A MORE COHERENT MOVEMENT
Cagan, Leslie
A More Coherent Movement BY LESLIE CAGAN While I understand the desire to identify priorities for our movement, the posing of such a question perpetuates the assumption that it is both possible...
...What is missing is a movement able to take quick advantage of the openings when they come along...
...We need to look for the openings and create new possibilities for challenging power...
...We need to keep plugging away on the issues we already work on, and stay open to the new ones as they arise...
...Is worldwide environmental devastation a greater or lesser priority for us than the crippling foreign debt burdening the developing nations...
...What is missing is a movement broad enough and strong enough to begin to set the terms of national as well as local debate, a movement that has the ability to take quick advantage of the openings when they come along...
...A More Coherent Movement BY LESLIE CAGAN While I understand the desire to identify priorities for our movement, the posing of such a question perpetuates the assumption that it is both possible and desirable to do so...
...We are rooted in all constituencies...
...Having said all that, I must now urge us to focus attention on the crisis in the Middle East...
...Acknowledge that we will win and secure the changes we fight for only when power relations have begun to change...
...She is a co-chair of the National Committee for Independent Political Action and a frequent contributor to Z Magazine...
...One priority for the progressive movement is to begin articulating a more thorough anaylsis of how issues, struggles, and people are connected...
...military power, the escalating drainage of resources away from problems here at home, the racist foundation of this country's foreign policies, the undermining of our Constitution and the War Powers Act, energy and the environment, as well as the realignment of international relations and power...
...And there is an avalanche of problems demanding our attention...
...The issues in this crisis are many and diverse: control of oil, the use (and abuse) of U.S...
...We have at least the beginnings of an understanding of how the systems of oppression function separately and with each other...
...Lots of good organizing goes on every single day in every corner of the country...
...systemic change, and the multifaceted, interconnected oppressions we confront...
...Our movement needs to be stronger, more effective, clearer about the contest for power, and I think it can be...
...An increasing number of activists have worked in such efforts...
...We have decades of solid experience to build from...
...This represents political growth in our movement...
...We have to be clearer about power—our lack of it, where it rests now, and the need to change it...
...Leslie Cagan has been an organizer in struggles ranging from nuclear disarmament to lesbian/gay rights, anti-intervention, housing justice, and environmental issues...
...For instance, we have recently waged positive progressive electoral campaigns, often under the leadership of African-Americans, and we have won some historic victories...
...Throughout the movement, people tend to equate "politics" with elections and legislative efforts...
...We cannot for a moment let up on our struggles to stop specific horrendous realities (war in Central America, homelessness, AIDS, toxic dumping, nuclear weapons—you know the list...
...We are battling an intricate, interdependent series of oppressions, structures of domination, and hierarchies of control...
...But is the dismantling of apartheid any less or more crucial than a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict...
...Power exists in elected bodies, in court appointments, in corporate boardrooms, on the private golf courses of America, in bias-related violence on the streets, in the mass media—and in the largest military force in world history...
...Develop organizing vehicles to challenge power in the different arenas of our lives...
...Can we work more cooperatively, in a more collaborative fashion...
...Start to address the various parts of the progressive movement that work together—or don't...
...Does it make sense to consider the struggle for affordable housing and an end to home-lessness any more or less essential than the fight for national health insurance...
...We need to become a more coherent movement, and I believe we can...
...The priorities for our movement must be to: h Begin articulating (in our writing and speaking, and in the ways we do our organizing) the need for We have decades of experience to build from...
...Our definition of "power" must be expansive, not narrow...
...At the same time, I am concerned that as we put our energy into electoral efforts, we may be ignoring or simply missing other possibilities for effective organizing...
...We will always have to, as the Quakers say, "speak truth to power," but we also must exercise our power, challenge oppressive power, and change power relationships...
...It is critically important that each of us play a role in building a mass-based, diverse movement for peace in the Middle East and for new national priorities...
...Her electoral work includes serving as the co-coordinator for the 1989 Dinkins mayoral campaign in New York City...
Vol. 54 • November 1990 • No. 11
