Last week, the Center for New Liberalism held its annual New Liberal Action Summit (NLAS). It was a two day event featuring panels on a number of topics ranging from cost of living, to housing, to maintaining global liberal democracy. There was a wide variety of speakers including 5 sitting members of congress.
There was also quite a bit of drinking that happened after hours, which may also have featured some in depth discussions, though it’s kind of hard to remember in retrospect.
The specific topics being discussed were great and one could probably write a collection of sizable articles on what was said for each panel, which honestly would be pretty cool. But beyond the specific details of particular policy and how to tackle some individual issue, the summit was also valuable in illuminating some broader themes about the Center for New Liberalism and where the center-left is going in 2024. So, if you’re willing to indulge a bit of navel gazing, let’s take a look at some takeaways from NLAS.
We’re in a tough spot right now
A good portion of the summit was dedicated to discussions of the threat of MAGA in America and more generally of right wing populism worldwide. Unsurprising, what with it being an election year. Nevertheless, hearing directly from elected House Democrats who have to deal with lunatics like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz daily, as well as state and local democrats who deal with republicans who aren’t quite as overexposed, one is reminded that many of these aren’t just harmless cranks. Hearing Jake Auchinsloss and Marilyn Strickland recount their experiences on January 6th and the genuine fear that Trump’s mob was going to drag them out of the Capitol and kill them was a chilling experience that ought to be all anyone needs to hear to clarify that Donald Trump doesn’t deserve to be on the same continent as the oval office.
Though beyond the existential threat to democracy, the summit was also a good reminder that the Republican party sucks just as much for the average american as it does for the congresspeople who were almost lynched on January 6. There are the things Donald Trump has already said he’d do to make peoples’ lives worse such as deporting tens of millions of people or making imported food, machines, and industrial goods more expensive with an across the board 10% tariff.
But there’s also more localized harms happening right now. Matt Hughes, Commissioner for Hillsborough, North Carolina, spoke eloquently about the indignities of living under a Republican state government that seems dedicated to general assholery. Republican state lawmakers have prevented the town’s board from enacting LGBT anti-discrimination ordinances and covering abortions for municipal employees on the city health care plan (even if those abortions took place outside NC).
Sitting in California, it can be easy to abstract away the harms of Republican governance as hypotheticals. What might happen, who could get hurt, and what you will have to fight for. That’s not a hypothetical for the people of Hillsborough. If Republicans lose control of the state legislature and Democrats are able to undo their preemption of local non-discrimination ordinances, people in Hillsborough won’t have to worry about being fired for being gay or figure out how to get to Virginia to terminate a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy.
But while the failings of hard-right MAGA governance can feel remote from the Californian vantage point, the failings of Democratic governance are omnipresent. The wealthiest state in the union is also home to almost a third of its unhoused homeless population. San Francisco, the crown jewel of the Bay, is one of the richest cities in America. It’s home to some of the most brilliant artists, scientists, and companies in the world. Yet, somehow, this city can’t install a public toilet for less than a million dollars or build a trashcan that costs less than a used Mazda CX-3. The people of San Francisco are compassionate. They’re nominally willing to swallow some of the highest tax burdens in the country in order to help the least fortunate. Yet that compassion, embodied in the billions spent every year by San Francisco, gets repaid by those charged to help the downtrodden pocketing the money, sheltering abusers, and leaving us with 800 dying from overdoses that apparently can’t be treated by the GDP of a small country.
But the worst part about democratic governance is not even really the failure. After all, to err is human. Instead it’s the hypocrisy. Democratic leaders claim to want to hold the powerful to account. Yet when they themselves are called out for workplace drunkenness or rape, the response isn’t to hold those people responsible, force them to account for their wrongdoings and sacrifice to make amends, it’s to diminish and forget, lest they and their allies risk losing power. And by no means is this hypocrisy a vice exclusive to the city by the Bay. Nationally, Democratic power brokers were perfectly willing to defenestrate republican George Santos for breathtaking corruption and dishonesty. Yet when the same happens (repeatedly) on their side, they do not apply the same exacting standards, hoping someone else will free them from the duty they shoulder with such gusto when it’s convenient.
We have the best ideas
With so much going wrong, it’s tempting, even trendy, to throw up one's hands, give up on trying to fix anything, and become a doomer. Yet within NLAS, there was a persistent optimism and interest in solving problems by the speakers as well as the attendees that was quite heartening. Brittany Pettersen recounted her own experience of having a family member fighting opioid addiction and the tremendous harms of fentanyl in her community. Yet her response wasn’t to lament that nothing could be done. It was to list off policies that she had implemented or wanted to implement that could help. Increasing investment in treatment and recovery services while finding ways to stop the smuggling of precursor chemical and preventing the manufacturers of said chemicals from accessing dollars were emphasized as ways to blunt the impact of fentanyl and opioid addiction in the US, even if it wouldn’t eradicate the addiction crisis.
This is emblematic of why liberalism has been the world’s most enduring political ideology even as briefly ascendant beliefs like Monarchism, Fascism, and Marxist-Leninism have withered away. At the core of the liberal project is a willingness to try policies, evaluate their success, modify them if improvements need to be made, and discard the abject failures. You can see this exemplified in the changes to approaches in zoning over the years. The downzoning of American cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles was, in part, the brainchild of mainstream liberals like then-mayor Dianne Feinstein, as an attempt to respond to the very real issues of environmental degradation. Yet now, often the most vigorous advocates of dramatic upzoning in cities are often center-left liberals.
This is the case across the board. We have the policies and we know they work. The Child Tax Credit cut child poverty by a third (until it was scrapped). The liberal international order helped cut the share of humans living in absolute poverty from 50% to 10%. Building housing has been shown to reduce rents. We’ve got good ideas and they can work if implemented. That’s something to be celebrated.
Politics is about people, not ideas
Yet the most important thing that NLAS illustrated was how little much of what was discussed mattered. Countless were the stories from people who have actually had to run for office and put themselves in front of real people to win elections. Everyone, to the last person, emphasized that what really helped them win votes wasn’t statistics, white papers, studies, or manifestos. It was the stories they could tell to people and the stories others would tell for them. Virginia Senator Russet Perry spoke of how talking about her background as a public servant and her refusal to allow her daughter to grow up with fewer rights than her were what won over voters in her race to determine control of the state senate. LaJoy Johnson-Law gave a chilling description of her experience with premature birth and how that motivated her to focus on childrens’ issues and eventually run for school board. Colorado Assemblymember Manny Rutinel pointed out how sharing stories of people impacted by the state’s draconian occupancy laws, where 3 roommates were prohibited from residing together unless they were part of the same family, helped him reform that law.
This is not to say that liberals should discard their fondness for data, policy, and wonkishness. Rather, it is a reminder that our ideas should be used to inform electoral strategy. They can’t be the strategy in and of themselves. Paraphrasing comments from representative Emanuel Cleaver, you use ideas to inform policies. Then, you use those policies to shape your activism. Finally, you use that activism to create a consensus that can effectuate change.
This, more than anything else, was really what made NLAS such a valuable experience and makes the CNL such a great organization. There was a heavy focus by the organizers and the speakers on marrying a strong set of ideas to serious organizing in order to create real, meaningful impacts. The focus was not just on discussing the latest beef on Politics Twitter, the best new white paper, or the dankest memes. During the summit’s downtime, there was a genuine interest in people’s local politics, the situation on municipal issues like housing reform and crime, and what candidates were best positioned to make things better on the city council or state house. And this was an interest that was being actively cultivated by the organizers. Much of the session on Saturday were dedicated to trainings to help chapter leads or chapter leads to-be make plans for the upcoming election, schedule events, speak convincingly, and be a more capable organizer, to which the attendees were very receptive.
Coming away from the New Liberal Action Summit, there was a simultaneous sense of unease about the future. America and the world are facing significant challenges and the forces arrayed against adherents to liberal values are myriad and daunting. But on the final Sunday, as people were having breakfast, recovering from a bit too much drinking the night before, and preparing to catch their flights home, there was also a sense of optimism there. The participants were leaving with a strong belief in their values and skills that they could use at home to organize, to convince, to campaign, and to win.
Postscript: If you’re interested in making changes in your community, consider becoming a member of the Center for New Liberalism. Chances are your city has a chapter that has events, campaigns, and happy hours for you to attend. If there isn’t one, you could start and help make the change you want to see.
Finally, if you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, we have an active community Slack channel that will be an epicenter for liberal organizing in the upcoming election. If you’re interested in joining, feel free to contact us.