Matthew Yglesias cites examples where swift united action, enabled by links, blogs and people, may have had some positive impact. He then calls directly for the same with respect to pushing back against the proposed changes to Social Security, and offers us the example of how the still-powerful AFL-CIO used its clout against financial services firm State Street.
What’s really interesting in this piece titled Harball is the context he creates, wherein his concerns about civil progressive society are accompanied by his recommendations about how to address issues … by forming focused virtual communities, using the Web (and no doubt, blogs as well as email).
Interesting. With the government entirely in the other side’s hands, progressives are going to increasingly need to fight and win battles in society rather than in the courts or the legislatures. Doign that effectively means building a more robust progressive civil society.
The union movement, unfortunately, is a shell of its former self, though some people are proposing changes that might alter that a few years down the road. But the AFL-CIO is still the natural core of any progressive response on the “society” side. It’s my hope that the internet’s capacity for creating “virtual communities” can help build up somewhat robust social networks among the typically atomized sorts of people one finds online.
If the AFL-CIO does move forward with something like this (and I hope they do), I hope they’ll think of ways for people outside the unions to likewise sign on. The anti-Sinclair campaign this past fall was encouraging, but suffered from a lack of participation on the part of big, established institutions.
Leave a Reply