7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Toward a "social awakening", December 11, 2009
This review is from: A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement (A Century Foundation Book) (Hardcover)
In their Introduction to A New New Deal, Amy Dean and David Reynolds make a clear statement of what is becoming conventional wisdom among both union and community organizers: "Labor is unlikely to revive without becoming part of a larger social awakening that aims to put the nation on a different course." (p. 14) They waste little time assessing the prospects for such an awakening because they are eager to explain their recipe for nurturing it. But as they illustrate and trace the history of their "regional power-building model," they actually provide lots of evidence that we are likely in the midst of such an awakening process.
I'm not referring to awakening moments -- like the amazing resurgence of young people and minorities during last year's Presidential election campaign - but rather to a longer-term politicization of both unions and community groups, often in concert with each other, over the last decade or so. This process involves a redefinition of "politics" as a year-round, mostly local, activity focused on achieving influence and then power over governing - not a cyclical process where temporary electoral mobilizations interrupt the "real work" of labor and community activists and then leave governing to the politicians. Focused on public policy changes that can make real differences in working people's lives while shifting power relations, this involves grassroots policy and political education, leadership development, careful institution-building, all in the service of what Dean and Reynolds call "deep coalitions" among a wide range of locally-based progressive organizations.
The very powerful model Dean and Reynolds advocate is based on this broader redirection toward a more expansive practice of both politics and organizing. Though the range of organizations and campaigns they report on and evaluate is both extensive and diverse, it is but a small portion of the larger landscape of increasing activism over the last two decades. For Dean and Reynolds, the problem with this upsurge in activism -- not just in its crushing defeats and demoralizing compromises but even in its most heartening victories -- is its episodic lack of permanent institution-building.
The stated purpose of their regional power-building model is to build permanent structures that generate well-targeted campaigns to advance a regional economic policy agenda that "ultimately aims to establish a labor-community movement [as] part of the region's governing fabric." Policy wins on good jobs, living wages, affordable housing, and, more broadly, on regional economic development with broad and sustainable benefits for workers and working-class communities is one important metric. But the other one, for Dean and Reynolds, is establishing a dialectic where "[g]rowing and strengthening . . . grassroots institutions become[s] a core way to strengthen a region's quality of life." (p183)
Dean and Reynolds are supportive of one-off campaigns for specific legislation, like living-wage ordinances and community benefit agreements (CBOs), but frustrated when such efforts don't strengthen and expand the unions and community groups who foster them and the coalitions that have often won significant reforms. Though they don't mention it, the campaign against Wal-Mart in the City of Chicago two years ago is a perfect example of the problem. Though the "Big Box" CBO was not achieved, a number of other important things were: Wal-Mart's further expansion into the city was blocked and its national urban strategy, crippled; the Chicago City Council passed the CBO, forcing Mayor Daley to veto it, and then seven new aldermen were elected against the concerted efforts of the vaunted Daley political "machine'; and the issue of living wages was effectively advanced both locally and nationally. But the powerful labor-community coalition that was generated through that campaign dissipated, and with no agreed-upon explanation of why the Big Box ordinance was not re-introduced into a City Council where it presumably had the votes to override Daley's veto.
A New New Deal is a manual, addressed mostly to the labor movement, for how to achieve deep coalitions that simultaneously exercise economic and political power while developing long-lasting grassroots institutions, including larger, stronger, and more aggressive unions. It is based on the successful experience of such coalitions in California - specifically in Los Angeles and in the Silicon Valley area around San Jose, where Dean was the head of the South Bay Labor Council in the 1990s. The basic outlines of the regional power-building model will be familiar to laborites who once took the AFL-CIO's Union Cities program seriously and/or to those involved in the national federation's current New Alliance efforts to restructure central labor councils in at least ten key states.
The book has the strengths and weaknesses of the manual genre. Personalities, including Dean's, count for nothing, as do historical tensions and animosities among actually existing leaders and institutions. As a result, the kind of story-telling that makes for more interesting reading is subordinated to explaining a formula for building a complex of institutions that can flexibly adjust to all the messily specific contingencies of a diverse array of metropolitan areas. Though clearly written and accessible to a general audience, the book sometimes reads like a series of PowerPoint presentations without the bullet points. What's more, the formula is thought-through in detail based on a wide variety of complex experiences, both in other California regions and in Denver, Atlanta, Seattle, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Cleveland and elsewhere.
The formula is easy to state - developing a regional policy agenda + deep coalitions + building aggressive political action - but meaningless without the formulas within the formulas and the variety of potentially successful options within each of those. The book is, in a word, deceptively simple in its presentation but dauntingly complex in its understanding of the practical difficulties and possibilities embedded in various progressive forces within our society, not just the labor movement. This makes it less than a pleasurable read. But it enhances its value as a how-to manual. It is a book that demands to be studied, not just read, and especially by people who are invested in fulfilling the very real potential of progressive movements in this historical moment.
On one reading I'm convinced that theirs is the right formula, but as they insistently show, each piece is dependent on the others, and if you live in a region with a weak or sleepy central labor council or without key unions to champion the process, their can-do spirit can seem utopian.
Still, though the regional power building model is about how to bring various pieces of progressive activism together into a self-developing system, it also highlights some pieces that are absent or weak in many places, and there is a lot for progressives to do in the absence of a full-blown program. For example, their argument for "thinking regionally" (vs. nationally, globally or too locally) is compelling no matter what you do with it. Likewise, I get why we need regionally based "think-and-act tanks" and why they need to be formally independent of both academia and any existing labor movement institution, but that doesn't mean some "simply-think" tanks can't start developing a broader and deeper understanding of regional economies. I also buy their formula for developing deep coalitions around core and peripheral partners for whom a regional economic development agenda is core to each partner's different mission, but that needn't stop temporary coalitions from trying to sustain their relationships as best they can. Likewise, their "civic leadership institutes" will not do what they want them to do without a well-staffed think-and-act tank feeding a deep coalition to target effective political action, but such institutes are a good idea anyway. (See [...] for a curriculum.)
In the current period progressives can watch and hope for the best from our national Democratic champions, firing off a regular stream of e-mails and mounting occasional protest demonstrations. Or we can build regional power where we live and work. Dean and Reynolds propose that 10 percent of the funds the labor movement spends on "single-shot electoral efforts" be shifted to long-term regional power building around the country. In 2008 that would have been about $40 million. I doubt that's enough to fund a new New Deal sufficient to our current needs, but it sure could do a lot of social awakening.
-- Jack Metzgar
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's time to build more labor-community coalitions!, October 9, 2009
This review is from: A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement (A Century Foundation Book) (Hardcover)
Having worked in the labor movement for years, I must say that Dean
and Reynolds make a convincing case that the labor movement must organize in
the community as well as the workplace. In California we have seen
some very dynamic labor councils bring together broad coalitions of
community groups, faith leaders, unions, environmentalists, and
others to fight for social justice and an economy that works for
everyone. A New New Deal not only tells our California story but
also uses examples from around the country to show how people can
build these coalitions in their own regions.
Jack McGlinn
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good News Is No News, January 3, 2010
This review is from: A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement (A Century Foundation Book) (Hardcover)
Amy Dean and co-author David Reynolds have a daunting task: publicizing labor's victories. In the mind of the public -- to the extent they think about it at all -- labor is about rusting steel mills, and the shrinking and aging of America's industrial unions. In other words, lament and nostalgia. While this is true in many areas, there's another, equally compelling, story that never seems to make it into the national news. That's because good labor news seems to go nowhere.
As A New New Deal makes very clear, though, in many areas labor is changing and chalking up some astonishing victories along the way. The transformation of Los Angeles from a bastion of conservatism to one of the most progressive and labor-friendly cities in the country is a story that needs even more space than Dean and Reynolds give it here. But they do a good job in telling about the rise of labor under Miguel Contreras and the formation of community-wide coalitions with deep roots in LA's many, and varied, communities.
And Amy Dean herself, as the youngest leader of the South Bay Labor Council, fought for similarly sweeping changes in the San Jose-Silicon Valley area. On her watch, the South Bay moved from domination by real estate interests into one where labor-backed candidates won elections and implemented things like living wage statutes and health and safety rules.
For the general reading public, the book is a bit dense and could use more of an over-arching narrative. But it's filled with fascinating details about real, honest organizing, and how the working class -- if it's lucky enough to generate some good leadership -- can sometimes win over money and venality. And, if you're a labor or community activist in an area that needs changing, A New New Deal is a great place to start.
But you have to read it here. It won't be on the network news.
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