"I’m tired of watching people suffer while politicians make their backroom deals. The bosses may tell me where to sit; no one tells me where to stand”

A great reminder that stepping out of line can make a difference!

Massachusetts is one of the most prosperous states in the nation and yet many of our residents live just at or above the poverty line.

A recent study by Mass Budget and Policy found that the gap between Massachusetts's richest and poorest households is the 8th highest in the nation.  

In large measure this is a function of two factors - our regressive tax system and the erosion of the minimum wage.  In 1968, the Massachusetts minimum wage was worth $10.52 (adjusted for inflation). Today, it is $8.00.

At the same time, nearly 1 million hard working people in Massachusetts—almost one-third of our workers—are forced to go to work sick because they can’t risk losing their jobs and the wages their families need.  This creates substantial instability and puts many workers a few sick days away from poverty.

The legislature has failed, thus far, to enact either an earned sick time bill or a minimum wage bill - and so now, we are going to the ballot.  On August 7, we submitted our ballot petitions to the Attorney General.  You can read a summary of the earned sick time petition here and the minimum wage petition here.

Senator Elizabeth Warren signed our minimum wage petition and Senator Ed Markey signed our earned sick time petition. That's the kind of progressive support we have.

Reformers are investing in a politics that combines technical skill with grassroots energy. 
Can that formula transform the culture of “wait-your-turn’’?

PHOTO CREDIT: TIM PIERCE

The thought-provoking piece by Robert Kuttner  in the Boston Sunday Globe describes the dynamics of Massachusetts Democratic politics, wherein an older party establishment can be resistant to the new ideas and tactics introduced by “outsiders” not used to party norms. Kuttner holds out hope that reformer/”insurgent” candidates like Deval Patrick and Elizabeth Warren can re-align the party’s mechanics, aims and candidates.

At Progressive Mass, we don’t see reformers and party politics necessarily to be at odds, but we believe that for real cultural shift within the party institution, there must be an outside  force applying some pressure. Indeed, this is one of the foundational impetuses of Progressive Massachusetts.

What do you think? Does Robert Kuttner describe the state of play accurately? How does an institution like a political party cultivate nimbleness? Do “outsider” efforts–including Progressive Mass–risk becoming part of the same cycle that turns energy and reform into “the way things are done”? (If so, how do we stop that?) Or is the “reformer as regular,” in Kuttner’s formulation, a real possibility?

Many of our most active Progressive Mass organizers and activists also work hard for the benefit of the Party, not only in winning elections (Patrick, Obama, Warren!), but also on Ward and Town Committees. Individually, people have been staking out ways to be both outsiders and insiders. Can we create a way to harness the best of party politics and outsider reform? (consider Kuttner’s earlier article, “Can Insiders be Outsiders?“–from 2001!)

Excerpts from this great article are below; read the whole thing here (it may be limited to subscribers for a few days).

Can state Democratic reformers transform the “wait your turn’’ culture?

[...]Despite the Democratic sentiments of voters, the institutional party has often seemed dysfunctional, decrepit, and not welcoming of new blood.

In this odd history, one fact screams out. The two big statewide winners of recent decades were complete outsiders.

We could be in a new era of what might be called the reformer as regular. The people attracted by Patrick and Warren are now increasingly the institutional party, and they are very good at politics. Even so, the legacy Democratic Party is still alive, and familiar faces are running for the Senate seat just vacated by John Kerry.