Rebuilding the Dream Through the Democratic Party?

A Review of Van Jones' "Rebuild the Dream"

By Ted Glick

Future Hope column, July 23, 2012

http://tedglick.com/columns/129.html

"No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old
garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the
new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one
puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine
will burst the skins and the wine is destroyed, and so
are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins."

-Jesus of Nazareth, from the English Standard Version
Bible, Mark 2:21-22

I've never been a Democrat, even though my parents were
liberal Democrats, and even though I've supported some
running for office who were definitely progressive.
Going from a boy to a man in the 1960's, it seemed like
a no-brainer to me. How could I support a party that
had racist segregation supporters in its leadership
like James Eastland, John Stennis and Strom Thurmond,
and a President elected in 1964, Lyndon Johnson, who
campaigned opposing the sending of any more US troops
to Vietnam but, after his election, did just the
opposite, dramatically and maddeningly escalating that
imperialist war?

Of course, there's always been a liberal/progressive
wing of the Democratic Party that has given support to
progressive movements struggling for peace, equality
and human rights.

Van Jones' latest book, Rebuild the Dream, analyzes the
Democratic Party, the Obama phenomenon, the Occupy
movement and the overall progressive movement and puts
forward a strategic perspective on how we can change
the country given where we are in 2012. It is a book
well worth reading. Though I have a number of
criticisms of it, Van has done the movement a service
by putting his brilliant intellect to work to put
forward a set of ideas about how to build what, in his
prior book, The Green Collar Economy, he called a
broad, populist alliance one that includes every class
under the sun and every color in the rainbow."

Building a "broad, populist alliance," I completely
agree, is an absolutely essential strategic task, and
constructive debate over how best to build it, and the
actual work of doing so, is very much needed, now.

In Rebuild the Dream, Jones calls for the building of
an independent movement outside of the Democratic
Party, but there's a real question about how
"independent" he sees this movement, particularly when
it comes to electoral activity. In a couple of key
sentences, he says, for example: "The challenge will be
to see whether some part of the 99% can capture a
beachhead within an established party - without being
captured itself. If it can succeed, the 99% movement
will have the standing and the power to force the U.S.
political system to be more responsive to the needs of
everyday Americans." (p. 173)

Elsewhere he calls for a movement that is
"fundamentally independent of any party, politician or
personality," and he IS critical in many ways of both
parties. For example, in the introduction, he writes
that "our grandparents crafted laws and policies to
protect the country from corporate abuses and Wall
Street's excesses. Unfortunately, both major political
parties were seduced into allowing the elites to strip
those protections from our law books." (p. 7) But
despite these positive and accurate perspectives, the
overall strategic approach of Rebuild the Dream when it
comes to the electoral process is that this independent
movement should primarily work within the Democratic
Party.

Jones puts this perspective forward even though he is
critical of the Obama Administration of which he was a
part for six months. One of the things which he does in
this book is to analyze where the Obama movement of
2008 came from, what Obama and that movement did right
and wrong after he was elected President, and what
lessons can  be drawn from those experiences.

There are two significant ideological perspectives that
Van puts forward that are troubling:

-his pretty explicit pro-capitalist orientation. Among
other passages, on page 189 he writes, "We need to
advance toward a better capitalism. An appendix by Eva
Patterson says of Jones in reference to his book, The
Green Collar Economy, "Van's book is a veritable song
of praise to capitalism, especially the socially
responsible and eco-friendly kind." (p. 252)

Without question, within a broad, progressive alliance
"the socially responsible and eco-friendly" businesses
must be a part of it. But I question if that alliance
itself should declare itself pro-capitalist. It seems
to me that what is needed is an alliance built around a
program on the issues. Debate should take place about
what are the best ways to address the range of
system-produced crises - climate, health, unemployment,
housing, education, cultural violence, inequality,
etc. - without the alliance having an explicitly
pro-capitalist, pro-socialist, pro-libertarian,
pro-anarchist or any other historically-based ideology.

Indeed, the organization Rebuild the Dream which Van
helps to lead, produced something like this with its
"Contract for the American Dream." It's a 10-point
program that had lots of input--the participation of
131,203 people according to Jones. It can be
strengthened and expanded, but it is without question a
solid progressive platform without an explicit
pro-capitalist, socialist or other ideological
orientation that I'm able to detect.

-his call for a 99% movement which "defines itself as
the 99% for the 100%." I found this to be both
troubling and unclear. Does Van really believe that the
1/10th of the 1% which really dominates the US
government and much of the world's economy are
potential allies in a struggle for a truly just world?
He does write that "many of the 1% are on our side."
Really? I am all for welcoming anyone from anywhere, no
matter their race, gender, class, political ideology or
personal history, if they begin to see the error of
their ways and, through their actions, come over to the
side of the people. But it is an illusory view that the
vast majority of the corporate ruling class is anything
but the numerically tiny but powerful "them" in "them
vs. us."

This strategic view clouds and confuses how we do our
work. Our work should be focused among the
constituencies who are hurting under this systemmany
of which Van delineates in the book--and those of all
classes who are genuinely concerned about injustice and
the state of the planet. And honestly, that's really
not "the 99%." It's more like maybe "the 70%," though
over time we can win more and more of that other 30%
who, because of their rightist ideology or upper-class
privileges, are on the other side.

I continue to believe that what the independent
progressive movement needs is an explicit "third force"
strategy, not a take over the Democratic Party
strategy, or a strategy to establish a beachhead within
it.

A "third force" strategy was first articulated that I
know of by Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1984 during his first
presidential campaign. He tied it to the building of
the Rainbow Coalition as a coalition bringing together
African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians,
farmers, workers, feminists, lesbians and gays, peace
activists, environmentalists and others disenfranchised
or disturbed by the system. It also openly welcomed
those who were committed to building a third party,
although as Rev. Jackson became more politically
powerful during his 1988 Presidential campaign, those
who supported that objective began to be marginalized.
Then, in 1989, the incredible potential of this popular
alliance was essentially destroyed when organizational
changes were forced through from the top that took away
the Rainbow Coalition's dynamic and movement-building
character.

That tragic ending of this promising movement doesn't
negate the soundness of the third force strategy, or
the continuing need for it.

A third force would, almost certainly, mainly support
progressive Democrats at first as far as its electoral
tactics, but it would also welcome the involvement of
Greens and others who support or run as independents
for office. Decisions as to who to support and how
would be made democratically. Perhaps more importantly,
a third force would be supportive of the kinds of
electoral reforms that would open up our corporate- and
two-party dominated, undemocratic electoral system and
make it possible for many more voices and viewpoints to
be heard. Such reforms must include public--not
corporate--financing of elections, instant runoff
voting, proportional representation, reasonablenot
restrictiveballot access laws, free media time for all
candidates who show a base of support, etc.

But a third force must do much more than support or run
candidates for office, and in this respect Jones' book
has some good things to say. He writes about the
importance of the "Heart Space" and the "Outside Game."
The Occupy Wall Street movement is a good example of
both, which Van is positive about: "Occupy Wall Street
has inundated the Heart Space with visceral hurt and
authentic anger. They leveraged massive creative talent
in service to their message, and used social networks
for distribution. In all of this, they've played a
strong Outside Game as well. Their action was edgy-it
provoked police response and demanded a response by the
broader establishment." (p. 133)

Jones also talks positively about civil disobedience.
Referring to the Take Back the Land network, he writes:
"police have come to execute the eviction [of the
owners of a foreclosed home] and are faced with crowds
of people willing to be arrested, and in many
instances, the police have just left. Then the banks
have waited for things to quiet down before they make a
second run at it." (p. 207)

He also mentions the civil disobedience campaign at the
White House in the summer of 2011 against the tar sands
Keystone XL pipeline where 1253 people were arrested
over a two week period. However, it is literally a
one-sentence mention.

This is my final main criticism of Rebuild the Dream:
its very limited focus on the climate crisis. Jones
himself seems to be aware of this when he writes, over
three-quarters of the way through the book on page 184,
that, "in this book, we have barely touched upon the
environmental crisis. But since I wrote my last book,
The Green Collar Economy, things have gotten mostly
worse-in many cases much worse. . . Catastrophic
climate change, driven by human activity, is still the
biggest threat to human societies, not to mention
innumerable other species."  He then writes several
pages about this "biggest threat."

Unfortunately, in this section he does not repeat the
ideas from an important paragraph in The Green Collar
Economy, about the need for a "World War II level of
mobilization" on global warming. This is what he wrote
in 2008, echoing similar calls from Al Gore, James
Hansen, Bill McKibben, Lester Brown and others:
"Reversing global warming will require a World War II
level of mobilization. It is the work of tens of
millions, not hundreds or thousands. Such a shift will
require massive support at the social, cultural, and
political levels. (p. 58)

I have to honestly wonder if this omission, especially
given his stated understanding that this greatest-ever
threat to human civilization has gotten worse, is
related to Van's Democratic Party orientation. The sad
truth is that the Democratic Party, particularly Barack
Obama, has moved backwards over the last few years as
far as how he and his party are addressing, or not
addressing, the climate crisis.

We should learn from the words of Jesus, one of the
greatest organizers in human history. Let's find ways
to keep our "wine," our independent progressive
movement, in new bottles. Let's appreciate and build
upon all of the various media, cultural, alternative
economic, political, direct action, training and other
groups that, collectively, are much more powerful than
the sum of the parts.

Let's be clear that though there are many Democats part
of this broad independent progressive network, some of
whom have been elected or are running for office, the
Democratic Party is not part of our movement network.
Let's come together as progressive Democrats, as
Greens, as other independents, as revolutionaries, as
reformers, as grassroots progressive Republicans, into
a new third force that can truly transform our society
before it is too late.

Ted Glick has been an organizer and activist since
1968. He has prioritized work on the climate crisis
since 2004. Past writings and other information can be
found at http://tedglick.com, and he can be followed on
Twitter at http://twitter.com/jtglick.

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