Coop Scoop: The How to Organize During the Biden Administration Edition (with Video)

March 5: Local or national? Online or in the streets?

March 5, 2021

Issue #66

By Marc Cooper

With most of us bustling around to search out available vaccine and trying to survive this pandemic you might not have noticed that the Democratic-controlled House over the last week passed some of the most important reform legislation in recent history.

Thumbs went up for The Equality Act, that would fold anti-LGBTQ discrimination into the existing Civil Rights Act. Also approved was the crucial George Floyd Policing Act that would strip police of their “qualified immunity” among other critical reforms including a ban on chokeholds.

And on Wednesday night, on a narrow party line vote, the House green-lighted the all-important omnibus bill known as H.R. 1 that would effectively counter the 250 plus voter suppression proposals now being pushed by Republicans in 41 states. It would also put an end to partisan gerrymandering, and its measures would significantly clean up our rickety election system. It’s probably the most important small-d-democratic measure that Congress has considered since the voting rights and civil rights acts of the 1960’s.

Moreover, there’s a lot more reform legislation in the pipeline gushing toward the House rather immediately: massive immigration reform, significant climate change measures, health care expansion, and that nebulous thing called infrastructure (just look at the catastrophes this past week in Texas and Mississippi to measure what the urgency is on this matter). And there’s that 800-pound gorilla of the unfinished Minimum Wage raise still confounding and dividing Democrats.

Taken together, these are the primary reasons that 84 million Americans cast a vote for Joe Biden. Most of these reforms have huge popular support — including among a majority or a significant minority of Republican voters. So with that in mind and with the Democrats controlling both houses of Congress and the White House, this should all be a slam dunk, right?

Wrong. NONE of these measures will pass the Senate where the Democrats need a minimum of ten GOP votes that simply do not exist. Let me repeat: none of these measures will pass the Senate (unless they are first disfigured and maimed by GOP “bi-partisanship.” The shop-worn and historically racist filibuster will be used by the Republicans as a steel barrier against any of this being approved.

Indeed, the Republicans, all 50 of them, are voting no on the crucial $1.9 trillion COVID relief package in spite of its 75-80% approval rating from voters. Worse, the jackass senator from Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, has used his Senatorial privilege to force the clerks into reading out loud the entire 700 page bill that will have taken up 10 hours or so. Johnson has no problem stating that his intention is merely to inflict pain on the Democrats and bog things down, even though millions of Americans are anticipating its passage and receipt of those $1400 checks. This affair tells you exactly the amount of Republican cooperation to be had even on the most pressing and arguably non-partisan of reform legislation…zilch.

Those $1400 checks, by the way, will now go to 15 million fewer Americans last time, thanks to the narrowing of the eligibility window that Biden capitulated to in order to placate the reactionary Democratic Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia. Because the Dems are using the very limited and rule-bound “reconciliation” process for this COVD bill, they only need the 50 votes of all Democratic senators plus the tie-breaking vote of VP Kamala Harris to pass the measure, meaning that someone like Manchin could sink the entire enterprise if he were to vote no.

All of this as way of introduction to the meat of this edition. It seems dead obvious that voters in and out of the Democratic Party are going to have to exercise their own power if we want any of this to materialize. The filibuster has to be nuked or gutted to pass anything beyond this COVID package. And, somehow, enough pressure has to be brought to bear on the three or 4 conservative Democrats — led by Manchin— who weaken the reliability of the on-paper Democratic Senate majority.

The tough question before us is how do we exercise that power? If you are not asking that question, slap yourself and wake up. Without increased popular pressure and organization, almost every reform that the 84 million voted for will be a dead letter.

So, do we join up with Move On or Indivisible and rely mostly on “clicktivism?” Do we take direct action and perform civil disobedience in the streets? Do we organize locally or nationally or somehow link both together? Do we join DSA?

These are challenging issues and those of us on the Left have historically excelled in denouncing what we don’t like and have pretty much failed at exerting real political influence about things we do like.

For some wise answers to this question, I have turned to my longtime friend, my former editor at The Nation, and one of the smartest people I know when it comes to sorting out these issues of organizing and mobilizing in the most strategic way.

I spoke with Micah Sifry who was, in fact, my editor at The Nation way back when, co-founder and former president of New York’s Civic Hall, author of several books, and is currently the publisher of the twice-weekly newsletter, The Connector (which you should sign up for right here).

I am very pleased to present to you this one hour talk with Micah conducted earlier this week. Listen up as he touches on all aspects of current political organizing efforts by those who want real change and are serious about achieving it (absent all dogmas and mythology).

Here’s my interview with Micah.

You can subscribe to Micah’s newsletter here.

Note: I am making this post public and therefore available to non-paying subscribers. In the future (beginning next week) any original video will go only to paying subscribers while non-paying might get only a short excerpt. So this is good time to upgrade your sub to paying.

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