Sea Anchors

As you may know, a sea anchor is a device for stabilizing a ship in the grip of a storm. In the age of sail it was frequently a large sail thrown overboard with a rope attached to the ship. The sail's drag against the water provided sufficient resistance to wave and wind to create a modicum of stability.

As I read of the effort to crush the rising resistance in the Middle East, as I heard President Obama's State of the Union speech, which was so full of platitudes and irrelevancies, and as I read of the eighth secretive meeting of the Koch Brothers and their billionaire/millionaire allies in Rancho Mirage and the fact that two Supreme Court Justices (Scalia and Thomas) have been regular attendees of these political plotting soirées, I was, to put it mildly, at sea. An engulfing chaos seemed to be the reality of the day.

But then I heard Governor Jerry Brown's short, no nonsense, and very knowledgeable speech and read of the Common Cause-led, almost 1000 person protest at the Koch Brothers' event and asked myself "Is the left finally starting to find itself?"

The political left has been abandoned by mainstream politics in this country. The Democratic Party, the Lefts' traditional home, has, sometimes angrily, rejected it despite the critical role it played in getting Obama elected. Obama, like Clinton, is taking the Party to the center as fast as he can. There is nothing in the middle of the road, as Jim Hightower so uniquely said, but yellow stripes and dead armadillos. However, I believe that in the protest against the Koch Brothers' billionaires political plotting and in Jerry Brown's State of the State address the Left may yet mount a major resurgence.

Why so? Let me take the protest at Rancho Mirage first. The protest was reported to have had about 1,000 demonstrators. It was organized by Common Cause. They bussed demonstrators from all over Southern California. It was a well organized effort, but the thing that struck me most forcefully is that unions of low wage earners, e.g. janitors and domestic workers, were providing much of the transportation. The people, in a very basic sense, were involved. This indicated a major shift in union emphasis. In my youth unions were focused on manufacturing workers and as such they were organized in and through the plants where people worked. The corporate business community exported most of those jobs, so the unions began organizing the next lower tier of employee. These people did not work in one place. They worked in a variety of buildings and homes. Yet union membership and organization still worked. I found that fact very heartening. The poor of this country are finding institutions of an earlier age are still viable and they are willing to use them. However, there is a lesson for Progressives here. As with factory workers, until we have government focused on the people's and society's well being, technology will continue to be directed at eliminating jobs and eventually today's union members will face the same fate as yesterday's factory workers. This is why we need a developed, informed and articulated Progressive perspective. We have to stop reacting and anticipate the future. As Dennis Kucinich repeatedly pleaded in the 2008 Presidential election, "Wake up America, wake up" so we should be urging "Wake up Progressives."

Jerry Brown's State of the State address struck me as the first honest, developed, well communicated speech I have heard from a politician in many a decade. Gone were the shibboleths, the euphemisms, the deceptive use of language so common to current political speech. His strategy is solid for these times; take the budget issue to the people. He has made his recommendations and encourages others, so far with no success, to make theirs. As a case in point, he noted the massive resistance by local governments to his proposed elimination of redevelopment agencies. However, in an excellent display of honest politics, he pointed out that these agencies use this tax-payer-supplied money, which could be better used for schools and safety services. Academic research has shown repeatedly what most of us know, that municipal politics and decision making are far more controlled by the local business community than by any other segment. This pot of money, in effect, allowed the business community to spend tax dollars on whatever projects appealed to them. Is it little wonder that the Republicans don't want Brown's proposals, hard as they must be for all of us, taken to the voters?

As we float and bob in this sea of political and social chaos, caused mainly by the manipulations of excessive wealth that now engulfs us, it is both consoling and energizing to see a plank or two that we can grab onto. I think Common Cause and the unions involved in the protest of the Koch brothers' billionaires plot against democracy and the efforts of Jerry Brown to bring sanity and responsibility to California's government should receive strong Progressive support. The image of janitors and domestic servants opposing the third wealthiest people in the country after Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and a people's organization like Common Cause seeking a law suit to have Scalia and Thomas removed from the Supreme Court for unconscionable bias should be energizing to all of us. Let us turn these sea anchors into visionary Progressive foundations.

Bob Newhard