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A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement (A Century Foundation Book)

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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

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

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.

By Ken Volante, MTI Staff

Amy Dean and David Reynolds' A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement ($29.95), recently released by Cornell University Press, is a timely meditation on the strategies necessary to build regional progressive power and reshape the political direction of the United States.

The "regional power" analysis shows the promise in labor organizing and political activism in close coalition with other progressive organizations such as faith-based groups, community advocacy groups, environmentalists, living wage campaigns and local referenda committees.

The book does not offer a theoretical fix-all nor promise a specific nuts-and-bolts how-to of regional power building. Rather, the authors take great pains to describe the elements of what works in regional labor power building.

Author Amy Dean's first hand experience in the field, particularly, her work in the Silicon Valley's South Bay Labor Council, lend credence to the applicability of the blueprint. The authors also detail regional power building movements that (for the time being) failed. Finally, they issue a humble call to arms based on the massive gains possible in a regional strategy. That carrot should be enticing enough for the famished American labor movement.

A New Hope

Labor must think and act regionally. As a result of fractured local governance and issues, such as transportation, that span beyond one specific locale, labor must think regionally and in concert with regional players in order to effect lasting change. Such work is extremely difficult.

American Labor is rightly criticized for being insular, provincial and slow-as-auntie's molasses on a cold winter day. In all fairness, Labor has also been beat up pretty bad since "Business Organized as a Class" (to quote labor writer Kim Moody) in the 1970s. That said, while Labor has tremendous ability and resources to affect political change, it has largely done so in near term, cyclical outbursts of effort.

While these may result in "wins" (a la Labor 2008) this behavior does not engender the trust of potential coalition partners who need labor's help, say, two months after the election. By building a coalition around a framework of progressive issues the labor movement can partner with a few to dozens of local advocacy organizations to affect regional change. If business organized as a class, why is it any less possible for Labor to work with those it can create close communion with?

Coalitions that Work

Dean and Reynolds identify three characteristics of regional power building: developing a regional policy agenda, creating a deep and lasting regional coalition and moving from access to government.

A regional policy agenda is necessary to address workers' needs that are larger than the "meat and potatoes" work that unions tend to do well. These critical issues may include affordable housing, a living wage, public transportation issues, and affordable health insurance. The authors identify "The work done by the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) to support the Milwaukee and Madison efforts [to] demonstrate how systematic research can pave the way for concrete strategies (115)." This research supported the Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership (WTRP) which brought together unions, community organizations and one-hundred firms that employed 65,000 workers. Employers who joined followed a basic code of conduct for worker training, allowed greater worker involvement in the firm, and sought to solve problems collectively (114).

Deep coalitions have an ultimate goal "to move beyond transactional relationships (`I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine') to relationships based on intertwined interests and strongly shared values" (131). In this fashion coalition partners make shared values a deep and lasting mutually shared agenda in order to forge the way to regional power.

Working in coalition helps labor unions to move from access to governance. "Another weakness in traditional labor and progressive politics is the lack of candidate accountability. Having worked to elect good candidates, organized labor and its allies often ask very little in return" (180). Unions have become increasingly effective, through initiatives such as Labor 2004 and Labor 2008, in working on national elections by mobilizing members around worker issues (and the candidates who support them). While these efforts have proven to be an effective model, labor's fate remains tenuous in such scenarios as greater power is necessary to hold public officials accountable.

By combining these three fundamental characteristics of regional coalition building Labor can ultimately create the campaign issues, recruit candidates who support them, educate candidates on the shared issue agenda and hold officials accountable to remain dedicated to the issues important to the workers who got them elected.

Dean and Reynolds then move on to identify conditions that foster (and/or hinder) regional power building work: the emergence of labor movement institutional leaders, foundation fiscal support, established models and the availability of peer-to-peer support, and regional economic conditions. Their succinct analysis of case studies in Denver, Seattle, Atlanta, New Haven, Boston, Milwaukee and Cleveland help the reader to understand the difficulties and potential for labor's work in regional power building.

The analysis is at times sober but continues to build towards correcting the errors of past work by the ultimate juxtaposition of Dean's work with the South Bay Labor Council (detailed at the beginning of the book) with other efforts around the country. The reader is allowed to make her own estimation of this regional framework's potential. Ultimately the authors are very persuasive in their arguments. Who better than Labor, the ideal of collective and solidarity forged in a land of free agency and individualism, to show the way for a new future?

The book is, simply, engaging and hopeful. The reader is left, though, wondering about the details on how provincialism, pervasive racism, organizational limitations and the clash of leader personalities can be worked through. Those efforts are worthy of a supplemental study. Detailed guidance on handling these issues is necessary through a manual or by a hands-on workshop. The book successfully argues for a shared vision of the future, for labor - and for its obvious, as well as its yet to be realized, allies. Indeed, the book seems to tacitly argue for something beyond a "New, New Deal."

If Labor is able to realize the power of its own capacity, and work through internal and external differences, then it would be able to cut the deal that is beyond the deal. Labor and its allies can forge, not beg, for its coherent vision for a collective future in spite of Corporate America and its continued contributions to modernity's dissolution.

Authors Amy Dean and David Reynolds write from a perspective of deep local level experience in and with the US labor movement. They know from those experiences of often weak-to-nonexistent connections, let alone perceptions of mutually shared agendas, between local unions and their communities, and of the common perception among many non-unionized Americans of ordinary means that the labor movement offers, and could offer, little if anything to them. They wisely recognize that in order for a resurgent 21st century labor movement to come about,these "disconnects" will have to be tackled aggressively and substantively by the labor movement, as part of broader cultural and social changes they regard as preconditions for the labor resurgence they believe will serve well not only working people but our communities and our entire country's future.

Their book sets forth a strategy--in Dean's case based on her leadership role in pioneering it in Silicon Valley, California--to address these shortcomings which they call "regional power building". The book describes the strategy, the thinking that underlay its development, how efforts to put it in place have played out in a number of regional contexts including obstacles encountered and lessons learned, and what would be necessary to enhance the success of those efforts.

Agree with it or not, the book's argument is clearly and compellingly set forth and argued, richly supported with specific experiences. The tone is self-assured as one might hope for and expect from two authors who have the advantage of extensive practical experience in the trenches trying to do what they advocate.

If you are an activist or concerned citizen who leans progressive in your politics and feel disappointed with the results of the first two+ years of the Obama Administration or are looking for ways to build on accomplishments to date, I highly recommend the book. It will give you a coherent interpretation of what has and has not happened not just over the past two years but over the past 30 years in American politics. It will stimulate your thinking, regardless of the extent to which you agree or disagree with the authors' argument. And if you are looking for potentially promising ways to invest such time and energy as you have in fostering progressive change in our country the book will leave you with plenty of ideas on how you might be able to contribute.

If you lean conservative or right-wing in your politics, read the book to learn about what you are up against in some regions and may be up against in others in the near future.

If you have no strong political views but just like being well-informed about public affairs, including low public profile but potentially important developments that generally are not reported on in the mainstream media because they rarely are seen as constituting "events" or "news", read the book and learn.

I was heartened by the stories of real change told in A New New Deal. I am a community-based educator who wants to see our cities, states, and nation build a more social just and environmentally sustainable economy. The book shows how community and labor can come together in metropolitan areas to organize for real change. The authors point to stories of real successes and since they are both experienced grassroots activists they convey a sense of how leaders can get started in their own communities.

Susan Santone, Executive Director, Creative Change Educational Solutions