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Even though our Inauguration trip to DC only lasted four days, it felt like we were off in an alternate, giddy reality for much longer. Even attempting to get back to work today, that state of elation continued with the stream of news about things like Obama’s Executive Orders to close the prison at Guantanamo and send special envoys to critical conflict zones. It would be easy to keep this inauguration high going for a long time, pretending that just being happy that “that’s MY president” and agreeing with everything is an acceptable form of participation. And so I’m all the more thankful that I got myself out of bed on Monday morning and attended the Alliance for Justice panel on the Role of Activists in the Obama Administration. The panelists — Eli Pariser of MoveOn, JoDee Winterhof of CARE, and Van Jones of Green for All (who, I will admit, was the name on the agenda that got me there) — affirmed my conviction that the work for real social change is only just beginning.

My notes:

Eli Pariser

• we can allow ourselves some giddiness over the next few days, but then we have to address what this means for our politics and take it seriously — moments when people fear for their economic survival = shifts toward conservatism, so we can’t ignore the possibility of that challenge emerging and the pendulum swinging back the other way
• can’t build sense of togetherness and guard against reactionary behavior through the media because it thrives on fear — and Obama can’t do this alone, either — has to happen through organizing.
• collective action problem — not just one person can spread a sense of hope, everyone has to do it together, build institutions together through the struggle
• “virtuous cycle” – people believe their actions can change things, sense of hope becomes an incentive (so need to leverage people’s recent experience of doing something that led to tangible change — this is an opportunity to create great change in a short period of time)
• not a single troop has come home from Iraq, not a single green job has been created, no one has better healthcare…yet. this is the work we have to do now.

JoDee Winterhof

• CARE measures impact of development work on women and girls
• how to partner with members of Congress and agencies, create participatory democracy is a shift in thinking after so many years of working against government
• “build the boat while we sail it” – have to act quickly to create change
• CARE’s constituents (in terms of advocacy) are people who care about what happens in the development contexts where they work
• the stories of how policies/potential policies are impacting real people are known to those who are working in communities, not those creating the policies in Washington – community workers have to keep getting those stories to the people at the top
• continue using all the avenues (Facebook, letters to the editor, email, etc) used during the election to advocate for change

Van Jones

• emotional to be older than MLK was when he was killed
• have to remember those who won’t be at the Inauguration because they sacrificed to get us here
• recognized Green for All staff by name in audience
• also have to think about the people who aren’t celebrating tomorrow and will be scheming, because our dreams are their nightmare
• campaigns have to win one day, governance has to try to win everyday
• tendency to get our own history wrong and believe that Obama is the most central figure in this movement, and everything has to relate back to him — important to remember that we were working to build this before anyone had heard Obama’s name
• struggle for economic justice, taking to the streets around the prison-industrial complex, WTO — building our pro-democracy capacity goes way back beyond what started a year and a half ago (and now people act like nobody voted for Nader)
• “we had to drag that flag back to make it a peace flag” – the struggle against injustice during the Bush administration
• “pro-democracy movement made a fool of Karl Rove” by 2006
• Obama saw that the country was ready for change because of the movement that had been building for a long time, he was the vehicle for the movement
• Obama and the country do not need us to go spend four years in a state of elation, agreeing with Rachel Maddow
• “you only get a couple of lines next to your name” (“Lincoln: freed the slaves” “Churchill” beat Hitler”) – the lines next to Obama’s name are up to us. Could be “first black guy” or it could be “world’s hero” — so don’t go easy on him. Set the bar high and give him a challenge so he can be the world’s historic figure he needs to be.
• when Mandela was released from prison, he said it was the time to intensify the fight against apartheid, not ease up — now is the time to intensify the struggle for democracy here

Q&A

*The question and answer period pretty quickly unraveled into a series of appeals to Van Jones for help in one way or another, so I eased up on the notetaking at this point.

question: how to continue to broaden the base for a progressive majority, building on all the people who voted for Obama after never having voting for a progressive?

Eli Pariser: MoveOn.org tries to listen to its members, find out what they care about, and make it easy for them to make change – technology makes it easier to figure out what those issues are…have to use listening mechanisms to understand what is important to actual people. We have to keep the channels clear from around the country so Obama can hear us, over the pundits and insiders.

JoDee Winterhof: help people stay focused on the core issues, not the distracting issues that conservatives want them to worry about

Van Jones: the gov’t is about to spend $1 trillion — it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for people to try to shape that stimulus. We need to advocate for projects that are people ready and planet ready, not shovel ready.

The movement has picked up bad habits of how we treat each other — “need to go from diesel to solar” in how we relate to each other — the movement needs to stick together, be kinder to each other. “it matters who we are being” as a progressive majority – “do the right thing, but be the right people as we do it”

question: it’s inevitable that many of us will be disappointed by our elected officials during this administration, how should activists behave when our elected officials betray or disappoint us?

Jones: it’s up to movements to create political space for them to step into, so if they fail us, we should assume we didn’t.

Winterhof: we have to make sure our voices are heard and are at the table

Pariser: have to remember how many people will be spending this administration reading the polls and thinking about the next election, not doing what they think in their hearts is right. So “creating the political space” means continuing the persuasion campaigns of the election that move public opinion throughout the country toward supporting “what’s right” (e.g., green jobs) that politicians might not otherwise support if they don’t see it in the polls.

Winterhof : approach advocacy by layering strategies and broadening appeal over time

Jones: need to create jobs for the most marginalized people (“green economy Dr. King would be proud of”)

question:
how to use technology effectively for advocacy without diluting all the progressive causes due to information overload?

Pariser: one cannot assume that when there is a problem, others are taking care of it. it’s up to us to see problems, accept that we might not be experts, but do what needs to be done. what needs to be built, and maybe i’m the person to build it.

figuring out how to make information move up, down, and across networks is a challenge that has not been solved — although technology has helped in recent years — and we still have to experiment and mess up to get it built.

Final Highlight

Among the celebrity guests, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary, who sang the campfire favorite, “If I Had a Hammer” (Yes, we sang along. Yes, we even did the camp hand motions.) and agreed to pose for a picture with us: