originally posted 2009-06-07 - 16:56,c

The lead story at the first day of the America's Future Now conference, sponsored by the Campaign for America land the Institute for America's Future, was a major health care an $82, million health initiative launched by a coalition of community health groups.  If you didn't catch my post  Day One: We Took Back America, What Next? here it is.

Now I would like to share my thoughts about the conference as a whole, which went from June 1 through June 3. My expectations on walking in were high  and  I wasn't disappointed, except for talking points from the official Obama team (Jared Bernstein, economic policy advisor to Vice President Joe Biden,; John Podesta , former Clinton Chief of Staff, who led the President's transition team; and Mitch Stewart, Director of Organizing for America.) 

Speakers over the three days represented community organizers from forty states, union representatives, progressive members of both Houses of Congress (and in a few cases staffers subbing for their bosses.) While attendance was down this year from 2,500 last year to around 1,500 this time, this event -- the ninth since 2003 when the first was held -- enthusiasm was high.

The Bush Adminstration suffered a stinging defeat, and Barack Obama is our president. There is a lot to celebrate in Obama's first hundred plus days, and other things of concern. The question before the conference was: What then is the role that Progressives should be playing now to ensure that OUR intiatives, are on HIS agenda; and that that agenda is passed in both the House and Senate. 

In his opening remarks, Robert Borosage, co-director of CAF, set the stage, pointing to the gains progressives have made since  2003. For the first time in America's history, not only has a former black, community organizer, Barack Obama been elected president; but he ran "on the most progressive agenda since the New Deal."

Progressives have every reason to feel good about their accomplishment in electing Obama, he said, but this is no time to sit back and let him do the heavy lifting.

[N]ow the real struggle begins.

... snip  ...

[We can] witness the greatest period of progressive reform since the 1960s [but this is not a foregone conclusion.]

... snip...

When Al Franken is finally seated Democrats will have 60 votes in the Senate and a majority in the House,But notice, I said a Democratic majority -- which is not the same as a progressive majority. [empahsis mine]

His message was compelling.  Politics is not a spectator sport in which we cheer the winners and  jeer the losers; or spend our time complaining about Obama's failure to live up to our expectations.

[The future will be decided by the ability of progressive forces to] build independent movements, organizing outside of Washington, demanding real change.

Borosage told two versions of a familiar story. both of which  he said were apocrophyl.

In one version, labor leaders meet with FDR, urging him for support and he replies" I agree with you. I want to do it. Now go out and make me do it."

In the second, according to  Bill Moyers,  Martin Luther King tells LBJ.that Blacks could no longer wait for the right to votes, with Johnson replying, "I wanna do it, but I can't get it through the Seate. You have to go out and make it possible."

Well that's the story but Borosage calls it misleading.

No president wants to be pushed by his base. Every president wants good soldiers, not independent, obstreperous, aggressive movements. Roosevelt ... feuded with labor leaders. Johnson wanted King to stop the demonstrations, wiretapped him and eventually split with him.

[The quotations are taken from a printed version of the speech handed out at the time, but again the emphasis is mine.]

Speakers at the closing session exhorted the liberals to take back America -- from Obama. Naomi Klein summed up where things stand for progressives right now:

 The president of the most powerful country in the world is doing all right, but there are a lot of people in this country who are not doing all right," writer Naomi Klein told the crowd. "Obama is making us stupid," she added. "Love can make you stupid."

Her remarks and those of steel worker's president, were distorted in a his June 4, Washington Post piece, i

On June 4, the second day of the Conference, Dana Milbank wrote a cynical piece, Liberals May Be Looking for a Take-Back. Pointing to the lower attendance this year, he described the conference as a ho-hum love-fest for the president. Pointing to the lower attendance this year, he wrote:

President Obama is just killing the progressive movement.

Sneering at Naomi Klein's remarks at the closing session: President Obama is just killing the progressive movement, he suggested that

He entirely missed the point of the conference, by since Obama continues to have a high approval rating progressives have simply lost their rallying cry and politics are no longer very exciting. Now it's time for politics as usual.

In my next post I will report on the Immigration initiative and panel discussions on  the economy. where much emphasis was put on the critical role that labor union must play in defending the living standards and working conditions for all Americans.

Millbank quotes Leo Gerard, head of the United Steelworkers who warned that if the progressive movement does not join with unions and  seize the opportunity to lead with our progressive ideas," then "Rahm Emanuel will lead." And while "Rahm has the president's back," the union leader said of Obama's chief of staff, "I don't think he has our back."  But he juxtaposes Gerard to results of a straw poll taken at the conference by Stan Greenberg that showed Obama had a high approval rating from people at the conference, but what Millbank failed to mention was that more than half had serious concerns as well.

Millbank didn't report that Gerard spoke about the ordinary average Americans he met, in a t 34 cities in a four day blitz tour that he took this past March. The trip was sponsored by the USW and the aliiance for American Manufacturing. He spoke to workers who had already lost their jobs or were fearful that they would be losing them, families in danger of losing their homes, with no health insurance,. And his message was loud and clear: We need a comprehensive industrial policy now, with "managed investment agreements."

It was in that context that he made the remarks about it is up to Progressives,  with the participation of the labor movement to be watching "our back" not Raum Emmanuel.

The conference ended on a high note. Winning big in the last election was a victory for progressives. The next stage of the fight will even more difficult. Not only is it necessary to fight for healthcare reform, economic reform, protecting the environment, defence of the right to organize, but it is necessary for us to build a movement for the long term that can create a wind at President Obama's back. A movement that is independent, obstreporous and aggressive. That was the message of the Conference and it was a good one.