Protesting Progressives by Jo Freeman

Protesting Progressives

The mood at the annual progressive conference meeting held in Washington,DC on June 7-9, can best be described as cautious pessimism. After the high two years ago of electing the first African-American President and a Democratic-controlled Congress, both attendance and attitude have spiraled downward.

Some of the pessimism was expressed in the belief that the Democrats will be lucky to lose only 3-4 Senators and 14 Representatives in November. Others said that "in '08 we wanted to elect more Democrats. Now we want to elect better Democrats."

Through 2008 the conference was called Take Back America. After the Democratic sweep that year it changed its name to America’s Future NOW. Unfortunately NOW seems to be receding ever farther into the future.

President Obama wasn't exactly criticized, but he wasn't celebrated either. With a few exceptions, disappointment was seen more in what wasn't said. No one praised the passage of the healthcare bill, or the fact that the Great Recession did not become another Great Depression, or said that the unemployment rate could be worse. Foreign policy was represented in a workshop debate on whether it was possible to achieve anything positive by staying in Afghanistan as Obama has said he plans to do.

One of the exceptions was Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who said he was "utterly disgusted" with the Obama administration, even though the ACLU continues to work with his appointees in various agencies to achieve its agenda.

Instead of looking forward with hope, many speakers looked back with nostalgia, telling the audience that change only comes through mass social movements. Since the audience was a mostly Sixties crowd (in both senses of the term), that appeal was received warmly.

There was also some jealousy of the Tea Party movement, because they are rousing the masses the way progressive causes used to do. However, there was also amazement that this mass movement is often so out of touch with reality, making preposterous claims and demands. There was no analysis of why the right has hit the streets and the left hasn’t, given that both believe that American’s biggest need right now is for more jobs.

A little over seven hundred people registered for the conference — the fewest in anyone’s memory. About half that number attended any one of the plenaries.

A dozen or so of those who registered came only for Nancy Pelosi’s 8:30 a.m. speech on the second day, and they didn’t come to listen to the highest ranking female public official in the country. She had barely begun when people wearing orange t-shirts started yelling "our homes, not nursing homes." They were members of ADAPT, a disability-rights group based in Rochester, N.Y.

Several in heavy-duty wheelchairs rolled to the front (one ran over my foot) with the occupants screaming something that was completely unintelligible. As conference officials tried to reason with them, Pelosi’s six-person security detail tried to usher her out. ADAPTers wouldn't stop shouting and Pelosi wouldn’t leave. Saying something to the effect that she heard more noise from the Democratic Caucus, she proceeded to give her entire speech even though virtually no one could understand her words over the unyielding chants and shouts.

Their outburst was a surprise to practically everyone, with the possible exception of the Speaker herself. ADAPT has confronted her before. She may have been the only person in the room besides the ADAPTers who knew what they were screaming about until after it was all over.

The left has always had a talent for shooting itself in the foot and this was a marvelous example of ineffective protesting. No one passed out literature and no one in the audience that I spoke to had the foggiest idea what ADAPT wanted. I only found out afterwards when I spent some time talking to a couple of them that they were angry at Pelosi because she has declined to co-sponsor HR 1670/S683, which they call the "Community Choice Act."

Their leaflet — which one fished out of a backpack for me — says that Pelosi has "refused to support the right of seniors and people with disabilities to live in freedom!" Even after reading their literature, figuring out what ADAPT wanted was, to say the least, challenging. Even harder was figuring out why they thought keeping progressives from hearing Pelosi’s speech would advance their goal.

More effective was CodePink’s protest at the same time. They raised a large banner at the front of the room which proclaimed "Stop Funding Israel Terror." They made their point without disrupting Pelosi’s speech and their message was clear. On the other hand, if ADAPT hadn’t been so distracting, conference officials might have removed their banner as they did in 2006 when CodePink protested Hillary Clinton’s position on Iraq.

Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi have the distinction of being the only speakers at the annual progressive conference to be on the receiving end of organized protests.

There were some positive themes at the conference, though most of those came from speakers who were professional politicians. Former DNC chairman Howard Dean praised the millennial generation for its progressive views. He said "this country is headed in the right direction," even though the polls show that the majority of Americans believe the opposite.

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Protesting Progressives

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