Thom Hartmann: Take Advantage of This Rare Moment

Take advantage of this rare moment

Dear Friend,

As 2010 gets underway, I have just finished my first year as a Board Member of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). So let me start this letter by stating how proud I am that PDA is one of the only active progressive groups that stayed true to its issue positions last year, even when the party leadership gave ground to “ConservaDems” like Joe Lieberman & Ben Nelson & Mary Landrieu.

PDA started 2009 fighting for single-payer healthcare for everyone, and despite all the compromising, all the fudging, all the cave-ins on Capitol Hill, PDA continues to battle to include in whatever health insurance bill is passed, the right of individual states to pass their own single-payer plans.

• If you would like to help pass single-payer healthcare at the state level, you can link up by selecting “Healthcare for all/Single Payer Issue Organizing Team,” here.
• And if you’d like to help sustain PDA’s efforts, join our “Change Makes Change” program, here.

PDA began the year pushing hard, as PDA has always done, for the U.S. to get serious about withdrawal from Iraq. In addition, PDA did not waver on Afghanistan, even when the Obama Administration unfortunately decided to increase the number of occupation troops there. In fact, PDA helped lead the fight to pass a resolution at the California State Democratic Party convention calling for the end of the Iraq War & the Afghanistan occupation--and plans to spend 2010 helping to pass similar resolutions at State Democratic conventions all across the nation.

• If you would like to help with PDA’s efforts to pass “Out of Iraq, Out of Afghanistan” resolutions at state party conventions, you can link up by selecting “End War & Occupation, Redirect Funding Issue Organizing Team,” here.
• And if you’d like to help finance those efforts, please join us in our “Change Makes Change” program, here.

One more example: Many progressive groups bought into the argument that any climate change bill is worth passing--even a flawed, compromised, weakened cap-and-trade bill which gives away billions in new offsets to energy corporations, and undercuts EPA’s regulatory control over carbon emissions, one of the best tools we have to fight global warming. PDA did not agree with that argument, preferring instead to fight for a solution, which might actually begin to address the climate change catastrophe.

• If you’d like to help with PDA’s climate change fight, select “Stop Global Warming Issue Organizing Team,” here.
• And please help us pay for our organizing, at “Change Makes Change”.

2010 will be another important year, as progressives do our best to maximize this rare moment of potential reform. We need to help progressive incumbents, defending those who fight for us, like Dennis Kucinich & Eric Massa & Donna Edwards & Russ Feingold. We need to boost progressive challengers. We need to be active in gubernatorial races, especially this year, when redistricting after the census will play a key political role in the coming years.

We need to be more visible this coming year, as more and more progressives come to understand--as PDA understood a year ago—that President Obama and the House & Senate leadership need to be flanked and pushed by the progressive grassroots, in order to create political space for real reforms.

PDA is not a huge bureaucracy. It’s not the biggest group around, or the most famous. But if you believe that an “inside/outside strategy” is our best chance to take advantage of this rare reform moment, and if you feel most comfortable with an activist organization that sticks to its principles even when the powerful begin to cave in, then you belong with PDA.

And I promise you--PDA will not waste your money—this is an organization that’s energetic, principled, and feisty, and gets a huge bang for the buck.

Your friend,
Thom Hartmann