Birth of a Movement

Alan Jenkins, TomPaine.com

December 04, 2007

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, one of the organizers of the Heartland Presidential Forum.

Four thousand grassroots activists braved freezing rain and hazardous roads to be part of it. Five candidates for president of the United States came to express their support. The mayors of Los Angeles, Des Moines, and Trenton, N.J., took prominent roles. And four weeks before the Iowa caucuses, it has suddenly become a force to be reckoned with in American politics. It is a new progressive movement, a movement for Community Values, born last weekend in Iowa at the Heartland Presidential Forum: Community Values in Action.

The event was organized by the Center for Community Change, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, and hundreds of grassroots groups around the country, to launch a national Campaign for Community Values. John Edwards, Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd, and Dennis Kucinich each appeared in person and spoke separately to the crowd, while Hillary Clinton addressed the group by telephone. (Although the event's organizers had invited all candidates of both parties, no major Republican candidate accepted an invitation before the stated deadline).

The event was moderated by Cathy Hughes, founder and chairwoman of Radio One, which also broadcast the event via radio, cable, and the web, as did C-SPAN. And synchronized events were held by community organizations and congregations in Charlotte, N.C.; Los Angeles, Calif.; Columbia, S.C.; Nashville, Tenn.; Oxnard, Calif.; New York City; Bozeman, Mont., and other cities and towns.

The forum was revolutionary in at least two ways. First, it was organized not isolated issues, but around shared values and a progressive vision. And second, it featured real people—grassroots leaders from around the country—sharing their stories and asking the candidates pointed questions.

The grassroots leaders who took the stage voiced again and again the ideas that embody Community Values—that "we are all in this together," that "we are all connected" and "share responsibility for each other," that we "love our neighbors as we love ourselves," and that it's time to reject the "politics of isolation" and embrace the "politics of connection."

But it was their diverse and compelling personal stories that brought that message home in vivid color. Reverend Katrina Foster of the Bronx stood with Deidra Lewis of Springfield, Massachusetts and her daughter Alexiana as Deidra told how her daughter would have lost her sight to a rare eye disease if not for the State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Rev. Foster questioned Obama's support for health care reform that would include private sources of insurance, and pushed for the expansion of effective public programs like SCHIP and Medicare.

Iowa Farmer Larry Ginter stood shoulder-to-shoulder on stage with Maytè, an immigrant honor student from New Mexico, as the student told Hillary Clinton that "my success is the success of my country—the United States of America." Ginter told Clinton that immigration is inextricably linked to flawed U.S. trade and agricultural policies and implored, "for the sake of our national soul, we've got to stop treating immigrants like common criminals." Bill Lawless of Illinois pressed Clinton to commit to taking up immigration reform in her first 100 days in office—the Senator demurred.

The questioners included an Arab-American and Latino immigrants paired with African-American South Carolinian Malik Whitaker, together challenging racial profiling and racial bias in our criminal justice and environmental protection practices. Retired Des Moines teacher Judy Lonning joined Deborah Thomas of Wyoming to assert that polluting corporate hog farms and polluting gas and oil corporations spring from the same problem: the failure to bring corporate power in alliance with the common good through government regulation and enforcement.

The candidates paid their due to Community Values on stage. Dodd said he had learned about Community Values while serving in the Peace Corps. in the Dominican Republic. Obama told the crowd that "this idea of Community Values is not just the cause of my campaign; it is the cause of my life," noting that the Bush Administration had pursued a contrary "go it alone" approach to politics. All of the candidates promised to make "tough choices" to uphold Community Values and to meet with the event's organizers within the first 100 days of their administration.

Unlike in past elections, though, Community Values voters are poised to hold the candidates accountable to their commitments, whether they ascend to the presidency or continue in the Congress. The inspiring forum was a beginning, not an end.

The two thousand Iowans who attended the event will participate in the Iowa caucuses four weeks from now—many of them for the first time. And they will vote their values. The thousands of others who participated from communities around the country will also be voting Community Values in their own primaries and in the general election. And because the crowd was overwhelmingly made up of grassroots organizers with strong organizations back home, they will be spreading the Community Values message to hundreds of thousands more, tied to real issues and the policies of connection that embody their values.

The broader Campaign for Community Values will extend far beyond election day, moving hearts, minds, and policy for years to come. Just as the conservative narratives of "family values" and "limited government" and the politics of isolation so often drove our political discourse at the end of the 20th Century, Community Values and the policies of connection are poised to shape our political reality into the 21st Century.

That means a growing bloc of Community Values voters who see the connection between living wages, civil rights, universal health care, education, and a pathway to citizenship for our nation's immigrants. It means environmentalists challenging predatory lending and racial profiling as well as toxic waste and greenhouse gases.

That progressive unity, connection, and positive vision are no longer just aspirations. They happened in Des Moines last week. And that was just the beginning.