Coffee Talk
Jun 22nd, 2007 at 10:31 am by Susie
I was sitting and catching up with a friend in a local cafe yesterday. He’s black, and we often discuss issues of class and race.
He mentioned the speech Digby made at the Take Back America conference, and asked me if I’d noticed what was missing.
“She talked about, you know, habeas corpus and Abu Ghraib and the war in Iraq as though they were the only defining issues of the progressive movement,” he said. “No mention whatsoever of economic and social justice.”
“To tell you the truth, I hadn’t noticed,” I said. “But that’s because, well, I’m used to it. I bring up this stuff again and again, but it just doesn’t seem to interest the big bloggers.
“I mean, those things they say define being a progressive are just basic, patriotic stuff - American values. Those are things the ‘real’ conservatives also feel. They’re the bare minimum.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“I went to this one session on Katrina and poverty, and one of the speakers was saying the same thing. She said economic and social justice was really at the core of the progressive movement, but that we’re treated like we’re on the outside of the circle, trying to get in,” I said.
I told him how I’d tried to pin down local activists on progressive values in the local mayoral race, and he just shook his head. “They’re babies when it comes to real politics. They don’t get it,” he said.
Nope. They don’t.
