It doesn’t get any more inside political baseball than this, but it’s a hard hit for movement progressives and activists, some of whom have been serious movers and shakers.
The groups dropped by the Democracy Alliance tend to be those that work outside the party’s structure. Groups with closer ties to the party, such as the Center for American Progress and Media Matters, retained their status with the Democracy Alliance as favored organizations.
The decision to drop certain groups was delivered to those affected last week. Among the ones axed are Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Foundation, James Rucker’s Citizen Engagement Lab, Melanie Sloan’s Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (known as CREW), Third Way, the Center for Progressive Leadership, the Advancement Project, Democracia, Free Press and Simon Rosenberg’s NDN, according to sources with knowledge of the situation. Groups working on issues relating directly to people of color appear to be the most dramatically affected.
Inside Grimm’s reporting, the statements of gratitude for Democracy Alliance from strong progressive fighters being kicked out will give you an idea of DA’s power, but also the quickly regrouped attitude required of ousted groups to maintain their image and confidence as they seek independent funding in a very competitive financial climate this year.
Not being in the progressive movement community, but a liberal writer about all things political, I can’t help but see this as a corralling money moment, so that funds can be directed strategically, which means to those who already have power.
When you look at what Greenwald’s group has done on the Koch Bros., as well as Melanie Sloan’s group, but especially James Rucker’s work in helping to oust Glenn Beck, there’s been some real work done here to expose elements of the political world that are worthy of investigation.
Democracy Now! has been outside the DA circle for years now, I believe.
Media Matters, who has close Democratic Party ties, as well as Center for American Progress, which does as well, both remain inside DA.
But Deborah Sagner, a former member of the donor network, said that the decision was in line with the group’s unfortunate drift toward supporting only groups closely allied to the Democratic Party. “I was sorry to see that the DA has continued on the trajectory away from funding independent infrastructure that induced me to leave the organization two years ago. I will say that the DA was a great idea (the need was nicely expressed by Bill Bradley in this editorial written at the time the DA was incubating), did some excellent funding of good groups, and it’s really a shame that it has not been able to fulfill its promise,” she wrote in an email. – Ryan Grimm
This story is hitting hard across the Democratic progressive activist world.
It’s another de-funding moment for movement progressives by an establishment money organization.
Democracy Alliance is just another example of the sclerotic two party system. The groups that were removed represent the future; if there is one.
The establishment will always try to kick regular grassroots people to the curb. I am not hearing too much from people on this years election. I think people are so fed up with whats going on in Washington DC, and whats happening in their state. Its no wonder Independents are growing in numbers.
CREW being among the outcasts is a bit of a surprise. They’ve been pretty reliably assisting Democratic congressional “leadership” with their outcasts. Apparently, they weren’t reliable enough. This does serve to explain why they were so reliable, though.
The lesson here for any progressive groups should be that they should not become dependent on any one source for much of their funding, unless they merely want to do the bidding of that source.
If Democracy Now wasn’t an outsider already, they have a lot of chutzpah.
Guess I’m going to be getting more junk e-mail soon…
Just to be clear, it’s my understanding that none of the progressive groups relied on one source of funding. However, DA’s access to big donors is unquestionably important for all progressive groups, which I’d bet still has access to many of them, if through other means.
If your organization will take a hit when a source of funding goes away, you’re relying on it. PBS let itself be led around by the nose for years for the 10-15 % of its funds that come from the government.
If what you’re saying is true, though, then this might be good news in the long run. If those organizations can survive more or less intact, the Democratic Party will have less influence on them. That’s a good thing for progressives.