Blog from Wellstone Action

Tuesday's Triumphs and a Halloween Tale

sbmueller — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:48:29 -0600

A week or so ago – Halloween weekend, actually – The New York Times stepped up its holiday spirit with a very scary story. The kind you tell while aiming a flashlight at your face.

It gave frightening new details about a group of ultra-conservative Tea Party stalwarts who meet in Washington, D.C. each month. They share polling, opposition research, and voter contact strategies. They preview media pitches and advertising angles. And they coordinate the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars they plan to raise and spend between this November and the next.

Hundreds of millions. Like, one of these organizations – American Crossroads – is going to spend $240 million all by itself.

Because progressives aren’t terrified enough about next year’s election odds. Happy Halloween, y’all!

It’s no secret that those of us working to take back our progressive vision for this country have been plenty afraid about our chances for success. We’ve watched the rise of a re-energized conservative movement, backed by billionaires, that believes in everything we don’t. And Tuesday’s elections, with everything from voters’ rights to workers’ rights to women’s rights laid bare before a not-so-metaphorical grim reaper, were watched by all of us with at least as much fear as there was hope.

But then, my facebook feed began to blow up. Posts from my pals about victory in Ohio, then Maine, then Mississippi, and then a late-night left-fielder about an undoing in Arizona.

These wins – for justice, for fairness, for all of us – were the lift our spirits sorely needed. While these zealots with cauldrons whipped up their witches’ brew in legislatures across the land, the people resoundingly refused to take a drink.

And this wasn’t anything magical, right? It was the result of months of focused work, of good, old-fashioned organizing. Of these four achievements, Wellstone Action! had a hand in two of them. And we’re not even close to finished.

In the face of extremist politics, the people of Ohio proved their collective power. Wellstone Action! has a deep history in Ohio, with years of offering our Camp Wellstone, Advanced Campaign Management, and Labor trainings to citizens, campaign workers, and candidates. And as things heated up this past year, we were pleased to partner with the Ohio Democratic Party, Ohio Education Association, and We Are Ohio to train Ohioans how to mobilize and organize at the grassroots. We also joined with Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, developing a voter engagement plan and supporting their efforts to beat back this most recent assault on workers. And, as of Tuesday, two more of our Camp Wellstone alum – Grant Hutcheson (City Council) and Yvette Simpson (City Council) – join fellow Camp Wellstone alumnus Armond Budish (House Minority Leader) as elected officials.

Wellstone Action! also had the privilege of working in Maine to restore voter’s rights, alongside our friends at National People’s Action Electoral Power Cohort and the Maine People’s Alliance, who collected 71,000 signatures through Maine’s “People’s Veto Ballot Initiative Process”. What was a neck-and-neck race just one week ago turned Tuesday into a 20-point landslide. Wellstone Action!’s role in this win actually began this spring, when we teamed up with Maine State Employees Association (a member-run organization of SEIU) working intensively with campaign leaders to develop member engagement, mobilization, and lobbying strategies that would ignite voters against a number of anti-union, anti-public worker initiatives.

Our campaign in Maine was strategically positioned to not only defeat this spooky public policy, but also to serve as the springboard for this week’s victory on voter registration, and the means for taking back our progressive power in this state. And, in the spirit of what we teach at Wellstone Action! – that building power and winning change requires a serious, strategic, and sustained investment – our work isn’t even close to over. In fact, it continues next week, when we team up with Engage Main to train folks from their labor and community-based organizations and recruit candidates for next year’s legislative elections. And after we recruit those candidates? Well, Wellstone Action!’s going to train them, too.

The tricky thing about nightmares – be they on Elm Street or Main Street – is that we’re sometimes not sure whether they’ve ended. After all, there’s a whole lot of money to be made in drawing them out: you can remake the original film using different actors, you can conjure up a crossover showdown between two epic villains from two different franchises, and your pockets can stay full as long as the antagonist’s defeat is always ambiguous.

So while Tuesday’s triumphs don’t exactly let us roll the closing credits on this conservative, national nightmare of ours, they absolutely signal how we the people can shift the plot when the “good guys” stick together – when we progressive protagonists stand up, keep fighting.

This story’s not over yet. And I’m already excited for the sequel.

Sara Beth Mueller is the Director of Communications and Marketing at Wellstone Action!. She hates scary movies but is awfully fond of metaphors.

How Good Storytelling Can Save the Left

Erik — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:05:19 -0500

This is cross-posted from Dissent Magazine's Symposium: Organizing and Therapeutic Politics
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We have asked a number of organizing scholars and practitioners to comment on Zelda Bronstein’s “Politics’ Fatal Therapeutic Turn” (and exchange with Marshall Ganz) from the Summer 2011 issue of Dissent. The responses were written either before or during the incipient stages of the occupations now taking place across the United States—events that carry with them the potential for a remobilization of the American Left. We hope that the arguments below will help carry forward discussions about where (and how) to go from here.

How Good Storytelling Can Help Save the Left

Zelda Bronstein begins her recent article “Politics’ Fatal Therapeutic Turn” with a timely and compelling question: Why, at a time when bold organizing and activism are needed more than ever, are “the partisans of democracy…largely demobilized and defensive?”

Her answer is less satisfying: individuals and organizations on the left have turned politics into therapy “as a source of personal validation and emotional succor” rather than the “strenuous citizenship essential to democracy.” Her claim rests on two case studies, but her broadside against MoveOn and Marshall Ganz is the more interesting and most troubling part of her article.

MoveOn and Ganz, Bronstein writes, “use techniques of mutual self-disclosure to propel individuals into a politics where aggravation is alleviated by the balm of righteous sentiment.” Yet, her problem appears to be more with MoveOn than with Ganz. Bronstein uses Ganz to critique MoveOn, then blames him for MoveOn’s failure to follow his model of organization.

The more provocative challenge in Bronstein’s piece is not her misreading of Ganz or his organizing model; it is her rejection of organizing as “creating relationships through public narrative” and her dismissal of the importance of community and collective story in the formation of collective action. She writes that “community grows out of trust, and trust out of shared action, not shared stories.” Then she quotes Christopher Lasch —“the concept of ‘community’ evokes ‘intimacy and togetherness’ [while]…political life thrives on controversy,” suggesting that a focus on community building is not the same (nor presumably does it support) something more “strenuous.” Bronstein clearly places herself on the side of action and controversy—what she refers to as “grubby politics.”

Bronstein’s caricature is a classic example of the false “either/or” dichotomy that has plagued left politics for generations and western civilization for a lot longer. It’s head versus heart; the same lines drawn between the “hard” Old Left focus on direct action and class and the “soft” New Left emphasis on culture. Is the choice truly between pragmatic “politics” and the theoretical, idealistic, intimate relationships of “community?” When are we going to learn we need both and more?

In fairness, I think Bronstein would probably agree. But so does Ganz. Even a cursory reading of Ganz’s writings, or a brief conversation with him, would make clear that he practices both “head” and “heart”—action and strategy deeply rooted in relationship. Bronstein’s claim that Ganz “gives priority to personal affect and motivation” gets us nowhere. Changing the world requires healing this divide.

Wellstone Action, the progressive training institute created after the death of Senator Paul Wellstone, tries to do this. Wellstone used to say, “Electoral politics without community organizing is a politics without a base; community organizing without electoral politics is a marginalized politics. And community organizing and electoral politics without a clear, progressive public policy agenda is a politics without a head, without a direction.” Wellstone Action combines all three and now trains out of this model, which it calls the “Wellstone Triangle.”

Changing the world requires both organizing and mobilizing. Organizing is about building relationships, finding common cause, and developing new leaders. Mobilizing is about moving self and others to collective action around common cause. The power is in bringing these together. If all we focus on is mass mobilization, we will quickly find a fractured and oftentimes dwindling following behind us—if there is any following at all. This is the classic challenge of large organizations that try to create nationally driven “movement” campaigns, which seldom have anything moving on the ground more than slogans and heaps of cash. Conversely, if we build relationships and fail to move people to action through a pragmatic analysis of power, we will have a really good holiday card list and large Facebook following, but will not shift power or deliver real policy outcomes.

Let’s go beyond the head and the heart and flesh out the whole body. In this analogy, issues are represented by our head. Most of us think and care about lots of issues; we take action on far fewer. We choose to act on those issues that connect most directly with what matters to us, our interests (or gut) and our values (or heart). Until an issue touches our heart, we may still “care,” but we will not act. Personal narrative sharpens motivation by connecting head, heart, and gut. Bronstein may call this therapy; I call it Organizing 101, and it has long preceded either Ganz or me.

Moving people to action always begins with the recognition that there is something wrong. This is the beginning of a story that connects the challenge we face with our ability to change it. But this story cannot end with self-realization. Collective action requires a collective story, and, as organizers, we learn to elicit individuals’ experiences and weave them together. We create spaces—literally—for people to recognize in another a piece of themselves. This begins building community, and is the way we find common cause in the collective challenge we now recognize together. It is one way to break out of the relentless isolation and individuation of social experience that has occurred over four decades of a neoliberal economic regime with its story of market fundamentalism.

Identifying shared challenges gets us started; it does not change the world. We need to lay out a clear choice, an agenda worth fighting for. The Left has been relatively successful at defending the New Deal 1.0, but has not developed our New Deal 2.0. We have not succeeded in developing a new collective story, a point I believe Bronstein and Ganz would agree on. We need to provide a credible alternative and then create opportunities for people to act, and to act now. This is how movement-building power and change begins to happen. To succeed, we must first believe that story, narrative, and community matter to politics.

The diagram below illustrates this type of movement-building change and is inspired, in part, by Marshall Ganz’s work on “strategic capacity.” Put simply, change happens when enough people are motivated (have the urgency and commitment) to develop an effective strategy and deploy their resources (their capacity) to act on the right target (where we choose to spend our resources within existing power relationships) at the right time (where we find and create political opportunity).

What Ganz calls strategic capacity depends on the right combination of leadership and organization to “turn what we have into what we need to get what we want.” Sydney Tarrow calls these resources our “repertoire of contention,” which every social movement requires along with common purpose and sustained collective action. These resources include

• motivation (what compels and sustains our action)
• cultural knowledge (the salient information from particular communities)
• training and education (what others have taught us)
• financial resources (available money and infrastructure)
• community networks (our personal and organizational relationships)
• experiences (the stories of what has been done before)

Using these resources, we develop campaigns to win organizing, electoral, and public policy outcomes. But our campaigns need to be more than instrumental means to a victorious end. Movement building measures success by whether our campaigns and victories also create more organizing opportunities, reorganize existing power relationships, shift the narrative frame, develop new leaders, build stronger organizations, and expand our repertoire of contention.

Organizers are critical to making this change happen. Effective organizers have the ability to see and to experience the pain of a person and the world as it is, in all of its “grubby politics,” and at the same time imagine and ignite in others the imagination of what is possible and necessary. Walter Bruggemann calls this the “prophetic imagination;” Saul Alinsky calls it the “schizoid” nature of organizing. Ganz defines this complex relationship of leadership and organizing as “accepting responsibility to create conditions that enable others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty.”

We come back to where we began: to a both/and rather than either/or approach. Seen through this lens, any particular aspect of organizing (whether it is building a collective story or mobilizing for action) or a given training (whether leadership development, campaign skills, or governing as a progressive-movement elected official) can be evaluated for the particular need it meets at a particular moment over the course of building a movement. Bronstein calls for mass mobilizing yet dismisses real organizing. She characterizes storytelling as therapeutic, rather than recognizing it is as the principal way we create a collective public narrative, imagine an alternative, build the power and motivation necessary to challenge existing power relationships, sustain our campaigns, and deliver progressive public policy at the end of the day. In short, she calls for a bolder, more expansive organizing at the same time she narrows its focus and drains it of its heart and soul.

Click to read "Zelda Bronstein Responds".

Erik Peterson is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at Wellstone Action and is an assistant professor in the Masters of Advocacy and Political Leadership program at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. He has over thirty years of community, labor, and electoral organizing experience.

Budgets are moral documents-progressives must frame the moral choices

Erik — Thu, 19 May 2011 10:19:31 -0500

We hear the same story repeated across the country.

The mythic couple sitting around their kitchen table - not able to pay their bills - making the tough choices about what to cut.

‘Government needs to act more like that couple, tighten their belts, and make the tough choices,' opine conservatives.

But is this really how the mythic kitchen table conversation goes?

Does this couple really sit around talking about which of their children - little Jimmy or Jane - eats on Tuesday, as many conservatives suggest? Or the water dripping into their living room from the damaged roof will just have to continue to drip until it pours? Or they just won't fill the tank with gas even if it means they can't get to work?

Really? This is the conversation?

I think not.

Rather, I think this mythic couple starts out being pretty mad about being put into this situation in the first place. And once they have cancelled cable TV and their trip to Disney (which sets off another rage), this mythic couple focuses on how to get more money, not on calmly deciding which of their children will eat.

I think they talk about how to pick up extra hours, a better-paying job, or other ways they can get more money so they can pay for Jimmy, Jane, the roof and the gas - not about which of these need to be sacrificed.

And if they are forced to make the impossible choice, I don't think they describe it as a ‘tough choice,' but rather as a horrific and tragic one.

I think most Americans understand - just as this mythic family does - that their lives will not improve by making more cuts, but rather by finding the resources to pay for what they need.

The problem in most of the current budget debates raging across the country is this conversation about new revenue is barely mentioned; even many progressives concede the point as lost before the fight is even waged. The debate, then, devolves into how much to cut, how deep to cut, and which cuts hurt the least.

Paul Wellstone used to say "Progressives make the mistake that people are galvanized around ten-point programs. They are not! People respond according to their sense of right and wrong. They respond to a leadership of values."

Wellstone Action teaches that all campaign messages must present a clear values choice. Effective campaign messages need to name the problem - the challenge that connects deeply with people's lives - then define the choice and present a credible alternative and opportunity to act.

Our progressive messages around the budget need to show this same clarity and discipline.

Laying Out a Progressive Budget Values Choice.

Budgets are moral documents.

They are our values in numbers.

They reflect the choices our communities make together through our government.

The Republicans in Congress have already laid out a crisp choice. They say the budget deficit and out of control spending is the problem. They say the choice is between the Democrats and their class warfare and politics of envy and the Republican focus on jobs and renewed prosperity.

It's a clever choice they lay out. And it is defining the budget debates across the country.

And what has been the response so far from many Democrats?

"We need to come together. Now is not the time to draw lines in the sand," Senator Harry Reid deadpanned on the Sunday morning talk shows last week.

Really?

Surely we do not need more political polarization and gratuitous gamesmanship. But all politics is about choices, and if we lose this essential point in some gauzy effort to all get along and be bipartisan we have lost the essence of why politics matters.

As progressives we need to lay out our clear choice. People are hungry for an alternative.

We need to clearly identify who benefits through our budget decisions at the expense of whom?

Who can afford to sacrifice and who simply gets sacrificed?

We need to make clear that the current Republican budget and tax code that accompanies it benefit Wall Street and the wealthy class at the expense of Main Street and the rest of us.

Going Beyond the Politics of Scarcity.

There are a few brave voices in Congress making this case. In April, the Congressional Progressive Caucus under the leadership of Representatives Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) presented "The People's Budget."

This budget combines new revenue with strategic spending cuts. It ends the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and creates a truly progressive income tax for the highest earners. It cuts Pentagon spending that even the Pentagon doesn't want, and it gets us out of two wars with their $1.1 trillion price tag. The budget then directs these resources to creating jobs, strengthening social security, healthcare, education, and rebuilding our country's infrastructure.

The People's Budget is not fantasy but a real alternative. It has also gotten little attention from Democrats, or even from many progressives.

It's time for more progressives to define the clear choices we face.

We need to reject the politics of scarcity.

In the richest country on earth we have plenty of resources. Our problem is not the amount of resources but their distribution. We need to name those who enjoy a disproportionate share of our commonwealth - not to blame, but to point out that such accumulation comes only at the expense of many, many others. To point out this choice about how we will distribute the wealth we have created together.

We cannot fall into the trap of balancing budgets through the tired mantras of redesigning and streamlining government or cutting government inefficiencies and waste.

Certainly there are always better, even cheaper ways of delivering critical services and meeting our collective needs. But there is no magic bucket of government fat out there just waiting to be cut - certainly not enough to even come close to what is needed. Even our opponents concede the cuts are hand wringing ‘tough choices' that have to be made.

Hubert Humphrey used to say that we can judge the quality of a society by how it prepares its young, provides for its elderly and protects its most vulnerable citizens.

These are moral choices and need to be framed as the stark moral choices they represent.

As progressives we need to avoid the message frames that portray our public budgets as wasteful and bloated. We need to frame our choices about who will have jobs and who will not. Who will eat and who will not. Who will have heat and housing and who will not. Who will have health care and who will not. Who will have a decent school and chance at college and who will not.

These are moral choices and they speak to our moral values.

Our Choice: Corporations and Wall Street or the Middle Class and Main Street

Warren Buffet once famously remarked that if there is class warfare in this country, his class was winning.

Seldom has this been on such prominent display as the Senate testimony last week from the five CEO's of the largest oil corporations. With a straight face these five CEO's insisted that $32 billion in profits for the first three months of 2011 was not enough. They still needed that $2 billion in government subsidies if they were to thrive and continue to grow.

It is wrong to protect billions of dollars in subsidies to oil companies and propose cuts to energy assistance for low income people who need to pay for heat.

Thankfully Senator Schumer (D-NY) framed the moral choice the Senate faces: Are the handouts to the five wealthiest corporations in world history more important than the equivalent cuts Republicans propose for student loans? Which makes us a stronger and better country?

Conservative defenders and their oil company patrons frame the choice as investment, energy independence and jobs versus class warfare and the arbitrary punishment of a few successful businesses. They decry any progressive alternatives as "un-American."

But buried in the Senate testimony was the admission that nearly $30 a barrel - 30% of the price of oil - comes from market speculation, not the real cost of producing that barrel of oil.

As progressives we need to lay out the stark choice: do we use our tax dollars to subsidize market speculators and price gougers, or do we invest in educating the next generation of entrepreneurs?

These are moral choices.

And budgets are filled with these choices.

No society or business has ever cut its way to greatness. Greatness comes from hard work and coming together to make wise choices and investments in our future.

People are hungry for straight talk and clarity about what progressives stand for, and what their alternatives are. With laser focus we need to make clear the values behind each and every choice.

We believe budgets should not be balanced on the backs of workers, the middle class, or those who are most vulnerable when the most fortunate contribute less than their fair share.

We believe that we have collective responsibility for one another and all must share the burden in times of distress and challenge. And for those who have been extraordinarily blessed, as the Bible teaches us, much is to be expected.

We believe that it is wrong that the wealthiest corporations are sitting on over two trillion dollars in cash reserves, are earning record breaking profits, and are still not hiring American workers. And it is intolerable that we continue giving these corporations even more subsidies and tax breaks.

We believe the tens of billions of dollars in tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthiest taxpayers are not a higher priority than K-12 education, or health care, or housing, or any number of the myriad of public purposes we spend money on.

We believe that it is wrong when many of the largest U.S. corporations pay little or no taxes, and the wealthiest Americans - the multi-billionaires and millionaires - pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than the teachers, firefighters, janitors, nurses, small business owners and snow plow drivers now under attack.

We believe it is wrong when those who are doing really well ask for even more, and elected leaders support them.

Dan Cantor of the Working Families Party has said: "Of course we want government off our backs. We want it off our backs, and on our side. And not on the side of the banks."

In short, as progressives, we need to offer a choice of a government that works for our interest not against it. A budget that meets the needs of our very real families so none of us have to make the impossible choices facing our mythic family sitting around their kitchen table.

That is the moral choice before us.

Photo on flickr by RambergMedialImages

Governor Scott Walker--A shining example of how NOT to lead

Jblodgett — Tue, 10 May 2011 16:37:45 -0500

The assault on working people by the Wisconsin Governor and his allies reminds us that our movement must stand for the development of leaders who have both the right values and the skills to lead--to bring people together and create positive change for the most people possible.

Gov. Scott Walker is an example of an appalling failure to lead. Stubborn and inflexible, having set his mind to his goal of gutting public unions, he refused to budge, and used juvenile and mendacious tactical stunts to get his way. The result: he has divided his state in a deep and destructive way. This is a dramatic display of how NOT to lead - no matter what your political stripes are or at what level you are exercising your leadership.

Wellstone Action's work is all about helping new waves of progressive leaders-leaders who reflect our values--win elected office and start turning this country back around. Finding the right people as candidates, however, is not just about what values they hold. It is also about having the ability and the will to lead in a skillful, mature, and sophisticated way.

There are some universal qualities and skills of good leadership. Here are several to consider:

Self-Awareness - Know thyself is the first charge of all good leaders. Know your strengths and weaknesses, solicit feedback and coaching from others, always work on growth and development.

Empathy - Leading is all about moving a people from point A to point B, and to do that, you need to know people. Empathic leadership is about understanding the concerns and circumstances of others, and then leading accordingly.

Deep Listening - Related to empathy, you know other people by listening deeply. This is an acquired skill, but few do it well. It takes awareness and practice to listen well.

Accountable -- Accepts responsibility for actions, and communicates back and stays connected to the people they're leading.

Empowering - Include others in the work, and turns the spotlight off them and on to people. Is always talent scouting for emerging leadership, and actively builds their replacement.

It is important now for the progressive movement to work on a mass scale to find, train and support a new wave of candidates to run at all levels of public service. But as we do, let's make sure these are candidates with the leadership skills to unite and govern effectively toward the common good.

Representative Keith Ellison testifies against hateful bigotry

Pflanagan — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 12:53:02 -0600

This blog is cross-posted from Sojourners. In addition to serving as Director of Wellstone Action's Native American Leadership Program, Peggy Flanagan also serves on the board of directors for Sojourners.

During my Lenten journey this year, I will be looking to my Muslim brother, Congressman Keith Ellison, to understand what it truly means to live a life grounded in love, respect, inclusivity, and justice. Yesterday, I watched Rep. Keith Ellison testify at a hearing on the "radicalization of American Muslims" on Capitol Hill. I felt sadness, anger, and an incredible sense of pride.

Watching my friend Keith tear up while telling the story of a young man who sacrificed his own life in service to others tore at my heart. He described Mohammed Salman Hamdani as an individual with an All-American story. He was a man who loved Star Wars and worked part-time driving an ambulance in order to pay for school. Mohammed's story is one that reflects the very values that America professes to be built upon. Unfortunately, due only to his ethnic and religious background, some questioned his motivation when he rushed to the aid of others. It wasn't until his body was recovered that the murmurings of him being associated with terrorists ceased. Mohammed Salman Hamdani was a hero, but unfortunately, he needed to make the ultimate sacrifice for some to believe him.

Keith Ellison didn't need to testify today. He didn't need to stand up in the face of ridiculous, racist sweeping generalizations of an entire ethnic group. Too often, those of us who are Native American, people of color, or identify as a member of a religious or ethnic group end up speaking on behalf of our entire community. It can be exhausting to speak truth to power in the face of injustice, but Rep. Ellison does it all the time. No one asks him to do it. He does it because it is the right thing to do. He stood up to the hate, the fear, and the racist assertions of Rep. Peter King. He stood up for you. He stood up for me. He stood up for all of us.

Watch video of Rep. Keith Ellison's testimony here.

From the day he first started campaigning, Keith Ellison was labeled by some as radical, extreme, and even a terrorist. When he first arrived to the United States Congress, he was sworn in using Thomas Jefferson's Quran. Then Rep. Virgil Goode of Virginia called on Congress to support immigration reform to ensure that no more Muslims were elected to Congress. Keith Ellison never lashed out or fired back at those who spewed racist and hateful rhetoric. He simply educated those who were willing to listen and did the best he could for those he represented.

I remember door-knocking with Keith in the summer of 2004 when I was running for the Minneapolis school board, and he was seeking re-election to the Minnesota House of Representatives. We knocked on the door of a woman who was apprehensive to vote because of her religious beliefs. I spoke to her for a long time about my own personal faith and how Catholic social teaching is deeply tied to my progressive politics. Keith spoke to her about needing every voice in the community to be part of the process if things were to improve in our neighborhoods and state. We walked away from that house as a team united in our shared values of love, respect, inclusivity, and justice. These are the values that I have seen Keith Ellison demonstrate every day.

As we reflect on our faith and grow closer to God and to our community, let us also remember what it means to be American, to live out the values of justice and inclusivity. I will reflect upon the fact that only in America could a Catholic Native American be represented by a Muslim African American in Congress. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Corporate reforms will not create excellent schools

Erik — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 17:00:38 -0600

Increase competitiveness.

Focus on maximizing short-term output over long-term investment.
Layoff workers.
Squeeze more productivity from the remaining beleaguered workforce.
Demonize unions that oppose the changes.
And when the enterprise collapses, shut it down and outsource the work.

Sound familiar?

This is not just the recipe for the current global financial crisis and economic meltdown. It is the same corporate model that is driving much of what passes for education reform these days.

It is a corporate model that prioritizes short-term production and profits - call them higher test scores - over long term investment.

A model that focuses on outputs and accountability more than inputs - the economic, social and cultural context within which we try to educate children.

A model that equates workers joining together to negotiate fair contracts with their employers in good faith as something evil and to be feared, rather than the fundamental foundation for democratic debate and cooperation.

A model that lays off workers at the same time insisting that they are the most valued ‘asset.'

And it is a corporate model that deskills education and applies economic rationalization (Taylorization) to pedagogical practice, rather than supporting and promoting what creates a team of highly motivated, collaborative, and skilled educators.

This model hasn't worked so well for our economic well-being, nor do I suspect it holds much promise for our educational health, either.

This is not to say that there are not real problems facing our public schools. Too many students fall through the cracks. The achievement gap between white students and students of color is alarming. And too many students (although it must be said it is still a relatively small percentage overall) leave school ill-prepared to succeed. But these are merely descriptions of impact, the symptoms caused by a problem, not the problem itself. And as Dr. Lowell Levin has said, "Whoever defines the problem controls the range of solutions."

On a flight to Boston this past year I sat next to an apparently high priced lawyer who was flying home after representing a student at a private school. We started to talk about education and quickly shifted to education reform. This attorney complained that it was incomprehensible to him why teachers opposed being tested on their subject matter to determine whether they were competent to teach. "If they are scared to be tested because they will fail, no wonder we are having such problems in the schools," he lamented.

There are so many things wrong with his statement, but what I asked back was whether he thought the reason we were having "such troubles" in the schools was because the third grade teacher didn't know as much as her third graders. He admitted they knew more. "Why then," I asked, "did they need to be tested on content?"

Many of the current reformers define the problem as a lack of accountability, inadequately trained or incompetent teachers, a public school monopoly that restricts competition, recalcitrant unions, or poorly structured schools.

The solutions then become almost self-evident: deliver rewards and sanctions based on increased testing and reporting; fire teachers or proscriptively prescribe how they should teach; break public school "monopoly status" through charter schools and vouchers; attack unions and either cow them into silence and acquiescence or put them in the impossible situation of choosing to defend their members (their legal obligation) over securing desperately needed "reform designated money"; restructure schools by centralizing control and imposing draconian personnel reshuffles with the same layoffs, job insecurity, job combination, increased workload, dislocation, instability and stress that accompany draconian restructurings in any private sector business.

And for what real end?

Test scores may go up in the short term, perhaps - but so do short term profits in most corporate restructurings.

The question is whether there is better teaching and learning? Are students better equipped to lead successful lives in a rapidly changing world? Are they more engaged democratic and global citizens? Have they grown and developed into more full human beings? Have they learned critical thinking and content other than literacy and math? Beyond the anecdotal, heroic individual success stories the answer is almost always "no."

The problem with many education change initiatives are that they adopt unquestioningly the basic tenets of free-market fundamentalism and its corporate model that focuses on maximizing outputs without attention to making sure the inputs are right. They narrow the focus of education just at the time it needs to be broadened. And they erase the act of teaching and the culture that supports and nurtures it, just as corporate America routinely erases the lives, work, and communities of the workers who make our products. (If you doubt this, recall how vociferously labeling laws and anti-sweatshop monitoring are fought by industry.)

So what is the problem?

What truly impacts a child's ability to learn?

And what is currently working?

Certainly there are teachers that shouldn't be teaching, and there are unions that are stuck in models of operating that no longer make sense, just as there are incompetent and self-serving elected officials that shouldn't be in office, CEO's who shouldn't be running a business, parents who shouldn't be parenting, and foundations that promote extreme self-interest under the guise of the public good.

The problem is not poorly skilled teachers or obstructionist teacher unions. Poverty, violence, a culture of hopelessness and underachievement, lack of parental support - or no parents at all - the lack of health care, racism, deteriorating schools, and teachers and principals who have given up hope after having been asked to do the impossible are all far more likely to impact teaching and learning. Schools are being asked to mitigate a series of social ills that are far beyond their scope or ability to address. They are asked to heal catastrophic illness with Band-Aids.

Rather than deal with these larger economic, social and cultural issues, which are far messier and could severely challenge the economic and political powers that created them, many of the corporate education reformers are content to focus on finding someone to blame, or on building intricate systems of goals and accountabilities, or simply restructuring the enterprise.

So what creates better learning outcomes and a culture of success? A drive to learn and teach? A sense of optimism and hope?

There are a number of lessons that we can learn from Finland, whose schools are now vaunted as some of the most successful in the world after languishing in mediocrity for much of the last century.

Their magical turnaround relies on no magic at all: Finland addresses poverty, lack of housing and health care as part of a national provision of social benefits. Then they start with what drives a child to want to learn (for every kid is born hard-wired wanting to learn) and what inspires teachers to excel at teaching.

Hint: It isn't through narrowing the curriculum to focus more rigorously on core subjects. Nor is it to create more structured days, or more accountability to a unified curriculum, or more testing, or performance pay for teachers, or any of the myriad of other palliatives being offered up in the United States.

Rather, elementary school children in Finland play a lot. They spend 75 minutes a day in recess, compared to about 25 minutes a day for American children. They do mandatory art, music, and crafts classes, which become venues for learning math, science and reading. Class sizes are small, and in high school science they are kept to 16 students to emphasize lab based activities. Finnish children learn by doing. Learning is exciting and fun, not the relentless drills on how to take multiple choice tests that many U.S. children endure.

Teaching is not only a highly respected profession in Finland, but a highly sought after and competitive one. Teachers must achieve the equivalent of a Masters degree before being hired and then they are paid well. Finnish teachers are almost 100% organized in strong unions and they make about 105% of what their non-teaching counterparts earn with the same education, compared to about 70% for the United States.

Finland uses national core standards as guidelines (rather than prescriptions) for teachers planning their curriculum, and schools are staffed so teachers have time during their day to create curriculum, plan collaboratively and discuss challenging questions around teaching and learning.

Students are tested, but tests are used diagnostically, instead of being wielded as high stakes judgments to reward or punish schools and instructors.

This creative teaching and learning environment is the high octane juice that fuels excellence. The result: highly qualified, highly motivated, highly innovative teachers who are allowed to do what they do best - teach kids.

Is this approach to reform cheap? - No. But we have already seen the results of the cheap corporate turnaround models applied to public education: the quick grab for instant results, consultant driven panaceas, and the myopic narrowing of learning to higher reading and math scores.

This is exactly the same short-term focus and restructuring that corporate America has pursued for the past three decades - merge, restructure, privatize, layoff, scapegoat and outsource - with dismal consequences.

Free market fundamentalism didn't work for our economy or for workers and our communities; there is little reason to hope that this same corporate approach will produce anything better for our schools and children.

Opportunity knocks as the conservatives start to overreach

Jblodgett — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 15:39:50 -0600

Earlier this month, I wrote about the 2010 legislative and governor takeovers in many states by very conservative forces. They've wasted no time pushing their ideologically extreme agenda. In Wisconsin for instance, while Governor Walker disingenuously claims that he is budget cutting not union busting, the fight is exactly about the taking back of worker rights generally. We are proud that many of the thousands of our Wisconsin alumni of Wellstone Action trainings are part of the fight back in Madison. This is what the Tea Party looks like as a governing entity: radically conservative on economic issues, interested in fundamentally shifting power away from workers and toward business owners, and a desire to gut our public sector.

Count on these forces to overreach, as they've already begun to, and invite a backlash by a public that does not buy in to their radical agenda. It is this backlash that provides enormous opportunity for progressives to win back broader public opinion and swing the pendulum back in our direction in the 2012 elections.

While the priority now for the progressive movement is to mobilize to stop these measures from passing, we must keep an eye on getting ready for the 2012 elections. And the getting ready part right now is to begin to talent scout for strong candidates who can run for legislative seats in 2012. Just as the conservative forces pushed forward a huge new wave of candidates who won in 2010, we must generate a similar wave of candidates who can start to take back power in 2012.

We must pick our candidates carefully. They should be well-grounded in their communities, and able to connect with voters by articulating a strong alternative vision to what the current governing majority is doing. As with all good candidates, the candidates of 2012 need to be authentic to voters by being straight and clear about what they believe and why they are running for office. The candidates of 2012 need to be up for the hard work it takes to run a winning campaign.

At Wellstone Action, in partnership with other great groups, we are ready to start training this new wave of 2012 candidates to run winning campaigns as well as training teams of people who help each of these candidates win. Through Camp Wellstone, our Advanced Campaign Management School and custom trainings, we are one part of the effort to re-build progressive power starting with the election of 2012.

Attention Scott Walker and John Kasich: We all do better when we all do better

Erik — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 12:05:42 -0600

The rallying cry of the labor movement is "an injury to one is an injury to all." The bible teaches us that "I am my brother's keeper." Benjamin Franklin implored his wavering fellow delegates to sign the Declaration of Independence saying "we must hang together or most assuredly we will all hang separately." And Paul Wellstone used to always say "we all do better when we all do better."

This progressive story of community, collective rights and responsibilities is starkly different from the conservative story of competition, winners and losers, and individual choice and risk.

We hear this conservative story nightly on FOX news, right wing talk radio, and most recently in the halls of power in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and other states around the country. This conservative story says "you're on your own, good luck. You're alone - make it work."

Wellstone Action teaches that our stories matter.

The conservative story tries to convince us that free markets, deregulation, limited government, no unions, no taxes, and turning a blind eye and deaf ear to those unemployed or less fortunate (or blaming them for bad life choices) will solve all of our problems.

This conservative story says that the most fortunate - the wealthiest individuals and corporations - deserve what they have taken from the rest of us, and that it is okay that their wealth is derived from the greatest redistribution of wealth in the history of the world, because that is what competition and free markets are all about.

This conservative story pits one group of workers against another. It demonizes immigrants, Muslims, and any opinion that challenges free market fundamentalism. It says if I have been hurt, you should hurt as well.

So when Governor Scott Walker from Wisconsin refuses to accept public worker concessions until they also give up their collective voice and rights - or when Kerri Miller from Minnesota Public Radio asks this morning "why should public sector workers enjoy rights and protections that other workers do not?" - we hear the same conservative story, a story that drives our politics and community life to the lowest dominator.

At Wellstone Action we believe in and train out of a progressive story that says all workers deserve a right to join together for collective voice - whether private sector workers or public sector workers, whether through a union, a co-op, or an association.

This right is the law of our land, enshrined in the National Labor Relations Act, passed in 1935. This law protects the collective right of most private sector workers to engage in "concerted activity" - the right to act collectively as a group to negotiate in good faith and secure decent wages, benefits and working conditions without fear of reprisal. This is not a "union right," but the right of all workers to create or join a union.

Over the past 50 years, many states, including Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana have extended this collective right to public sector workers, as well. And now radical conservative governors and legislatures in many states are trying to strip this fundamental right away.

At Wellstone Action we believe in a progressive story that says we all have collective responsibility for one another and must share the burden in times of distress and challenge.

Budgets should not be balanced on the backs of workers, the middle class, or those who are most vulnerable when the most fortunate contribute little or nothing.

The wealthiest corporations are sitting on over two trillion dollars in cash reserves, are earning record breaking profits, and are still not hiring American workers. Last week, Forbes magazine showed that many of the largest US corporations paid little or no tax in 2009. General Electric made $10.3 billion in pre-tax income and paid no taxes. Exxon Mobil recorded a record $45.2 billion yet paid the IRS no federal taxes. The wealthiest Americans - those uber-millionaires - pay less a percentage of their income in taxes than the teachers, firefighters, janitors or school bus and snow plow drivers under attack in Wisconsin. We believe those who are blessed with the most need to share in the burden as well.

We believe in a progressive story that respects the dignity of all people and says that all children matter.

We should be able to love who we want, freely worship the God of our faith, and be able to pursue the American Dream regardless of where we come from without being told that if you are gay or Muslim or an immigrant you do not matter and should have your rights taken away.

Wellstone Action trains thousands of progressive activists to build power, win elections, and govern from this progressive perspective.

And now more than ever we need to tell the age old story that each of us matters, to live by the golden rule to do to others what we would want done to us, and to remind the world that indeed "we all do better when we all do better."

Photos on Flickr by aperture_lag and Nickolas Nikolic.

Take action: Support state workers in Wisconsin

Jhaut — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 12:10:15 -0600

This past Friday in Wisconsin, Governor Walker made good on his promise to try to strip away worker's rights in the state.

He has turned Wisconsin, known as the birthplace of public sector union organizing, into ground zero in the battle over whether we will protect and uphold the democratic right of workers to bargain for and secure a fair deal or whether we will strip these rights from workers, just as corporations have attacked private sector workers and their right to organize for years.

Wellstone Action urges our partner organizations, union members, alumni, and friends across the state of Wisconsin to stand up against this unprecedented and undemocratic power grab. The radical proposals on the table include ending collective bargaining, raiding health programs, and selling state assets to benefit businesses.

Make no mistake, this so-called budget-repair bill has nothing to do with saving the state and taxpayers money; it is free-market fundamentalism gone to the extreme, where the Governor and his corporate allies are using the budget crisis to try to push through their radical political ideology and agenda.

Collective bargaining is a right, not a privilege. We support the lawful right to bargain for health care and a living wage and safe and decent working conditions. Wisconsin is not alone in this threat: we are seeing similar attacks in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and other states across the country.

Stand now and take action. Please visit One Wisconsin Now, and demand yo ur legislator to vote against this bill.

Our partner, Wisconsin Voices, is involved in two rallies happening this week at the State Capitol in Madison: Tuesday, February 15^th and Wednesday, February 16^th, both at noon. Contact Jorna Taylor for more information at jtaylor@infoservicesgroup.net.

Egypt's social media revolution

Louis — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:21:38 -0600

We all have seen the impact of social media, but have we ever seen it done in the likes of Egypt's revolution? The brave women and men on the ground reported back to the rest of the waiting world moments of sheer terror, confusion, empowerment, and pride for the Egyptian people.

Imagine the greatest achievement in open, free communication is shut off. When the Egyptian government realized the level of protest that was literally ballooning in the streets, they did just that. Internet and social media site access were disconnected, or severely limited for most people. Like many of us, I know I would have a hard time going about my normal routine without internet access. From my home computer, to my smartphone, to Minnesota Public Radio via an app, I subconsciously demand to see and hear the whole story on what is happening in my midst and across the world.

"Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted," by Malcolm Gladwell, predicted the opposite of what happened during Egypt's revolution. Gladwell wrote about how the civil-rights movement of the 1960s in the South "happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter." He argues that the "new tools of social media have reinvented social activism," but social change cannot be brought on with social media. This article appeared in The New Yorker October 4, 2010. On January 25, 2011, the Egyptian people and media collaborations working on the ground throughout the uprising began to prove Gladwell wrong. Social change can be achieved through social media.

To be fair, Gladwell was right that a revolution will not be tweeted. Just 140 characters at a time is not enough to encompass the whole situation, or tell an entire story of such magnitude. But Twitter is exactly how I first heard about the events in Egypt. By that first weekend of protesting, I saw articles by major international news sources, many of which were exploding with hits and comments on social media and news-sharing sites like Reddit.com. The first responders to Egypt's revolution came from Al Jazeera, the news source that has been viewed as unfavorable in the United States, for reasons such as their graphic reporting on the invasion of Iraq. Al Jazeera was also the only news source reporting live during the start of the war in Afghanistan, from their station inside the country. Over the course of Egypt's revolution, Al Jazeera remade its image in the eyes of many Americans through streaming online the news of Egypt that no one else was reporting. During the first few days of the revolution, Al Jazeera's Twitter view numbers skyrocketed by more than 1.5 million people in the US alone. It's Facebook page numbers doubled overall.

We live in a 24-hour news cycle no matter how often we engage, revile, or dislike it. The morning paper and evening broadcast are becoming past tense. I would say that the term "new media" is already outdated. Every few moments a new tweet streams down my computer or phone screen, many of which are lost in the endless challenge to be rated as the "latest news tweet." How can I be constantly aware of the next revolution, when so much of what passes for news are gossip blips? Regardless, I believe that by taking away our instantaneous sources for who, what, where, when, and why, the pulse of social media is disrupted.

Today, President Mubarak left office. Two days earlier, Al Jazeera English commented on how "Social media has been dubbed the new tool for revolutionaries," but also acknowledged that of the people involved with the protests, "many on the ground...[had] little or no access to the internet." Gladwell perhaps said it best: "Where activists were once defined by their causes, they are now defined by their tools."

Where will you be when the next revolution happens, and how will you tell your story? The world is eagerly watching, listening, and commenting.

Photo 1 from Ahmad Hammoud on flickr.
Photo 2 from yamaha_gangsta on flickr.