The next issue I'd like to address from Yearly Kos is a broader one that I think deserves some attention and discussion.
The question is this: why are the "progressive netroots" so disconnected from the challenges facing average working-class people?
We live in an age that has been referred to as a "New Gilded Age", with a tiny slice of the population getting richer while the vast majority find themselves trapped in ever more tenuous economic circumstances. An economy that once rewarded hard work has been replaced by one that keeps people in line through fear: fear of losing their jobs, fear of losing their health care, fear of being "offshored" or "outsourced" or otherwise kicked to the curb.
One would think that these developments would be of great interest to the progressive netroots. But by and large, they seem not to be -- unless you're talking about helping Democrats win elections, in which case there's a great deal of interest in organized labor.
Don't get me wrong: there were lots of times when attendees and presenters talked about organized labor. But they always did so in the context of politics, rather than the context of economic justice. And what working people today need more than anything is help achieving economic justice.
Almost every time I heard people discussing organized labor, for example -- whether on official panels, or just conversations in the hallway -- I heard them describing labor as "the boots on the ground" of the progressive movement.
Given the strong orientation of the netroots towards politics and campaigning, it's probably not surprising that they view organized labor through that particular lens. But it strikes me that doing so reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what labor unions are for.
It's true that union members are at the heart of nearly every Democratic candidate's campaign. But they aren't union members to get Democratic politicians elected. They're union members because they want to take the power to determine their economic futures into their own hands.
In other words, they don't want to wait for a politician to benevolently make their lives better for them. They want to do it for themselves -- and joining together in unions is the best way to make that happen. If politicians are willing to join them, they're willing to help their campaigns; but to be dependent on the beneficence of politicians would defeat the purpose of joining together in the first place.
A better understanding of this fundamental truth would probably go a long way in helping the netroots better understand the role of unions in the economy, and why a critical part of restoring the American Dream is removing the barriers that have been erected to keep people from joining together.
I was at Yearly Kos to help spread that understanding, and I think we made a good start there. But now it's time to think about next steps. How can we, as a movement, better reach out across online communities? How can we help people understand the threats to the American Dream -- and help bring progressive communities together to defeat those threats, once and for all?
What do you think? Share your opinions in the comments!
P.S. Over on the AFL-CIO blog, Tula Connell is grappling with some of the same questions.
