progressive movement

Advocacy, Organizing & Persuasion
• Educate public officials, candidates, and decision-makers regarding issues
• Influence major institutions to respond favorably to the movement’s ideas and proposals
• Exert an appropriate influence on the legal and judicial systems
• Organize and operate grassroots campaigns (other than legislative, such as those that pressure corporations and office holders)
• Train grassroots advocates and grassroots campaign managers
• Train individual persuaders and idea promoters
• Carry out online education, motivation, and fundraising for issue campaigns (e.g., by non-profits)

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On February 15, 2009, Mike Lux energized an audience of some 75 progressives at the Mercury Lounge in San Francisco.  Referring to his new book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, Lux put events of the tumultuous recent past in historical context.  He spoke about the conflict taking place since the time of the nation’s founding between progressive advances for the common good and conservative retrenchments that favor the wealthy.

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Defining the values that underlie and unite progressives became an urgent question in the early 21st Century. Progressives came to recognize that, to a great degree, our political choices emerge from our sense of cultural identity and our emotional responses to stories and images, not from ‘rational’ cost-benefit analyses.

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In the early years of the 21st Century, the term “progressive” gained popularity in the media and among elites and voters, but there was little consensus as of 2008 regarding what progressive identification meant.  Clarification of progressive values and political values is likely to become a matter of strategic importance to candidates and officeholders, particularly if the trend toward increasing progressive self-identification continues. 

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The American conservative movement has succeeded in moving public attitudes steadily rightward over the last 30 years, with far-reaching consequences for the country’s political governance.  This success has been achieved through a well-funded and well-coordinated organizational infrastructure that follows a long-term, disciplined communications strategy.  In order for moderates and progressives to maximize the power of their own ideas and values, and to compete effectively with conservatives over the coming decades, they must develop, without delay, their own infrastructural capacity and p

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This paper, based on a presentation at the Third Annual Democracy Fest in 2004, discusses some of the things that grassroots activists can do between campaigns to strengthen their groups and enhance the position of progressives in their communities.

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This seminal paper by the co-founders of the Commonweal Institute articulates the need for organizational infrastructure for the modern progressive movement.  It describes the nature of political movement infrastructure, the infrastructure functions important to advancing the goals of a movement, important process considerations in the establishment and function of infrastructure, and options for funding and supporting infrastructure for the progressive movement.

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The American conservative movement has succeeded in moving public attitudes steadily rightward over the last 30 years, with far-reaching consequences for the country’s political
governance. This success has been achieved through a well-funded and well-coordinated
organizational infrastructure that follows a long-term, disciplined communications strategy.
In order for moderates and progressives to maximize the power of their own ideas and values,
and to compete effectively with the right wing over the coming decades, they must develop,
without delay, their own infrastructural capacity and practices. This paper suggests how to
get started.

Click here to read the pdf file.