All that demands a coordinated network of independent grassroots organizations and at least one true progressive political party completely free of all corporate influence.
At the same time, converting the historic Democratic Party to an organ of real social and ecological change remains essential. The 2016 Sandernista campaign made the party bend. In 2018, some real progressives poured through the cracks in its corporate wall.
The midterm elections also showed that a real leap forward has no room for a circular firing squad. The agreement to disagree, and work both sides of the road at once an inside/outside strategy is vital to victory.
Those who want to work on the outside should by all means do so. Those who can maintain their principles while working inside the party must also do what needs to be done.
Nobody is going to be 100% pure. Nobody can rightfully claim to have all the answers.
But we do know this:
By and large, the cultural/identity revolution the Baby Boomers lit in the 1960s has hugely succeeded. America is far from entirely remade. But in terms of diversity, we're now a very new nation in many important ways (partly as witnessed in the faces of this new Congress) since Jack Kennedy won the 1960 election, essentially with black votes. He rightly proclaimed the coming to power of a new generation, then didn't live to see its hopes bashed in the imperial futility of global conquest ... or its victories in making this a far more diverse and open society than the one that killed him.
Six decades later, the Millennials must now lead and win the economic, anti-imperial and ecological battles we need to survive.
The Solartopian conversion must be funded not by new taxes, but with money re-directed (as suggested by Code Pink and others) from the imperial military budget. It must happen as soon as humanly possible.
In the Age of Trump, the middle ground is gone.
So while we use independent organizing to make the hard place of what we stand for irreducibly clear, the rock of inside organizing must crack open and transform the Democratic Party.
That won't be easy. But it should be fun. And our survival depends on it.
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