On Monday, the Boston Globe’s front page featured a wide ranging profile of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and all of the amazing work PCCC members have done to push the Democratic Party to embrace Elizabeth Warren’s agenda and fight for progressive change.
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The Boston Globe: Progressive wing waves Elizabeth Warren banner
Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor are cofounders of Progressive Change Campaign Committee. The group has been promoting the political profile of Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in presidential primary states.
WASHINGTON ai??i?? Elizabeth Warren has pledged she will not seek the White House in 2016, but that has not stopped diehard Warren boosters from promoting her political profile in presidential primary states, saying she is best positioned to push the Democratic Party to the left.
A group called Progressive Change Campaign Committee is waging the most visible of these pro-Warren crusades, training volunteers, meeting with labor leaders in New Hampshire, and handing out stickers with Warrenai??i??s name.
But there are costs to party unity, as the Massachusetts senator becomes a central figure in an intensifying battle for the Democratic Partyai??i??s soul.
The movement behind Warren is not as intense as the conservative Tea Party version for Republican candidates, but pushing against the partyai??i??s center is the goal for both.
ai???Weai??i??re going to make sure that every Democrat who runs for president is forced to say whether they agree with Elizabeth Warren on key issues, like expanding Social Security benefits and more Wall Street reform,ai??? said Adam Green, the 37-year-old cofounder of the group.
Warrenai??i??s impassioned stance on expanding Social Security is in defiance of President Obamaai??i??s proposal to trim the growth of benefit payments in future years. On that issue, and for her strident efforts to curb the power of Wall Streetai??i??s big banks, she was recently criticized by a centrist think tank as leading the Democratic Party ai???over the populist cliff.ai??i??ai??i??
That only further inflamed Warrenai??i??s loyal grass-roots allies, with Progressive Change leading the charge last week. Campaign-style signs that the group has created neatly summarize its dedication: ai???Iai??i??m from the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party.ai???
Progressive Change and other liberal groups saw a perfect opportunity to mobilize their supporters and generate more publicity for the battle over the partyai??i??s direction after Third Way, the centrist Democratic think-tank, leveled its attack on Warren in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.
The same day, Progressive Change gathered dozens of activists and Social Security recipients in front of Third Wayai??i??s offices in Washingtonai??i??s lobbying district. Members handed over boxes of petitions with 125,000 names ai???to deliver a rebuke to Wall Streetai??i??funded Third Wayai??i??s attacks on Social Security and Senator Elizabeth Warren.ai??? [Read more]
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The Globe also profiled our initial meetings with Warren, and our relationship growing over time:
The group, founded in 2009 by former MoveOn.org staffers, has been closely intertwined with Warrenai??i??s rise.
In the summer of 2010, Green and 34-year-old cofounder Stephanie Taylor saw an article in Huffington Post warning that the Obama administration might bypass Warren to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The group gathered about 240,000 signatures, and lots of publicity.
They sat down with Warren a week later at Netroots Nation, an annual conference of thousands of liberal activists, where Warrenai??i??s keynote speech made her the weekendai??i??s most sought-after companion.
A year later, before Warren entered the Senate race, the group led efforts to ai???draftai??? her into the race, with $100,000 in contributions, hundreds of house parties, and a list of activists gathered from the fight over the consumer agency. A week before Warren declared her candidacy, Green and Taylor sat on her front porch in Cambridge and talked about the nature of power as they sipped iced tea.
They talked about it again in a 30-minute rousing conference call that Warren held with hundreds of Progressive Change supporters, just three days before she defeated Senator Scott Brown.
ai???Elizabeth Warren is one of us,ai??? Taylor told her fellow activists.
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Elizabeth Warren actually WAS progressive, and an effective advocate for the poor. She very abruptly dropped the poverty issue, and now specifies (frequently) that she stands with the middle class alone, those with incomes over (roughly) $40k. If addressing inequality, she is referring only to the gap between the middle class and rich. This makes her a Democrat, not a progressive. On core socioeconomic policies (which define the US), today’s Democrats are actually to the right of Eisenhower and Nixon.
Demand the details of what the Dems mean when they refer to “expanding Social Security;” you might not like their plan. There is no progressive element of the Democratic Party, to my knowledge. What they actually appear to have is a boldly deceptive agenda to dismantle the New Deal entirely. What became known as AFDC was actually first written into FDR’s Social Security Act of 1932. The Clinton Dems wiped that out, and still had time to begin dismantling Social Security itself, targeting the disable. While it shouldn’t be our sole consideration, remember that we pay into both Social Security retirement and disability. (note: Upon being elected, President Obama reversed Clinton’s policies against the disabled.) Several Dems who wear “bold progressive” stickers on the lapels have recently stopped claiming that they will protect Social Security in whole, specifying that they will protect Social Security retirement (for now). These include Elizabeth Warren. As was done with the Great Society branch of the New Deal, the Dem plan appears to be that of dismantling the New Deal one piece at a time. Demand the details!