Progressives should take a page from the inside-outside strategy embraced-- [View all]

--by the far-right movement.

http://www.thenation.com/article/its-time-for-a-tea-party-of-the-left/

For progressives, the biggest lesson to be learned from the Tea Party’s playbook is that they don’t work for the Republicans—they make the Republicans work for them. Bernie has already begun to do the same with the Democrats, and his primary race should encourage others to challenge establishment Democrats from the left. The progressive formation that has perhaps made the most headway in this regard is the one I work for: the Working Families Party. The WFP is a coalition of community-organizing groups and labor unions that push progressive policies, like paid sick leave, and help elect a new generation of leaders on the state and local level. While we’re proud of what we’ve built, we’re a long way from the ideological and electoral power that the Tea Party exercises. The WFP has figured out how to maneuver inside and outside the two-party system without falling prey to the usual failures of third parties, and is now organizing in 11 states. But the Tea Party has taken over Congress, and done so without an institutionalized party apparatus. Neither the WFP nor a prior, important effort to launch a Tea Party of the left—Rebuild the Dream—have generated the kind of momentum and mass participation of the Tea Party.

? Decentralized movements like Occupy and Black Lives Matter have similarly enabled mass participation among millennials by giving away ownership of the movement brand for anyone to run with. But more established progressive institutions have been reluctant to turn over the keys to party-building and electoral organizing to a mass base.

While no existing progressive organization has the capacity to adequately absorb and engage the base that has coalesced around Sanders, his supporters could get behind the new formations that will inevitably emerge. None of the existing organizations could sustainably fund the number of organizers to manage and direct a volunteer base of this magnitude–but more importantly, many of the millennials that are driving the Sanders campaign wouldn’t join a traditional organizational structure; it’s not what they are looking for. They are looking for channels that allow them to unleash their creativity and passion through self-organization and co-creation.

? Such a party would limit itself if it resonated only with a small set of constituencies. It requires not a laundry list of grievances and identities but a new collective identity and compelling narrative—an “us”—that is much greater than the sum of its parts. It means conveying a new sense of “the people” not solely on the basis of shared suffering but through a shared will to craft their own democratic destiny. It must give its base a real sense that they are the creators of the path toward a democracy that works toward freedom and justice for all Americans against those in our country who have in every era stood by the belief that freedom and justice were only meant for a select few.