Why Progressives Should Be Strongly Involved in the Democratic Party
November 23. 2005
by Gerry Straatemeier, MSW
I wrote this piece in response to someone's request for information about what we stood for.
I can only speak for me, not the whole caucus. Of course, the caucus is an infant. Sherry Bohlen
and I are its co-mothers. As it develops, it will define itself beyond our original
vision. I hope you will bear with me as I try to explain my views; perhaps you are not
interested, in which case I write to clarify them for myself.
If I tell you I got my MSW at UC Berkeley in 1967, you will understand that I knew about activism
and about Saul Alinsky and about SNCC, and about Selma, but not about the party, nor how to
influence it. And, one by one, as every strong and charismatic leader was lost to assassination
I think many of us just became really depressed about the possibility of influence, and
concentrated on being good people in our personal lives and good citizens in our communities.
Since the 1960's, I have worked as a clinical social worker, raised kids, became a New Thought
minister, a writer, and am now raising my second batch of kids - my grandson and my partner's
son, both Sophomores in high school.
If Bush and Cheney had not been such a complete disaster for America, I would probably still be
only concentrating on church and family, teaching and working for peace and social justice at a
community level. As it was, I was ready to say "yes" when another PC recruited me during the
2004 Dean primary campaign.
As an activist, I knew that all my friends were leaving the Democratic party in droves to become
Greens or Independents or to stop voting altogether, deliberately, even passionately, because in
the Democratic Party they felt betrayed. They thought I was selling out by working for Democrats.
I have to tell you that, as I look up, I see almost as many Democrats whose votes have been
"bought" by corporate lobbyists as Republicans. I am appalled, along with
my friends, at the rush to the right by well known Democrats, at their inarticulate
spinelessness when attacked by the neocons and their media minions, at their voting records
against the interests of working families and the poor as well as their silence in the face of the
destruction of what I thought Democrats held dear. I guess I think that voices of dissent are
essential to the democratic party, we're the "give 'em hell" party.
I resent more than anything the DLC idea that to win elections we must be more like Republicans.
Hogwash, I say.
I tremble as the neocons deliberately disassemble the work of several generations in social
policy, through legislation and through rules and regulations and through "starving" needed
programs, while Democrats for the most part sit quietly by. I reject the notion that to be
pro-regulation and pro-labor is to be anti-business. I believe in balance and the win-win
solution. Of course capital must appreciate to attract investment, but as a small investor, I
haven't noticed my own portfolio exactly flourishing. I will never agree that dishonesty and
bullying can bring us long-term prosperity.
Democrats may have lost their backbone, and the media may have been bought out and lost their
edge, and many Democrats can probably also justly be accused of corruption - which is probably
why they are silent - but we are more creative and stronger as a people, as Americans, than any of
the foregoing might suggest. It has been almost like Democrats have been fighting with their
teeth extracted and both hands tied behind their back. I look at the Al Gore of today and the Al
Gore of 2000, for instance, and I wonder where he was during his own campaign, and I know that it
was DLC Democrats who silenced him, not Republicans. Then Howard Dean told us in his campaign
that it was our own fault that the party had fallen into the state of disrepair that it had,
because we had abandoned it. I am here to tell you that at least in Southern Arizona, almost all
of the people working actively on the phones and house-to-house in the 2004 campaign were Dean
supporters, who personally disliked John Kerry.
I am not a politician, and although I am a bit of an armchair philosopher, I am not an
intellectual. My aim is to infuse the energy of the grassroots activists, who count me as one
of their own, and who had been abandoning the party, and who are "mad as hell" at the current
state of affairs, and who hold a strong vision for a future of an honorable, peaceful world
that works for everyone, back into the Democratic party, so their views are in fact
represented and considered. Their values are honesty, honor, and fairness, based upon the
worth and dignity of every human being, inextricably interconnected, and a belief in
government as the moderator and advocate of the common good.
The issues at stake include corporate ownership and manipulation of the political and electoral
process, political elitism, nationalism and militarism in general, especially in partnership
with unregulated robber-baron corporatism, the oil wars, improper American dominance and bullying
in the world, American human rights abuses and abuses of international law, war profiteering, our
hypocritical buildup of new nukes while we deny other countries a similar buildup, our looting of
other countries wealth and resources on behalf of our corporations in the false name of "free
trade," (and then being upset when millions try to flee the abject poverty that we ourselves
caused by coming here), our interference with the culture and politics of other countries on
behalf of US corporate interests during both Republican and Democratic administrations, and, at
home, the Katrina spectacle multiplied across the country, based on corporate welfare and
de-regulation in every area of public interest, regressive taxation, unemployment and
underemployment, the income gap and loss of real wages for working families, continuing disparity
of lifestyle, education, housing, and wealth for white-privileged vs minority citizens,
undermining of civil and privacy rights of every kind, destruction of the social safety net,
inadequate health care and retirement, senior and womensą issues, separation of church and state,
oil dependence for energy needs, wanton destruction of our environment, dismantlement of our
public education system, over-incarceration of especially minority Americans, the death penalty,
invasion of privacy in so many ways, media reform, and so on. I guess I do have a list of
grievances, do I not?
It just seems like basic decency and honesty has departed the American political scene. Then, to
add to the mix, we have an entirely different global situation than we did 50 years ago, and the
conceptual frames that we worked from in 1965, in large extent, just don't apply in 2005. We do
have to embrace globalization and an interconnected planet, because they are here to stay, but
with ingenuity, honesty, and honor we can dream up global solutions that benefit the entire
planet instead of plundering it for the greedy few. It is no longer a matter of labor versus
business, it might be more a matter of multi-national, tax-free mega business, in partnership
with the institutions of power, versus the interests of the rest of the world.
I'll bet you weren't expecting a social science lecture!
Anyway, I hope that you find our ideas compatible, and that you will want to help us introduce
issues such as these into the dialogue within the party, and that you agree that the voices of
people who are working on important issues, like the voting integrity issue brought to us by
AUDITAZ and others, should have a hearing within the party.
Peace and more peace,
gerry
Rev. Gerry Straatemeier, MSW
Arizona Democratic Party, State Committeewoman
Co-chair, Progressive Caucus
Independent Journalist, AFL-CIO
