David Michael Miller
The movie Divided We Fall paints a dispiriting picture of progressive politics in Wisconsin, with serious implications for the future of progressivism both at home and nationally.
In an election year that stirred hopes with the unlikely and nearly successful grassroots Bernie Sanders campaign, and then headed downhill into the reality TV show that is the 2016 general election, Katherine Acosta’s hard look at the way progressive activists influence (and fail to influence) electoral politics has deep resonance.
Acosta attempts to explain why the historic uprising against Scott Walker fizzled out.
The pivotal moment in the documentary comes when retired Madison teachers union president John Matthews tells how statewide union leaders “pulled the rug out from under us.” He describes how, while speaking to a group of teachers who had participated in a mass walkout, he was handed a note explaining that statewide union leaders had announced the teachers should go back to work. Matthews was shocked. The leaders were negotiating with Walker and had decided to accept cuts to members’ health insurance and retirement benefits in the doomed hope that, in exchange, Walker would give up on Act 10 and the destruction of their unions.
Union leaders had essentially told state Republicans, “If you will leave us alone so we can continue to exist as a union, to hell with the members,” Matthews says. “That destroys the union movement.”
Acosta segues from that betrayal, which let the air out of the protests, to the push by union leaders and state Democrats to get protesters to stop occupying the state Capitol building. From there she moves to the recall elections, run by professionals with little connection to the mass rallies that made us all feel, for a short time, like part of a vibrant, democratic movement.
That whole trajectory might feel familiar to Bernie Sanders delegates who attended the Democratic Convention this year and felt seasick watching their progressive movement absorbed by the Democratic Party establishment.
Fortunately, the outlook for the presidential election looks quite a bit better than the end of the story in Wisconsin, where Democrats failed to stop Act 10, and then failed, twice, to defeat Walker, leaving the state even more firmly in the hands of right-wing Republicans.
What are the lessons of these recent flashpoints — the Wisconsin uprising and the Bernie Sanders campaign?
Acosta’s narrative notwithstanding, it’s not clear that continuing the occupation, or heeding the briefly popular calls for a general strike, would have changed the final outcome of the losing battle against Walker.
With union membership at historic lows and Walker’s successful exploitation of hostility to public employees among cash-strapped, nonunion private-sector workers — not to mention Republican majorities in all three branches of government and redistricted electoral boundaries — the protesters might not have been able to achieve their ends even if they had not been abandoned by timorous leadership. Turning the tide might take a long time.
Progressives are understandably frustrated by the visceral loss of energy when we move from activism in the streets to the institutional electoral process. But how do we figure out the right relationship between movement politics and electoral politics? It’s not just a matter of a few missed steps.
I once interviewed Howard Zinn, whose name was invoked constantly by students working on the Ralph Nader presidential campaign in 2004. Zinn was warm toward those student activists, but he also warned against getting too hung up on ideological purity when it came time to vote. You can be part of a movement that criticizes Democrats from the left, and also vote for the least-worst option at the polls, he explained. Movement politics is a long-term effort, not to be confused with short-term campaigns.
This year, when we are done obsessing over Donald Trump, we progressives need to get back to building a majoritarian movement. We got a glimpse of what that might look like in Wisconsin, and again in the Sanders campaign. That potential is still there, and it’s possible to take the next step.
Our Revolution, the group run by former Sanders staffers, is working to draft and support progressive candidates all over the country.
And Ralph Nader, whom I interviewed recently, has a very concrete suggestion for a grassroots organization to push progressive policies.
“Let’s say 1 percent of people in every congressional district organized at the level of a hobby,” says Nader. People in district offices would hold members of Congress accountable and demand policies in areas of broad public agreement — increasing the minimum wage, reducing wasteful military spending, and criminal justice reform. Civic-engagement hobbyists could change the world, he says. “We’ve got to tell people: ‘1 percent, that’s all you need.’”
Sounds like a reasonable next step.
Ruth Conniff is editor of The Progressive.