Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T16:36:49.889Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Identities and Legislative Agendas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2015

Michael T. Heaney
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Fabio Rojas
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington
Get access

Summary

Iraq is like many issues that progressives work on in the sense that you have a lot of organizations outside of Congress that are trying to change US policy. So, part of the challenge, frankly, is to connect like-minded members in Congress with the growing opposition around the country.… It requires, first of all, getting the progressives inside Congress better organized to advance their agenda and, equally important, that has to be organically connected to the movement outside of Congress.… We follow what we call the “inside-outside strategy,” which guides us in efficiently organizing against Bush's policy inside Congress. Then, we link up with whatever coalitions exist outside of Congress.

Bill Goold, executive director of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (Goold 2008)

A fundamental question for the party in the street is how to connect with other parts of the party, especially the party in government. One strategy that its adherents use – as Bill Goold explains in the opening quote – is to simultaneously work inside and outside political institutions, such as Congress. Their objective is to use the power of those institutions to accomplish some of the goals of the movement (Weldon 2011). These efforts are facilitated by a handful of leaders who are both a part of the party in the street and the party in government. Members of Congress who regularly speak at movement rallies and conferences – such as Representative John Conyers Jr., pictured in Figure 6.1 in front of a banner reading “Healthcare Not Warfare” – might be counted as belonging to this group. For the antiwar movement after 9/11, we also think of Representatives Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee, Jim McGovern, Maxine Waters, and Lynn Woolsey as having filled this niche. Other members of Congress may straddle the fuzzy boundary (which we describe in Chapter 1) between the party in the street and the mainstream political party. Yet the vast majority of members of Congress do not fully embrace the sentiments of the party in the street, even if they do sympathize with some of its goals. A significant challenge for the movement is to recruit these potential supporters to promote the movement's agenda.

Type
Chapter
Information
Party in the Street
The Antiwar Movement and the Democratic Party after 9/11
, pp. 173 - 204
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×