News broke this week that immigration is polling as America’s “top problem.”
What? Seriously?
Immigration is the “top problem”? Not climate change? Threats to democracy? The rise of hate? The loss of rights? Women’s autonomy? The widespread availability of guns? A corrupted judicial system?
I am convinced that immigration is polling as the “top problem” because far-right extremists are driving America’s public agenda.
They have been for a while. It’s partly deliberate intention from the far-right. It’s also partly our carnivalesque intrigue and horror at everything that’s happening that inspires mainstream media to cover whatever is being pushed by the far right. The Democratic US president even travelled to the border this week, further underscoring the issue.
The American public agenda is not being driven by the American majority, nor is it being driven by Democrats.
That’s a bold statement from someone trying to grow a tiny baby political nonprofit. One might think we’d like to not ruffle feathers.
But the hard truth is that Democrats and Democratic values and priorities are not driving the public agenda. Those values and priorities also tend to also be in alignment with the general public.
If we’d like Democratic values and priorities to drive the public agenda, we need to behave differently — and it’s not going to happen just by voting and registering voters and canvassing and postcards and all the other traditional political stuff.
We need to go out and deliberately shift the agenda.
We need to raise a fuss.
We need to drive media coverage.
We need to get people talking.
WHY AREN’T WE DOING THAT? AREN’T WE MAD? AREN’T WE WORRIED?
Don’t we want things like climate change to be the top priority for this country? Women’s rights? Fighting increasing hate? Stabilizing the democracy? Any of that?
The lists could go on and on and on but I’m preaching to the choir.
Anyway. We’ve got ideas here at Shift the Country about how to actually drive the agenda. We’re doing calls Friday afternoons and Tuesday evenings to ramp up work to do it. We could build bigger coalitions, get existing groups to do new stuff, do high profile things in communities, work our social networks, pressure businesses, and on and on. We’re pushing engagement, partnerships, and pressure to supercharge democracy. We build on what’s already there and make it huge.
Join us. We’re meeting at 3 pm Central today (4 Eastern, 2 Mountain, 1 Pacific).
Other groups have similar advocacy goals, for example, Progress Iowa, or Interfaith Alliance, among others, both of which I support. Do you work with successful efforts in this or other states to change the narrative, as on immigration? Or at least change the strategy, because I can’t find an example of a successful strategy, or narrative to counter the xenophobia?