Bill Moyer: The Leaders and Ideas to Run the Country

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/25/2074/

The Leaders and Ideas to Run the Country
by Bill Moyer

Believe it or not, progressives are not satisfied perpetually organizing protests, holding down the negative pole of the dialectic, happily defined in opposition to the status quo. We long for more and our country and planet deserve more. Truth is, we have the leaders and ideas to run this country. Better yet, some of those leaders are coming together to strategize at the first Progressive Cabinet Summit at the Carter Center in Atlanta this Tuesday in preparation to do so.

The Progressive Cabinet Summit, a unique gathering of over forty-five progressive policy, movement, and media leaders will take place at the Carter Center in Atlanta next Tuesday, June 26. It is being co-convened by the Backbone Campaign and the Institute for Policy Studies. Scheduled to compliment and prepare for the first ever US Social Forum, its purpose is to be a strategy session for advancing the message that progressives belong to a propositional movement with the leaders and ideas to run the country.

Beginning with a video welcome from Professor Howard Zinn (view), and facilitated by Adrienne Maree Brown, (E.D. of the Ruckus Society and co-founder of the League of Pissed Off Voters), the Progressive Cabinet Summit will build on work of the Backbone Campaign its partner project Progressive Government over the past four years:



* Commerce - Hunter Lovins, co-author with Paul Hawkins of Natural Capitalism
* Energy - Prof. Dan Kammen of UC Berkeley’s Renewable & Appropriate Energy Lab
* Education - Eric Cooper of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education (listen)
* State- Emira Woods of the Institute for Policy Studies
* Interior - Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network
* Dept. of Justice - Jakada Imani of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
* US Trade Rep. - Lori Wallach of Global Trade Watch
* Immigration - Baldemar Velasquez of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee
* Among others.

Bush and Cheney are leaving in eighteen months, hopefully sooner. Now is the time for progressive leaders and citizens to take control of how progressives are perceived and how we think of ourselves. We must demonstrate that people who are aligned with us belong to a unified, propositional movement, that transcends party affiliation with the leaders and ideas to run the country. Creating a Progressive Cabinet is a great next step in communicating and preparing for that reality.

As Stephen Zunes, Professor of Political Science at the University of San Francisco and a Cabinet nominee says “The Progressive Cabinet is an essential project at a critical time.” Trust yourself, listen to each other and March forth with the courage and confidence future generations depend on us to have.

Bill Moyer is the Executive Director and co-founded the Backbone Campaign in 2003. Bill has had a duel and intersecting path as both an activist and artist. Bill’s involvement with social change work stretches back to the 80’s, when as a student he was deeply involved in the anti-nuclear movement and the anti-interventionist movement, lived at Big Mountain to assist Dineh elders refusing to relocate off their traditional land, and then attended the Institute for Social Ecology.

[Greeby]

1. I take it this is a different guy to the Bill Moyers we know and love?