: "Take Back America: This is OUR Time!" Uplifting Message from DBA Conference!

[KoKo]

Take Back America: 'This Is Our Time'

By Robert Borosage on June 18, 2007 - 10:35am.

These are opening remarks at the fifth annual Take Back America Conference in Washington, a meeting of 3,000 leaders and activists from across the country and across the tribes of the progressive movement.

-snip-

So we must build a movement that can transform the country.

What is exciting about this moment is that we are moving on up. Labor is here – with an expanded and aggressive education program that reaches into the households that constitute nearly 25 percent of all voters

MoveOn is here – with over 3 million members, with increasing sophistication and resources.

Americans United is here, anchored in USAction, ACORN, AFSME, SEIU and the Campaign for America’s Future—and driving issues across the country.

Progressive bloggers are here—helping progressives capture the lead in the new media and confronting the right.

Progressive majority is here, electing progressive candidates from state and local offices across the country – the next generation of Paul Wellstones.

We’re building a progressive infrastructure—still not as well funded as the right—but increasingly able to compete in the battle of ideas. The Center for American Progress is here, the Institute for Policy Studies, the Economic Policy Institute. Drinking Liberally is here, with more than 100 chapters across the country, a modern-day version of the tavern politics of our Founding Fathers.

And a new, enduring majority for progressive reform is within reach.

We can find economic common aground across racial battlegrounds. We can build a progressive coalition for change.

Labor households represent 25 of the electorate and vote 64-34 Democratic. Hispanics are the fastest rising part of the electorate and voted 69-20 Democratic. African Americans voted 89-10 Democratic. The young, 18 to 29, voted 60-38 Democratic and hope for the future. Single women – when they vote – are 66-32 Democratic. Independents in the last election voted 57-39 Democratic.

Now you and I know that voting for a Democrat is not necessarily the same as voting for a progressive. Joe Lieberman proved that. But increasingly progressives are driving the Democratic debate. We are setting the agenda. We are recruiting and identifying new candidates. We, to quote the Yankee philosopher Reggie Jackson, are “the stick that stirs the drink.”

We can build a new majority coalition for progressive change. But we are not there yet. And we won’t get there unless we stay on the move.

This is the time to unfurl our sails and ride with the current which is headed our way. This is not the time for timidity, for tacking to the elusive center, for trimming our sails or lowering our heads. This is a time to claim the future, to challenge the failures of the right, to chart a new direction.

Much More about what WE CAN DO ...........

http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/take_back_america_our_time