Identity crisis

Political protests and organizing are on the rise, but the progressive movement remains marginalized. Who's afraid of the new new left?

by Kathleen Hughes

Matthew Jerzyk

The night before his graduation from Brown University in May 1999, Matthew Jerzyk celebrated. He was standing on Wickenden Street in Providence, taking pictures of his friends, when police arrived to break up the gathering. They began arresting students and Jerzyk took a few pictures. Before he knew it, he says, his camera was taken, he was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and refusing to move, and thrown into a van with his friends.

Jerzyk spent the night in jail. Later that summer, he began looking into police practices. He wanted to know their policy on the use of pepper spray and how citizens could file complaints, but he found the police unforthcoming. Jerzyk's frustration led him to a police accountability campaign at South Providence-based Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE). In the year since his arrest, Jerzyk has taken a job with Rhode Island Jobs with Justice, a coalition of 30 community, labor, and religious groups. He's become a member of DARE, an 800-member community organizing group, and recently helped start Truth to Power, a progressive think tank focused on social, economic, and political justice. He marched in the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization and with Unity 2000 demonstrators at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.

In describing the path to meaningful social, political, and economic change, Jerzyk says, "You have to constantly be simultaneous." This means, for example, that when one asks, "Why is there so much abandoned property on the south side of Providence?" one can also ask, "How do the same policies lead to massive land ownership inequalities in Iowa and El Salvador?"

You could call Jerzyk an activist, although that seems too narrow. You could describe him as leftist, but that sounds too theoretical. Nevertheless, the 23-year-old is both of these things, full-time. His work manifests the same leftist sentiment that was displayed at the GOP convention protests, the November 1999 battle in Seattle, and April's demonstration in Washington against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. And for some, these displays amount to more than just isolated episodes of political activism.

John Osmand of Providence, a member of the International Socialist Organization, is joined by others, such as Greg Gerrit, chairman of the Green Party of Rhode Island, in asserting that the marches -- as well as marked support for presidential candidate Ralph Nader and numerous progressive coalitions of labor, community, student, and religious groups -- evidence a new leftist movement that might be called the "new new left."

In this new new left, so named because the '60s left was the New Left, progressives protest with anarchists, socialists, communists, Greens, community activists, labor union members, and students. Often, protesters fall under more than one of these labels. Together, they seek to fight corporate globalization, enhance environmental protection, challenge criminal justice policy, and secure health care, good jobs, and civil rights for women, people of color, homosexuals and society's have-nots. With an inclusive, friendly, and serious face, the left is suddenly popular in a country long hostile and dismissive of it.

Sue Coughlin

Adherents are trickling in, spurred by disenchantment with the Clinton administration and the insurmountable two-party system, which is dominated by corporate interests. Once moderate liberals, such as Rick Van Wie, chairman of the Socialist Party of Rhode Island, and Sue Coughlin, co-chair of the state Green Party, have been radicalized into third-party activism. For them, it amounts to "common sense," and they see others in their communities who could easily shift as well.

A SECOND VIEW, held by Darrell West, a political science professor at Brown University, and the Reverend Duane Clinker, a Methodist minister in Warwick and founding member of the Rhode Island Organizing Project (RIOP), a coalition of labor and religious groups, is skeptical of any substantial "new new left" mobilization. They see the knitting together of progressive and leftist interests as coincidental, not intentional or organized. "The WTO protests in Seattle attracted a lot of media attention in ways that we haven't seen before," West says. "But it will take a lot more than that to really stir action."

Adds Clinker, "What's the left? Is there an agreed upon agenda? We know we have to get together to do some specific stuff, but I'm not sure that's the left."

Still another view is more complicated, and it illustrates the fundamental shortcoming of a new new left movement. Held by what should be core constituents of such a movement -- Sara Mersha, DARE's 25-year-old lead organizer (like Jerzyk, a young Brown graduate); Marc Cohen of the Rhode Island Alliance for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights; and George Nee, secretary-treasurer of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO -- this third view denies participation in an organized movement. Mersha, Nee, and Cohen focus instead on advancing their specific issues, rather than the so-called "new new left" as a whole. While they strive for fundamental social change, they do not define or relate to their work as an explicit function of the left. As such, the new new left struggles to claim its most necessary members.

George Nee

MOVEMENTS ARE BORN of crises, and "the left" has never been a popular term in the United States. It was the Vietnam era 30 years ago, by most counts, when the left last had significant influence.

There are several reasons for the left traditionally bearing negative connotations in this country. First, says West, the American left made some critical mistakes in the '20s and '30s in praising Stalin and "a kind of communism that turned out to be totalitarian, rather than egalitarian." McCarthyism, Red scares, and the Cold War increased hostility toward the left and its elements. And images of '60s upheaval and Vietnam War protesters linked "leftist" and "unpatriotic" in many people's minds.

Finally, says West, the left has been marginalized by this country's two-party electoral system. "The two parties have a major advantage in ballot access and campaign finance," he says. "It's hard for parties of the left to get any traction." In addition to needing 1000 signatures merely to appear on a presidential ballot, a third party needs to garner 5 percent of the vote in a previous presidential election to receive $12.5 million in federal campaign funds. The major parties receive somewhere between $65 and $70 million in federal funds for presidential elections, West says, and as we face our first $1 billion campaign, a mere $12.5 million doesn't amount to much.

History and the two-party system aside, a political movement such as the new new left needs fertile ground to be born. And the present political climate is being fed, first and foremost, by issues of corporate globalization and the growing divide between the rich and the poor. NAFTA, the Soviet and East Asian economic collapse, even media attention on Nike's Indonesian sweatshops, all contributed to "corporate globalization" joining the common parlance well before the Seattle protests demonstrated the extent of discontent. "The World Trade Organization and World Bank have provided a clear enemy in a way that nothing since Vietnam has provided," says Paul Buhle, a Brown University lecturer in American Civilization. "The protests in Seattle were a clarion call for the next generation."

As for the prosperity gap, the rich started getting much richer and the poor started getting much poorer during Reaganomics, and this trend has continued through Bush and Clinton. With inflation adjustments, the minimum wage is lower now than it was in 1979, and the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans have more money than the combined wealth of the lower 90 percent, according to the Green Party USA Web site. As the poor and middling classes receive scant share of corporate America and Wall Street's stratospheric profits, they're watching Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, legal aid, and other benefits decline. For the people fortunate enough to have health care, HMOs are a stress disorder unto themselves. And then there's the specter of Bush and Cheney in the White House.

As for other problems, consider the police torture of Abner Louima in New York, the dragging death of Robert Byrd in Texas, and the beating death of Matthew Shepherd in Wyoming. There's a burgeoning prison population, largely because of non-violent crimes, and the continued use of the death penalty, despite the growing number of wrongful convictions that have been revealed by DNA evidence.

IF THERE'S one thing that signifies the new new left, it's broad-based coalition. "There are several edges of the new new left," Buhle says. "And the first is alliance."

Alliance was illustrated on a recent Wednesday in Providence, when seven different groups joined the Rhode Island Hospital nurses union, United Nurses and Allied Professionals (UNAP), in a petition to end mandatory overtime. The seven supporting groups were: the Health Care Organizing Project, which is itself a lobbying coalition, Rhode Island Jobs with Justice (RIJJ) also a coalition, the Brown Student Labor Alliance, Progresso Latino, the Coalition for Consumer Justice, Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), and the Rhode Island Nurses Association.

Individual labor unions have long supported one another. Students, however, and consumer lobbying groups such as HCOP are relatively new to the picket lines, Buhle says. This new face of labor is characterized by "a shift in leadership from `right-wing thugs' with frequent ties to organized crime, who eagerly supported every war that came along, to an AFL-CIO that has an executive vice president [Linda Chavez-Thompson] who is not only Chicano, but also a woman," Buhle says.

Nee, who was a longtime labor activist before taking the secretary-treasurer position with the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, agrees that labor is more inclusive. In addition to creating a new, executive-level position for Chavez-Thompson, the AFL-CIO has been lobbying for domestic partner (same sex or not) benefits. As a result, the big three auto makers -- Ford, GM, DaimlerChrysler -- recently extended such benefits to its workers. "Labor all along has been fundamentally concerned with the rights of workers regardless of who they are and what their background is," Nee says. "That doesn't mean we've always been true to it, but the spirit is there." In the same way, Nee says, labor has always looked for alliances with community groups. Now, he says, "There's a renewed emphasis and a little more understanding that it's a good thing."

Labor unions and students made enemies of each other during the Vietnam War. Most of that tension is gone today, says Anthony Arnove of Providence, an editor at leftist South End Press in Cambridge. Beyond solidarity on picket lines, student-led anti-sweatshop campaigns have won living wages, benefits, and other improvements for university employees. The student/labor friendship today is certainly due in part to graduate student organizing campaigns nationwide.

Alliances among coalitions -- as seen on the RIH picket lines and elsewhere -- have emerged as an important aspect of the American left in the last 10 or so years, says Marti Rosenberg, executive director of Ocean State Action (OSA), a Cranston-based labor and consumer activist coalition. A national linkage of these state coalitions has just been established. It's called US Action, and Rosenberg, a veteran activist who previously worked for gubernatorial candidate Myrth York, is the group's secretary. Thus Ocean State is not just as a lateral nexus of knowledge and concern, but a vertical one, too, which runs from citizens to organizers, lobbyists and legislators. That these progressive coalitions are sprouting like mushrooms and clustering together speaks to their effectiveness.

Ocean State, whose members range from unionists and environmentalists to supporters of lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender rights, runs the Healthcare Organizing Project (HCOP). Beyond the Rhode Island Hospital picket lines, HCOP worked to derail Columbia/HCA's purchase of Roger Williams Medical Center, to avert state-level Medicaid cuts, and to stop Blue Cross from reducing choice in mental health care providers. OSA, a non-profit, is twinned by Ocean State Action Fund, a lobbying group, which means that members can work toward change not only within communities, but also on a legislative level. In addition to HCOP, Ocean State runs the Campaign for Livable Communities, which is studying and advocating anti-sprawl land use. The strength of a staffed organization such as OSA, Rosenberg says, is its ability to rapidly organize action on a wide variety of issues. "It's just solidarity," she says.

DIRECT ACTION FOR Rights and Equality (DARE) is neither a coalition, a lobbying group, nor a comfortable participant in "the new new left." DARE, rather, is a membership-based alliance of 800 low-income residents. From its mauve cinderblock home off Broad Street, across from Classical High School, DARE works with the people that the Seattle, Washington, and Unity 2000 protesters most want to speak for -- those who have lost jobs because of NAFTA; the communities who do not have health insurance; who do not benefit from the stock market boom; who suffer from a stagnant minimum wage, and cuts in welfare and social service programs; who face prejudice in the criminal justice system; and who must endure urban environmental blight because the Nature Conservancy isn't likely to buy land on Broad Street.

DARE started 14 years ago with five people sitting around a kitchen table, explains lead organizer Mersha, a native of Lynn, Massachusetts, who came to DARE in February 1999 after student activism at Brown. At first, DARE's founders gathered to build playgrounds and install stop signs. Since then, the group has helped win benefits for state daycare workers and successfully sued the Providence Police Department for access to copies of complaints against police officers.

Jerzyk calls DARE "one of the most honest forms of resistance anywhere in this country." Jerzyk praises the group's functioning as a true organization "for the community, of the community." DARE does not speak for people as an advocacy group, Jerzyk says; rather, DARE members and organizers work together to address community issues such as police accountability, the rights of prisoners and ex-prisoners, the public school system, a living wage, and the environment.

Yet, despite its obvious grass-roots, leftist approach, DARE is uneasy with a "left" label. The decline in the '70s of groups like the Black Panthers means, Jerzyk says, that today's left is associated with white intellectuals, not DARE members. Mersha notes that community members also relate to "the left" as a political label. Given that the electoral system hasn't afforded poor South Providence residents much power, the community remains distrustful of it. For these two substantial reasons, DARE isn't likely to go out of its way in the name of the new new left.

DARE's unease points to the traditional criticism of the American left and of the Seattle protests in particular -- that both are white and affluent -- despite labor offering the movement some diversity. It's a ruthless tautology that the movement struggles to break, thus far unsuccessfully: the movement is white because it seems white.

Jerzyk is not sure this homogeneity matters, so long as the white intellectual new new leftists, such as himself, are being, as he puts it, as simultaneous as possible. Part of being simultaneous, he says, is helping organizations like DARE succeed on the community level, while also electing progressive candidates to the state house, and going to the Seattle, Washington, RNC, and DNC protests. "You find your point of entry in as many ways as you can," Jerzyk says. But for now, Jerzyk seems like one of the few members of DARE with enough time, energy and motivation to truly be simultaneous.

IF COALITIONS LIKE Ocean State Action illustrate leftist cooperative spirit, and DARE indicates suspicion of a leftist movement, then the growth of the Green Party and support for Ralph Nader's presidential candidacy reflects the quotidian attractiveness of the new new left movement.

Despite being state co-chair of Green Party, Sue Coughlin is a relative political neophyte -- a registered independent who pulled "a lot of Democratic levers." Her involvement in the environmental protest against a container ship port at Quonset Point never grew into activity with a political party or candidate. In April, however, something changed. "I'm a mother and I'm 35," Coughlin says. "I want my kids to participate in a political system that's not a broken one." Coughlin admires the Green Party's mission to strip the electoral system of corporate influence and return power to voters. "The whole system is so overrun by corporate money," she says. "The current political parties do not in any way address the needs of the middle- and low-income classes."

Beyond this, Coughlin admires the Green's 10 key values, which mirror the core new new left issues of corporate globalization, health care, labor issues, civil rights, the environment, and non-violence. Coughlin calls this, "Common sense decent values." She sees many people like herself, who are disgusted by the current system but wary of change. "We have to show them that there is another way to go . . . a way to get involved and make change," Coughlin says.

If the first local meeting of Nader 2000 on July 26 was any indication, a few dozen Rhode Islanders have already found a new way to go. Green officials say 45 people attended the downtown Providence meeting, 20 or so of whom had no previous political involvement beyond voting. Richard Walton, a national coordinating committee member for the Greens, calls the attendance "huge."

WHETHER YOU CAN call it leftist sentiment or not, notes of anti-corporate feeling can be seen in the huge punitive damages against big tobacco, the similar effort to hold gun makers accountable, the government prosecution of Microsoft, and the shift in environmentalism from consumer choices -- do I eat organic foods and recycle -- to corporate responsibility. Osmand says that even Hollywood is reflecting the mainstreaming of leftist concerns. Take, for example, Boys Don't Cry, with its hate crime tragedy; Three Kings, which cast a critical eye toward the Persian Gulf War; and The Hurricane, which told the story of a wrongly convicted black man.

Coalitions such as Ocean State Action are making the most headway in the name of progressive politics, in the general direction of the new new left. And yet, the coalitions are largely working within the system. In The Rise and Fall of the American Left, John Patrick Diggins defines a true left as a strict and radical opposing force, not a reforming and cooperative one. According to this definition, the progressive coalitions are liberal, not leftist. Similarly, the AFL-CIO's endorsement of Al Gore clearly moves the union out of the leftist camp.

Buhle and Jerzyk, however, assert that an effective new new left must demand change from every angle -- within the system as a cooperative force, and from outside, as an outside radical force. Nee, in defending the AFL-CIO's endorsement of Gore, says, "We live in a world of practical politics. As much as we may have different ideals and visions [than the Democratic party], third-party candidates are not going to win the election . . . We're looking at an A- [in Gore] versus an F- [in Bush]."

Indeed, the Democratic Party hopes that all wavering voters will decide that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. Arnove, however, predicts that voters aren't going to be easily persuaded. After betrayals by Democrats on so many issues, from gays in the military to health care, "People are questioning the politics of lesser evilism," Arnove asserts. So long as Democrats can inspire sufficient fear of Bush in those considering voting for Nader, he adds, the Democratic Party can take the most disgruntled and marginal of its voters for granted.

Better organization -- still more coalition building, more protests, and more inside-the-system successes from the likes of Ocean State Action and the Green Party -- could bring marginal leftists into the fold and increase the viability of the new new left. The movement's growth could also depend on more problems, perhaps the election of Bush. Or, as Buhle says, "The new new left awaits a market decline to become a mass movement."

More critically, however, the new new left needs people like the DARE members who are wary of inclusion. No matter how dynamic, committed, and "simultaneous" someone like Jerzyk is, and no matter how enticing and respectable the Green Party is, the new new left will remain fractured and meek until disenfranchised citizens can be persuaded to join it.

Until then, one is reminded of the proverbial question about the tree falling in the forest without witness -- if there's a movement going on, but few are willing to claim it, is it a movement? "Maybe we're right before the dawn," Reverend Clinker says. "Or maybe we're still waiting on midnight."

Kathleen Hughes can be reached at khughes[a]phx.com.