Take Back the American Dream

This coming Monday through Wednesday, I’ll be attending the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) annual conference. This year, it’s titled Take Back the American Dream. It’s the ninth year of the conference, and this is the second time I’m attending.

I’m actually fairly stoked about going because this year, CAF is joining up with Van Jones’ “Rebuild the Dream” organisation, in order to add a bit of policy heft to what is fast becoming a widespread grassroots brush fire. From Madison to Liberty Park in New York City and across the country, more and more people are becoming all too aware that things have gone deeply wrong in this country.

I’m not talking about voting for one candidate over another, or even about one party over another. It goes deeper than that; it goes, really, to the heart of what the American Dream really means, and whether that idea can still be achieved by the vast majority of people. I think many Americans would argue that it cannot be, and this is a big part of the reason why you’re seeing folks like this taking part in the “Occupy Wall Street” protests:

(Photo courtesy Erik Kain/Forbes Magazine)

When you have over 700 airline pilots showing up at the Wall Street protests, it’s hard to paint them as being composed of counterculture drum circle fetishists. One of my acquaintances, Matt Stoller, described the protests as being like a “church of dissent” and not in fact a protest per se, which I thought was a poignant way of describing them.

That’s not to knock voting, or participating in the electoral process; far from it. I make my living participating in that process, and I think it’s a great mechanism for people to make their voices heard. With that in mind, I’d say that voting is a necessary but not sufficient mechanism for making the changes we want to see made manifest.

In other words: electoral politics is not the only vehicle for change. I’ll write more on this later, but one of the things that I like the most about this conference is that it really delves into the strategy, tactics, techniques and procedures that best help progressive organisers achieve the world we are all striving for, and it does that by acknowledging that there is more than one route for achieving that change.

As an organiser, full stop, that appeals to me deeply. I think it’ll appeal to you as well.

But you’re not going, you say? Fear not, here’s how to follow along from home.

First, if you find yourself in DC on Monday, you can still sign up. The conference is taking place at the Washington Hilton, 1919 Connectictut Ave NW. Bear in mind that there will be an additional door fee of $25 to sign up on site. You can check out the agenda here.

Second, if you’re at home: you can watch the entire event on Free Speech TV. That’s DIRECTV Channel 348 and Dish Network channel 9415. FSTV will also be streaming the event at http://ourfuture.org and http://freespeech.org.

You can also follow along online on Twitter and Facebook. The Twitter hashtag is #takeback11, and the Facebook page can be found at http://facebook.com/OurFuture.

I’ll be writing about my impressions of the conference over the next few days. If you have a question, feel free to ask.