TAPestry Blog
Making Change: Progressives in the Obama Moment, by Robert Borosage. President Obama has deep and strong support from progressives. But in Washington, the media is increasingly focused on areas where Obama's base is disappointed or restive. ... We're on the verge of the greatest era of progressive reform since the 1960s. The crises we face - the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and the unprecedented and accelerating deterioration of the environment - leave no choice. We can't simply recover and go back to the old economy. We have to build a new economy from the ruins of the old. ... For all the talk of cooperation, these reforms face entrenched opposition from corporate and special interest lobbies. ... read entire article here.
America's Future Now progressive conference taking place June 1-3 in Washington DC. You can listen to audio files of the lectures at this link.
America is turning progressive. The results are in: Americans are now more closely aligned with progressive ideas than at any time in memory. On issue after issue, significant majorities of Americans favor progressive solutions to the nation's problems and reject the right's worldview. Article by Joshua Holland. Click here to read more.
Green Jobs. Susan Shann, of Earth Revolution, interviewed Nell Levin, (Coordinator of TAP) and Dr. Sekou Franklin (Political Science Professor at MTSU). They discussed their work to create a Green Jobs Corp in Nashville, to train and provide solid, living-wage and career-track jobs for potentially thousands of Tennesseans.
Recent issues of The Nation include numerous articles by people who are "out and proud" as socialists.
The articles -- a forum titled "Reimagining Socialism" -- were inspired in part by an essay by Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher Jr., "Rising to the Occasion: Do Socialists Have a Plan?"
The forum led to many responses, and Ehrenreich and Fletcher responded to all of those with another article, Change Socialists Can Believe In. That article includes their definition:
We--Ehrenreich and Fletcher--are not entirely unanimous about the nature and outcome of this discussion ... But we are both socialists, which means, fundamentally, that we believe in the human capacity to solve our common problems collectively in an egalitarian, participatory and democratic fashion. As we wrote in our original essay, we share the conviction that the time has come for so-called ordinary people to step into history and take control of their own destiny.
