Left Organizers Would Make Short Work of Town Hall Raiders If Single-Payer was on the Table

This week, I've decided to write about a national issue with potential local impact ... that's right, I'm talking about those loud right-wingers crashing health care "town hall" meetings around the country. Now I'm not going to spend a lot of time discussing the politics of health care this week. I've done that here in the Open Media Boston editorial section several times, and will continue doing it until we finally win some kind of rational fully-public national health system in the U.S. No, I actually want to start by talking about the phenomenon of left-wing whining about the right-wingers in question. And by left-wing, let's be clear that in this case I'm talking about two specific wings of the American left: the liberal wing that backs the Democratic Party, and the conspiracy wing that sees incipient fascism behind every tree. My focus here is on the former wing because I just don't take the latter wing seriously enough to spend time writing about them.

So, yes, I said whining. Surprised? Don't be. I've spent over a quarter-century in and around the left. I've run hundreds of public events, large and small. Including precisely the kind of zap actions the right-wing is pulling on the Democrats. And I'm completely unimpressed by people saying that it's unfair that the town hall raiders are bankrolled by big conservative political operations and that their actions are scripted by big PR firms.

It's not unfair. It's politics. Corporations rule the roost in this country - including health care corporations. They are always going to act in the best interest of their shareholders - said interest being to make as much money as possible. There are also plenty of capitalist ideologues among the corporate elites that see the writing on the wall for their continued control of the American political scene, and see in the rising clamor for national health care the potential for government to take a larger role in running economic sectors they have dominated for decades.

So the corporations put money into movements to counter attempts to expand the role of government - aside from expansions that get them more free handouts. These movements are driven by their own internal politics. The grassroots right-wingers in question may be theocrats, or right-wing conspiracists that see "black helicopters" behind every tree, or just racists that really can't deal with a black President. But whoever they are, they are not all being paid to show up at the town hall meetings and related events (although some small minority of them are almost certainly being paid). They are out there because they really don't want to see any kind of public option for national health care.

But many of those right-wingers have complained that when the left-wing participates in similar protests they get treated better in the media. And I think that's not entirely off the mark. We're not usually called "zealots" (except on Fox), for example. On the other hand, I think left-wing protestors tend to have a reasonably well-thought out agenda at similar protests. And that left protestors are far less likely than this current crop of right-wing activists to make violent threats against politicians (or anyone else).

Still, I think that while mainstream media might be a bit more genteel to left protestors as compared to this new crop of right protestors - sometimes referring to us as "community organizers" or "union members" (etc.) rather than "the mob" - they are generally just as dismissive to the important role protest plays in a functioning democracy. That is, most American media does not think highly of protest at all - going so far in some cases as to have (unwritten but nonetheless real) policies against covering most protests. So I think that commentators on the broad left are missing something in midst of the sound and fury of the media circus that's accompanied the town hall meeting protests. That something is that the mainstream American media is treating the right-wing protestors in a very similar fashion to the dismissive way they regularly treat left-wing protestors.

Meanwhile, left commentators (mostly of the liberal variety) are attacking the town hall protestors for having paid organizers behind them, and having operating funds from the aforementioned conservative political action groups and PR firms. Which is a strange position to take. What, after all, is the difference between the way the right-wing is orchestrating their town hall campaign, and the way the left orchestrates all kinds of campaigns. Do we not have paid organizers? Do we not whip up people into a bit of a frenzy on certain key issues and mobilize them where we think it will have the most effect? I mean the main group of foot soldiers that the Democrats can rely on in these situations is union members mobilized by left-leaning union leaders - who for a variety of reasons, some understandable, some just bad, tend to back major Democratic Party social policy initiatives. Even when, as with health care, their own analysts know perfectly well that the Democrats' policies give away far too much to the corporations. Unions can put millions of dollars into big campaigns like the Employee Free Choice Act or national health care, and field plenty of analysts, strategists and organizers when they do so. So we can quibble about the difference between left and right mobilizations, but overall what the right-wing is doing at the grassroots level on health care is not all that dissimilar from what the left traditionally does in comparable situations. Although not yet in this situation.

The irony is that many union analysts and organizers are absolutely part of the actual left - the broadly social democratic and socialist left that I haven't explicitly mentioned until now. But they don't necessarily control their unions; so that partly explains why left and right mobilizations on health care have more similarities than not. It just seems to be a truism that the higher one goes in union politics the more one moves to the center of American politics - and follows the lead of the Democrats. So union leaders - even leaders like Andy Stern that had solid left politics when young - tend to become solid backers of the Democrats once they get into power. With a few Republican exceptions. Such union leaders don't like their analysts and organizers pushing them from the left, tactically or strategically. It can hurt their relationship with the Democrats. More on that in a moment.

Needless to say, as someone in the broadly socialist left, I don't agree with right-wingers on virtually any aspect of the health care debate. But I think this all points to a huge problem with the framing of the debate on the national level - which is that there's really no left position being pushed in a big way by large unions or community groups, most of which have long since decamped to the weak "public option" or "expanded Medicare" positions being pushed by the Democratic establishment.

And they've turned their back on fighting for an "everyone in, nobody out" single-payer national health system. Or at least their leadership has - which functionally amounts to the same thing.

So in the absence of a left position, the actual left that knows full well how to successfully use many of the same tactics being used by right-wingers in the so-called "town hall meetings" - and let's be real here, they are no more town hall meetings than any other scripted media-friendly public appearance by national politicians - the actual fighting left that locates itself to the left of the Democratic Party is not participating in efforts to organize any kind of solid response to the right-wing in this particular arena.

And why should we? Why would the people that struggle for democracy, human rights and social justice that have historically backed cradle-to-grave public health care go to the mat for a massively watered down corporate-driven excuse for a federal "health care reform" plan? People on the independent left are regularly kept out of such debates - despite having built a considerable groundswell for genuine reform in a variety of areas for decades.

The funny thing is that many of us are the very kind of experienced political operatives that are capable of going head-to-head with the town hall right-wingers.

And let me tell you something. If these town hall meetings actually put single-payer health care on the agenda, the actual left would have turned out in force.

And please read this next bit very very carefully (especially you right-wingers) ... we would have cleaned the right-wing's clocks for them. I guarantee you. Because in every city - and in a fair number of rural areas - there are left-wing organizers who could put together a few dozen people and completely derail every tactic the right-wing protestors' PR industry handlers put together for them.

Why am I so confident? Because experienced left-wing organizers use the same kinds of tactics every day in a hundred different events around the U.S. And in many cases, we invented the tactics. In addition, remember those left-wing union organizers I mentioned above? Oftentimes those folks are deliberately held back from doing things they know would work in this situations - because their leadership doesn't want to antagonize the Democrats.

So even when unions are involved in turning out pro-reform members and allies to events like these town hall meetings, they are forced to fight with one hand behind their collective backs. And that's a pity because union organizers are some of the most experienced and effective grassroots organizers out there. Plus, they know how to play rough in a political fight when called upon to do so. If those many of them that backed single-payer were allowed to push solid campaigns for real health reform, we'd be much closer to establishing a proper national health system than we are now. And town hall meetings wouldn't even be an distant memory.

Anyhow, I thought it was worth pointing out what should be obvious - that it's not that hard to take the steam out of the right-wing meeting screamers. They got nothing. No reform plan. No political acumen. Just a lot of anger. And some money and decent organization behind them. They do not have to be the leading edge of a new fascist movement in the U.S. They do not have to coalesce into any kind of significant political force. They can definitely be outflanked and defeated.

But don't look to liberal networks like MoveOn to dampen their thus far vainglorious wrath. Don't even look to most big unions and community groups. They are all too close to the Democratic Party - especially on issues like health care. Look to the independent left. And look to independent left media like Open Media Boston to cover all such big ticket issues in ways that the mainstream media just won't touch. The American left may be small and underdeveloped compared to many other industrialized nations, but despite our various doctrinal and factional differences, we have lots of ground-level experience with grassroots organizing and mobilization. If the Democrats (and unions and community groups that back them) should choose to finally open up some political space on their left on issues like health care, then don't be too surprised if the next time there's a surge of angry right-wingers at public events if they find themselves surrounded by people in clown costumes holding "I'm with stupid" signs as soon as they open their mouths.

Because that's how we roll ... [lol ...]

Jason Pramas is Editor/Publisher of Open Media Boston