A great call to action to the US progressive movement.

A taste…

“What I’d like to do today, however, is do something that was never really explicitly done for me, which is to express, succinctly, some useful lessons learnt by folks in my generation, and put them out there for debate and discussion for those of us, whatever our age, here at this turning point for the next generation of netroots/grassroots activists.”

…

“What is called for right now are three massive parallel movements: engagement, coalition, and party reform.

engagement

The first movement, already underway, calls for an across-the-board engagement with the structures of United States Governement from the local to the federal level. We need to build a culture that embraces engagement, embraces policy, and embraces, above all, the value of working in partisan politics. For too long, many liberals have prided themselves in remaining outside of politics, have refused to “get their hands dirty” with partisan politics; that disdain for party politics has yielded exactly what one might expect, a triumph of the party that was willing to dive in over the one that wasn’t. We need to reverse that. We need to valorize getting involved in the process; we need to grow a new generation of activists committed to a lifetime’s work of writing and shaping the laws of the land at every level of government. We need to get the discussion from the trite “lesser of two evils” debate into the territory of “which office are YOU going to run for?” or “what do you think of this bill?”

In my view, people who don’t get involved in politics, especially local politics, don’t really have much grounds to complain. The era of complaining is over. The era of engagement has begun.

coalition building

Second, a new generation of liberals and progressives must define a new form of coalition building that will bury, once and for all, the divisive, counter-productive and ineffective politics of purity and atomization that have bedeviled American progressives for the better part of a half-century.

Politics is not about being pure. It is about building coalition. It is not that we don’t have ideals or ideology. We all do. Every last one of us. But successful politics in the United States happens only when our political pragmatism is informed by our ideals; history has proven that successful idealists are the ones who build pragmatic coalitions. That is the essential formula. The success of the conservative movement taught us that though ideology may well be the motor that drives a political party, it is pragmatism, patience and coalition building that forge political success.”

She puts on her ONE/Northwest hat and births a new blog category (technology!)…

There’s an effort in the works to let the nonprofit technology world know that having software that talks to other software is currently a big issue for most small advocacy organizations. In a recent study about progressive technology, lack of data integration was cited as the #1 universal complaint.

We chose Salesforce.com as a database platform partly because it can integrate with other systems (our clients may be using What Counts for email blasting out of Salesforce, or using the Outlook Edition to look up people in Salesforce from thier email). Integrated systems can make life easier for all of us.

The effort’s called the Integration Proclamation.

The goal of the effort is to generate some mass that can be put in front of technology vendors, funders, etc. If you support the idea, please add your name to the list to indicate you want a world where the technologies that nonprofits use are able to seamlessly share data with each other.

Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than the raising of the next generation. C. Everett Koop

First off, I’m not a parent… I’m an auntie. It is a role that I cherish. I’m the kind of wacky auntie that loves to play, read, rap, dance, giggle and snuggle. Although the auntie antics are light I take the act of child raising very seriously. In my theory of change, this is it. This is the big one. As a parent or as a part of a child’s extended community, this is perhaps the single greatest act of transformational change we can offer to the world.

For only as we ourselves, as adults, actually move and have our being in the state of love, can we be appropriate models and guides for our children. What we are teaches the child far more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become.
Doc Lew Childre

I am very fortunate to have many role models in my life that exemplify this practice. Further, I am literally surrounded by committed, heartfully engaged, full on parenting fathers. Yes, that’s right. Fathers, in the most beautiful sense of the word.

Josh, Dean, Steve, Dave, Sean, Gideon, Drew, Matt, Dad… I’m calling you out. You rock my world.

These men have stellar partners. They are high grade mothers. I imagine this is where their inspiration comes from. Their commitment feeding one another. When one is down the other steps in.

For me, it is a gift to work in an organization where shop talk offers an opportunity to share parenting stories and provide support to the shared engaged fathering experience. The continuous flow of staff emails calling out changes in work schedules to serve family responsibilities inspire me. This is social change in the making.

As this year ends… I want to send a big shout out to all of you amazing parents and your communities of support. You are making real change happen in this world. Know that the respect and love you are modeling in your intimate relationships is work of the highest order. Ultimately, it’s all that really matters. Thank you.

Footnote: Most read parenting book in the ONE/Northwest office this year, Unconditional Parenting, Alfie Kohn.

More than just another book about discipline, though, Unconditional Parenting addresses the ways parents think about, feel about, and act with their children. It invites them to question their most basic assumptions about raising kids while offering a wealth of practical strategies for shifting from “doing to” to “working with” parenting - including how to replace praise with the unconditional support that children need to grow into healthy, caring, responsible people. This is an eye-opening, paradigm-shattering book that will reconnect readers to their own best instincts and inspire them to become better parents.