The opening session of the Take Back The American Dream Conference here in Washington — a progressive confab led by former Obama administration official and Glenn Beck enemy Number One Van Jones — sought to find common ground with the protest movement on Wall Street, which some are already looking towards as the start of a progressive tea party.
Attendees here opened the conference an hour early for an update on the growing protests in New York, and talk of the occupation on Wall Street sprinkled into the opening speeches.
“This is a struggle about what kind of America we will be,” said Robert Borosage, an activist with the Institute for America’s Future who helped open the conference. Like tea partiers do (and progressive activists have done for years) Borosage assailed both parties, claiming each had become too close to corporate power.
But Borosage said the Wall Street protests suggest that people are actually starting to heed the warnings against big money and big power as the nation’s focus turns once again to national elections.
“We need a politics that’s disruptive,” he said. “The kids in Occupy Wall street gave us a taste of that.”
But some warned the audience here not to go too far down the path of totally non-partisan protest.
“As some of you know, I haven’t always been the happy Democratic camper. I’m like y’all,” Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) told the audience. “But I also know where our battle lines are drawn, and I know that we can get their faster with our crowd than we can get their with their crowd.”
