Penny Abeywardena
DMI Is Highlighted in Handbook for Progressives
Released earlier this week, "The Practical Progressive: how to build a 21st century movement" is a comprehensive handbook profiling dozens of organizations that are deemed “absolutely critical to the long-term success of progressive movement.” DMI is proud to join the impressive roster, which includes many of our own partners and collaborators like the Progressive States Network, The Nation, Center for Community Change, Young People For, and Brave New Films.
Billed as the “thinking person’s guide to creating a meaningful, sustainable change in the public sector,” author Erica Payne provides an overview of the progressive movement and a history of the conservative infrastructure. But the real value of the publication is in the profiles and the questions addressed by the head of each group, whose answers allow the reader to get a taste of the character and soul of each organization. For example, DMI’s executive director Andrea Batista Schlesinger had this response to a question about giving advice to fellow progressives, “The conservative right has defined our friends and enemies for too long (unions, lawyers=bad, the free market=good). It’s time to reclaim this. We need to make the case that the poor and the middle class have a shared economic interest in a progressive agenda, that a progressive immigration policy is in the best interest of the middle class, that access to the courts and a muscular government prepared to regulate is in the best interests of all of us.”
Now this gets to the heart of DMI’s work. This is why we: provided the first and most comprehensive analysis linking progressive immigration policy to economic security for middle-class Americans; launched civil justice programming to advocate for the preservation of our civil justice system as a basic issue of economic justice for current and aspiring middle-class Americans; and give the microphone, through our popular event series the Marketplace of Ideas, to progressive policymakers addressing our nation’s most critical challenges like predatory mortgage lending, access to preschool education for all and creating affordable housing. And the examples could go on…
At this point you must be 1) dying to learn more about DMI’s programming (you can never know too much!), and 2) looking forward to reading The Practical Progressive. So what about this: check out our cool web properties like TheMiddleClass.org and MayorTV, and then make a donation of, say, $25 to DMI because the first 20 donations of $25 or more will get you a copy of The Practical Progressive as a thank you for your generous support of our work!
Penny Abeywardena: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 4:20 PM, Aug 20, 2008 in
Drum Major Institute
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