Alan Jenkins is executive director of The Opportunity Agenda, a communications, research, and advocacy organization with the mission of building the national will to expand opportunity in America. He is a member of the board of directors of the Center for Community Change.
Progressives have long been criticized for talking issues and constituencies at the expense of vision and values. Linguist George Lakoff has argued for years that progressives have ceded the moral high ground to their detriment. And Thomas Frank has documented how conservatives tell a larger story that connects with working people at a values level, even while undermining their economic interests.
That critique has never been fully accurate. The continuing human rights movements led by people of color, women, gay people, and immigrants have always been rooted in the values of freedom, equality, dignity and opportunity. As Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights has said, "there's a reason why Martin Luther King Jr.'s greatest speech was not called 'I have a complaint.'" The modern environmental movement, too, speaks not only of our individual interests but also of our moral responsibility as stewards of the earth and its inhabitants.
But it is also true that progressive political discourse has increasingly moved away from a discussion of shared national values and toward a patchwork of issues and narrow policy fixes. That dynamic has certainly played out this presidential election season, with last month's "Values Voters Summit" priming candidates' commitment to conservative values while progressives largely haggled over the details of policy proposals.
But that's about to change. On December 1, a coalition of Iowa social justice groups will host the Heartland Presidential Forum: Community Values in Action, in Des Moines, Iowa. Just four weeks before the Iowa caucuses, it will be a presidential forum focused not on specific issues, but on progressive vision and values.
What are "Community Values"? They are the idea that we are all connected and share responsibility for each other as members of a common society. They are the recognition that we are stronger together, and that our policies and politics—and the way we treat each other—should reflect that.
The idea is not new. Dr. King said, "We are caught in an inescapable web of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly." Bill Clinton has spoken and Michael Tomasky has written about "the common good" as a foundation of progressive ideals. Our national motto, E Pluribus Unum—"from many, one"—symbolizes both the American resolve to form one nation from a collection of states, and our determination to forge one unified country from people of different backgrounds and beliefs.
But our country is falling far short of that ideal. When the president vetoes child health insurance legislation because it would insure too many kids, the politics of isolation have triumphed over the policies of connection. When we can't clear a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who are part of our economic engine and our social fabric, we're forgetting that we're all in it together. When we leave impoverished New Orleans residents stranded during Hurricane Katrina and fail to invest in their return, we're weaker as a nation.
Focusing on policy details is important, but it misses the larger debate about the kind of country we aspire to be. Conservatives have had free reign over that debate in past elections, and could do so again this election year. And that's true across party lines. Where Republican candidates have taken arguably progressive positions—Giuliani and McCain on immigration, Romney and Giuliani on reproductive rights and gay rights—they have either backed away from those positions or deflected them on purely pragmatic grounds. Similarly, both Clinton and Obama have stumbled on immigration issues, falling back on security arguments that don't adequately explain what they believe in and why.
The Heartland Presidential Forum is a chance to tell that story, and it's connected to a larger, nonpartisan Campaign for Community Values led by the Center for Community Change and hundreds of grassroots groups around the country. Building on the presidential forum, the Campaign is designed to elevate Community Values in our political discourse in lasting ways that transcend single elections or legislative battles.
Community Values are more than slogans or progressive patriotism. They help us make tough national choices. They mean, for example, that I may pay more in taxes so that your kids can stay healthy, and that doing so is in my interest, as well as yours. Shared sacrifice, as well as shared benefit, has always been crucial to our national success.
Americans are tired of the "go it alone" politics that have left us scrambling to piece together health care, education, affordable housing and decent jobs from a tattered social fabric. But they need a new story that includes their hopes and dreams while connecting them to their fellow Americans and to their government. Left to their own resources, the candidates might never get to that story. The Heartland Presidential Forum and the Campaign for Community Values are designed to give them their chance.
