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Union members have always been more likely to be leaders and organizers of local voluntary organizations.
This article is part of the Prospect’s series on The Future of Organizing.
Theda Skocpol’s Diminished Democracy is one of the most important contributions to our understanding of the demise of the robust local associations upon which real democracy depends. It chronicles the simultaneous hollowing out of authentic local voluntary associations and the creation of a rapidly burgeoning professional progressive advocacy sector.
So I was eager to read the assessment of Indivisible by Skocpol and her co-author, Caroline Tervo. But, at this moment, when we desperately need to understand the causes of our civic lethargy and find remedies to the learned helplessness that characterizes the last several decades in America, I felt this piece missed the mark.
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First, when the authors ascribe Democratic down-ballot losses in 2020 to earlier resistance momentum not “carry[ing] over,” they misunderstand the last two elections. The 2018 blue wave was fueled by unprecedented turnout on our side and relatively less enthusiasm on their side. Democratic losses in 2020 were the result of Republicans who had voted in 2016 but sat out 2018. Second, they ignore the enormously successful channeling of that momentum and energy into the variety of extraordinary responses to the threats posed to the election by Trump and COVID, including convincing tens of millions of supporters to vote by mail and recruiting poll workers to replace the sidelined Election Day workforce of mostly retirees. And third, they ignore the organizing and preparation for the campaign to defend the results after the election.
Counterpoint From Micah Sifry: Focus on the Grassroots
The bulk of the article is a thoroughgoing indictment of Indivisible’s national leadership. By masking reporting (using previously unpublished information on Indivisible) as analysis, they give themselves an unwarranted advantage. A journalistic presentation would have offered Indivisible the opportunity for some kind of response to information presented as fact, if not the thrust of the argument against them as well. Thus, they act as prosecutor and jury; over 11 pages, the voices of the defendants are never heard. Every decision Indivisible made over the past four years was obviously wrong without the possibility that there was more to it than the organization’s résumés and funding sources, let alone that there were trade-offs. These kinds of one-sided, simplistic attacks on progressive organizations in progressive spaces constitute serious unforced errors that inevitably set us back.
And, despite their presenting only one side of the story, they can only convict Indivisible of not being the organization they wanted it to be. I have no association with Indivisible, but my experience has been consistent with its 2017 mission statement, which was “The Indivisible Project cultivates and lifts up a grassroots movement of local groups to defeat the Trump agenda, elect progressive leaders, and realize bold progressive policies.” Given their resources, they have done very well by it. Contemporaneously, it was well understood that Indivisible and other new “resistance” groups gained followers and resources because they were, um, resisting. And their significant contributions to the campaign to stop Trump from overturning the results demonstrate their continuing effectiveness.
Also, the authors don’t seem to notice that when they criticize Indivisible for its heavy emphasis on structural democracy reform and racial justice, they criticize it for doing something that others have criticized nonprofits for not doing because they are too instrumental and narrowly focused on immediate incentives. It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
But what most compels response is their conclusion and recommendation: “If progressive-minded Americans want real change, most of the expertise, money, and time we can muster should stop flowing into national advocacy bureaucracies engaged in symbolic maneuvers and purist politics. These resources should flow instead to participatory citizens’ groups intertwined with reformed Democratic Party committees in every state and local community.”
In her book, Skocpol writes that labor unions are “increasingly left to their own devices by citizen groups oriented to the values and needs of the upper middle class as well as the very wealthy.” Ironically, this critique situates the authors as intellectuals “oriented to the values and needs of the upper middle class and very wealthy.”
But their conclusions in this piece, like so many others’ with enthusiasm for collective action, make no reference to unions—one of the only continuously successful progressive realizations of that at scale. There’s almost never any acknowledgment of the extent to which the erosion of unions undercuts the possibilities for robust civic society more broadly. Union members have always been more likely to be leaders and organizers of local voluntary organizations. Unions are one of the few remaining institutions where people learn the habits of democratic participation. And members of a disturbingly large precarious and non-union workforce have less flexibility and capacity to engage in voluntary associations.
Those of us who have spent our careers being pushed back by the decades-long tide of neoliberalism that has washed away one local democratic bulwark after another know that the reversal won’t be funded by philanthropy or depend on the judgments of this or that activist. Any serious discussion of thickening democracy or progressive renewal must begin by acknowledging the systemic obstacles to collective action and building on what has always worked: the kind of authentic solidarity that sustains the labor movement and the movement for Black lives.
