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    Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era
    Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era
    Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era
    Ebook145 pages1 hour

    Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era

    By James Larnder, Nathaniel Loewentheil and Robert Kuttner

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    About this ebook

    Times are changing. Instead of obsessing about what they’re against, progressives have begun to think about what they’re for—to prepare once again to play their role as agents of bold ideas and political and social transformation. Finding new confidence and imagination, they have begun to renew their political capital. The essays in this volume draw on that new store of capital to sketch the outlines of a progressive agenda for 21st-century America. Authors such as Van Jones, Dean Baker, Andrea Batista Schlesinger and Miles Rapoport cover a wide array of topics and, in their policy recommendations, present a few contrasting ideas. But all these essays reflect a belief in the need for fundamental change. The problems discussed here cannot be solved, the authors agree, through charity, through volunteerism, or even by well-meaning local and state governments, though surely all have a role. The contributors make the case for the kind of concerted action that can only come through the agency of our national government. They argue that we need programs that serve our national and international needs and encourage faith in our public institutions, creating a positive cycle of political change and space for further reform. There are many good reasons to be worried at this critical moment in history. To navigate these troubled times, we need a rare combination of ideas, action, resolve, and leadership to meet the challenges that lie before us. Thinking Big is an indispensable piece of that puzzle, arriving just when it’s most needed. With a foreword by Robert Kuttner, author of Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency. The Progressive Ideas Network is an alliance of multi-issue think tanks and activist organizations working together to amplify the power of ideas in advancing today’s progressive movement.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJan 15, 2009
    ISBN9781609944612
    Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era

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      Book preview

      Thinking Big - James Larnder

      Thinking Big

      Thinking Big

      Progressive Ideas

      for a New Era

      The Progressive Ideas Network

      James Lardner and

      Nathaniel Loewentheil, Editors

      Foreword by Robert Kuttner

      9781605092782_0004_001

      Copyright © 2009 by the Progressive Ideas Network

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

      Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

      235 Montgomery Street, Suite 650

      San Francisco, California 94104-2916

      Tel: (415) 288-0260, Fax: (415) 362-2512

      www.bkconnection.com

      Ordering information for print editions

      Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the Berrett-Koehler address above.

      Individual sales. Berrett-Koehler publications are available through most bookstores. They can also be ordered directly from Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626; www.bkconnection.com

      Orders for college textbook/course adoption use. Please contact Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626.

      Orders by U.S. trade bookstores and wholesalers. Please contact Ingram Publisher Services, Tel: (800) 509-4887; Fax: (800) 838-1149; E-mail: customer.service@ingrampublisherservices .com; or visit www.ingrampublisherservices.com/Ordering for details about electronic ordering.

      Berrett-Koehler and the BK logo are registered trademarks of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

      First Edition

      Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-60509-279-9

      PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-60509-278-2

      IDPF ISBN: 978-1-60994-461-2

      2009-1

      Production Management: Michael Bass Associates

      Text design: Andrea Reider

      Cover design: Randi Hazen

      Preface

      Stephanie Robinson and Barry Kendall, cochairs, Progressive Ideas Network

      IDEAS hold the unique potential to unify and empower today’s progressive movement, bringing together our leaders, grassroots advocates, communications networks, and supporters around shared values. Recognizing this, leaders of progressive think tanks and activist organizations from across the country met in December 2007. We gathered to look beyond the short-term interests of our individual institutions to envision how, together, we could work more effectively on behalf of our common goals. We emerged with a commitment to form an alliance—the Progressive Ideas Network—that would provide opportunities for collaboration and coordinated action, offer service and training to its members, and create a forum for crafting long-term strategies and ideas.

      The members of the Progressive Ideas Network believe in the possibilities for bold, transformational change in American society, and our business is to generate the ideas and policies needed to create that change. Our organizations contain hundreds of original thinkers in progressive politics, and our networks reach thousands of talented activists who fight every day for the rights and well-being of millions of Americans. We have come together at this auspicious moment to lay out a course for genuine progress in the government and governance of our country and all its people.

      The essays in Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era present three elements of change: long-term vision, fundamental values, and prescriptions for immediate action. The leaders who authored these essays speak for and with the unheard voices in our society, and the ideas contained here are born out of service to them. We call for all Americans to build tomorrow’s society together, with creativity, wisdom, morality, ethics, and love—and with no more hidden costs, to us or to our children.

      We would like to thank all of the people who made this project possible. The steering committee members dedicated countless hours to creating a vision and direction for the project. Special thanks are owed to Deepak Bhargava, Jim Harkness, Larry Mishel, Miles Rapoport, and Andrea Batista Schlesinger. Seth Borgos played an especially important role in this process. Our editors, Jim Lardner and Nate Loewentheil, worked with dedication, patience, and incredible editorial skill. Thanks to Caitlin Howarth for designing an earlier version of this project. Working with the Berrett-Koehler team has been a true pleasure; we are very grateful for their backing and guidance. Finally, we would like to thank the following foundations for their generous support of the Progressive Ideas Network: the Wallace Global Fund, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Open Society Institute, Marguerite Casey Foundation, A. H. Zeppa Family Foundation, and Stoneman Family Foundation.

      The year 2009 can mark the start of a new progressive era in the United States; in that spirit, we offer these ideas to you. We invite you to share your responses at www.thinkingbigthebook.com and to contribute your ideas for positive change. We’re looking forward to the years of shared conversation, decision making, hard work, and true progress that lie before us.

      Authors

      Stephanie Robinson is the president and CEO of The Jamestown Project, a national think tank focusing on democracy. She is a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School and former chief counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Robinson is a nationally recognized expert on issues relating to social policy, women, race, family, and electoral politics. She was featured as one of the Thirty Young Leaders of the Future in Ebony magazine and was profiled in the book As I Am: Young African American Women in a Critical Age.

      Barry Kendall is the executive director of the Commonweal Institute, a think tank focused on building the progressive movement through effective idea marketing and coordinated action. Holding a doctorate from Stanford University, Kendall is an expert on the role of religion in American culture and politics. He is a member of the Bay Area Advisory Board of the New Leaders Council and an adviser to Netroots Nation.

      Foreword

      Robert Kuttner

      ACRISIS is also an opportunity. The financial collapse has not only pushed America into a deep recession. It has also discredited the dominant right-wing ideology that claims markets can do no wrong and that we’re all on our own. And the need to prevent a crash from becoming a second great depression allows us to think big. Large-scale social investment suddenly becomes politically possible because it is economically urgent. When Congress, in three weeks, can find $700 billion for Wall Street, it no longer seems utopian to ask, Where is that kind of money for the rest of America?

      For the past three decades, America has become a more precarious place for most of its citizens. Government has done less, when it should have done more. As corporations have ceased to provide reliable jobs, wages, health care, or retirement security, government has failed to step into the vacuum. As women as well as men have joined the workforce in large numbers, government policy has failed to address the needs of children and families. As carbon-based energy has become less reliable and more of a menace to the planet, government has failed to help develop alternatives. And as government has defaulted on these and other pressing challenges, people have tended to give up on the promise of democracy.

      This hopeful book spells out the things that America should have been doing for the past three decades—initiatives that now become imperative in a crisis. It is long overdue that these ideas gain a hearing and become part of the accomplishments of the new administration.

      The best thing about Thinking Big is the way it connects the dots. Larry Mishel and Nancy Cleeland discuss how government is indispensable to redeeming an economy of shared prosperity. If government can pull America back from the brink of depression, the same public investment so urgently needed for macroeconomic purposes can also make the economy fairer and more secure. Nathaniel Loewentheil and Vera Eidelman add a strong case for social investments of all kinds—human capital as well as physical capital.

      Miles Rapoport and Stuart Comstock-Gay go on to connect the dots between restored hope in government’s ability to change American life for the better and the renewal of American democracy. Only if democracy is strong can we expect our government to deliver. And only if government delivers can it reclaim popular faith in our common enterprise as Americans. The challenge entails repairing the mechanics of American democracy—from voting machines to election day registration— but it also requires redeeming the aspirations of democracy and once again engaging ordinary Americans in the enterprise of using the tools of democracy to make a constructive difference.

      Ultimately, as Deepak Bhargava and Seth Borgos write, this enterprise is about values. In recent years, the political Right has claimed a monopoly on values. But democracy is also a value. Community is a value. And the idea that all people should have a decent life, free from discrimination and exclusion, is also a value. As the false utopian ideal of radical individualism has failed us once again, it’s clear that most Americans share the value of community and mutual responsibility.

      The conservative collapse is not only on the economic

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