This is a more detailed version of a cartoon that I did for the November 11, 2009 of the Tri-City Voice.

I read an article in the March issue of the Progressive by Howard Zinn that I thought made a good point. In it Zinn warns Progressives not to expect the election of Obama to unleash any great reform cycle, unless his election is accompanied by the hard work of Progressives to move the nation to be receptive to reform. In his article, Zinn wrote:

I'm talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes- the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.

But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhoods, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on maters of war and social justice.

Let's remember that even when there is a 'better' candidate (yes, better Roosevelt than Hoover, better anyone than George Bush), that difference will not mean anything unless the power of the people asserts itself in ways that the occupant of the White House will find it dangerous to ignore.

Many progressives are disappointed that Barack Obama has taken a more centrist path during his Presidency, but I'm actually not that surprised. Presidents, even liberal Presidents, usually don't go in a more liberal direction without pressure from the grassroots. I listened very closely to Obama during last year's campaign and read his website and realized that he was not as liberal as Kucinich, Edwards, Biden, or Richardson. He is a smart but very cautious politician. I think Zinn makes a good point that it's generally the grassroots that moves the country in a more progressive direction.

Though I generally agree with Zinn's thesis, I also think it's necessary for there to be progressive politicians within the system who know how to use the system to make change. Jim Ramelis made a good point in a recent blog that progressive politicians need to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Three progressive politicians who both talked and walked were congresswoman Bella Abzug, Senator Paul Wellstone and Senator Ted Kennedy. Right now, in our health care reform debate, the oncoming debate on finance reform, and the the debate on climate, we need to learn from this three progressive politicians how we could combine strong progressive grassroots agitation with the political know how of the political system to make a more progressive program, rather than a watered down reform.

Bella Abzug served in the House of Representatives from 1971 to 1977. Bella Abzug was a lawyer, an antiwar activist, an early feminist and an organizer for various left wing causes. As a lawyer in the 1950s, she went to Mississippi to represent Willie McGee, a black Mississippian convicted of raping a white woman and sentenced to death. In spite of threats to her life by white supremecits, she managed to stay McGee's execution twice before he was eventually executed. She also represented people accused of Communist activities by Senator Joseph McCarthy's Congressional committee. In the 1960's, Ms. Abzug founded of Women Strike for Peace to protest nuclear testing and the Vietnam War, and she later campaigned for Senator Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 Democratic Presidential primaries. In 1970, Ms. Abzug ran for Congress, winning the 19th Congressional District elections with 55 percent of the vote.

When Bella was in Congress, she became adept at championing left wing causes. Jack Newfield wrote in his book of essays American Rebels:

Working an eighteen-hour day, she was scrupulously prepared on all the issues. She became an expert in parliamentary law- cutting through red tape and also tangling up red tape to suit her purposes. She knew how to strategize- she could sniff out opponents' agendas- and she understood the complexities of leadership, the importance of forging alliances. She kept a journal of what it was like to be a free wheeling woman of New York confronting the genteel Southern male establishment that ruled Congress at the time. She would write, "I spend all day figuring out how to beat the machine and knock the crap out of the power structure," and in another entry she wrote, "I'm not being facetious when I say the real enemies in this country are the pentagon and its pals in big business."

The oral history Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the Rights of Women and Workers, Rallied Against War and for the Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along the Way by Suzanne Braun Levine and Mary Thom commented about Abzug's ability to use grassroots pressure to mobilize the government towards action:

She began her life's work as an advocate and organizer, developing policy and legal arguments, making connections between ideas and constituencies. Then in 1970, at age fifty, she ran for office for the first time and was elected to Congress, representing a progressive district in Manhattan. Being on the inside was a new experience for her, but Bella became one of the most respected strategists in the Congress. Friend and foe alike marveled at her mastery of congressional procedure and her innovative approaches to legislation. Moreover, she continued mobilizing pressure on the government, organizing women around the country to participate in lobbying her colleagues, and securing funding and authorization for the First National Women's Conference, which she chaired after she left office...

...With each evolution her career underwent, her core commitment to social justice took on a new dimension... From the beginning she was committed to diversifying and enlarging the reach of any movement she became a part of.

In Congress, Representative Abzug co-wrote the Freedom of Information Act, the government Sunshine Law (which required government bodies to meet publicly) and the Right to Privacy Act. She introduced bills for child care, family planning and abortion, and in 1975 she introduced a bill in support of gay rights. Bella helped organize the Congressional Caucus on Women's Issues and the Women's Political Caucus, and was the chief strategist for the Democratic Women's Committee.

Senator Paul Wellstone was a two-term U.S. Senator from the state of Minnesota from 1990 to 2002 and member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Paul Wellstone had taught political science at Carleton College for two decades and had been involved in community organizing and various protest movements. Wellstone helped found the Organization for a Better Rice County, a group of single parents on welfare, which fought for public housing, affordable health care, improved public education, free school lunches, and a publicly-funded day care center. He also organized union members and farmers and was arrested for protesting farm foreclosures at a local bank. In 1974 Carleton College tried to dismiss him due to his political activities, but his students led a sit-in that eventually made Paul Wellstone the youngest professor at Carleton to ever get tenure. In 1990, Wellstone ran for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Rudy Boschwitz, narrowly winning the election. Sadly, Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash in 2002.

In Wellstone's book The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming the Compassionate AgendaThe Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming the Compassionate Agenda, Senator Wellstone had to learn the same lessons as Congresswoman Abzug about the intricacies of the legislative body that they were elected to. In the book, he writes:

It is amazing how much of what happens in the Senate is based on what Donald R. Matthews, in his pioneering book U.S. Senators and Their World, written in 1959, calls "norms and folkways", the unwritten rules that govern behavior. The Senate is a small body, and personal relationships are extremely important in it. It is fine to rock the boat, as I often do, but if people think you are a fraud or just a showboat, they will look for the opportunity to vote no every time your name is on an amendment, and then you are in big trouble. In the ideal situation, other believe in you even when they don't believe in your positions.

Senator Wellstone received valuable advice from Dale Bumpers, one that struck me as a person that frequently watches the Senate and House speeches on television. Wellstone writes:

Dale Bumpers, the experienced and colorful senator from Arkansas (and the best orator in the Senate), explained this to me the next day. "Paul," Bumpers said, "let me tell you something. You know all those speeches you've given on the Senate floor- they've been good. And every semator is delighted. Because they don't mean anything. Only when you know the rules, know your leverage, and know how to fight are you taken seriously. Now, you are meaner than a junkyard dog. Now you know the rules, and now you are taken seriously."

Another lesson that both Wellstone and Abzug learned is the importance of mobilizing citizens to issues of economic justice, health care, education and equal rights. Growing up with a brother who had suffered from a mental illness, Senator Wellstone worked hard to organize men and women with mental illnesses into a powerful lobbying force to enable Wellstone to pass the Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act. He worked with Mary and Al Kluesner and their organization SAVE, the Suicide Awarenes/ Voice of Education, to include a suicide prevention program amendment to the Children's Health Act of 2000. He also worked hard to visit and organize poor communities and farming communities in his state and elsewhere. He strongly believed that he had a responsibility to educate the public and to organize them to be a political force for change. He strongly believed that an organized grassroots force was the only thing that could push back against the powerful forces against progressive change, the big businesses that had the money to lobby politicians. A lesson the Wellstone drew from the health care reform debates of 1993, and one that is very applicable today, is that progressives need to communicate to the public and mobilize them to their cause. Wellstone wrote:

Moreover, progressives or liberals who advocated "medicine for all" legislation were dysfunctional. We talked to ourselves. I spoke at many pro-single payer gatherings around the country. I loved the people, especially the doctors (usually family practice doctors and pediatricians) and nurses who cared so much about their patients. But we never moved beyond a small family of fighters that, though right, never became much of a political force. Too many single-payer advocates assumed that proposing the correct solution to the problem would automatically set the legislative machinery into gear. They forgot the missing ingredient: power. We never organized a grassroots constituency powerful enough to successfully fight for the change.

The only way we could have beaten the health care industry would have been with dramatic and effective citizen politics.

Senator Ted Kennedy served as the Senator from Massachussetts from 1962 to 2009. He was the fourth longest serving senator in U.S. history, and he amassed a string of strong progressive legislative achievements for this country. He authored over 2,500 bills, of which 500 became law. During the 1960s, Kennedy fought for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1968 Fair Housing Act, and was the floor manager for the 1965 Immigration Act. In 1971 he passed legislation quadrupling cancer funds. In 1975 Kennedy sponsored the 1975 Education for All Handicapped People Act, and in 1980 he introduced the Civil Rights for Institutionalized Persons Act, whiched protected the constitutional rights of the elderly, the mentally ill, the disabled, and the incarcerated. In 1990, Kennedy cosponsored with Orrin Hatch the Ryan White CARE Act, which speeded funds for cities most hit by the AIDs epidemic. In 1990 Kennedy wrote the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibiting disability discrimination. In 1993 Kennedy co-authored the Family and Medical Leave Act, requiring businesses to provide unpaid leave for emergencies or births. In 1996 he cosponsored with Kansas Republican Senator Nancy Kassebaum the Kennedy-Kassebaum Act, which allowed employees to keep health insurance for a time after losing job. Kennedy helped President George Bush with the No Child Left Behind Act.

The key to Kennedy's legislative achievements was his ability to build coalitions and his ability to reach across the aisles to collaborate with Republicans on common causes. The book Good Ted, Bad Ted by Lester David, explains Kennedy's strategy for passing important legislation.

Kennedy is a superb legislator because he understands the inner workings of Congress the way a great football coach knows how and where to position his players and which plays are likely to succeed, which may fail.

Staff members explained his system: Before a single word of a contemplated measure is put on paper, Ted talks to legislators from both Houses, by phone or in person, and with other parties who have an interest in the issue, to obtain their views, pro and con. Then, after carefully noting where the thorny patches lie, Ted tailors the measures to sidestep them.

His goal is to win the backing of 70 percent of the members of both Houses. It is an important number since a two-thirds vote in the Senate and House can override a veto; the bill becomes immune to a presidential turndown. It also becomes filibuster-proof because two-thirds of the Senate and House can invoke the cloture rule which chokes off the endless speeches that can keep a measure from coming to a vote.

Discussing his legislative technique, Kennedy said, "If you're interested in being effective, it's important to build coalitions. You have to compromise to make progress."

In the book The Kennedy Legacy by Vincent Bzdek, Bzdek wrote more about Kennedy's legislative philosophy:

"If you can't get it all, increments," noted Feinberg, explaining Kennedy's legislative philosophy. "Incremental reform. He has confidence that once the incremental reforms are put in place, they will work. And people will come back for more. so he was always willing to bargain hard, make demands, work out the best good you could get short of the perfect."

It may be that Ted's own imperfections gave him a greater tolerance for the inevitability of imperfection, an appreciation of gray areas and the necessity of baby steps when walking towards the promised land. The lives he'd lost had increased, for him, the value of something, however bastardized, over nothing- a piece of the pie if you couldn't get the whole pie.

One of the things I've learned from both Abzug and Wellstone is the need for progressives to educate and organize ordinary citizens to push for progressive causes. In this current debate on health care reform, I think one of the reasons that the centrists are conceding so many things to the conservatives is that in August and September, conservative grassroots activists made a lot of noise in the town hall meetings with politicians and have been more effective than progressive activists in getting the public's attention. Because of this, these conservative activists have been able to define the terms of the health care debate and have given leverage to the Republicans in Congress. Matt Tiabbi wrote a scathing article in the September 3, 2009 edition of Rolling Stone magazine, and he made a good point in the last paragraph of his article. Tiabbi wrote:

Then again, some of the blame has to go to all of us. It's more than a little conspicuous that the same electorate that poured its heart out last year for the Hallmark-card story line of the Obama campaign has not been seen much in this health care debate. The handful of legislators - the Weiners, Kuciniches, Wydens, and Sanderses - who are fighting for something real should be doing so with armies at their back. Instead, all the noise is being made on the other side. Not so stupid after all - they, at least, understand that politics is a fight that does not end with the wearing of a T-shirt in November.

Tiabbi makes a good point. As much as I still like Obama, I have no illusions about his ability to make progressive change. He is what he is: a smart, cautious left-of-center politician who will only go as far left as the electorate lets him. If we want more progressive change it'll come from mobilizing the grassroots, and supporting progressive politicians who will introduce a more unfiltered progressive legislation. In the House, Dennis Kucinich introduced an amendment that allowed states the option of choosing a single payer system. In the Senate, progressive legislatures like Bernie Sanders, Barbara Boxer, Russel Feingold and Charles Schumer are fighting for a stronger reform bill. I think progressive legislators should be doing now what conservative activists have been effective doing: supporting progressive legislators and persuading centrist legislators of the rightness of our cause. The central message that I received from Barack Obama's campaign last year was that the power to enact change was in all of our hands. Obama will only be as progressive as we force him to be, as FDR was progressive because of the push of striking workers and JFK and LBJ were progressive because of the push of the civil rights activists. I think progressive politicians like Ted Kennedy, Paul Wellstone and Balla Abzug are important. But these progressive politicians derive their power from us and they are only as effective with strong grassroots support. In that same March 2009 issue of the Progressive, Zinn reiterates this point:

"Historically, government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, has failed it responsibilities, until forced to by direct action: sit-ins and Freedom Rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war.

Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which require direct action by concerned citizens."

If you enjoy this cartoon, take a look at these links for more of my political cartoons at Everyday Citizen:

Jasper's Day
Jasper Tackles Health Care
Jasper Protests the War
Jasper and the Economy
Jasper Sings a Protest Song
Jasper Meets a Poet
Jasper At A Detention Center
A Cartoon about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
A Cartoon about My Experience in an Evangelical Church
A Cartoon about Political Debate
A Cartoon On Gay Marriage