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Dan La Botz—Occupy the Democratic Party?
January 28, Saturday, 2:30 pm
Lincoln Park Public Library
1150 W. Fullerton, Chicago
Corner Racine Ave., across from DePaul University
(Red Line: Fullerton)
The Occupy protests have renewed and electrified progressive political forces in the U.S. With more than 1,400 Occupy sites to date, occupiers have dramatically and rapidly stymied America's hard right-wing drift, and opened the debate to leftist solutions. But how should Occupy relate to the Democratic Party, the historic electoral home for social democratic ideals?
The idea that the Democrats could be a vehicle for progressive social change was attempted on a larger scale over the last hundred years by farmers, workers, and the African American community. For many, these historic struggles serve as an important model for today.
Writer and activist Dan La Botz argues that while these popular social movements had some impact on the Democratic Party and through it on American society, by and large the result of the fusion of mass movements with Democrats was disastrous. Most movements only gained partial success at best, and some went down to defeat. And, all of those movements—turn-of-the century Populists, 1930s labor, and African American civil rights—were far larger and more powerful than Occupy is today. Indeed, all the great reforms in the history of our country were won not through the establishment parties, but rather through independent mass movements.
OUL welcomes Dan La Botz, a Cincinnati-based teacher, writer and activist. A former Chicagoan, Dan writes on labor and politics for such publications as Against the Current, Labor Notes, Multinational Monitor, NACLA, MRZine, Counterpunch and others. He is the author of several books on labor in the U.S., Mexico and Indonesia. He is a leader of Solidarity, a member of the editorial board of New Politics, and received more than 25,000 votes as the 2010 socialist candidate for senate in the 2010 Ohio elections. Dan's most recent book (available in PDF format at no cost) is A Vision from the Heartland: Socialism for the 21st Century.