If we are to succeed we will have to make alliances with people and groups whose professed political stances are different from ours and at times unpalatable to us. We will have to shed our ideological purity. Saul Alinsky, whose successor, Ed Chambers, was Gecan’s mentor, argued that the ideological rigidity of the left—something epitomized in identity politics and political correctness—effectively severed it from the lives of working men and women. This was especially true during the Vietnam War when college students led the anti-war protests and the sons of the working class did the fighting and dying in Vietnam. But it is true today as liberals and the left dismiss Trump supporters as irredeemable racists and bigots and ignore their feelings of betrayal and very real suffering. Condemning those who support Trump is political suicide. Alinsky detested such moral litmus tests. He insisted that there were “no permanent enemies, no permanent allies, only permanent interests.”
“We have to listen to people unlike ourselves,” Gecan said, observing that this will be achieved not through the internet but through face-to-face relationships. “And once we’ve built a relationship we can agitate them and be willing to be agitated by them.”
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Institution building is possible only if you “engage institutions or create newer and better ones—whether it’s churches or civic unions,” he said. Without these, the power in the other two sectors—corporate and governmental—dominates.
The state, he said, has learned how to manipulate familiar protest rituals and render them impotent.
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“Can we rebuild unions?” Gecan asked. “We can. It takes time. And we’re doing it in some parts of the country. Can we rebuild civic life in our cities? We have and will do more. Can we take these people on? I know we can. But it will take different tactics. It will take some very unconventional allies that will surprise people.”