Time for a Populist Revival!

You are not just a caucus of Congress, but also representatives of America's progressive movement. The people of that movement need to see you, hear you, talk to you, connect with you. The CPC has more punch and a greater potential than you realize -- not merely inside Congress, but especially outside. Your caucus can become the rallying point for the burgeoning grassroots forces of populism. By rallying the "outside," the CPC would geometrically increase its voice on the inside.

As you know from your work in your districts, there is no organizational center of the progressive movement. You could provide that. I don't mean any grandiose hierarchical structure, but a nationwide channel for connecting the movement's many components, amplifying its voice and increasing its reach. You could (and should) become this hub, not by holding a press conference or proclaiming that the CPC will take the lead, but by simply doing it. Here are a couple of ways:

One, start going to the countryside with a series of CPC hearings on the minimum wage, Citizens United, fracking, etc. As you know, a member of Congress is not that big a deal in your own town, but I guarantee that if groups of three or four of you held progressive congressional forums in places like Des Moines, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Brooklyn, Albuquerque and Spokane, you would fill the biggest hall in town with people eager to start mobilizing in a big, interconnected, progressive movement. Media coverage would be extensive in each place, and people would be energized by the mere fact that someone in power gives a damn about connecting with them and has bothered to come out to enlist them.

Two, help set up a progressive speakers network, so we routinely have outreach in cities, suburbs and towns, providing nationwide education and action on populist principles and causes. The nineteenth-century Populist movement had 40,000 "lecturers" in its speakers program, constantly going directly into communities to spread the word. We don't have 40 now who are out there regularly. But we do have plenty of good speakers, each of whom could commit to doing maybe a half-dozen local events a year, with community groups and social media generating content and crowds. I can tell you from experience that these grassroots speaking events, combined with a bit of music and some libations to turn them festive and lubricate the movement, are not only enlightening and invigorating for the audience, but for the speakers as well.

My overall point is that to have a mass movement, we have to go to the masses. I'll leave you with this thought, which I stole from the advertising pitch of a small moving company that was in my town of Austin, Texas, back in the '70s. This company was really just a couple of good ol' boys (named Skeeter and Booger, as I recall) with a truck, but they had a winning ad in the Yellow Pages that said, "If we can get it loose, we can move it."

There's our challenge: get the grassroots loose, and the people themselves will move America forward to a bright populist future.
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Read Next: In "How to Build an Anti-Poverty Movement, From the Grassroots Up," Greg Kaufmann presents 10 groups that are laying the foundation for an economic justice revival.