First Published: Frontline, Vol. 4, No. 1, June 9, 1986.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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By the end of his bold bid for the Democratic Party nomination for president in 1984, Jesse Jackson had made clear to a broad spectrum of the left the contribution that activism in the electoral arena could make toward pushing the progressive and working class struggle to a new level. The founding convention of the Rainbow Coalition in mid-April (see Frontline, April 28) has again placed the question of this arena’s potential squarely on the agenda. The regroupment of the Rainbow is a long-awaited positive development, one which presents the left with opportunities for effective participation in national electoral politics which, at the left’s current stage of development, it could not have created on its own. Even so, the Rainbow’s working class moorings are neither consolidated nor explicit, and for that reason some on the left have expressed qualms about wholeheartedly signing on.
Just as Jackson identified three main political currents in U.S. politics overall – conservatives, liberals and progressives – there are also three broad currents within the Rainbow – working class partisans of the anti-capitalist left, fairly consistent progressives (best represented by Jackson himself) and moderates who have a more limited commitment to the Rainbow’s peace and justice platform. In class terms, the Black petty bourgeoisie, led by Democratic Party operatives, is the core social base for the moderate current, while the progressives are constituted of both petty bourgeois and working class forces.
Further, the reality of today is that the moderates in the Rainbow have a degree of sophistication and experience in electoral work that the left sorely lacks. Thus at the founding convention it was not surprising that moderates exercised a degree of initiative that raised the prospect of compromising the Rainbow politically and organizationally.
The challenge before the left is not to retreat in the face of this balance of forces, but to master the art of maturing within it and learn how to strengthen working class initiative. The Rainbow has the potential to thrive as a broad alliance, and the political and ideological strains between its three currents should be handled and resolved in a framework of unity. At the same time, it is the degree of firm ties that can be built between the broad base of progressives and the class conscious left that will largely determine the Rainbow’s vitality and programmatic consistency.
Entering the 1984 presidential race, the left was facing Reaganism on the offensive; we had little initiative or room to maneuver. Then Jesse Jackson threw his hat into the ring. The initial backing that launched his campaign was the progressive wing of the Black church, not a broader progressive front. It is indisputable that Jackson could not have won the consensus of broader forces – especially among whites – and he made the wise decision not to be held hostage to their vacillations.
The campaign tapped the political energy of millions, and eventually most significant sections of the U.S. left came around to the recognition that Jackson was the only candidate to advance a progressive program and the only progressive in recent years to stir a substantial working class base into political motion. Consequently, the Jackson campaign served to mature the U.S. left as it strove to analyze and interact with the new political dynamics created by the birth of the Rainbow.
Now this April’s founding convention confirms that the political and organizational consolidation of the Rainbow will be even more of a challenge than the 1984 campaign. But for the left, it is take up politics on this terrain or go back to the sandbox. The left will never mature politically in a hothouse of its own making.
In the immediate, pragmatic sense, the recent regroupment of the Rainbow Coalition is about preparing for Jackson to run again in 1988. The focus on a presidential campaign has led some to the conclusion that the Rainbow Coalition is little more than a grand-scale expression of Jackson’s personal ambition. But Jackson’s individual motivations, while not entirely irrelevant, are also not a critical issue at this juncture. Jackson is the most effective figure to bring a progressive program before a national electoral audience, and this is the crucial point.
In this period, the electoral arena concentrates the political struggle and focuses the contention of divergent class and sectoral interests. It constitutes the main arena for the fight to beat back Reaganism, with the presidential election as the most important focal point.
Whatever the differing assessments on the left regarding the prospects for transforming the Democratic Party into an organization partisan to the working class – and in our view those prospects range from bleak to non-existent – the fact remains that at the present time the Democratic Party is the political terrain on which progressives must struggle for the development and expression of a relatively comprehensive working class program.
Moderate forces in the Rainbow Coalition undoubtedly entertain fundamental illusions about the prospects for radically reforming the Democratic Party. The question at hand, though, is whether the left, through the Rainbow Coalition, can step by step come up to the task of breaking a substantial section of the Democratic Party’s working class base away from that party’s political and organizational hegemony. Thus, in spite of differing strategic assessments of the Democratic Party, left and moderate forces within the Rainbow Coalition can unite on the significance of electoral politics and on the need to build up an independent organization to influence politics in this realm.
In addition, having launched the Rainbow’s peace and justice agenda at a national level in 1983-84, it would be a considerable setback to drop the banner in 1988. We must strive to place the Rainbow platform and a credible candidate before the U.S. people in every presidential election from here on out to surrender this ground, which was won through tremendous effort, would be retrogressive.
Once the overriding political importance of preparing for a strong showing in Jackson’s 1988 bid for the Democratic nomination is brought into focus, the unmistakable thrust of the recent national convention also becomes clear. Jackson ran in 1984 while simultaneously trying to construct an organization and beat back attacks from all sides. Jackson’s candidacy gained the momentum it did in spite of organizational problems that sometimes seemed to verge on chaos. No one can afford to repeat this scenario in 1988 and even beginning now it will take an immense effort to put a campaign structure in place. In this sense, the founding convention’s emphasis on formalizing its state and national structures, personnel and finances was a timely, if not belated, development.
The founding convention also focused on one of the key political requirements of the Rainbow Coalition: broadening its base beyond the constituency that moved with Jackson in 1984. While the vitality of the Rainbow Coalition will remain dependent on the continuing support of its centerpiece – the mass of the Black community – its program objectively embraces all the disadvantaged. The media, the mainstream of the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party all bent their efforts towards ghettoizing the Rainbow as an initiative of, by and for Blacks alone – and the recent gain in shattering this argument is more than welcome. The founding convention’s success in attracting representatives of labor and the progressive farm movement was particularly significant.
But some of the developments that accompanied these gains – especially under the influence of the more moderate and petty bourgeois forces – threaten to distort the activities of the Rainbow Coalition, its composition, and ultimately its program. This danger was already in evidence at the founding convention, and a few pitfalls should be especially noted at this time.
In getting the foundations of an electoral machine in place, almost all other aspects of maturing a grassroots peoples’ organization have been neglected. Essentially, the Democratic Party’s model of organization has been adopted lock, stock and barrel. But the Democratic Party is a bourgeois political party and it is constructed accordingly. There is no mechanism for mass political education, training or participation in direct action. If the Rainbow Coalition simply adopts the organizational Structures of the Democratic Party it will seriously compromise its potential to grow into a peoples’ organization.
There were a number of incidents at the founding convention that served to verify that this danger is real. Attempts to address some of the pressing political issues of the day and to find the mechanism to channel the human and material resources of the Rainbow Coalition toward direct action were given short shrift by the leadership. Those attending the convention devoted considerable attention to crafting resolutions and identifying priority issues for activism such as the Big Mountain land battle, voting rights in Alabama, the Hormel strike and anti-apartheid activities. While not opposed in principle, these and other substantive political issues were treated in a thoroughly perfunctory manner.
A further example which illustrates the tendency to subordinate everything to building an electoral machine was the blunder on the citizenship question. The draft constitution presented to the convention linked Rainbow membership to being a registered voter – hence a citizen. Although this may have been no more than a thoughtless oversight on the part of conference organizers, it throws the danger into sharp relief. One seemingly innocent phrase would have qualitatively compromised the Latin and Asian stripes of the Rainbow as well as the participation of Black immigrants from the Caribbean.
The attempt to have this unacceptable provision removed was a sobering process for the left forces who initiated it. The initial pragmatic solution was to offer those who could not register to vote some qualified “associate” membership. This suggestion was wisely withdrawn when it was accurately labeled second class membership and stiff opposition had formed among the Latino delegates. While this move prevented the issue from breaking out in a bitter fight, it did not solve this knotty problem. The question still remains: Will the Rainbow Coalition truly enfranchise the “aliens” in this country whom the federal laws disenfranchise? Or, will it become principally an electoral machine again “locking out” the “foreigners”?
Further, while the broadening of the Rainbow toward labor and farmers and thereby toward a white base of support is both laudable and necessary, the left has a role to play in ensuring that the other stripes of the Rainbow are not left behind. Unfortunately, outreach for the founding convention to Latin, Asian and Indian communities was poor and this was reflected in serious under-representation of these sectors of the population among the delegates. The Black South was also under-represented, in spite of a high level of progressive, anti-racist organizing in the region. Coming out of the recent Rainbow national board meeting, it seems that this latter problem will be corrected through the launching of a “Southern Crusade” to build support for the Rainbow Coalition.
In the process of broadening, both the composition and the program of the Rainbow must be carefully attended to. The locked out of the national minority communities must not be sacrificed to the strengthening of the white stripe. And, programmatically, as whites are drawn to the Rainbow, the centrality of the anti-racist thrust must not be diluted. At the core of Reaganism is a racist assault that the potential white base of the Rainbow can and must come to recognize if they are to become reliable supporters of peace and justice politics.
The left’s tenacity and tactical skill will have a great deal to do with how these key issues are addressed and resolved. The challenge therefore is to get positioned on Rainbow terrain-and strive to mature as rapidly as possible.
Linda Burnham is chair of the Line of March Black Liberation Commission.