13. Finale: What did we learn? Where do we go from here?

In this, our final episode of the Practical Radicals Podcast, we hear from over a dozen progressive leaders, including several former students, and reflect with them about what we’ve learned since the book Practical Radicals came out last November and what we make of the path ahead — as the U.S. and the world face a daunting and overlapping set of crises.

We offer thoughts on the seven strategy models, looking at exciting developments in the field as well as areas that could improve. Base-building in community organizing faces major challenges. Sulma Arias has reoriented her organization, People’s Action, to spark a “revival of community organizing,” a field whose crisis became more acute and widely acknowledged during the COVID pandemic. The labor movement, by contrast, is experiencing its most exciting resurgence in decades. Stephen Lerner — whose organization, Bargaining for the Common Good, brings together unions and community groups to work on joint strategies — sees tremendous promise in labor’s upsurge, pointing especially to the prospect of organizing entire sectors and taking on “the giant corporations that are driving the whole economy.”  Thomas Walker of the Communications Workers of America explains why he thinks building on labor’s momentum calls for unions to spend more of their assets on base-building and to support new ways of organizing. 

Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party argues that movements need to get serious about governing power, which requires treating progressives elected to office as co-conspirators rather than targets. Lydia Avila describes her work with California Calls, which hopes to build a grassroots leadership development pipeline and combine the best principles of community organizing with electoral politics. 

A key strategy in the years ahead will be disruption, which Lisa Fithian, author of Shut it Down, argues is a “transformational process” that can give people a greater sense of agency over their own lives and the world. Lissy Romanow, who used to run the training institute called Momentum, points to hopeful examples where momentum as a strategy is being combined with more long-term base-building work. 

We then offer thoughts on the ways movements and organizations need to adapt to get sharper on strategy. Texas activist Asha Dane’el addresses the importance of developing a long-term vision and investing in leadership development that combines “rigor and compassion.” Alex Tom tells us how the Chinese Progressive Association hit upon a hugely successful new approach to fostering organizational alignment and preventing unnecessary internal conflict by writing a “culture operations document,” which is given to all new staff and explains the organization’s vision and leadership philosophy as well as key terminology. Doran Schrantz describes the commitment to leadership and other factors that have allowed ISAIAH, a church-based organization, and labor and community partners in Minnesota to transform the state. 

We conclude with some thoughts on our current historical conjuncture. Overdogs have never wanted a true democracy, and right now, they see an opening for autocracy. As Ian Bassin of Protect Democracy explains, by objective scholarly measures, “US democracy has been declining faster [in recent years] than almost any other country on the planet.” Alicia Garza, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, argues that it’s crucial to form not only a “united front,” which brings together different elements of the left, but also a “popular front,” which unites the left with the center and even pro-democracy elements of the right. As the recent victories in France, India, and Brazil illustrate, there is nothing inevitable about the slide to authoritarianism — if we can achieve the unity and will to fight it.

Links: 

Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice

Alicia Garza, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart

Lisa Fithian, Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance

Transcript for Ep. 13 (coming soon)