Progressives have a road map for congressional influence in the widely-downloaded Indivisible Guide. However, we need a higher-level road map to turn those individual actions into a unified movement. Here are preliminary thoughts:
Tactics:
- Relentlessly promote a value framework: Freedom and Responsibility (consider these working values in need of vetting). These values are operationalized through Respect and Care for people, the earth, rights, and our nation’s ideals. These words — or those that replace them — should be used to frame every single issue in every single context on the left. And we mean these specific words, not just general concepts.
- Promote a proactive platform. For example, instead of playing defense on women’s health issues (“don’t take away our freedoms and access to care”) set a proactive goal that every woman in the United States can access a women’s health clinic within one hour.
- Show how condescending the Republican leadership and their allies are by constantly asking why they think the American people are so stupid that they cannot see through their lies. They think the people they are sworn to represent — their own constituents — are stupid. The voters are not idiots. Voters, including Republican voters, have much more nuanced opinions that the condescending opinions offered by party leadership.
Time frame:
- Short term: rapid response on a day-to-day or week-to-week level. It is necessary to tie all the different protests and actions together under one identity/umbrella to give shape/momentum to the movement.
- Medium term: state elections and midterm federal elections, with a particular eye toward 2020 redistricting. We need to win some elections.
- Long term: 25 year strategy to flip the framing of issues, retake the court, and shift the political center to a more progressive place.
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