New DNC Chair Perez Promises Renewed Focus On Grassroots
February 26, 2017
IMAGE: U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez addresses the AFL-CIO Convention, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2013 in Los Angeles. (US Department of Labor/Flickr)
IMAGE: U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez addresses the AFL-CIO Convention, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2013 in Los Angeles. (US Department of Labor/Flickr)
I was hoping that Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) would win the Democratic National Committee chairmanship because of his experience as an organizer, but former Labor Secretary Tom Perez — who won a narrow victory at the DNC’s Atlanta meeting today — is also a great choice. He’s progressive, pro-worker, an accomplished advocate for civil rights and social justice, and the first Latino in that job. He immediately asked Ellison to serve as deputy chair — a smart move to bring the party together.
Importantly, the delegates at the Atlanta meeting also elected union organizer and immigrant rights activist Maria Elena Durazo — who supported Ellison for the top post — as DNC vice chair. The daughter of migrant farm workers, as head of UNITE HERE’s LA local and then leader of the 800,000-member LA County Federation of Labor, Durazo helped elect progressives throughout the state and helped transform the California Democratic Party into a voice for the disenfranchised, including immigrants.
We now have a Latino and an African American at the top of the DNC, a moderate Democratic minority leader in the Senate (Chuck Schumer) being pushed to the left by the grassroots resistance movement, a democratic socialist (Bernie Sanders) with a large and energized base within the party, and a charismatic and principled progressive woman (Elizabeth Warren) as the strongest voice within the party and the most likely candidate for president in 2020. These are all positive signs.
The battle between Ellison and Perez was often portrayed as a struggle between the party’s “progressive” and the “establishment” wings. That’s a mischaracterization. Both Ellison and Perez are long-time progressives. Perez is hardly a corporate Democrat or a tool of the party’s Wall Street wing. His entire career has been devoted to fighting for civil rights, workers’ rights, and social justice.
Perez is certainly the most progressive DNC chair since Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris occupied that post in 1970. Since then, the position has been held primarily by corporate fundraisers and moderate-to-liberal politicians, including Larry O’Brien, Jean Westwood, Robert S. Strauss, Ken Curtis, John C. White, Charles Manatt, Paul Kirk, Ron Brown, David Wilhelm, Chris Dodd, Donald Fowler, Roy Romer, Steven Grossman, Ed Rendell, Joe Andrew, Terry McAuliffe, Howard Dean, Tim Kaine, and the recently deposed Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
It would be a huge mistake for my fellow Ellison supporters to diss Perez and threaten to leave the Democratic Party. No doubt a handful of Ellison supporters will feel the need to go on the warpath. I hope the media don’t manufacture a phony party crisis by giving a megaphone to the small number of Ellison supporters who think that Perez’s victory is a defeat for progressives. It isn’t.
After he lost the primary fight, Bernie endorsed Hillary. Some of Bernie’s followers attacked him for doing so as a sell-out. A few drifted over to embrace Green Party candidate Jill Stein. But the media exaggerated the extent of the desertion. In fact, about 95% of Bernie supporters voted for Hillary. We need that kind of unity now.
As my friend Gerry McDonough, a long-time progressive activist in Massachusetts, observed: “We’re in a war against fascists. There’s no time for infighting.”
Ellison echoed those sentiments. “If you came here supporting me, wearing a Keith t-shirt, or any t-shirt, I’m asking you to give everything you’ve got to support Chairman Perez,” he said after the vote. “You love this country, you love all the people in it, you care about each and every one of them, urban, rural, suburban, all cultures, all faiths, everybody, and they are in need of your help. And if we waste even a moment going at it over who supported who, we are not going to be standing up for those people. We don’t have the luxury, folks, to walk out of this room divided.”
The task ahead — which Perez supports — is to rebuild the Democratic Party as an organizing party that can take advantage of the growing grassroots resistance movement that has emerged since Trump’s inauguration. That means raising money to hire organizers and put them in states and Congressional districts where liberal and progressive Democrats can win governors’ seats, state legislative races, and the House and Senate races. It means working in collaboration with unions, community organizing groups, environmental and LGBT groups, the Dreamers and other immigrant rights activists, Black Lives Matters, Planned Parenthood, Indivisible and other groups that are already mobilizing on the ground.
The anti-Trump resistance movement is way ahead of the party. The five million strong Women’s March, the battles at airports against Trump’s travel ban, the recent wave of town hall meetings all over the country where angry voters (many of them politically involved for the first time) confronted Republican members of Congress, and the 7,000 local groups galvanized by the Indivisible website all happened without Democratic Party involvement. But we need the party to help expand the protest movement and channel that energy into an electoral movement to put progressive and liberal Democrats in office.
Let’s get behind the Perez/Ellison team, strengthen the progressive movement, and defeat the pro-Trump Republicans in 2018 and 2020.
Peter Dreier is professor of politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. His most recent book is The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame (Nation Books). This essay is reprinted from the Huffington Post.
Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.
Filmmaker Michael Moore, perhaps one of the most visible and active leaders of the Trump Resistance movement, has stepped up with two major contributions to the battle ahead. He has created an easily accessible website—calling it a Resistance Calendar—where people can post news about all upcoming resistance activities and find out what is going on in their community and region:
“I’ve promised you a one-stop site, a clearinghouse of all actions—a RESISTANCE CALENDAR—where you can find every upcoming action, protest, march, sit-in, town hall, anti-Trump, pro-democracy event in all 50 states!”
Moore also unleashed “The Michael Moore Easy-to-Follow 10-Point Plan to Stop Trump,” published as part of this article, which contains Moore’s list of tactics for resisters all over the country to take on. Part of Moore’s plan is to take over the Democratic Party, which means to him getting Congressman Keith Ellison elected to head the DNC when it meets this Saturday, February 25.
A key element of Moore’s plan is creating with 5 to 20 friends and family members a personal “Rapid Response Team.” Moore also wants thousands of progressives to run for office and make their own media using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and other social media sites to spread news and information.
He says: “Make sure all your friends and family are signed up.”
—Don Hazen, Executive Editor of AlterNet
Friends, I welcome you to “The Michael Moore Easy-to-Follow 10-Point Plan to Stop Trump.”
First, let’s acknowledge what we all know to be true: Trump is in deep, deep trouble—in the pocket of Russians, surrounded by Alt-Right idiots, alone in his bathrobe in a mostly-empty White House—and caught inside a disgusting “shit-sandwich,” so said his supporter who turned down the NSA job.
Only one month into his So-Called Presidency—and yet there is good news, as this is what the American landscape looks like:
• Tens of thousands of citizens across the country have stormed Congressional district offices and town hall meetings to express their rage at the Trump agenda (a dejected Republican congressman, after a 3-hour verbal assault from his angry constituents, said on TV last night, “let’s face it—they [the Obamacare supporters] have won”).
• A federal court halted Trump’s first Muslim Ban—actually, make that FOUR federal courts have ruled against him! He’s conceded defeat and will not appeal to the Supreme Court (though he will try a new ban—and good luck with that, you son of a Scottish immigrant).
• Progressive Democrat Congressman Keith Ellison appears to be the front-runner for this Saturday’s vote to head the Democratic Party—and to FIX the whole damn mess! Also, a recruitment drive has begun across the country to find the best local candidates to run for state and federal offices in 2018. Millions are committed to never letting the Debacle of ‘16 happen again.
• Our beautiful Army of Comedy—with its Platoon of Satirists led by Alec Baldwin and Melissa McCarthy—is killing it! The devastating impersonation of White House spokesman Sean Spicer by McCarthy has Trump fuming to the point where he has considered getting rid of Spicer. Politico says he simply can’t watch one of his top aides being portrayed by…a woman!
So the momentum is with us right now—and if we all just take a little time to do the Action Plan below, I’m convinced we’ll succeed in halting the dark force that is Trump. We can tie him up in knots at every turn, and eventually, we can bring him down.
So let’s get started with our…
10-POINT ACTION PLAN TO STOP TRUMP
1. THE DAILY CALL: You must call Congress every day. Yes—YOU! 202-225-3121. It will take just TWO MINUTES! Make it part of your daily routine, one of those five things you do every morning without even thinking about it:
1. Wake up.
2. Brush teeth.
3. Walk dog (or stare at cat).
4. Make coffee.
5. Call Congress.
It is impossible to overstate just how much power you have by making this simple, quick daily call. I know from firsthand experience the impact it has. These politicians freak out if they get just 10 calls on an issue. Imagine them getting 10,000! Holy crap—the dome will pop off that building!
NOTE: if you’re saying to yourself, “I don’t need to call because my rep is a Democrat!”—that is NOT true. They need to hear from you. They need to know they have your support. Don’t believe it? Our beloved Sen. Elizabeth Warren voted in favor of Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development! I’m sure no one in Massachusetts thought they had to call her. YOU DO! She and the other Dems need to hear from the boss—YOU! They work for us—and what boss doesn’t have daily contact with his or her employees?
It’s easy to make The Daily Call. To call your U.S. member of Congress or Senators in D.C., dial 202-225-3121 (or 202-224-3121 if busy). It’s even better to call their direct line. For Senators, find each of their numbers here. For the direct line to your member in the House of Representatives.
Someone has created an app to make this very easy: Go to the App Store and get “5 Calls.” The app will dial the friggin’ phone for you and give you talking points for when you speak to your reps!
If you’d rather to write to your reps, you can find the best way to do that for each of them here by typing in your address here.
I will post updates on the actions we’re fighting for each day and week on my Twitter and Facebook pages. If you want to know what to call your reps about, I encourage you to follow me right now on Facebook and on Twitter at @MMFlint. All my social media sites are at my website www.michaelmoore.com.
Remember—A call a day keeps the Trump away.
2. THE MONTHLY VISIT: To add even more pressure, SHOW UP! Your member of Congress has a local office in your town or somewhere nearby. So do both of your U.S. Senators (often in the nearest federal building). Go there and ask to speak to their aide about the issues we’re facing (again, I will continually post them on my social media sites).
Also, don’t forget to visit the local office (or the state capitol office) of your State Representative/Assembly person and your State Senator.
And, if you’re lucky to live within driving distance of Washington, DC, show up on Capitol Hill and pay an unannounced (it’s legal!) in-person visit to your U.S. Senators and your Congressman/woman. They pay serious attention to this. It blows their mind that you’d drive that far to see them. Do it!
I know not everyone has the time to do THE MONTHLY VISIT—but if you can, please do!
3. YOUR OWN PERSONAL RAPID RESPONSE TEAM: You and 5 to 20 friends and family members must become your personal RAPID RESPONSE TEAM. Sign everybody up so that when we need to leap into action (like we did at the airports the hour after Trump signed his Muslim Ban), you can email and text each other and make an instant plan. On other days, you’ll share links to good investigative stories and TV news items. Come up with a name for your RAPID RESPONSE TEAM—mine is called “The V for Vendetta Rapid Response Team” and it consists of myself, my daughter and son-in-law (and their new baby!); my two sisters, their spouses and adult children; my cousin; 8 friends; 6 co-workers; and my next door neighbor. That’s 27 of us and we live from Seattle to Michigan to Maryland. And each of them are forming their own local Rapid Response Teams. So that means the 27 on my team are so far responsible 405 new Rapid Responders overnight! And each of those 405 are doing the same—they’re recruiting their own 5-20 people—and BOOM! 4,050 more Rapid Responders tomorrow—and growing!
4. JOIN! JOIN! JOIN!: We all know it’s time for all of us to be part of a greater whole, so let’s actually physically sign up online and JOIN some of our great national groups. I’ve joined Planned Parenthood, ACLU, Black Lives Matter, Democratic Socialists of America, and ERA Action. Some charge money to join, so if you don’t have much, pick the lowest amount ($5 for ACLU for example)—or join groups that don’t charge anything (but if you can help them financially, please do). They will keep you informed of national actions and fight for us in court.
5. THE WOMEN’S MARCH NEVER ENDS: The historical, record-breaking January 21st Women’s March on Washington—and the hundreds of other Marches that day across the US and the world, with over 4 million in attendance—brought massive numbers of people out who had never protested in their lives. It inspired millions of others and ignited so many local movements we still can’t count them all. The day after the Women’s March, another two dozen protests took place. The day after that, 2,000 Utahans jammed into their state capitol in Salt Lake City. Then, on the following Saturday, tens of thousands of Americans occupied their local airports to oppose Trump’s Muslim ban. And on and on and on. Every day dozens of actions continue to take place as if the Women’s March never ended. It hasn’t. Join it!
I and a group of friends have set up THE RESISTANCE CALENDAR (www.resistancecalendar.com) that is updated daily, where you can find out what actions are taking place near where you live. All you have to do is type in your city or state in the search bar.
It’s critical that large numbers of us continue to march, protest, sit-in, and be very visible—to Trump, so he knows we are the majority; to put the Dems on notice that we expect them to grow a spine; to our fellow Americans who live in Boise or Tulsa or Grand Rapids and have been feeling alone and afraid since the election. Our mass presence reminds them the people didn’t elect Trump. And it is good for each of us to operate in concert with each other, to feel the solidarity and the hope.
And the official Women’s March on Washington—they’ve called for a national Women’s Strike on March 8th. Let’s join them!
6. TAKE OVER THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: The old guard of the Party has twice in 16 years presided over the majority of Americans electing the Democrat to the White House—only for us all to see the losing Republican inaugurated as President. How is it that we have won the popular vote in SIX OF THE LAST SEVEN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS—the Republicans have only won ONCE since 1988—and yet, we hold NO power in any branch of government?! That, plus losing 1,000 local seats in this election that the Dems use to hold—plus watching many Dems in Congress unwilling to stand up to Trump—PLEASE, the old leadership has to go. God love ’em for their contributions in the past, but if we don’t enact a radical overhaul right now, we are doomed as far as having a true opposition party during the Trump era. And that, more than anything, will help to usher in the vice-grip of a totalitarian culture.
You must do two things:
Let the DNC know that THIS SATURDAY, February 25th, the Democratic National Committee MUST elect reform and progressive candidate, Congressman Keith Ellison, as the new DNC chair. Keith is a former community organizer, the first Muslim elected to Congress, and a key backer of Bernie Sanders. He not only has Bernie’s support — and mine — but he’s also backed by Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Gloria Steinem, John Lewis, and many others. Sign his petition of support and let the DNC know how you feel.
And locally, you need to start attending your county Democratic meetings. If possible, organize your friends and others and take over your local Dem organization. More on this at a later date.
7. HELP FORM BLUE REGIONS OF RESISTANCE: People keep saying to me, “Mike—I live in a Blue State—what can I do?” If you live in a Blue State, you have one of the MOST important tasks to complete: Show the rest of America what it looks like when Trump isn’t in charge! Blue States and Blue Cities must do an end-run around Trump and create the America we want to live in. That means New York goes ahead and offers Free College for All. California can create its own Universal Health Care. Oregon can stop mass incarceration of African Americans. Hawaii can enact its own climate change laws. Blue States can show the rest of country how much better life can be. Important historical note: Before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal, California and New York passed their own state laws to make it legal. This greatly helped pave the way for CHOICE being the new normal—and the enactment of Row v. Wade.
8. YOU MUST RUN FOR OFFICE: I know, that’s the LAST thing you want to do. But if we keep leaving the job up to the dismal, lame, pathetic political hacks who have sold us all down the river, then what right do we have to complain? This is only going to get fixed when you and I decide we are willing to put in our time—even if it is a brief time—and run for office. I ran when I was 18 and got elected. You can, too. We need good candidates for the 2018 elections—and not just Congress and State Houses, but also school boards, city councils, and county commissions. Why not take out a petition today and run next year? Heck, I’ll bet I’ll even support you!
I realize most of you can’t do this—but there is one office every one of us can and SHOULD run for next year: PRECINCT DELEGATE. Every precinct, every neighborhood can elect x-number of Dems to the county Democratic Convention. It’s on the ballot and it’s usually blank—no one runs for it. So the precinct delegates end up being appointed by the party hacks. And that’s who ends up eventually at the national convention to pick the next presidential candidate. So this is an important position to run for. The time commitment is just 3 hours a year! You attend the county convention—that’s it. Call your city or county clerk and find out how to get on the ballot. If you’ll do it, I’ll do it. It’s the first step to making sure we put a candidate on the ballot who can win.
9. YOU MUST BECOME THE MEDIA: Stop complaining about the media, stop wishing they were something they’re not, find the ones who are doing a good job, and then start your own “media empire” by sharing their work and your work on the internet. Use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and other social media sites to spread news and information. Make sure all your friends and family are signed up. Yes, I’m talking to you, Baby Boomers. Get over it, put down your postage stamps and your “TV clicker” and find a six-year old to show you how to start tweeting. You can be your own reporter, your own editor. You can curate the news for your friends. And now Facebook lets you have your own network with Facebook Live! It’s all free. Get on social media now. Imagine, your own CNN is in the palm of your hand…
10. JOIN THE ARMY OF COMEDY: Trump’s Achilles heel is his massively thin skin. He can’t take mockery. So we all need to MOCK HIM UP! Not just the brilliant people at SNL or Colbert, Seth Myers, or Samantha Bee—but YOU. Use your sense of humor and share it with people. Get them to do the same. Keep sending around the SNL links spoofing Sean Spicer, Trump, and Kellyanne—there’s no such thing as watching them too many times! Hahaha. I truly believe the final tipping point for Trump will be when he implodes from all the laughter—the mocking, the unbearable ridicule of tens of millions of Americans that will discombobulate him and force him out of the White House. I know this seems like Mike’s fever dream, but I believe it can work. I don’t know what happened to Trump in boarding school at 13 and I don’t care. Whatever it was, let’s use it. He’s used all the other things he picked up over the years—misogyny, bigotry, greed—against the powerless and the unfortunate. It’s time to laugh him outta town. And if there’s one thing we all could use right now is a good laugh—AND the possibility of a much-shortened presidential term.
So, there you go! The 10-Point Action Plan to Thump Trump. Something for everyone. And every one of us needs to do them. Please share this and spread the word. We can stop him. We can nonviolently block and obstruct halt the damage he’s doing. But it’s going to need—and take—ALL HANDS ON DECK!
Let’s make Trump toast again.
—Michael Moore
Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.
IMAGE: Michael Moore at the march against Trump, New York City — Mathiaswasik /Flickr.
What follow are the scariest words I’ve read since I first saw President Donald Trump.
“Unless the Democratic Party becomes stronger and more effective, a radicalized Republican-conservative juggernaut is likely to take over for decades,” Theda Skocpol, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University, wrote in Vox.
Skocpol is co-author of The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, one of the definitive books on the movement that to many Trump opponents exemplifies the widespread reach and sustained opposition necessary for the left to match — if it is to contain and then reverse the new president’s agenda. She’s rightly seen as a guiding light for insights into effective mobilization from the bottom-up, which she regards as the most significant aspect of the Tea Party story.
Of course, top-down support from Koch-brothers backed groups and Fox News should not be understated, but Skocpol’s research shows that whatever its leaders and funders did, the Tea Party movement sparked a genuine explosion of activism among the party’s base.
“These grassroots activists, pretty much on their own, ended up organizing 900 regularly meeting local Tea Parties spread all over the United States,” she told Democracy Journal‘s Michael Tomasky. “And a lot of the impact they had filtered up from local Republican Party committees, from pressure on elected representatives and candidates, and the effect they had on galvanizing people to vote and participate in Republican primaries.”
And most of these groups were brand new to politics, not rebranded versions of existing groups as many — including your pal @LOLGOP — assumed.
So how can Democrats match the right’s exponential expansion of its activist base?
She believes that while outside efforts like the Indivisible Groups are “right on,” they won’t be enough.
“But here’s the problem in just imitating—even if you get it straight that it wasn’t the Koch brothers and it wasn’t all a bunch of marches, which were the least of it in some ways—it’s hard for the left now, for the center-left now, to imitate what the Tea Party grassroots people did,” she told Tomasky. “Because they were spread out across the country.”
With Skocpol’s help, it’s easy to identify the left’s biggest immediate problems: (1) its geographical density in a Constitutional republic designed to empower well-distributed minorities; and (2) the understandable urge to burn it all down. (Effective messaging, including the lack of a clear contrast to the GOP’s “GOVERNMENT BAD” rallying cry, is the third biggest problem, but this requires a much more concerted long-term effort to match conservatives’ decades-long framing advantage.)
“Anti-institutional tendencies in today’s culture make the idea of dismantling the existing order attractive to many people,” she wrote in her post, “A guide to rebuilding the Democratic Party, from the ground up.” “But social science research has long shown that majorities need strong organizations to prevail against wealthy conservative interests in democracies.”
Skocpol argues that the Democratic National Committee is our best — and possibly only — hope to combat the “strong possibility of a long-term authoritarian right turn in US politics.”
This is a terrifying thought for several reasons.
You have to start wetting yourself when you consider the reality that America has likely been in a “feedback loop of growing inequality and Republican rule” for decades, with conservatives using their victories and the billions of dollars in gains they’ve secured from those victories to firmly establish their political dominance by shrinking the tax base, hammering organized labor, and making voting more difficult while buying elections, especially local elections, only gets easier.
Almost equally underwear-spoiling is the prospect of having to depend on the DNC, which has seen its reputation shredded both due to its pro-Hillary Clinton leanings and concerted attacks on the institution from foreign interests.
The contest to lead the Democratic Party’s central organ now seems to be verging on repeating the trauma of the 2016 presidential primary between frontrunners Rep. Keith Ellison, the choice of most Bernie Sanders supporters, and former Labor Secretary Tom Perez, the choice of most Obama-and-Clinton-leaning factions of the party.
Especially when compared to the ruthless, increasingly autocratic opposition Democrats face, the differences between Ellison and Perez are subtle, stylistic, and somewhat hard to find. Yet these differences are still easy to magnify.
Skocpol believes Democrats need to “embrace a year-round, face-to-face organizational style.”
Both Ellison and Perez are capable of pulling off such an organizational and functional transformation. Both candidates represent groups targeted by Trump’s overreach. And both can appeal to the sort of genuine populism that the president effectively faked during his campaign.
Yet despite these affinities it’s easy to imagine the Bernie-wing taking a second straight rebuke as proof that it is not welcome in the party. This would be a disaster for the United States and the world.
There is simply no other organization on the left that can match the “well-entrenched networks” of the right including “the cross-state federated networks of the NRA, the Christian right, and the centerpiece Koch organization, Americans for Prosperity.”
With 2017 and 2018 elections rapidly approaching and likely to establish the momentum for 2020, Democrats need to quickly move on to effectively combatting the GOP and its concerted efforts to prevent non-conservatives from voting by “checking and adding voter registrations.”
And the DNC has to be the beating heart of this effort, regardless of who wins the chairmanship. Or any hope of defeating Trump may be DOA.
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