DFL Education Foundation

Encouraging things

Some things are encouraging.

Health care: Illinois passed health care for all kids to be implemented next July. Wisconsin has a plan to provide health care for all its citizens. It may have a good chance in the next legislature.

Elections: A forum this past fall described the work of several groups working for fair and accurate elections by letting all eligible voters vote and then counting the ballots accurately. Several states have passed laws requiring a paper trail so that returns can be audited.

Kids: Our business community is exercising leadership in the area of early childhood learning. The Minnesota Early Learning Foundation headed by Duane Benson was recently established to find cost-effective ways to reach families whose children may be at risk.
Vici Oshiro

Political parties, candidates and issues

The prevailing view in the Democratic Party these days seems to be that the only function of the party is to elect candidates. Elected officials--former candidates--define the issues the party stands for. This seems to me wrong-headed, back handed and why the right wing prevails.

For the last decade or two the right wing movement in the U.S. has organized around individualism and national chauvinism--that everybody should be able to take care of themselves and that America should be and should remain supreme in the world. Organizing around individualism--working together to promote individual effort-seems a contradiction in terms but it has worked and worked well. Chauvinism in a global world is dangerous. We end up going it alone, as in Iraq, and losing friends.

That's because the Democratic Party, instead of promoting new ideas to solve the problems facing individuals in an increasingly global world, has shifted to electing candidates. But for what? To defend past ideas? No wonder one hears that the Democratic Party is intellectually dead, has no new ideas. It has become the centrist party, the defensive party, whose goal is only to elect candidates.

The role of a political party is to define a philosophy--read that in today's terms as "message"-- and find the best candidates it can for public office to carry out that philosophy. Just as the right wing is always to the right of its candidates, the Democratic Party ought to be to the left of its candidates. It ought to defend them, offer them protection by providing a left base. Let the candidates move to the center.

We who are liberals ought to be smart enough to learn from the right wing movement. We ought to be talking about the issues first, about what we believe in. If we believe in government as a good, as that which we do collectively then we have to make our political party talk education, health care, how to solve traffic congestion, save the environment and survive in a global economy. Then we ought to go out and find candidates who will campaign on our issues, not just wait around for the next person who wants to hold public office and figure out ways to elect him. Maybe we should even figure out why too often it's him, not her.

Arvonne Fraser

Apollo Alliance

The Apollo Alliance is a new up and coming environmental organization. Much as Growth & Justice melds economic growth with universal well-being, so the Apollo Alliance melds fincancial well-being with environmental improvement.

Jeremy Wieland

Sojourners review

"Wal-Mart's critics can easily exploit some aspects of our benefits offering to make their case; in other words, our critics are correct in some of their observations. Specifically, our coverage is expensive for low-income families, and Wal-Mart has a significant percentage of associates and their children on public assistance." This quote from an internal memo at the big retailer was brought to our attention by Sojourners magazine in their e-newsletter. The notice is a call to action for congregations to remind folks that corporate greed is a Heavenly no no. Check it out.

Pam Rykken