Michael Karpman’s diary:

I was pleasantly surprised to see an email from MoveOn.org today asking me to vote electronically on whether or not the organization should support the final health care bill as proposed by President Obama (despite major reservations, I voted for “support”).

Usually the MoveOn emails I get tell me what to do and how to do it, so I applaud any actions they take that lean toward democratic process. However, I think MoveOn could take many more steps in this direction, and that doing so would further empower its members to build the progressive mass movement that is currently missing in action.

To offer a glimpse of where I think MoveOn should be headed, I was able to dredge up a July 2008 conversation between John Stauber, founder of the Center for Media and Democracy, and David Sirota on the Talking Points Memo website that makes many of the points I have been trying to make through my blog. The article deserves a full read, but here are some important excerpts:

 STAUBER: “I criticize MoveOn for what they are not doing, and that is empowering a bottom-up, democratic, progressive movement for fundamental social and political change. I am certainly not trying to reform MoveOn, that would be impossible because they are a tightly controlled organization and there is no access from the outside to change their modus operandi. Rather, I think we all should learn from MoveOn and focus on how we can use the MoveOn style, which has now been copied by thousands of groups and candidates, to actually empower a movement…

 I recently interviewed David Sirota on our website at and discussed with him the Democrats and MoveOn…”

 STAUBER: These 3.2 million people on the MoveOn email list are the object of marketing and fundraising campaigns, but they have absolutely no meaningful or democratic control over the decisions of organization, there is no accountability from the leadership to the MoveOn list members, and those of us on the list are unable to organize and communicate amongst ourselves within the list because it can’t be accessed by the grassroots at the local or state level.

 MoveOn, the Democracy Alliance, and the various liberal think tanks that have arisen to fight the Right are clearly a force able to raise millions of dollars for Democratic candidates and launch PR and messaging campaigns, but none of them are about empowering a populist grassroots uprising. Or am I missing something?

 SIROTA: I believe Moveon.org, the Democracy Alliance and the array of left-leaning institutions that have arisen in recent years possess a vast amount of potential for a progressive movement – but it is only potential at this point. That’s for many reasons – one of the biggest being the utter lack of small-d democracy. You cannot build a movement if you are unwilling to give up power to the rank-and-file…

 STAUBER: …I’d love to see a MoveOn-type organization that would actually trust and empower the millions of people on its email list so that the decision making, organizing and money benefit the grassroots and grow power from there upward, one in which the structure at the top is accountable to and elected by the members. It’s hard to have a political democracy when we don’t even have democratic organizations or movements. I’ve talked with some of the leadership of MoveOn about this, but they have no intention to democratize and will remain a top-down marketing and fundraising organization…

 SIROTA: It’s a huge challenge and gets to a deep psychological issue. Are we willing to think in movement terms, or are we going to keep succumbing to partisan terms foisted on us by a shallow media? Breaking free of that latter propaganda is no easy task – it requires a real commitment to grassroots organizing and education. That’s unglamorous stuff – the kind of stuff that doesn’t get you media accolades in the 24-hour news cycle. But it’s the kind of stuff that builds real power.

 I would say that if the institutions of the much-vaunted new progressive infrastructure are interested only in being celebrated in the short-term, meaningless media cycle, then they should do what they are doing. But if they are interested in actually building a movement that wields real power, they need to radically change from autocratic institutions looking for applause from Big Money, Big Media and big politicians, to democratic institutions looking to make meaningful change.

 There’s a reason why the labor movement continues to be the most durable and powerful movement apparatus in human history: it is fundamentally a democratic movement. Trying to build a progressive movement on an autocratic model is a concept that may change the deck chairs on the Titanic – but ultimately a concept that leaves everyone on a sinking ship. (emphasis added)