Systemic Lessons From The Rightwing Defunding Attack On ACORN
I'm working on an article about ACORN for Random Lengths News, for which I interviewed Nathan Henderson-James, currently ACORN's Director of Online Campaigns, which I also intended to present here at Open Left in some form. I was particularly struck by the following brief part of the interview, where I ask about the difference between how the right defends its own, and how the left generally fails to--and certainly did fail when ACORN was attacked most recently.
Nathan specifically says that he's not speaking for ACORN, but simply offering his own personal views, which, nonetheless do come from someone who witnessed what happened from the inside. And they accord 100% with my views, as someone who witneesed it from the outside. But the importance of what he has to say goes far beyond the case of the recent attacks on ACORN. In fact, they go right to the heart of one of the real reasons why single payer was excluded from consideration--a reason that has nothing to do with the supposed perfidy of everyone you can name and everything to do with the left's failure to organize itself for the true magnitude of the struggle we're engaged in.
OL:The natural thing that came to me was 'wait a minute, Blackwater kills people, and they're still getting hundreds of millions of dollars. I really had to scratch my head over that. And so what I'd like to ask you was, that sort of contrast between how you were savagely attacked, without even having hearings, and the way we have lawsuits, and people invoking state secrets, and all kinds of stuff with Blackwater, and what that says about the difference between the right and the left in terms of how they organize politically to protect their own. Any comments about that?
Nathan Henderson-James:
From a progressive's political point of view I think what this-this is a a personal observation, not an organizational observation- This is my own personal, this is not an ACORN position--is that it really points out how the progressive movement is not a movement. It is a bunch of people who share a political vision for America, but do it from the feet of several independent organizations that do not have an infrastructure that allows them to communicate quickly with each other, and create ways so that they can function much more as if they wre part of a unified movement, rather than a bunch of organizations that share a bunch of policy goals, but have a huge set of different methodologies for achieving those goals.
So what you see when ACORN starts to get attacked, the second round, and cleverly through sex, and prostitution scandal, a non-scandal, really, was the inability for people to think outside their own organizational self-interest, which I don't fault them for, to be very clear, at all. But it was not how do we stand up to these attacks, because it was about demobilizing key parts of the progressive coalition. It was like, 'Oh my God, how do I not subject myself to the same treatment, so that I can continue to do my very important work.' And it is very important, so I don't want to be devaluing anyone else's contribution, but I think that structurally, there was no ability for people to get together and call each other, and set up email chains and say, 'This is ridiculous. ACORN needs, We need to stand with ACORN. What's going on. What's the real scoop, blah, blah, blah.
And it's not that the conservative movement is open and based on democracy, but their infrastructure and their ability to talk to each other and their ability to coordinate, especially their biggest resources, you know, having a 24-hour news channel is very helpful, having that coordinate with other pieces, especially on messaging and talking points, gives them a whole set of capabilities and capacity that the left has not decided to invest any resources in.
The point Nathan is making is perfectly compatible with point I made in my diary series, "The Political Duality of Rep and Dem, a long elaboration centered on a simple duality:
(A) Democrats are reality-based when it comes to policies, and totally out to lunch when it comes to winning elections, and politicking in general.
(B) But Republicans are totally out to lunch when it comes to policies, and as reality-based as it gets when it comes to winning elections, and politicking in general.
Substitute "progressives" for "Democrats" and "conservatives" for "Republicans", and it remains equally valid, and fully congruent with the point Nathan makes.
