The Road to Progressive Change

As the 2010 election season comes to a close, the nation’s eyes turn to the future — 2012, to be exact, and the next presidential election.

“What the Latest Polls Say About Obama’s Re-Election Possibilities,” the headlines read. “Obama, Too Left for the Right and Too Moderate for the Left.”

It seems everyone is talking about Obama and whether or not he’s let down progressives. Many on the left say he’s disappointed them with his moderate ways. Others say he’s done the best he could with what he’s been dealt.

The Nation even devoted a cover story to the issue: “Kabuki Democracy: Why a Progressive Presidency Is Impossible, For Now.”

In the article, Eric Alterman briefly touches on specific disappointments: sacrificing women’s rights for a watered down health care revamp, abandoning the Employee Free Choice Act (much to the chagrin of the labor unions), taking it easier than promised on greedy corporations, and the list goes on.

But the resounding theme throughout all of this, Alterman writes, is this: “It doesn’t matter what Obama dreams of. The far more important fact is that the system is rigged, and it’s rigged against us.”

The federal government has long been out of touch with the American public, whose only real influence comes from the polls once an election cycle. After that vote, there’s nothing binding your favorite candidate to the promises he or she made on the campaign trail.

Yes, the road to progressive change on a national level is arduous. But it’s not impassable.

After all, the 1960s Civil Rights Movement started with just four students who staged a sit-in at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., A week later, the sit-ins had spread across the state, and weeks after that students across the South, from Richmond, Va., to Nashville staged their own. Next thing you know, we have the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act a year later.

What may seem like one action directly impacting a particular community at first glance, can transform into a national movement. When national politicians let them down by not acting quickly enough, the American public took the matter into their own hands and demanded equal rights.

Start small and start local. You never know when you might be the catalyst for the next Civil Rights Movement.

Jessica Newman is a staff writer for Campus Progress.

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