FW: follow-up

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This is one of a long series of memos (a trip down memory lane) I will forward to you per our conversation. This one from Steve Kest in September 0f 2002 followed a dinner that Marion and I had with Steve and Cate in which we discussed our thoughts, plans and hopes for what became CAP. I thought his memo was interesting on a number of levels, but rereading it now, it reinforces just how extraordinary your accomplishments were. The next email from Steve reflect the beneficial influence of spouses. Enjoy Herb -----Original Message----- From: Steven Kest [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, September 06, 2002 3:51 PM To: Sandler, Herb EXEC Subject: follow-up Herb and Marion, Thanks again for dinner last night. Delightful to see you and talk, as always. I've been thinking about our conversation, and I'd like to pursue a couple of the points that came up. And please keep in mind that my arguments against the relative unimportance of think tanks are not motivated by any short-sighted view about encouraging funders to provide more money to ACORN instead. Rather, I'm making an argument premised on and consistent with the political choices I have made about how to spend whatever time and skills I have -- i.e. based on what strategies I think are more likely to pay off over the long term. So, here goes. First, I really do believe that ideas follow power, and not the other way around. The flowering of social democratic/progressive policies and proposals in the 30s was made possible by the huge growth of the labor movement, and the resultant progressive majorities in Congress -- as well as by the threat to the system that the labor-led ferment in the factories caused, and FDR's decision to co-opt and head off that threat by developing the New Deal. Similarly, LBJ's War on Poverty resulted more than anything else from the civil rights movement, and from Watts and the other urban riots. Again, a movement from below forced a set of policies, proposals, and ideas into the political mainstream. My general point here is that, given the relative balance of power in this country, ideas that benefit the poor have to be forced into the debate. Ideas that benefit the rich don't have this burden: they will automatically get a hearing by those in power. Right-wing foundations have a ready audience, and they and their funders have been pushing open an unlocked door. Another way to say this is that if there is a marketplace of ideas, it is like all markets in our society: it is biased to and does the bidding of those with more money. Our ideas don't get a hearing not because we don't have good or well-developed ideas, but rather because in this marketplace the ideas that are attached to powerful interests crowd out all others. And I want to emphasize the point that our side does have good and well-developed ideas -- every bit as compelling as those devised by Heritage et al. Your bookcases must be as crowded as mine are with the publications of the scores of think-tanks, policy shops, advocacy groups, etc on the left, all of whom produce extremely well thought out policy prescriptions. And its not that we lack the marketing skill to get these proposals "out there". The fact is, with some exceptions the airwaves and the newspapers of this country are not hospitable to many of these ideas, and will generally ignore them unless we force them into the debate. What does it take to force our ideas into the political mainstream? Well, in an ideal world we'd have a labor movement as powerful as it was in the 30s, or a civil rights movement as compelling as it was in the 60s (along with the unrest and threat of further civil strife that both of these movements created). But short of that, we have the slow and steady work of present-day community and labor organizing, which in many cases is building the power that moves ideas off the pages of the American Prospect magazine and onto the nation's political agenda. Take, for example, the living wage movement. Since at least the early 90s (and at many other times in recent history as well) the issue of income inequality has been a favorite topic of the theorists and policy wonks. But it wasn't until powerful coalitions of community organizations, labor unions, and religious groups "invented" the living wage movement, and organized a broad enough base of folks so that local politicians had to take notice, that living wage proposals started getting seriously debated, and then enacted. There are now 82 cities across the country that have passed living wage ordinances, and hundreds of thousands of low wage workers who have directly benefited -- because community groups and their allies were powerful enough to beat the Restaurant Association and turn an idea into public policy. Or more to the point, because we had the power to change the terms of debate from the conventional right-wing ideology that "the citizenry and public officials have no business interfering with the market" to the interventionist and social-democratic view that "government has an obligation to ensure that all families can enjoy a living wage". Here's another way of looking at this same point. Contrary to what I'm afraid is becoming conventional wisdom, there are dozens of well-respected and highly competent think tanks that operate on our side of the political spectrum. We have no shortage of good ideas, and no shortage of idea-entrepreneurs out trying to market them. You asked for examples; here are just a few: - The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities puts out hundreds of reports and proposals relating to all aspects of federal and state budgetary policy as it affects poor people: welfare, taxation, income support, etc, etc. - The Economic Policy Institute provides excellent analyses on macro and micro economic policies. - The National Low Income Housing Coalition, the National Housing Institute, the National Housing Law Project, the Joint Center on Housing at Harvard, and many others do excellent work on the full range of housing issues. - Brookings, although perhaps too moderate for some of our tastes, does great work through the division that Bruce Katz runs on urban policy, smart growth, etc. - Families USA is the expert on health policy. - The Food Research Action Center similarly covers food and nutrition issues. - The Center on Policy Analysis is the left's answer to ALEC, and supplies progressive state legislators with policy options, model bills, etc. - The National Consumer Law Center, Martin's North Carolina operation, the Center for Community Change, and others cover the waterfront on fair lending issues. - The Education Trust, the Public Education Network, Cross-City Campaign, and many others develop and promote progressive school reform ideas. - The Campaign for America's Future works with progressive Democrats in Congress to develop proposals that counter the work of the DLC. - Most of the important states have state-oriented think tanks that focus on state policy. I could go on and on, but the point, again, is that there is no dearth of ideas on our side, nor of able proponents of these ideas. In fact, I believe we are more creative, and have done much better work, in developing policy proposals than the right has (despite all their money). What we need is the muscle to force them into the debate. So when progressive funders start salivating over the "successes" of the right-wing funders, I worry that they are drawing the wrong conclusions. Yes, it was an important element of the right's overall strategy that Heritage and Cato worked out the details of social security privatization -- but the real advantage the right had was that social security privatization (and most of their other policy prescriptions) match up with the self-interest of Wall Street and corporate America, and find ready acceptance by all of the many politicians who tow that line. Heritage's ideas were welcomed with open arms by those with power. Funders who want to promote progressive policies, in contrast, are obliged to help support the organizing that builds the power that can legitimize our agenda. Sorry to go on at such length on this topic, but this is obviously something I feel strongly about, and I didn't want to leave the discussion we began at dinner without contributing to a continuing dialogue. I welcome your thoughts on this. Steve -------------------------- Steven Kest ACORN 88 Third Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11217 718-246-7900 [email protected] www.acorn.org