the definition debate: what is a progressive?

Throughout history many banners have flown in the name of freedom, many different colors and styles spurred movements on to revolution and victory. From the Star Spangled Banner of the American Revolution to the red banners in the streets of China to the political banners of modern times. These streaming bits of cloth are more than physical symbols born by flag bearers. These banners are accompanied by boxes of thought and explicit doctrines of belief. We rally around banners, they lead us to freedom, they lead us to liberty, and they lead us to justice. But this what the banners of the past have lead us to today? We are now forced to rally behind one banner or another, we are forced to make a choice, we are forced to fight for freedom with conditions - yet freedom is unconditional.

Breaking over the horizon atop a mound of inequalities, injustices, and failed ideas rises a new banner, however this banner has no one flag bearer. It is a banner that waves and weaves between many people and multiple beliefs. This banner is a meshed quilt of the banners long since past and new lengths of fabric, innovately designed banners. This banner of sorts also bears a title: Progressive. However this title is unlike the titles from the banners of the past. This banner changes shape as it is held aloft to unite for a common cause.

The defining and constricting of this term, progressive, was a topic of great contention at the 4th Annual National Summit for Progressive Leaders of 2008 run by Young People For(YP4). I had many long discussion about what it means, the implications of the term, and the worries of a dogma growing within the progressive movement. To give a starting point:

From my "Hella Pone" workshop group representing Northern California, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin -

A progressive is: open minded, inclusive, compassionate, proactive and engaged in positive change, innovative, sustainable, optimistic, idealistic, for equality and justice, informed and conscious, evolving, and a leader challenging the status quo

The most important thing to remember is that the term progressive has a long historical and political connotation. Progressivism grew in the 1920s as a response to industrialization and traditional conservativism as well as to the more radical socialist and anarchist movements of the time. The American Progressive Party was born in the 1930s and advanced under Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Woodrow Wilson (?), and Franklin Roosevelt. Historically "progressives" advocated for worker's rights and social justice. Early progressives were proponents of anti-trust laws and the regulation of large corporations and monopolies, as well as government-funded environmentalism and the creation of National Parks and Wildlife Refuges. The principles of Progressivism and the early Progressive Movement would lay the foundation for future progressive thought and politics. Even wikipedia notes that the precise criteria for what constitutes "progressivism" varies worldwide. Here are some of the common (historical) progressive tenets outlined:

Ballot initiatives where citizens approve proposed laws through a direct vote, initiatives where citizens could proposed laws for legislation, direct primary, direct election of US Senators, referendum where citizens could vote to rescind laws, and women's suffrage. Early progressives also called for a centralization of government to reduce the number of officials and eliminate overlapping authority. At the start of the Progressive Movement government corruption was near an all time high. They sought to promote professional administrators to deal with this issue. Trust-busting, socialism (government working for the public good), laissez-faire market belief, and regulation of large corporations represented the economic tenets. Environmentally progressives called for increases in national parks. On the social justice side, early progressives supported the development of professional social workers, the creation of settlement housing (basically a community center operated by professional social workers to increase the standard of living in inner cities), enacting child labor laws (to end children in the workplace), promoting organized labor and the prohibition (alcohol was a deterrent to achieving success for the cause).

For our purposes I think we are, in a way, giving the term a boost. Where progressive used to represent a political party or economic theory, it now represents a set of basic values that seem very simple for everyone to agree upon. Young People For lists the issues that fall under the progressive title as: civil rights, constitutional liberty, immigrant rights, independent judiciary, LGBT rights, marriage equality, access to higher education, religious freedom, environmental protection, voting rights, civic participation, women's rights, worker's rights, human rights, international issues, environmental justice, equal rights, I think John Halpin, senior advisor on the staff of the Center for American Progress said it best, "Progressivism is an orientation towards politics, It's not a long-standing ideology like liberalism, but an historically-grounded concept... that accepts the world as dynamic." Progressives see it as an attitude towards the politics of today. It is a thought process that is broader than conservatism vs. liberalism, which attempts to break free from what they consider to be a false and divisive dichotomy of ideologies. There is an excellent article (click here) on what progressivism means today in WireTap magazine written by a young person.

For our purposes today I believe the term progressive is a way to develop a focused set of values while encompassing many issue bases. The progressive term allows people to live and work outside the boxes of society. You can be a republican, a democrat, liberal, economically conservative, socialist, black, white, red, blue - you are not forced to conform to a certain norm - you can fall under the progressive terminology if you share the same values and visions for our world. This is a dangerous area in any movement when we begin to confine our thought and set a type of dogma for ourselves to follow. If you are a republican you are no less progressive, if you are a socialist you are not too radically progressive, if you are not a vegetarian you are no less progressive, if you embody the full range of progressive thought that does not mean that you are not and cannot be a progressive. It is often difficult to allow for this openness of a term because we are stuck in an old way of thinking that limits our abilities to accept. We are trapped by our own postmodern love of labeling ourselves and creating the other.

We stream to the progressive banner seeking a doctrine, an ideology, or a mantra to rule the day. But the banner needs to be People. As one of my good philosophy friends explained to me, and I paraphrase, at the end of the day we are all just fictional characters living in a world that we have created for ourselves. Our identities are all constructed from what we choose to think or what history has developed We label and fit ourselves into methods The banner is not Progressivism, but it is People. If we lose sight of that idea, then the rebirth of the progressive movement has already failed. People are our end goal and focus. We are not here to advance our self-interest or force our ideology. Within the progressive movement our focus is People not Progressivism and we cannot forget. The banner needs to remain people or we as the progressive movement will just become another title, another dogma of boxed thought - we need to remain open and innovative and changing, we need ensure that we do not become more than an applied method of thinking. The banner is not Progressive, the banner is People.

How Progressives Can Win in the Long Run

By Iara Peng | September 27, 2006 | from WireTap magazine, a project of AlterNet.

Right-wing groups spend ten times more on youth leadership development than progressives do. If we want to win, we need to start investing in the next generation of leaders.

For nearly 30 years, ultraconservatives have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in young people and built an infrastructure that initiates young people into the radical right movement through campus activism, leadership training and career development. Their investments have paid off. The radical right wing now controls the executive and legislative branches of government, and it's only one seat away from complete dominance of the Supreme Court.
If progressives want to achieve the same sort of political success that the radical right has enjoyed for the past two decades, we're going to have to do more than focus on the next round of elections and pay lip service to engaging young people. We must make a serious, long-term investment in our next generation of progressive leaders. Young people provide a vital infusion of ideas, energy and passion to the progressive movement right now, and their commitment to continued activism and leadership is critical to building a progressive future.

The right wing's investment in young people

For decades, right-wing organizations including the Leadership Institute, Federalist Society, Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation have spearheaded a massive effort to bring young people into their movement. Last year alone, the Right invested $48 million in 11 youth-focused organizations aimed at increasing the number of ideologically friendly campus papers, fostering networks of students on campuses, shifting the way that students self-identify in terms of political ideology, providing skills and strategies training, and promoting right-wing values.

Students are cultivated by the right-wing campaign against college courses that conflict with their agenda. For example, they have accused more than 100 professors of making "anti-American" statements. They attend courses with titles like "How to Stop Liberals in Their Tracks." They have internships, fellowships and jobs waiting for them when they graduate. They learn how to run campaigns and how to run for office.

The return on this investment has been enormous. A powerful network of young ultraconservatives fills state capitols, the halls of Congress, the executive branch and the courts. It is supported by community leaders, skilled organizers, academics and media personalities that help dominate the debate. The leaders in whom the right has invested in are familiar names. In 1970, a man named Karl Rove was head of the National College Republicans. In 1981, Grover Norquist took the reins. And in 1983, it was Ralph Reed.

Progressives need to do more

Young people have been at the forefront of every social and political movement in the history of the world. Through organizations like United Students Against Sweatshops and others, young people have defended the struggles of working people and challenged corporate power. And progressives have made great strides in supporting young progressive leadership development at a national scale over the last few years through the creation of new, progressive leadership development organizations with a nationwide and multi-issue focus, including Young People For, the League of Young Voters and the Center for Progressive Leadership.

At Young People For, we've created a diverse national network of young leaders on campuses around the country. We connect them with each other and provide them with skills and training from national progressive movement leaders. Over the course of their one-year fellowship, they work to implement individually designed Blueprints for Social Justice -- creating important change in the present while at the same time learning valuable lessons they can put to work in the future.

This year alone, fellows at Young People For have played a key role in shutting down Florida's juvenile boot camp system, expanding campus nondiscrimination policies, creating leadership institutes on college campuses for high school students and GLBT leaders, and engaging young people in the political processes by registering them to vote.

Collectively, we're doing great work, but we're not doing enough. Right-wing groups spend more than ten times as much on long-term political leadership development than we do, and financial trends over the past four years show that progressive leadership development organizations are actually, on average, experiencing a decline in revenue. Unlike their conservative counterparts, youth-focused progressive organizations are often funded with a "buying," not "building," mentality, meaning that donors want their contribution to have immediate payoffs, such as election-year voter registration, but are not focusing on investing in the strategic, long-term sustainability of those organizations.

We need more investments through growth capital followed by sustainable, multiyear revenue. Doing so would allow youth-focused progressive organizations to plan for increased growth and build for the future. Eventually, this sustained investment would also help them create reserve funds that would allow them to continue operating at the same scale if funding sources temporarily decline.

Progressives should make a commitment to youth leadership development throughout our nonprofit organizations -- not just youth-led organizations -- that is on the same scale as that of the right wing. It's time to scale up our efforts by demonstrating our commitment to young people through mentoring, professional development, networking and intentional training opportunities to help develop young leadership.

A way for progressives to catch up with the right's infrastructure

In order to address this disparity, we must build widespread knowledge about progressive leadership development needs and opportunities, increase awareness about the gaps between right-wing leadership programs and their progressive counterparts, and support progressive programs over the long term. We need to identify gaps in progressive leadership development programs and start to support programs that fill those gaps. And we need to be clear about the ways in which progressive programs are falling short and develop new initiatives.

Getting to scale is the process of expanding effective programs to achieve greater impact by:

Increasing the numbers of young people served by these programs
Broadening geographic coverage
Building multi-issue and multidimensional programs
Making sure various marginalized communities are reached
Simply put, getting to scale means that our programs will be able to extend services to more people in more places. If our youth-focused work grows to the scale of the work done by the right, we won't have just created more of the same or an increase in quantity. Instead, we'll have created a catalytic effect that leads to fundamental change.

By getting to scale, we can do a better job of reaching beyond urban areas to provide services for marginalized youth at community colleges and on nontraditional campuses. The marginal cost per youth may be expensive, but the gains of reaching more young people in community colleges outweigh the costs, especially when larger social benefits are factored in.

If progressives are to support young people over the long term, we need to make sure our youth-focused work consists of multiple programs that offer complementary types of leadership development to various groups of young people. We must build strong relationships between leadership development organizations to ensure that future leaders have access to various leadership development opportunities throughout their youth.

Together, these organizations will be able to connect young people with opportunities to grow and develop their skills over time, from high school experiential leadership programs to college-based activism and leadership trainings to career development and professional development to mid-level career development, training and networking -- providing the key infrastructure to get our movement to scale.

To learn more about Young People For, or to discuss this story, visit the YP4 blog.

Iara Peng is the director of Young People For.