Contract For The American Dream – Progressive Ideals in One

Rebuild the Dream, a coalition of more than 75 progressive organizations, released a ten point Contract for the American Dream. It lays out a progressive policy agenda for D.C. as well as the American public. Rebuilding American infrastructure, planning for the future with a green economy, ending our wars, putting people back in charge of democracy and allowing voices to be heard in the workforce. All novel concepts now in one easy to reference contract. It is the progressive mantra. As Sam Stein highlights:

The basic premise of the campaign is that America isn’t broke, it’s merely imbalanced. In order to stabilize the economy, politicians should make substantial investments in infrastructure, energy, education and the social safety net, tax the rich, end the wars, and create a wider revenue base through job creation.

A sensible set of ideas and goals that are well supported by every day citizens. These are concepts D.C. leaders should be able to grasp and implement if they are willing to actually listen to their citizenry.

As the contract spells out “We have a jobs crisis, not a deficit crisis.” Wall Street is seeing that right now with stocks tanking. It is a lack of confidence in consumer spending and not an uncertainty in tax structures or the country’s debt.

I have had the chance to interview Van Jones twice now and a final one will appear in the magazine In These Times later this week. Part of what he said to me when asked about needing a counter to the Tea Part was this:

Just two years ago most of us were feeling at least somewhat optimistic and encourage about America’s future. Two years later we are mostly sad and morose and the main reason for that is the success of the Tea Party at hijacking D.C. and derailing our hopes and dreams. If someone wants to live in their own cave they may be able to escape the influence of these conservative libertarians but most of us are going to live in neighborhoods where our schools are being defunded, where our water and air may be compromised and where jobs are going to be increasingly scarce because of the poisonous affects of the Tea Party ideology and extreme tactics.

We have to, while still holding them in our hearts as fellow Americans and fellow human beings for whom we want the best, everything we can to give the American people a coherent alternative. Right now the only alternative people see to the Tea Party is just the status quo with more pain and suffering. Most people don’t understand that the Tea Party program will double, triple, quadruple the amount of pain and suffering. It is really a ratification of the status quo of corporate rule and not a refutation of the status quo of corporate rule and abuse of the American people. We have to present the public with a coherent alternative that is not the status quo made worse but is the America we thought we were voting for in 2008.
I don’t understand the progressive movement right now. If my son was playing soccer and kicked in three goals while the other team kicked in one and he quit, I’d be mad at him and disappointed. That’s how we are – we got the House, the Senate and the White House. Our opponents came around and got the House and we just quit. It doesn’t make any sense. This fight, this lopsided propaganda offensive against all of America’s best values and achievements. The right wing is losing in the polls.

They have this lopsided propaganda war against the achievements of the New Deal, against the idea we are one country, against the idea Americans including wealthy Americans should stand together in face of this crisis. And they are losing 60-70 percent of people say jobs are more important than this phony debt crisis they’ve created. Similar 60-70 percent of Americans say the wealthy should be asked to shoulder more of a burden going forward. 60-70 percent say we should wind these wars down more aggressively and bring the money and troops home to rebuild America. So we are 60-70 percent super majority with our basic ideas despite the fact that our opponents have launched this one-sided propaganda war against America’s values and achievements.
We should be quite hopeful that in an economy like this when we haven’t put up a coherent alternative in the face of the most determined onslaught that we’ve seen in many of our lifetimes that we are still at 60-70 percent. So I don’t think we should be discouraged at all. We should be more determined than ever to go ahead and make the corrections we need to make, learn the lessons we need to and get on with building the next American century.

Photo of Van Jones at the Take Back the American Dream Rally by markn3tel

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