Episode 7: Electoral Strategies with Maurice Mitchell

Many progressives are cynical about electoral politics. But our guest today explains why engaging in electoral politics is crucial for building the kind of society we want. Maurice Mitchell is the National Director of the Working Families Party, a savvy, independent political organization that has given progressives greater voice and leverage in cities and states around the country, most notably by taking advantage of fusion voting. Maurice describes his own trajectory, from being a local organizer to a leader in the Movement for Black Lives, who ultimately came to see movements alone as limited without the organizing force that a political party provides.

He offers an insightful analysis of our present conjuncture, shaped by a ruthless right committed to minority rule through the courts, decades of neoliberalism, and an information environment that breeds atomization and loneliness. As neoliberalism’s legitimacy crumbles, and the post-neoliberal, authoritarian right speaks to popular concerns, Maurice argues that WFP’s strategy of winning elections to achieve governing power and engaging everyday people in the work of governance offers a hopeful path forward.

Maurice concludes by reflecting on the questions that fill him with the same excitement he had as a young organizer: “What are you building? Who are you choosing to be? And who are you choosing to be with?”

Links:

Maurice’s 2022 highly influential essay “Building Resilient Organizations” is a must-read for everyone in progressive politics. And now, there’s a workbook, too.

We mentioned Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice, a terrific new training institute at CUNY for early- and mid-career organizers where Maurice has been a regular guest instructor.

Maurice’s argument about the present conjuncture compliments one made by Shahrzad Shams, Deepak Bhargava, and Harry W. Hanbury in a new report for the Roosevelt Institute: The Cultural Contradictions of Neoliberalism: The Longing for an Alternative Order and the Future of Multiracial Democracy in an Age of Authoritarianism

In the past two decades, progressives have gotten far more savvy at the strategy we call “narrative shift,” learning how to challenge the dominant story and change the common sense on key issues. For example, on same-sex marriage, activists drove a sea change in public sentiment — from 27% support in 1996 to 71% in 2023. And research shows that Occupy Wall Street, which some criticized as a “blip,” was, as one organizer put it, actually a “spark” that ignited mass movements for economic justice, from the Fight for $15 and a Union to the campaigns of Bernie Sanders, and changed how everyday people think about economic inequality. In this episode, we hear from two experts about how to achieve narrative shifts.

As co-founder and former head of United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country, Cristina Jimenez Moreta, was instrumental in crafting a narrative of immigrant pride, dignity, and belonging that helped bring about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), providing protection against deportation for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants. Cristina is now a Distinguished Lecturer at CUNY and co-chair of Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice, where she mentors young and emerging leaders and encourages them to think through hard questions like how to make the most of upsurge moments like the Movement for Black Lives, how to harness the power of new technologies like AI, and how to rethink our organizing models to build a bigger “we.”

Our next guest is Alan Jenkins, a civil rights lawyer and co-founder of The Opportunity Agenda, an organization devoted to narrative shift strategies. Now a Harvard Law professor, Alan has co-authored the 1/6 comic book series, which imagines what might have happened if the MAGA insurrection had succeeded. Alan unpacks the differences between messaging, framing, and narrative shifts, and gives examples of how conservatives and progressives have succeeded in changing the terms of debates. In a wide-ranging conversation, he considers how far we’ve come since Ronald Reagan suggested we “open the border both ways,” how grassroots activists at the 2008 Heartland Presidential Forum in Iowa steered candidate Obama toward a rhetoric of “community values,” and how comic books and interventions in popular culture can help foster the kinds of conversations our troubled nation needs.

Did Occupy Wall Street Make a Difference?, by Ruth Milkman, Stephanie Luce, and Penny Lewis, The Nation, October 4/11, 2021

Changing the Subject: A Bottom-Up Account of Occupy Wall Street in New York City, by Ruth Milkman, Stephanie Luce, and Penny Lewis, January 2013

In this episode, we explore the strategy of disruption and talk with one of its leading theorists and practitioners, the legendary scholar and activist Frances Fox Piven. Stephanie and Deepak begin by distinguishing protest from disruption, two types of action that are often confused. They consider famous instances of disruption, like the mass actions on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation that blocked the Dakota Access Pipeline, and lesser-known ones, like the 1975 “Women’s Day Off” that helped win equal rights for women in Iceland. They also reflect on how overdogs use disruption, citing the “Brooks Brothers Riot,” a protest by GOP operatives that may have tipped the 2000 election and presaged the insurrection of January 6th, 2021. Then, in a wide-ranging interview, Frances Fox Piven argues that “the most important achievement of elites is to persuade people that they don’t have power.” But, she explains, ordinary people in complex societies have enormous “potential power,” the power to disrupt by stopping work, breaking the law, or simply refusing to cooperate. Invoking a chapter of history she and her late husband, Richard Coward, helped write, Piven recalls the Welfare Rights Movement, when poor women of color used their disruptive power to get benefits they had been denied and hugely increased the amount of money spent of welfare in the U.S. Frances, Deepak, and Stephanie also discuss the potential for using disruptive power today, the ways that too much organization can stifle movements, and the essential role of exuberance, ecstasy, and even “sexuality” in movement politics.