Progressive Democrats of NC Annual Meeting

Progressive Democrats of NC held their annual meeting in Greensboro this past weekend. Here is my report on the meeting. I always learn something about progressive issues in the state of NC from these meetings.

FRIDAY

Friday evening started with introductions which included what organizations people are working for or working with. Across NC, many folks have various talents and different interests in various progressive issues. We then had dinner combined with bylaw revisions and election of officers. Pete MacDowell gave a brief synopsis of development of Progressive Democrats in NC (the organization PDNC started in June 2004). He talked about the H K on J movement, and how Hispanic rights and gay rights have made some progress in our state.

Pete said that the Obama victory lead us out of the dark tunnel of the Bush years into incredibly difficult economic times. Pete did not feel that Obama or Purdue can do this alone – he stressed need to continue to work on people’s agenda via the H K on J organizations. Pete talked about Delmas Parker’s principles and about the need to apply them to NC Democratic Party. He talked about the need for transparency on money flowing to Democratic candidates in NC. He also said that we need to do away with gerrymandering that results in less than half of the NC House seats being contested. This results in 15 to 18 of the districts (which are contested) getting large amounts of money pouring in.

Some concerns mentions are growing the grassroots, engaging Obama supporters, how to get the party platform and resolutions transformed into legislative actions, and concern that young adults were not part of PDNC.

Isaac Coleman talked about the “Campaign for Change” needed for this organization, and that we need to stop stressing “Democrats” and start focusing on change – the kind of change that Obama promoted. Someone pointed out that issues of re-districting (and other issues mentioned) are not that interesting to young adults. Another participant talked about the Military Commissions Act, Patriot Act, Bankruptcy Act, and how we need to get back to the “rule of law”. He felt that the issue of impeachment is where the Democratic party really fell down and became complicit in the crimes of the Bush administration.

Tim Carpenter, Director of Progressive Democrats of America, said that PDA is growing because the Democratic Party threw Kucinich and Dean under the bus and many people see the Democratic Party as corrupt. He said there are 72 members of the Progressive Caucus in the US House of Representatives, and a couple of them are on PDA’s board of directors. Tim talked about street heat and how that needs to be changed into heat inside the halls of Congress. He talked about the DCCC and how PDA went up against those folks.

H K on J march will be on February 14, 2009. That is the time for all the progressives in the state to come together to promote the 14 human rights positions that this organization supports. Tim felt that this is when we need to promote and work on a single payer health care (House bill 676) and the “Healthcare not Warfare” promotion. Tim will return for the H K on J march and will bring flyers for this promotion in order to get citizens of NC to pressure their Congress members to be co-signers on this bill.

SATURDAY

I arrived a bit late, due to a wrong turn on the unfamiliar streets, but I did arrive in time to hear Dr. Michael Schwalbe’s talk on “The Meaning of the Election and New Tasks for the Progressive Movement”. And once again, PDNC had an outstanding speaker at it’s annual meeting (and there were a couple more beside Dr. Schwalbe). Dr. Schwalbe is a Professor of Sociology at NC State. He spoke about successful social organizing, and said that social movements do not thrive on public events alone – there needs to be a core of folks doing the grunt work. He talked about ten points of social movements, and – sorry – I did not catch all ten points. But here are a few I did catch:

-we need to act collectively to enact change

-social movements need to raise costs of continuing with the same conditions

-triggering events will often set off a movement, and he said that we often don’t realize what was a triggering event until later. It is possible that the severe financial problems that we are facing, or the Obama campaign itself, will turn out to be a triggering event.

Dr. Schwalbe spoke about the health policies of Obama and how it is not getting rid of the profit motive. He also spoke about how mass protests are managed today versus the way they were managed in the 1930’s or even the 1960’s. After his speech, I asked Dr. Schwalbe to write up an article on his ten points of social movements and publish them on Common Dreams or PDNC blog. He published an article “You Might Be A Progressive If….” on Common Dreams earlier this year. His most recent book is Rigging the Game: How Inequality Is Reproduced in Everyday Life (Oxford, 2008).

The next speaker was Elaine Mejia, who is the Director of the NC Budget and Tax Center at the NC Justice Center. She spoke on “The Economic Crisis for North Carolina”. She said that the recent recovery of the economy (the last seven years) has not helped most people – income has not gone up, jobs have decreased, and income disparity has increased. Therefore, most NC families are not ready to face this new recession. The poverty rate has gone up and health insurance coverage has gone down (17.2% of NC has no health insurance). In the 1990’s the job market was growing, and income equality went slightly down. She said this was due to federal trade policies, tax policies, and federal fiscal policies. During this time, corporate profits went up.

Unemployment is now at 7% in NC, which is the highest it has been in 18 years. Ms. Mejia said that their center looks at under-employment, which is now at 12.5% in NC, with 20% of that group having under-employment for more than six months. She recommended putting money into transportation, increasing the earned income credit and increasing the minimum wage. She said that NC now has $800 million dollars in emergency funds – which is what Hurricane Floyd cost us. Their website is www.ncjustice.org. You can sign up for legislative alerts there.

We had a session where we broke into small groups and held discussions on what to do next. My small group only had some general ideas, such as better organization and getting more involved and more visibility for H K on J march (more on that later).

After a great lunch, Tim Carpenter of Progressive Democrats of America was the next outstanding speaker. He talked about the beginnings and evolution of the progressive movement, and mentioned the Healthcare not Warfare campaign. He said we spent $120 million in Iraq since this morning, and this money could be better spent on meeting human needs here at home. (And beyond the financial cost of the war on Iraq, there is the human cost of hundreds of thousands of lives lost and millions of lives ruined.) Tim talked about how Obama is about “change” but the question is ‘what kind of change do we want to see?’ He said that Obama has met with Senator Kennedy for health care plan discussions. Tim said that in Massachusetts, they did not get universal health care but instead got a low cost health insurance program. It is not “single-payer”.

Tim encouraged people to challenge incumbents in primaries, and that PDA does support progressive running for office on the federal level. He also mentioned “War Made Easy” movie and that the producer would be on C-Span on Sunday. PDA is promoting Raul Grijalva for Secretary of the Interior. There is information on him at the PDA website and a link on the PDA website that will take you straight to the Obama feedback website. Right now, we do not have a single progressive in Obama’s cabinet.

The next speaker was Dr. Nolo Martinez of the Center for New North Carolinians at UNC-G. His talk was on “The Immigration Crack Down Crisis and the New Civil Rights Struggle”. He said that in NC, not one single aspect of our lives is not impacted by immigrants. We have the fastest growing Latino population in the country. Some NC farmers are organizing against anti-immigration efforts because those immigrants work for them. Current NC law (enacted in the 1920’s) says that you need ten full time year round employees in order for workman’s compensation laws to kick in. If the number is less than ten, then there is no coverage for employees for workman’s compensation. Dr. Martinez told the story of a NC librarian who was literally taken from her car and deported for a driver’s license violation. She had her three children in the car with her. The librarian was sent back to a country where she has not lived since she was two years old. Obviously, this is both immoral and ridiculous, since she was not a criminal or a threat to our community.

Dr. Marinez said that immigration reform does not include just Latinos, and that immigration is the fabric of our country. He stressed that we need to stop hate speech and give NC kids who are immigrants the ability to attend higher education courses with in-state tuition. He hopes that Obama will put an immediate stop to the raids on immigrants. He felt that immigrants need more connection and collaboration with African-American groups, since Latinos cannot stand alone.

The next speaker was Dr. Jarvis Hall, who spoke on the H K on J march. This will be held on J Street in Raleigh on February 14, 2009. H stands for ‘historic’ and K stands for ‘thousands’. J stands for ‘J Street’. This event is organized under the NC NAACP, and they have a 14 point agenda. Dr. Hall said that they have written up and proposed legislation on all 14 points. They have a total of 83 legislative items in Raleigh, but that a lot of these items did not make it out of committee, and 56% of the action items did not receive full consideration in legislature. The report card is on the website for H K on J.

The H K on J march is promoted as “a movement – not a moment” and this year will be the third annual march on the NC State House. Dr. Hall mentioned how some of our legislators did some wonderful things – like Rep. Pricy Harrison. Rep. Harrison spoke for a minute at this point and said that she did not care about getting re-elected – she cared about doing the right thing. She said that when she promoted legislation that was fair to undocumented immigrants (I think she was referring to legislation on in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants, but I am not sure.) she got hundreds of hate mail, emails, and phone calls. A lot of them were from out of town. Dr. Hall ended by saying that we need to apply street heat not only in downtown Raleigh, but in our home towns also.

Dan Besse, who was the endorsed candidate for Lt. Governor by PDNC, spoke on the primary race earlier in the year and about how much was spent. Hampton Dilllinger spent $1.2 million, Walter Dalton spent $1.4 million, and the other candidates spent between $50,000 to $100,000. Walter Dalton won the primary for Lt. Governor. A friend of mine turned to me after these numbers came out and said that it is ridiculous that we spend so much money on a campaign when there are so many hurting people here in NC. Mr. Besse also had information on what campaign tactics worked best.

The final panel discussion was started, and the members were Delmas Parker, Kevin Smith, Ricardo Velasquez, Danni Montgomery, Luke Hyde, and David Parker (no relation to Delmas Parker).

Delmas has served as 2^nd vice chair of the NC Democratic Party (NCDP) for several years and has been with the Progressive Democrats since the beginning. Mr. Smith is the president of the African American Caucus of the NCDP. Mr. Velasquez is the president of the Hispanic Caucus of the NCDP. Ms. Montgomery is the 1^st vice chair of the NCDP, and is running for the position of chair. Mr. Hyde is the chair of the 11^th Congressional District for the NCDP. Mr. Hyde is running for chair of the NCDP.

Delmas talked about his proposed “Principles for the NC Democratic Party” which was endorsed by the executive committee of the Progressive Democrats of NC. Some of those principles include building the party from the precinct up, allowing issues to come from the grassroots, and becoming an open and transparent in regards to fundraising by posting all the information online. Another great idea he had is to hold virtual State Executive Committee meetings and our conventions via distance learning. Our state is quite wide, and it is difficult for the remote counties to stay tuned in to the main NC Democratic Party.

Delmas described three parties inside the Democratic Party in NC: there are regular grassroots members represented by more than 700 people on the State Executive Committee, the legislative party and the party of the governor. He said that Jerry Meek was elected in spite of the support for the other candidate from all the high level Democrats in the state with the exception of the Insurance Commissioner Jim Long. Delmas also talked about how the resolutions passed by the NC Democratic Party need to be acted on by our legislature and elected officials, and not die on the NCDP website. (This has been a big factor in my disillusionment of the NCDP and the national Democratic Party. It seems the grassroots has some very good ideas, which they work hard to pass as resolutions, and then the resolutions get totally ignored.)

Delmas went on to say that we need campaign finance reform – at this time, anyone can donate any amount to the Democratic Party and the leaders of the state house and state senate can decide who to give the money to – with no limits and no accountability.

The panel was finished by candidates for the next Chair of the Democratic Party speaking about their plans and goals for the NCDP. I was taken back by Mr. Hyde describing Rep. Shuler as a moderate, when he is pretty conservative. I think that this error comes from the mistaken idea that Bush & Cheney and their administration are “conservative” when actually they are war-mongering, fiscally irresponsible fascists. Of course, this is part of the national delusion. I have to say that Ms. Montgomery impressed me more with her dedication to working for the party and for her ideas about where the party needs to go in the future.

It was a great meeting, and many thanks to the organizers for putting this together.