Spring Awakening
March 14, 2012 10:04 AM   Subscribe

 
Disappointed this wasn't announced in rap form.
posted by Fizz at 10:06 AM on March 14, 2012


They might want to update the part about Grayson's prospects. He just got himself embroiled in a scandal after apparently crashing into a city bus after running a redlight (don't read the comments on that link unless you have a high tolerance for blech).
posted by saulgoodman at 10:12 AM on March 14, 2012


Eh, I've run red lights by accident. Too bad he ran into a bus though.
posted by Malice at 10:22 AM on March 14, 2012


saulgoodman: "He just got himself embroiled in a scandal after apparently crashing into a city bus after running a redlight"

Tisk Tisk, his opulent days of lobbying for Big-Yellow Light finally come to haunt him.
posted by wcfields at 10:26 AM on March 14, 2012 [3 favorites]


I'm not sure if it's because MJ is aiming at their existing audience or if it's an actual omission, but that first sentence (and indeed the whole paragraph) could have benefited from outlining the fact that the tea party was always a well-funded electoral campaign run entirely by political operatives, and never a relatively organic and actual grassroots movement like Occupy.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:32 AM on March 14, 2012 [8 favorites]


I wish I lived in Illinois' Tenth Congressional District. Actually, I live on the wrong block to vote in any of the interesting primaries in and around Chicago. Or so several phone polling companies have decided when I answer their first few screening questions.

Goddamn I wish I was young and still had the strength to agitate. Clearly, I did not do enough of it when I was young because, for example, women have fewer rights to bodily autonomy and self-determination now than they did the year I started kindergarten.

Godspeed, little progressives.
posted by crush-onastick at 10:37 AM on March 14, 2012 [7 favorites]


little "progreesives"...our folks carry pistols, now that's a talking point memo.
posted by clavdivs at 10:45 AM on March 14, 2012


Hakeem Jeffries has been in the state assembly since 2006. Just because he gave a speech at an Occupy rally does not necessarily mean that he would be an "Occupy" candidate in my mind. I was hoping this would be a list of people who had not previously sought office or at least those primarily inspired by the occupy movement.
posted by mattbucher at 10:51 AM on March 14, 2012 [1 favorite]


For the love of all that is good, please let Elizabeth Warren beat Scott Brown.
posted by dry white toast at 11:01 AM on March 14, 2012 [16 favorites]


This is where I sigh that Russ Feingold isn't running again.
posted by desjardins at 11:02 AM on March 14, 2012 [2 favorites]


the Tea Party movement came in many flavors, many never co-opted and astro-turfed.

You can tell the "flavors" that weren't "co-opted and astro-turfed" by their open and blatant racism. But the Right Wing Puppetmasters still appreciated their votes.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:12 AM on March 14, 2012 [3 favorites]


Disagree - the Tea Party movement came in many flavors, many never co-opted and astro-turfed.

If you've got proof, we'd all love to see it.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:18 AM on March 14, 2012


Do you have any examples at hand Bwithh? I'd be interested to compare/contrast how those "flavors" are faring.
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 11:21 AM on March 14, 2012


I would be interested in knowing if/how much Occupy-types/greens/real progressives are on local & state ballots this year.

The states are where the scary fights are happening right now, and if pockets of blue surrounded by vast seas of red can make a difference at all, it will be by putting state delegates in office all over the place instead of one or two national reps who will be ignored by both major parties before being gerrymandered out of office.
posted by headnsouth at 11:21 AM on March 14, 2012


If you've got proof, we'd all love to see it.

While I agree with you in principle, proving a negative is not actually possible. Perhaps a list of all known Tea Party groups side by side with a list of all known and co-opted 'Tea Party' groups.
posted by Slackermagee at 11:40 AM on March 14, 2012


I would be interested in knowing if/how much Occupy-types/greens/real progressives are on local & state ballots this year.

I doubt there are very many, though speaking from an anecdotal POV, I live in an extremely liberal district in a fairly conservative state (Virginia) with an extremely liberal US Representative, and so our state and local delegates/senators are well to the left of the state and most of the country. Since it's also a fairly well-off district, primaries are mainly who can be both lefty and business friendly, so the Occupy language wasn't particularly strong. Unfortunately the Greens that run in VA tend to be somewhat conservative/libertarian types when it comes to economics, so I have yet to pull the lever for any of them. However, one of the state senators from a neighboring district was the woman who tried to get mandatory prostate exams for Viagra put into the ultrasound amendment.

FWIW, I've heard secondhand that the Occupy movement both considered electoral politics rather distasteful during the early stages, and that there was a vocal minority (especially among the more libertarian contingents) that was really unhappy with the support from organized labor, but I didn't hear anything other than the very occasional muttering at the rallies I went to. I'd hope to think neither of these are true, and this article seems to be saying that.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:45 AM on March 14, 2012


While I agree with you in principle, proving a negative is not actually possible. Perhaps a list of all known Tea Party groups side by side with a list of all known and co-opted 'Tea Party' groups.

Well, here's going by the biggest groups listed on Wikipedia:
Tea Party Patriots, an organization with more than 1,000 affiliated groups across the nation that proclaims itself to be the "Official Home of the Tea Party Movement".
A little digging brings up this:
A 2011 investigation by the magazine Mother Jones found that the Tea Party Patriots organization was using its 501(c)(4) status to avoid disclosing its expenditures both to the IRS and to local contributors. The magazine reported that when local Tea Party groups pressed for more details on the group's expenses, they were removed from the umbrella organization and threatened with legal action.
Meanwhile, we have the blatant ones:
Americans for Prosperity, an organization founded by David H. Koch in 2003, and led by Tim Phillips. The group has over 1 million members in 500 local affiliates, and led protests against health care reform in 2009.
and
FreedomWorks, an organization led Dick Armey. Like Americans for Prosperity, the group has over 1 million members in 500 local affiliates. It makes local and national candidate endorsements.
and
Tea Party Express, a national bus tour run by Our Country Deserves Better PAC, itself a conservative political action committee created by Sacramento-based Republican consulting firm Russo, Marsh, and Associates.
and
Tea Party Nation, which sponsored the National Tea Party Convention that was criticized for its $549 ticket price and because Sarah Palin was apparently paid $100,000 USD for her appearance (which she put towards SarahPAC).
The only unaffiliated group (National Tea Party Federation) seems to be very thinly sourced with unverifiable information.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:53 AM on March 14, 2012 [20 favorites]


zombieflanders, good work!
posted by JHarris at 12:07 PM on March 14, 2012 [1 favorite]


Well, I read MJ and their blogs (among a great many other liberal sources) a lot, so I already knew about AFP and FreedomWorks and the TPE. The others just needed to be quickly checked out.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:44 PM on March 14, 2012


Hakeem Jeffries has been in the state assembly since 2006. Just because he gave a speech at an Occupy rally does not necessarily mean that he would be an "Occupy" candidate in my mind. I was hoping this would be a list of people who had not previously sought office or at least those primarily inspired by the occupy movement.
posted by mattbucher at 1:51 PM on March 14


Hakeem is what we call at #OWS #NYCGA a p/t occupier. He got arrested during the eviction and he's part of the #OccupyHarlem GA.

If we actually endorsed candidates, Hakeem would be #1 on the list, tied with Ydanis Rodriguez, a city councilman who was arrested also during the raid.

Josh knows better than to imply #OWS is in the business of getting people elected. He's actually stating the opposite: these are candidates who have eagerly embraced our "talking points". some like Elizabeth Warren because it sorta kinda makes sense; but others like Hakeem because he *is* an occupier.
posted by liza at 9:49 PM on March 14, 2012 [1 favorite]


I would be interested in knowing if/how much Occupy-types/greens/real progressives are on local & state ballots this year.

The Scott Walker fiasco in Wisconsin has, without any qualification whatsoever, spurred hundreds or even thousands of people into politics who only before ever voted. We have candidates running for city council, county board, state assembly, and in recall elections, state senate who have hardly any political experience but feel called to action. Many of them were inspired by marching around the state capitol last year in the demonstrations which sometimes topped 100,000.

This isn't Occupy per se, but Occupy has sort of run second fiddle here to our anti-Walker movement.

I have heard of similar things, on a smaller scale, taking place in Michigan and Ohio.
posted by dhartung at 11:09 PM on March 14, 2012 [3 favorites]


If we actually endorsed candidates, Hakeem would be #1 on the list...

Thanks for the info on this. I appreciate it.
posted by mattbucher at 7:20 AM on March 15, 2012




Hmmm...looks like the Occupy/organized labor alliance is breaking:
“It won’t happen,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and one of the first labor leaders to embrace the Occupy movement. “They are not working with the unions in a serious way yet; nor are the unions working with them in a serious way. And it is the wrong strategy.”

[...]

The difference isn’t just one of tactics: Despite public expressions of solidarity, labor leaders say privately that they’ve been frustrated by their inability to build a long-term relationship with the leaderless movement. Instead, they’re beginning to plan a day of protest later this year in support of the right to organize.

None of the union leaders BuzzFeed spoke with said they’d been contacted by occupiers about plans for a strike, a silence that has made the grand talk of a general strike even more puzzling to people whose members are familiar with picket lines.

“A general strike is a very specific thing,” said Bob Master, co-chairman of the Working Families Party and the legislative and political director of Communication Workers of America District 1. “It’s when all the workers in a city decide that they’re not working. It’s not when an outside group says, ‘How about we stop working for a day because we’ve got a set of demands that you weren’t part of formulating.’”
And this kind of pisses me off:
“Frankly there's not enough union people in this country anyway, so even if you made every union person strike, you still couldn’t have everyone not working,” said Jeff Smith, an organizer since the beginning of Occupy.

“It’s about getting enough people to opt out of what their normal equation is,” Smith said. “Even if you just stay home and watch TV, in some ways you'll have participated in this.”
Way to miss the point, Jeff Smith.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:27 AM on March 20, 2012


I'd love a general strike if someone could pay my bills when I get fired. Seriously, the concept just doesn't make any sense to the average non-union person. People are terrified of losing their jobs in this economy, especially in at-will states. I'm all for solidarity, but I like to eat, too.
posted by desjardins at 12:23 PM on March 20, 2012


I'm donno if it's new legislation or implementating existing legislation, all the OWS groups are posting about Iceland forgiving mortgage debt.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:06 AM on April 14, 2012


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