GETTING THE STORY DOWN - Part II (X.) by X.

It’s a rather astounding contradiction that the grassroots US Left still fails to express itself widely now that it has access to the most revolutionary equalizer of the freedom of expression. The ubiquitous internet renders moot the old argument that we lack the means to broadcast our ideas. We just seem to lack the vision, the will or both. There is no more painful reminder of this fact than the skyrocketing success of liberal online communities that have formed around the Democratic Party through the work of dailykos.com and MoveOn.org.

Both Dailykos and MoveOn grew in just a few years to enable tens of thousands of Democratic Party activists to reach millions of supporters. Although somewhat controversial for the mainstream, these websites firmly support the two-party status quo and mostly promote mild reform of the system (not to discount their significant contribution to the defeat of the clear and present Republican danger). But they succeeded with very little means in large part because they single-mindedly focused on growth, never missed the chance to boldly express their views and worked hard together in innovative ways to provide useful information to their supporters.

True, there are a thousand and one progressive blogs, websites and e-mailing lists out there. Yet not one of them comes close to reaching one tenth of the impact of the two liberal sites just mentioned. Part of the challenge lies in the fact that – unlike political groups that merely take a side in the status quo (like Dailykos and MoveOn) – progressive grassroots groups must start nearly from scratch in a fragmented US Left that failed to build and maintain a nationwide infrastructure over the past thirty years.

The US Left is disunited and discombobulated today not just because of the many political splits of the 60’s that were never healed but because we have a whole new generation of progressive organizers that work in complete isolation from one another, each in their own little local world. Much of what is written on progressive grassroots blogs is written from a parochial perspective and mostly consists of the mere recounting of events, complaints about the injustice of the system or utopian prescription for the future without a plan to get there.

This sorry state of the US Left guarantees that the same mistakes are repeated by local progressive grassroots groups all over the country without any of the lessons learned being shared. It guarantees that each group’s best idea likely remains its main or only idea, because none of the ideas get transmitted. Worst of all, it perpetuates a state of fragmented disempowerment because thousands of small, broke, disconnected progressive groups are no match for the system.

If we are to make real the revolutionary promise of democracy, we must accept our responsibility to share our knowledge without fear of criticism. We must extract the most valuable information from our own organizing experience and make it available to all, without fear of disagreement. We must compare our experience to the experience of others and relate it to what we have studied of our history without fear of failure. And we must keep developing the new ideas we have come up with or borrowed by applying them every day in our organizing work, without fear of the responsibilities of success. If we are serious about building a growing, diverse and capable nationwide progressive movement, we should all be organizing, we should all be thinking, we should all be sharing, and we should all be planning for the future.

And so after much procrastination and an endless stream of excuses, I will follow my own advice and join the process by writing this blog. The Pirate Caucus –which should welcome additional contributors soon– will first and foremost share perspectives drawn from a variety of revolutionary experiments in building democracy that took place over the past 15 years in New Brunswick, New Jersey at the initiative of several grassroots progressive student and community groups. The most recent and better documented such project in revolutionary democracy is the Tent State University movement, launched at Rutgers University in 2003 (find out more about it at tentstate.com).

This is but a small step to start with. There will be plenty more to come.

Do you know of a progressive grassroots blog or site that writes down and promotes its local experience and knowledge? Send me the link at xmanblog@gmail.com. (X)