Movement Adopts Recall As Political Strategy

by Peter Rickman & Bruce Colburn 

Social Policy

Spring 2012 issue

http://www.socialpolicy.org/index.php/component/content/article/4-latest-issue/530-movement-adopts-recall-as-political-strategy

Social Movements & Political Action

Successful social movements include a political strategy in
addition to direct action, mass mobilization, and deep
building, to build power and win change. While not relying
solely on electoral and legislative activity, movements must
recognize and embrace the importance of these political
activities as crucial venues in which to contest for power,
actualize change, and realize our values.

In Wisconsin, our movement chose to open up a political
front in the struggle. Of course, a political strategy
presents pitfalls. The ledger of American history is replete
with movements run aground by too quick or too complete a
turn toward electoralism. Because the critical moment that
catalyzed our movement took place in the political arena, a
political strategy is a must for us in Wisconsin.
Acknowledging that the background for this movement resulted
from complex factors, we also recognize that a political
strategy alone will not accomplish our objectives.

In Wisconsin, we do not believe that taking to the streets
must be counterpoised to taking to the ballot box. Indeed,
the movement here recognizes that we must do both, and more,
to be successful. A political strategy and the direct
action, mass mobilization, and deep building components
reinforce one another. In fact, we see the political
strategy as a way to develop the latter. In so doing, taking
on the recall of Governor Scott Walker as the centerpiece of
a political strategy, we are building upon the resonant,
galvanizing uprising of Wisconsin in 2011 and developing a
new model for movement activity.

Why Political Action

The political action of the Wisconsin uprising reflects the
spirit of the fightback. Working people are fed up with our
broken economy and democracy. We are not going to play by
the conventional rules. We are contesting for governance and
building power on our own terms to make our democracy and
our economy work for us.

Just as in the successful fight against the anti-union SB5
in Ohio, Wisconsin unions and community organizations looked
to an atypical but highly important level of democracy to
right the wrongs committed against us. Instead of waiting
until the next election cycle to throw the bums out,
progressive forces in Ohio and Wisconsin both chose to throw
out the playbook of convention and to establish democracy on
our own terms.

Here, we can win a major victory by replacing Scott Walker
with a champion, a fighter for our values who explicitly
takes up our issues on the campaign trail and who will
govern as the progressive. As important in many respects, we
must not only win, but also win with a mandate. Walker
instituted regressive tax cuts for profitable corporations,
deeply damaging austerity measures, as well as cutting
healthcare and education, pursuing a failed jobs strategy of
vintage trickle-down, and eliminating collective-bargaining
rights. We will raise up a coherent, potent agenda to frame
this special election as a choice between the 99% and the
1%.

Our strategy and organization for the recalls connects
directly to our objectives. Simply put, we cannot continue
to do politics as usual. If we seek to do "better" what we
must do "different," we will not win. A political strategy
cannot be grafted onto an organic social movement. Instead,
it must flow from that movement's activities and adherents.
Indeed, the movement leaders at the grassroots demanded
recall and a political strategy.

How We Got Here

We were faced with reactionary Republicans in charge of all
levels of government and an organized right wing in the Tea
Party. They came after us, forcing a crisis on labor and
progressives. We created a political crisis for them,
challenging them at every step with an urgency and immediacy
required by a "kill or be killed" moment. We challenged the
direction of the state by staging a mass uprising. We
challenged governance by taking up a political strategy. We
challenged by how we fought, relying on collective action by
the masses.

When a defiant group of students and workers took over the
Wisconsin State Capitol in February of 2011, many saw it as
a spontaneous eruption of discontent and frustration.
However, conditions alone did not spur a fightback. The
uprising took root in the organization of a community-labor
alliance formed between these students and workers over
months of developing a shared analysis and fightback
project. Combined with the galvanizing impact of militant,
direct action that brought out many more individuals and
organizations both at the Capitol and across the state, this
form of alliance organization and its implicit reliance upon
collective action and the embedded spirit of fightback
sparked a sense of possibility along with immediacy and
urgency.

When the first opportunity presented itself to go beyond
protest and to expand beyond unions and already allied
community organizations, the movement rose to the occasion.
Progressive forces transformed a virtually forgotten race
for the State Supreme Court into a battleground. We made it
about the Walker ally in the race and the potential judicial
challenge to Walker's antiunion law. Coming from dozens of
percentage points behind in the polls with a virtually
unknown candidate, we lost by barely a few thousand votes
statewide. The rapid mobilization of the consolidated forces
that came together in the uprising presented new
possibilities for an electoral strategy to complement the
movement in the streets.

Thousands of activists, many involved in politics for the
first time, circulated petitions to gather tens of thousands
of signatures to recall from office eligible anti-worker
Republican State Senators. The right quickly responded with
recalls of its own, targeting pro-worker Democratic
senators, setting off a summer of recall elections.

When the dust settled in August, progressive forces won five
recalls. We saw our expanded base take action beyond joining
a protest or a rally. We found collective action taking on
new meaning for the masses. In communities across the state,
those who bused in to the Capitol or who staged actions in
their own necks of the woods took up clipboards and walk-
lists. Progressive forces who never before worked together
took up campaigning in a way never done previously.
Community organizations, unaffiliated individuals, and
public- and private-sector unions joined to form
coordinating groups that not only knocked on doors and made
phone calls, but also staged rallies and protests both to
build energy and momentum and to drive a public narrative
about the recall elections.

With the appetite of the movement whetted for an
unprecedented recall of a Wisconsin governor, leaders
consolidated organization and strategized about how to
undertake gathering over 541,000 valid signatures in only
sixty days. Debates on how and when to proceed raged in
union halls, over dinner tables, and on blogs, Facebook, and
Twitter. Collectively, we decided to circulate recall
petitions beginning in mid- November, over the holidays, and
in some of the most unfriendly weather in the typically
inhospitable winter of the upper Midwest. Doubters remained.
An unprecedented outpouring brought us well beyond our goal,
gathering over one million signatures to recall Scott
Walker.

Political Strategy Both As Realizing and Building the
Movement

A few key themes emerged in our recall campaign of Governor
Walker. We know that a political strategy can be potent for
instrumental reasons. We can replace Scott Walker with a
progressive champion, winning a mandate while also re-
energizing ourselves to keep alive this movement as we go
from defense to offense. Along the way, we can galvanize
those outside of Wisconsin, dramatically impacting
circumstances affecting the 2012 election cycle at the
national level and do so in a way that lifts up working
people and their objectives.

First, elections are a venue in which many people, including
those not readily identifying with our movement, are
accustomed to making political choices. We are meeting
people where they are, to engage them in the democratic
decisionmaking we need to affect a change which is not only
in governance. Furthermore, elections hold clear time frames
when a choice must be made, forcing immediacy to the
question, "Which side are you on?" We are making this a
referendum, with a clear choice and a binary outcome on a
fixed timeline.

Second, we are drawing sharp, clear lines between us and
them, between our direction and theirs. The "us" is the 99%,
working class and poor people, and the "them" is the 1%,
corporations and the rich. The "us" are the candidates for
office, the movement organizations, and the broad mass of
people fighting in this struggle, while the "them" are Scott
Walker, the Koch brothers, and the right wing. Our direction
is shared prosperity, and their direction is austerity. Our
direction is a fair economy and a working democracy, while
their direction is neither of those.

Recognizing the commonality of progressive forces, we are
advancing keystone demands and issues. We do not say
"austerity," even though that is what we are fighting. We
talk about how Scott Walker gutted BadgerCare, the
healthcare program for low-income working families, to give
tax cuts to the corporations and the rich who do not pay
their fair share in taxes. We talk about how Walker went
after unions because organized labor is the only answer to
organized wealth. We talk about how tax cuts and trickle
down do not create jobs, only painful cuts and greater
income inequality. These are resonant issues that illustrate
our principles, without requiring a long-winded lecture to
get across the essential points.

No movement in history has been successful by failing to
draw clear contrasts, to dramatize unfairness and injustice,
to point out and polarize opponents, and to name the
problem. Our message and narrative speaks to and about our
movement, with the recall election as the venue in which we
can be heard.

Third, we are building organization during the struggle. Few
progressives would argue that we do not need an independent
political organization of our own. Many in labor and many
community organizations have long sought an alternative
vehicle; some of us even worked to develop it at various
points. Here in Wisconsin, we are building an independent
political organization that unites labor and community
forces in one vehicle, for this campaign and beyond. As part
of our operating mantra, we are taking on issues, elections,
and mobilizations as part of a coherent program to build the
movement, contest for power, and change the political game.

The organization we see as the vehicle for the movement is
called "We Are Wisconsin." It arose during the fightback,
matured during the ongoing fights against Walker's budget
and the summer of recalls, and reached greater scale as we
readied for the Walker recall. No one sat down one day and
said "We should have a movement vehicle that should include
x, y, and z, that does a, b, and c." However, we recognized
from the beginning that we must build organization during
our struggle. We could not form an organization unconnected
to the fights and the people taking them on, nor could we
delay building organization until after the fights
themselves. We continue to find ourselves growing stronger
for each fight in which we find ourselves and for the next
ones because we build organization in the struggle.

For example, we began the recall petition gathering by
staging a mass rally and march to Walker's own neighborhood
where activists signed recall petitions and committed to
action for the rest of the signature gathering period. We
then conducted actions around the issues at stake and around
the contrast between our side and Walker. These actions
drive a public narrative and energize our base to take on
more collective action. More traditional political activists
get pulled into movement activities, and we all unite under
one banner.

Fourth, we are bringing new relevance to collective action
and to leadership by regular people. Because the recall
election is so high-profile and because it is where so many
grassroots activists and even previously disengaged people
gravitated, the Walker recall effort has grown the movement.
People are being thrust into action and thrust into
leadership by taking action. From those who stepped forward
to take over and occupy the State Capitol, to those who
organized autonomous rallies in their communities, to those
who decided to circulate recall petitions, leaders have
taken on many roles since the uprising began, and they have
been treasured and nurtured.

Since last February, hundreds of thousands of people took
collective action for the first time. For many of the more
than 30,000 who circulated recall petitions, activism has
become a part of their regular lives. The recall election
provides a way for these people to take ongoing, sustained
action with a purpose that channels anger and frustration
into activism that we know can change the world. With the
Walker recall taking place, we have a framework through
which people can take action. These activists, new and
experienced alike, are working to become leaders through a
concerted program and through innovative campaign activity.

We are not asking people simply to knock on doors or to make
phone calls. Instead, we are mobilizing people to build
leadership. Activists are being called to take up the mantle
of leadership, so crucial to any movement. Activists are
responsible for organizing a network of twenty or so
friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers to be led to the
ballot box and into the streets. We are reconceptualizing
what it means to be an activist by transforming people into
movement leaders with a base or following that takes
collective action. On the back end, we have developed a new
generation of citizen leaders who will continue the fight,
realize the mandate of this referendum election, and take on
struggles of greater and greater proportions.

Where We Could Go

In future reflections, obviously we hope to look back upon
the strategic choices around our political strategy as part
of movement-building. But we cannot see that far into the
future. In the last analysis, at least here and now, we are
more organizers and street fighters than we are pundits and
intellectuals. Our vision is one of a new kind of movement
politics driven by working people through our own
organization that wins social and economic justice by
fighting on multiple fronts. We know that if it can be done
in Wisconsin, it will be done by this incredible movement
full of new leaders. And we know that if it can be done in
Wisconsin, it can be done all over the country.

[Bruce Colburn is Vice President for Politics & Growth with
SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin and a former elected officer of
unions representing mineworkers, steelworkers, and bus
drivers.

Peter Rickman is with the SEIU Fight for a Fair Economy in
Wisconsin and is a former Co-President of the Teaching
Assistants' Association at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison.]

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