Rebuild the Dream (33 page)

It is hard to keep a movement moving. The Outside Game is the key to this, and many aspects of this quadrant cannot be digitized or tweeted.

In the information age, we can all communicate instantly over vast distances, often in high definition. Modern movements have used this resource to tremendous effect, including the revolutions in the Middle East that utilized social media. But it is important to remember that the key contribution of the Outside Game quadrant is to
deepen
the connections between people who want change. Therefore, the 99% must continue bringing people together into a common, physical space. Just tweeting or passing
around pixels, in isolation from in-person gatherings, is not enough to build a powerful movement.

There is no substitute for live gatherings—large and small. All across this country, sports fans will drive forty-five minutes in bad weather, pay to park, stand in the cold, and drop ten dollars per beer to watch a football game that they could see in higher definition for free in their living rooms back at home. Why? Because there is something powerful about having experiences in the midst of large groups of people. Physical gatherings are the touchstone of a movement, the campfire around which those in the rest of the quadrants gather and feel empowered to work effectively.

The grassroots aspect of a movement—the Outside Game—is perhaps the hardest part to keep alive. We saw the Tea Party protests sputter and dwindle; despite persistent efforts by
Fox News
to insist that the movement was alive and well, the camera doesn't lie. We saw their great rally on the mall with 100,000 people one summer, and two years later they were struggling to get more than 100 people to rallies on Capitol Hill. We saw after the election how Team Obama failed to find a way to maintain the same energy.

The 99% proved that a people-powered movement could emerge “from the left,” fueled by economic grievance, based on passion and principles, not tied to a single personality or politician, acting as a swarm, and using an open-source “meta-brand.” On those grounds alone, comparisons to the Tea Party were apt.

But if it is imaginative and determined, the authentic, grassroots dimension of the 99% movement can avoid the Tea Party's fate and establish an Inside Game capacity, without losing the magic of the Outside Game.

T
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CCUPY
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TREET PROTESTS AND
the 99% movement struck an immediate chord with the American people. Three weeks into the occupation of Wall Street, the majority of New Yorkers—nearly 70 percent—had a favorable opinion of the protestors. A month later, a national poll by
USA Today
showed Occupy well ahead of Congress in terms of approval ratings. More than a thousand Occupy-themed groups sprang up in cities and towns everywhere, following the example set by those in New York City. As Al Gore said, Occupy Wall Street is a “primal scream of American democracy.”

Similar to the Tea Party, Occupy and the 99% have created a narrative befitting this moment, one of economic crisis. The handmade signs and personal sagas shared on the “We Are the 99%” Tumblr say it all. Their pain and outrage moved the nation. But the question remains: Can a movement succeed, powered solely at the emotional level by grief and righteous indignation?

Obviously not. The mainstream media has overlooked much of the beauty, joy, and hope that has always been shining around the edges of the anger and the hurt. Those qualities—already inherent in the movement—must now be strengthened and brought forward. For the movement to permanently capture the heart and move the soul of the American people, other powerful emotions—such as pride, patriotism, and compassion—must be placed closer to center stage.

In this chapter, I suggest three themes that should help the 99% occupy America's Heart Space. They are:

• Own “deep patriotism” and the next American Dream.

• Challenge and undermine “cheap patriotism.”

• Speak as the 99% for the 100% (not the 99% against the 1%).

One cannot lead a country that one doesn't love. To occupy the Heart Space, those of us who are fighting for the 99% should own the language of a deeper patriotism. Our movement already resonates with people who are mad at corporations, or who love the Earth, or who worry about the plight of the poor, or who seethe at the oppression of marginalized groups. We must continue to champion such causes. But we should follow the example of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and do so while laying full and explicit claim to the greatest ideals of our nation.

Our republic is dedicated in principle to justice and equality—the very things we are fighting for. When we fail to situate our arguments firmly within the highest values and best traditions of our own country, we needlessly miss opportunities to stir the nation. Everyone knows we love those Americans who are struggling; they also need to know that we love America itself.

For decades now, one end of the political spectrum has tried to monopolize all explicitly patriotic language and symbols. Too often, those of us on the other end have let them do so. Many have been wounded and worn down by the jingoistic ways that some of our opponents have used notions of “God and country” as a weapon against those struggling for diversity, compassion, and inclusion. For too long we have heard the charge of anti-Americanism being leveled against social justice causes and marginalized constituencies; sometimes we speak and act as if we have accepted the false claims of our opponents that the “real Americans” exist on only one side of the political divide.

But I can see no objective evidence that hard-core right-wingers love the United States more than anyone else does, at least not the country that actually exists, the one made up of the Americans we actually have today. To the contrary, they seem almost entirely unhappy with, scornful of, or disgusted by practically everything and everybody in twenty-first-century America.

On the other hand, those attracted to the 99% movement, almost by definition, want to embrace the whole country. We love the nation we have, as it is actually emerging and developing, in all of its multiracial, multifaith, gender fabulous, Twitter-addicted, and body-pierced glory. Yes, some small-minded people have tried to hide their intolerance behind the flag. But that kind of cheap patriotism should not be the only kind of patriotism with a megaphone (or a people's microphone) in America.

The 99% can embrace a deeper patriotism. After all, the millions who identify with the 99% are the ones actually fighting, in Dr. King's words, “to make real the promises of democracy.” In essence, we are standing up for the supreme patriotic principle: “liberty and justice for all.”

And many of us take that “for all” part pretty seriously. We don't mean “liberty and justice for all,”
except
for those lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people. We don't mean “for all,”
except
for those immigrants or those Muslims. We don't mean “for all,”
except
for those Asian Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, or Latinos. We don't mean “for all,”
except
for those women. We don't mean “for all,”
except
for the Appalachians and rural poor. We don't mean “for all,”
except
for the elderly or the disabled. We don't mean “for all,”
except
for the afflicted, addicted, or convicted. When we say “liberty and justice for all,” we really mean it. That kind of principled stand is evidence of a deep patriotism.

Deep patriots don't just sing the song, “America the Beautiful,” and then go home. We actually stick around to defend America's beauty—from the oil spillers, the clear-cutters, and the mountaintop removers. Deep patriots don't just visit the Statue of Liberty and send a postcard home to grandma. We go beyond admiring symbols; we defend the substance. We defend the principles upon which that great monument was founded—“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses who yearn to breathe free.”

The behavior of the cheap patriots is particularly instructive here. If terrorists threatened to blow up the Statue of Liberty, or developers threatened to level it to build a strip mall on Ellis Island, everyone in America would be up in arms. And yet some who call themselves patriots desperately want to blow up the principles inscribed at the base of that statue. That kind of cheap patriotism
must be replaced by a deeper patriotism rooted in an acknowledgement that attracting the wisdom and work ethic of all peoples is what has made America great. If an embrace of immigrant newcomers was good enough for our grandparents, it should be good enough for our grandchildren. The skin color of today's immigrants may have changed, but our national values should not.

Deep patriots include people in the business community who want to create jobs in the United States, don't dodge their taxes, invest in the country, and run corporations that respect our air and water. Deep patriots defend the institutions that make a middle-class society possible, including public education, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and a stable economic environment for businesses to grow and prosper. Deep patriots love and respect everyone in the country, regardless of the person's skin color, sexual orientation, income, faith, or tattoos.

Deep patriots love the whole country, red states and blue states—including everyone in the Tea Party. That's right: in fact, we love them so much that we do not want them to have to live in the high-risk, low-protection, puny-government world they say they want. Deep patriots don't want Tea Party members to live in neighborhoods in which, when they smell smoke, they can't find a firehouse for twenty miles—because of the budget cuts that they fought for. Deep patriots don't want Tea Party members to see their grandchildren going to schools with forty kids in a classroom, six books, and no chalk—because of the budget cuts that they fought for. Deep patriots don't want Tea Party members to have to wait seven minutes—or fifteen minutes—for someone to pick up the phone when they dial 911. When
grandma collapses, a government employee (yup!) should answer on the very first ring.

We don't want the Tea Partiers to suffer through the catastrophe that would result from their victory. Deep patriots don't just fight against our opponents. We fight for them, too.

It is important to challenge directly the flaws and limitations of cheap patriotism. The Tea Party, in particular, has been guilty of promoting this shrunken, negative, and limited version of American values. Left unchallenged, this is perhaps the most dangerous ideology in the country right now.

Please note: the real fight is not between “liberals and conservatives.” I purposely do not call the advocates of cheap patriotism “conservative.” After all, conservatives conserve things; they don't smash things. These cheap patriots have taken a wrecking ball—painted it red, white, and blue—and now are trying to smash down every institution that made America great. Our parents and grandparents fought for certain protections—for laborers, for the environment, to restrict corporations—because they saw the devastation that occurs without those safety measures. The cheap patriots want to destroy our forebears' achievements. They want to smash down the safety net, public schools, worker's rights, civil rights, women's rights, even the scientific method and rational discourse. They want to flush down the toilet all of the wisdom of the last century, and yet they still be called “conservatives.” I don't think we should pay them that compliment.

They insist that the government is trying to take over the economy. That would be a bad thing, if it were to happen. But that is not happening. In fact, the very opposite thing is happening: the corporations
are trying to take over our government. And the ultra-libertarian ideology of the Tea Party offers us no defense against that outcome. In other words, the real threat to our liberty is gathering around conference tables in the boardrooms of global corporations. A purely negative, “don't tread on me” version of economic liberty, which worships unrestrained free market at all costs, actually makes it harder for the country to defend itself from corporate domination.

The agenda of the cheap patriots would essentially hand the United States over to global corporations to do with us as they will, in the name of the free market. Their version of liberty creates a society in which the market is free and the people are not. Their version of liberty actually ensures and guarantees domination. Not domination on the part of the government, but an equally pernicious form of domination on the part of corporations that will quickly wind up owning the government.

These are corporations that love to pimp America, taking advantage of all our resources, but not giving anything back. They are American corporations only when it is convenient for them. They are American corporations when they want to use our courts to enforce the fine print in their contracts. They are American corporations when their intellectual property rights are threatened in Asia and they want legal recourse. They are American corporations when it is time to fight some overseas war for oil. That is when these companies are American companies.