An A-Team for Progressive Messaging in the States

http://truthout.org/team-progressive-messaging-states/1305211733

"Not everything that comes from D.C. is always better," says Denise Cardinal. At a time when some of the most crucial political battles in America are taking place at the state level, we cannot wait for a progressive communications strategy to come down from national groups. Cardinal, who is executive director of both the Alliance for a Better Minnesota and ProgressNow, is among those working hard to promote an alternative approach.

ProgressNow is a network of state-level organizations that, among other things, brings together labor, environmental and reproductive rights groups around a common communications agenda. They bear witness to the fact that when progressives work in isolation or try to import a communications strategy from Washington, their efforts rarely leave behind the kind of grassroots infrastructure in the states that we need to move beyond defensive battles and to build strength for the long term.

Among ProgressNow's state partners, Alliance for a Better Minnesota (ABM) provides an excellent example of how local organizations can do something different. Working as a coalition, they can create capacity for progressive messaging and communications that is far greater than anything the individual groups could manage on their own.

In the Footsteps of Paul Wellstone

ABM brings together more than 40 Minnesota organizations, including labor unions, the Sierra Club and Clean Water Action, and local branches of NARAL and Planned Parenthood. Cross-issue collaboration among such groups in Minnesota is not entirely new. Many of these organizations rose as influential political forces alongside the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, a progressive champion who emphasized the importance of coalition building. But ABM has extended this tradition in new ways.

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