations, ActBlue has created a social fundraising mechanism that coincides perfectly with the rise of the progressive blogosphere and participatory progressive political movement.  In terms of dollars raised, last year the Democracy Alliance poured $50 million into progressive politics, and as of today ActBlue is the largest Democratic PAC, with total disbursements of $32 million from small-dollar political donations.

Despite the impressive advances made by these movement-funders in recent years, there are three ways in which the movement-funding world has largely fallen short of the needs of the progressive movement:

• Movement funders are primarily involved with funding existing actors, and do not seek to instigate the creation of new organizations to fill gaps within the movement.
• Movement funders have not drawn up a picture of sustainability for the larger progressive movement.  The implicit model underlying donations made through the Democracy Alliance, NPC, and ActBlue is that political actors will rely on donations long into the future.  There is no concept of a self-sustaining segment of the progressive movement, perhaps started by seed funds but ultimately profitable in an ongoing way.
• Movement funders are largely concerned with the expressly political world.  They are concerned with actors who are pulling primarily political levers, whether they be engaged in making campaigns more effective, pushing ideas and narratives into the expressly political media, or recruiting leaders for political organizations.  They are not concerned with building and supporting progressive cultural institutions which will help construct the progressive cultural identity.

Now, to contradict a bit of what I just wrote, there is one movement-funding organization which I've not discussed very much, but is concerned at least partially with incubating new political organizations, and with creating sustainable political models: Skyline Public Works, which, like the NPC, is funded largely by Deborah and Andy Rappaport.  Skyline is primarily a grantmaking organization, and is largely concerned with mobilizing the remarkably progressive and civic-minded Millenial Generation through its GO! Grants Program.  (Although the organization temporarily suspended future funding of GO! Grants in August 2007, its website claims that applications for winter 2007 were accepted up until Nov. 15.)  While Skyline's list of grant recipients reads like a who's-who of progressive organizations, the group has also funded a few for-profit ventures, including Civic Space, the Huffington Post, and Goodstorm. 

So while my list of critiques of the progressive movement-funding world is not entirely accurate, it is largely true.  Building the progressive movement will require mechanisms for identifying gaps within our machinery; scratching together ideas for filling those gaps; developing sustainable business models for at least some of those ideas; and pulling together the venture and angel capital necessary to seed those ideas.

Moreover, this entire approach to intentional movement building must be under-girded by an understanding that the progressive movement will require not just a political infrastructure, but a cultural infrastructure composed of churches, schools, labor unions, political and cultural media, and other cultural institutions.  In other words, our movement-funders should be willing to incubate sustainable enterprises whose goals include building new cultural institutions, or strengthening existing ones.

This sounds like an incredibly tall order, and in some ways it is.  But of course, the progressive movement is not without cultural allies.  Labor unions, most colleges and universities, and many expressly or informally liberal houses of worship are already acting as organic creators of the progressive base.  In varying degrees, the progressive movement lacks strong connections to these cultural institutions.  Many of these institutions are also facing serious problems - including union-busting for labor unions, competition from charismatic conservative churches for liberal houses of worship, and a concerted effort to install conservative professors on college campuses.  Progressives should be aware of these assaults, and must be working to counteract or mitigate them.  At the same time, progressives should be working to pro-actively build the membership and cultural clout of their cultural allies.  These efforts are just as important as our expressly political work, and they should not be ignored by movement-funders.

The launch of the political mutual funds on Monday was another milestone in the evolution of the modern progressive movement, and in particular of the movement-funding world.  I wish the NPC the best of luck in building a donor base for its political mutual funds, and I look forward to the continued evolution of the funds.  At the same time, I also hope that there is more progress towards the incubation-minded, sustainable, and cultural movement-funding which I believe is necessary to the long-term growth of the progressive movement.

On Monday, Chris Bowers wrote about a fascinating Lear/Zogby study on entertainment choices and ideological orientation. The study is interesting because in addition to asking respondents to self-identify as liberal, conservative, or moderate, the study asks respondents a flurry of questions and then assigns ideological markers ("Blue", "Red", and "Purple") to respondents post-hoc. Bowers argues that the most significant way to produce political change is to support cultural institutions which produce progressive ideological change will make a much larger difference in electoral and legislative outcomes than anything that is done in the political world. I think it's a very wise point. Clever campaign ads and better voter targeting will only take a progressive candidate so far in a world where progressives are vastly outnumbered by conservatives. Contra-wise, even a very poorly run campaign for a progressive candidate can succeed in a world awash with progressives. That's why labor unions, progressive news and opinion media, and liberal religious organizations are so important: they are cultural institutions which make progressivism real for people who may not be tuned into politics actively, and thereby make people more progressive. The first-order political impacts of these organizations, like church voter registration drives and campaign donations from unions, are just gravy. For a long time, I've assumed that creating the kind of ideological change that will result in parity between progressives and conservatives is going to be a mammoth task. That's largely because ideological self-identification in exit polls has produced pretty steady results for a long time - about 33% of the electorate identifies as conservative, 20% as liberal, and the remaining 47% as moderate. However, the new Zogby/Lear survey paints quite a different picture. The survey puts about 39% of the country in the "Blue" team, 37% of the country in the "Red" team, and the remaining 24% in the "Purple" team. That's an astounding result! It means that a large chunk of the progressive base is going to the polls and thinking of themselves as "moderates", rather than as "liberals". Indeed, the survey data bear this out. When asked to self-identify ideologically, Blue team members spread out almost equally between "progressive" (31.1%), "liberal" (36.6%), and "moderate" (31.5%). In contrast, 87% of Red team members described themselves as "conservative" or "very conservative", with another 12% describing themselves as "moderate". (It's important to note that these ideological self-identifications didn't seem to matter for the presidential vote. Despite having many more self-described moderates, the Blue team voted 95.6% for Kerry, as opposed to the 98.6% of the Red team which voted for Bush; the comparable numbers among self-identified liberals and conservatives voting for Kerry and Bush respectively are in the mid-80s in exit polls. It's hard to say whether the Blue team slipped in voting progressively in down-ballot races. Finally, it's worth ) In light of these findings, I think the Center for American Progress's "Progressive and Proud of it" advertising campaign is both timely and wise. If you haven't seen the videos, click over there and check them out. I like them, a lot, although I do have some quibbles with the details. (For example, why put two white guys in the knock-off Mac commercials? Shouldn't progressives be represented by someone who's either not white, or not a guy?) On the whole, however, this advertising campaign, along with similar efforts like Commonweal Institute's "Promoting Progressive Values" project, are exactly the kind of thing we need. These efforts help people who might not be politically involved understand what progressivism is, and why they should identify with it. At the same time, these efforts lay the groundwork for candidates to self-identify as progressive, and to follow-through on that self-identification with progressive actions while in office. If there's a large group of voters willing to call themselves progressives, candidates and elected officials have an interest in identifying themselves with that group. In a way, the progressive ads are very similar to liberal cultural institutions. Institutions like unions, liberal churches, schools, and news media make ideology real by connecting the abstract concepts of an ideology with the tangible facts of everyday life. That is why we in the progressive movement should be working diligently to support labor organizing, establish and expand the reach of liberal religious organizations, and create progressive news and opinion media. These are the kinds of activities which are ultimately going to keep our movement growing.