"The Fight-Back Has Begun" To Reclaim The American Dream

By Isaiah J. Poole
Campaign for America"s Future
June 18, 2011

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011062418/progressive-fight-reclaim-american-dream

An email the Campaign for America's Future sent to its
supporters a few weeks ago with the subject line "How Would
You Take Back The American Dream?" kicked off a lively debate
on a listserv of progressive activists. What do you mean when
you say "the American dream"? How do you-and for that matter,
why would you want to-"take back" something that so many
Americans were often deliberately excluded from having in the
first place?

There may never be, and perhaps should not be, unanimity on
the mental picture each of us sees when we hear the phrase
"American dream." But Van Jones, in a landmark rousing speech
at Netroots Nation on Saturday, said there are some basics
that we ought to agree on: that "hard work should pay in this
country" and that everyone who is willing and able to do that
work should have that opportunity to earn enough to support
their households and to ensure that the next generation has a
better life.

"That is what our grandparents fought for, that's what our
parents fought for," and that is what we should be fighting
for, he said.

"We have a common enemy and we face a common peril" moving
the nation in the opposite direction from that goal, Jones
said: a conservative movement that is "committed to one thing
and one thing only ... killing the American dream."

In the face of that enemy, "the fight-back has begun," Jones
declared. He described the conservative movement whose
policies have shrunk the middle class and decimated the
American dream for millions of people "a red, white and blue
wrecking ball" that casts its destruction of the American
fabric in a false patriotism. ""If they think we are going to
salute their red, white and blue wrecking ball, they've got
another think coming," he said.

The question that remains now is "will we fight together or
will we fight alone?"

Jones cast the American Dream Movement as a way the elements
of the progressive movement can fight together, just as the
Tea Party movement has so far succeeded in doing. The vision,
Jones said, is of a decentralized, crowd-sourced "charismatic
network" that is not dependent on a charismatic leader.

The question for progressives was "can we find a banner that
we can march under that nobody owns." For the answer, Jones
drew on the 1963 March on Washington speech by Dr. Martin
Luther King, in which he said, "I have a dream, a dream that
is deeply rooted in the American dream."

In the fight to protect that dream, "progressives in a way
are the new conservatives," said Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn.,
who was also a keynote speaker at Netroots Nation in
Minneapolis on Saturday, and "conservatives are the new
radicals."

It is conservatives, he went on to say, who are attacking the
basic American values of a fair day's pay for a fair day's
work, of concern for the common good and the welfare of all
citizens, and of government that serves the people, not just
the powerful.

The initiatives that grew from those values-worker's rights
laws, Social Security, the GI bill and other federal
education aid programs, federal infrastructure investments,
Medicare, our equal rights movements, consumer protections,
environmental laws-were moving American toward a land of
broadly shared prosperity. As Franken said, "these are not
just good progressive ideas. These are examples of good
American ideas."

The sustained conservative attack that each of these has been
under for the past 30 years has led to the shrinking of the
middle class, the increasing concentration of America's vast
wealth at the very top, and an unprecedented level of
economic peril.

"The right wants this to be the nation of social Darwinism,"
Franken said. The conservatives who are leading the effort to
remake America and to destroy its traditions "might as well
be tearing stars off the flag. And we should say so."

Robert Kuttner, publisher of the American Prospect and senior
fellow at Demos, said that the creation of the broad post-
World War II middle class was not a spontaneous occurrence.
It was nurtured by public policy-in particular, it depended
on the strength of unions. That strength was bolstered by
such government decisions as President Roosevelt's
prohibitions against union-busting by government defense
contractors-a fight that is recurring now as Boeing moves
some of its airplane construction to union-hostile South
Carolina in an effort, the National Labor Relations Board
alleges, to avoid bolstering union contracting at its plants
in Washington state.

The "Speakout For Good Jobs Now" tour that launched Saturday
in Minneapolis is a campaign to push for policies that will
directly address today's unemployment crisis-nearly 25
million unemployed and underemployed people-as well as
policies that will ensure that the jobs of the future are
stable jobs with good wages and benefits that will expand the
middle class. Jones said that the tour is an integral part of
the American Dream Movement, which has as one of its
objectives changing the Washington policy focus from cutting
programs vital to economic security to strengthening these
programs as a way out of our economic crisis.

Good jobs at good wages, in an economy that provides its
people economic security and the tools for success, are
essential for people to fulfill their own American dream,
whether it is the suburban house with the white picket fence,
the urban condo or a farm in the country. That will only
happen when workers are empowered and can fight for their
fair share of the wealth of this country. That will only
happen when government is once again harnessed to protect the
weak and the vulnerable and taken back from the corporations
and right-wing ideologues. That will only happen when we once
again have a progressive tax system in which all pay
according to their ability, and the revenues are used to help
build the foundational elements of a new economy-including
good schools, clean energy, an efficient transportation
system, affordable and accessible health care for all-that
works for working people.

And none of that happens, of course, without an independent
progressive movement that is defending the American dream of
a broad middle-class America, even as it seeks to redefine
that dream for a more diverse, 21st-century America.

___________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate