Which Way Occupy?

I'm visiting NYC and a friend asked me if I was planning on going down to Zucotti Park. I hadn't even thought of it; I guess I hadn't realized that there was still an occupation of the Park going on. I did think of getting in touch with George Martinez, one of the Occupy activists who is running for a congressional seat currently held by Democrat Nydia Velázquez. Velázquez isn't a Blue Dog or a New Dem and she has no outstanding ethics charges against her. I had hoped George would run against scandal-prone corrupt New Dem Joseph Crowley, but when the new district boundaries came down, he was in Velázquez' district and her lack of leadership and her longstanding role as a cog in the Democratic machine was enough of an impetus for Martinez.

She's a garden variety Democrat and votes with the leadership. She isn't out front taking a leadership role on any of the policies important to Bum Rush the Vote. Like most of the Members, she's about her career, not the people she's supposed to represent in Congress.Martinez and his OWS allies have a very different idea about what the role of a congressmember should be-- an a very different idea about how to fight for for goals.

The Bum Rush premise is simple: Controlling politics without money is power, people power.

Our goal is to create an open-source, crowd-sourced DIY campaign. All of the resources we need to accomplish this goal are available to us due to the fantastic technology that we now have access to. We started this campaign with no money, and are using our resources in a very efficient and frugal manner.

Our resources come directly from our people. We look toward whomever is involved. We are not seeking to hire anyone. We are seeking those who like us want to see a game change in politics.

As you can see in our website, we are going DIY all the way. Every platform we need online is available for free. This is at the core of the Bum Rush philosophy. We seek to demonstrate a model that you don’t need money to win a race. Certainly, we are accepting donations, but donations don’t allow us to move forward, they simply accelerate the process. Everything we need to run this campaign exists within our community. We are hoping that what is true for us, is true for other citizens out there who look at their representation and find something lacking.

We want to inspire you to work toward making real change by participating in electoral politics. Whether you get involved in George’s campaign, or you get involved in a campaign where you live, all we care about is that you get involved. Don’t think about all of the reasons you can’t do it, think of all the reasons you can. The resources are available in your community to take back our government from the crooked and the ineffectual. It is time to take the power back from the people who think that political office is theirs to trade back and forth, and who sell their legislation to the highest bidder.

This is a Bum Rush, we are running up to the halls of power, and we cannot be ignored.

But, as you probably know, there's a very cogent argument going around that OWS should not be involved in electoral politics and must stay away from being for the Democrats what the Tea Party is-- or was-- for the Republicans. It's not an argument without merits. The Democratic Party is part of the problem. The congressional leadership-- even if you want to leave Pelosi out of the equation-- is part of the toxic Conservative Consensus. The corruption of party leaders like Crowley, Steny Hoyer, Steve Israel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz is exactly the same-- and exactly doesn't mean 99%-- as the corruption of the Republicans. Elect more Democrats-- even good ones-- and you enable this crew of cutthroats. Maybe... Max Berger lays out the argument eloquently in Alternet.

As long as there has been a thing called Occupy Wall Street, there have been people who've suggested it should become the left's version of the Tea Party. Josh Harkinson's piece is a notable contribution to the conversation because it comes after eight months of in-depth reporting on the movement. Harkinson, like Jennifer Granholm, suggests that Occupy should recruit and run candidates, so the left has champions in Congress and can credibly threaten less ideologically aligned Democrats. According to this logic, it doesn't matter if Occupy does this itself or essentially outsources the job to our progressive allies-- the point is to find ways to elect more good Democrats.

The idea of a progressive Tea Party was totally my jam before Occupy started. Like Harkinson, I didn't see how the left could create real change in America without taking control of the Democratic Party. Now I think it's important to recognize that the problems we face as a country can't be solved by electing more Democrats, or even by electing more good Democrats. A progressive Tea Party would be a welcome addition, but it wouldn't be nearly enough to create the kind of change we need.

If Occupy tried to start a left Tea Party, we would be following in the footsteps of several progressive movement efforts that came up short. Howard Dean's presidential campaign turned into Democracy for America to reclaim the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," the Progressive Change Campaign Committee explicitly references the DCCC, and Rebuild the Dream originally billed itself as the progressive Tea Party. I have worked for each of these organizations and have lots of respect for their work. But unfortunately, none of these projects, despite their many successes, have managed to mount a serious national effort to take out bad Democrats and replace them with good ones. They are constrained by the lack of a grassroots base in many congressional districts and big donors reluctance to fund challenges to Democrats. Even big, collaborative efforts to take out bad Democrats have a relatively poor record (See Sheyman, Ilya; Halter, Bill; or Lamont, Ned).

Occupy is less well suited than the Progressive movement to overcome these challenges. Most occupiers I know aren't interesting in learning how to raise money, knock on doors, or run campaigns. Starting a progressive Tea Party is a completely legitimate, useful goal-- but it's something for the progressive institutions to take on. New York state and city provide a good model for how this can work harmoniously: the Working Families Party is a unified progressive block within the Democratic party. They support Occupy and we support them on the issues. Together, we won a huge, unexpected victory for the millionaires tax.

Despite the hard work of our progressive allies, the unfortunate reality is that our political system as presently constructed is simply incapable of responding to people's needs. The election of the most progressive Democratic nominee of the past 30 years and a Democratic super majority in Congress resulted in relatively little change in American political economy, even during a time of massive economic crisis. The tepid response showed our political system was designed to serve the whims of the market, and no politician has the power to do much about it.

My generation doesn't put all, or even most, of the blame for this state of affairs on President Obama. We don't hate the player, so much as we hate the game. I believe Democrats are better than Republicans, because Democrats care more about the lives of gays, women, and people of color. I also believe everyone should all vote, because not voting would hurt people that I care about. That being said, we won't just win by getting new players-- we need to change the game. The system is fundamentally incapable of healing itself.

I agree with the idea of changing the game but Berger kind of lost me when he referred to moderates Bill Halter and Ned Lamont as progressive icons, implied that Barack Obama is a progressive and called claimed Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein are "noted radicals." I guess we're on different planets. His evangelical faith in OWS sounded disturbingly like the evangelical faith many people-- not sure if Berger was among them-- put in Obama 4 years ago. Misplaced faith based on the kinds of thinking that can claim with a straight face that Bill Halter is a progressive or Ezra Klein a noted radical. [I'm still rereading to see signs of irony or sarcacism but still coming up empty.] "The Occupy movement," he concludes, "would derelict of duty if we focused on the electoral at the expense of putting pressure on the system as a whole. The entirety of civic life can not be reduced to a get out the vote campaign. The left needs strategies that take aim at all the ways neo-liberalism breaks down our communities. The inherent conservatism of America government, and the limitations of electoral organizing, means we need inside and an outside strategies.

"Occupy has already inspired a new generation of social justice leaders to build an inclusive, radical movement that also speaks to the mainstream. We continue to push institutional groups towards more confrontational forms of resistance, bring new people into the struggle and provide a unifying message. Like the civil rights, women's rights, environmental movements before us, we can't afford to ignore the electoral realm, but we also shouldn't expect to succeed by voting alone. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party didn't succeed by electing candidates-- it succeeded showing the limitations of the electoral system. Occupy should aim to do the same." OK, voting alone won't do it. But I'm glad there's an OWS activist like George Martinez running against Nydia Velázquez and I'm glad that, unlike Bill Halter, there actually are bona fide progressive leaders running for Congress, like Norman Solomon, David Gill, Darcy Burner and Nick Ruiz. Obama had a career before he ran for president. People who were paying attention understood that it wasn't a progressive career. It was a corporate-oriented garden variety Democratic career with good packaging. More lesser of two evils. I suspect Berger is a lot younger than I am and I don't begrudge him his idealism, not for a second-- we had our day in the '60s too-- and, like he implies, there are many paths to the same end. I think we could both agree that OWS doesn't have what it takes to run an electoral campaign. But thank goodness the movement is inspiring candidates and voters who will give us the opportunity-- at least here and there-- to not have to pick between the lesser of two evils. Like George in my native Brooklyn. This was his response to the debate:

Occupy has done more in the last 8 months than progressives in the last 20 years in exposing the social and economic injustices rooted in corporate control over all of us. In that time, we've inspired and energized labor with a spark that they've desperately needed. Together we can overcome the anti-worker, anti-people, anti-Occupy sentiment from the right. Are the labor unions the inspired rank and file that are with us in the streets or are they the staffers conspiring with the status quo of the Democratic party not to rock the boat even as it's sinking with our economy? “Progressive” institutions could be the change they seek by endorsing a change in electoral politics coming from the Occupy movement or they can remain in bed with the entrenched corporate interests that allow state after state to enact anti-union legislation and increase the wealth gap. By standing with career Democratic politicians who have promoted holding the line in the face of full on assaults by the GOP, our communities have in fact fallen further behind. If not now, when? If not us, who? We are the ones we've been waiting for!

This is why I am running for Congress in New York's 7th Congressional District and am promoting the electoral direct action of Bum Rush The Vote.