By David Swanson

Progressive Democrats of America marked the beginning of its seventh
year with a three-day conference that brought hundreds of activist
leaders from all over the country to a Cleveland, Ohio, hotel this past
weekend. Participants heard from and met with star speakers, and split
up and strategized in groups organized around issue areas and
geography.

PDA activists engaged in similar work in distant states — opposing
war funding, promoting single-payer healthcare, protecting civil
rights, and advancing progressive candidates’ campaigns — were able to
compare their tactics and success rates. Many commented in the closing
plenary on how much they’d benefitted. Videos of many of the weekend’s
events are being posted at PDA’s Blog

While I missed the opening on Friday evening, I understand that Jim
Hightower was at his very finest and am looking forward to the video.
Steve Cobble, PDA’s and our country’s best political consultant, is
always at his finest, but I caught up with him on Saturday and Sunday,
as well as with Daniel Ellsberg, John Nichols, Jeff Cohen, and dozens
of other stand-out friends of PDA and the progressive movement who
attended the conference in full. On Saturday morning, Congressman
Dennis Kucinich, out of whose campaign for the presidency PDA was born
in 2004, gave a rousing speech (video).
PDA’s national director Tim carpenter is careful to always film video
interviews with visiting congress members and congressional candidates
– of whom there were a number in attendance. This way PDA’s top
questions are sure to be answered. Here are Carpenter and Kucinich: (video).

One of the highlights on Saturday was a session on healthcare that included:
Michael Lighty, Director of Public Policy for the California Nurses Association
Chuck Pennacchio, Executive Director of Healthcare4AllPennsylvania

Kurt Bateman, State Director SPAN-Ohio
Mark Dudzic, National Coordinator Labor Campaign for Single-Payer
Donna Smith, Healthcare Not Warfare co-chair
Wendell Potter, Senior fellow on Healthcare with the Center for Media and Democracy

Don’t tell any of them I missed it. I was hanging out with Ellsberg
and Cohen. The real highlights of these conferences sometimes happen in
the hallways and restaurants, and it was useful for me to hear in depth
where Ellsberg thinks we are right now, even before I knew that
Wikileaks would release new Pentagon Papers on Sunday. I told Dan on
Saturday that I didn’t think any new secrets could have the same impact
he did, even if released earlier, at least not on paper although
possibly if they took the form of videos or photographs. Ellsberg
agreed on how many damning facts were already out in the open. But he
clearly hopes, as do we all, that what Wikileaks has released will
impact the discussion in the corporate media.

Here’s a clip with Ellsberg, Kucinich, and Donna Smith in Cleveland: (video).

PDA’s activists strategized on Saturday on how to spread their
messages and educate the public, but focused on Sunday on how to
influence elected officials. It’s worth recalling, I think, both the
recent studies showing that a large percentage of those still believing
lies about Iraq cannot be persuaded to change their minds with any
amount of information, and the experience of the past couple of
centuries showing that elected officials care far more about being
unelected than they do about behaving immorally. David Dayen blogged
this comment over the weekend:

“I almost forgot to add an insight to this that I got
from Matthew Hoh, the former State Department appointee who resigned
his post in Afghanistan and has now spoken out repeatedly against the
war. Before the Wikileaks release, he told me after a Netroots Nation
panel that the staffers in many House offices did not want to hear his
take on the war and its myriad problems because if they understood it,
they would have a harder time justifying their members’ war vote. They
would literally rather remain in ignorance than know the truth. The
Wikileaks release makes that less possible now.”

I don’t know how much that last sentence will prove true, but the
ones before it are key and explain the work that PDA and other peace
groups are doing. Communications is crucial, but it has to translate
into the ability to swing elections, or our representatives will simply
vote for policies that have become less popular.

On the communications front, no American can do any better than to
watch the video of Saturday evening’s panel in Cleveland on “Delivering
a progressive message to a corporate media,” which included:
John Nichols, author and Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine
Jeff Cohen, author and founding director of the Park Center for
Independent Media at the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca
College
Marcy Winograd, former PDA-endorsed congressional candidate and Advisory Board member

Wendell Potter, Senior fellow on Healthcare with the Center for Media and Democracy

While Marcy provided the progressive candidate’s view of the media,
Wendell Potter gave that of a former corporate hack and a current
whistleblower, Cohen that of a former television talking head and
current media critic and university professor, and the always brilliant
John Nichols laid out in concise detail the documented dying of the old
media and the lack of any birth, as of yet, of a new media that can
replace it. Here’s Cohen: (video).

Also on Saturday, we shared notes in regional groupings, and I took
part in the Southern one, where energy was high and planning eager.
Southern progressives are on the move and planning a regional conference, possibly in Atlanta.

Sunday morning, we split up along other lines, joining one or more of PDA’s six Issue Organizing Teams:
• End War and Occupation IOT: Norman Solomon and Steve Carlson, table leaders

• Healthcare for All/Single-payer IOT: Donna Smith and Chuck Pennacchio, table leaders
• Stop Global Warming/Environmental IOT: Laura Bonham, table leader
• Accountability and Justice IOT: Susan Harman and David Swanson, table leaders
• Amend to Suspend Action Group (opposing corporate personhood): Dave Keeler, table leader
• Immigration Reform Action Group: Dan O’Neal, table leader

PDA is a major participant in immigrant rights struggles in Arizona
and wants everyone to watch for big actions there on Thursday, July
29th. Through the combination of two groups into a single meeting, and
by running down the hall, I was able to take part in three of the
meetings. Each group laid plans for the coming months, assigned roles,
and jumped to work, including taking on this week’s expected House vote
on war escalation funding. At the same time, some of PDA’s key anti-war
leaders were attending and playing a leading role in a huge and hugely
successful national peace conference
in Albany, NY. The peace movement is joining forces with the labor and
civil rights movements this fall, and PDA is in the thick of that.
George Korn from Rainbow PUSH was at the PDA Conference planning a
campaign for Jobs, Justice, and Peace with the United Auto Workers and
others.

At the same time, PDA is campaigning for congressional candidates,
among whom I saw David Gill and Doug Tudor at the conference, and staff
for David Segal and Marleine Bastien. The conference closed with a
beautiful speech by John Nichols comparing the creation of the
then-radical-and-progressive Republican Party with the prospect of
turning the Democratic party into something radical and progressive.
Some of us may believe the key to accomplishing that or another
solution to our broken government is truly independent organizing, but
I work with PDA because — despite its odd choice of name — it
provides the closest thing to that right now, drawing its agenda not
from Washington but from the active chapters around the country whose
true representatives took part in so much fruitful discussion and
debate in Cleveland.