Astroturfing on the Left

http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/45426
By David Swanson
We've grown accustomed to recognizing astroturfing on the right.  A
corporate lobbyist sends letters to congress members forging the
signatures and letterhead of local grassroots groups.  Oil
corporations create front groups to generate town-hall presence against
legislation that could slow climate change.  Health insurance
companies fund grassroots activists to speak for them. 
Fox News encourages and exaggerates support for whatever the Republican
Party tells it is needed.  Astroturf is a good name for all of this
because it is grassroots flipped upside down.  It's people being
organized to rally in demand of exactly what Republican congress members
want them to demand.
But what about astroturfing on the left?  How do we feel about
that?  Here's an example.
Last week AFSCME, the national labor union which has no presence in my
town, contacted me about helping to organize a rally for
healthcare.  I knew that AFSCME would only want to rally for the
public option but I also knew that coalitions can create
larger rallies if they include all appropriate allies.  So I drafted
the following announcement with three demands in it for the event and
asked AFSCME to approve it:
***
We need you! Health Care Reform rally, Monday August 24th,
Charlottesville, VA at the Downtown Mall, 12 pm to 2 pm.
Join us at the pavilion near City Hall with three demands:
-Vote Yes on the Weiner amendment for single-payer healthcare.
-Keep the Kucinich amendment for states' right to single-payer in the
bill.
-Include a strong immediate public option.
 
Who: YOU and hundreds of community organizers, grassroots activists, and
local politicians will gather to demand REAL health care reform. .
.now!
What: Highway to Health Care RV Tour Stop: A Rally in Charlottesville,
VA
When: Monday, August 24th, 2009, 12 pm - 2 pm
Where: Downtown Mall, Across from City Hall, at the Pavilion (605 E. Main
Street)
Why: Americans need comprehensive health care reform. . .now! Therefore
AFSCME's been driving an RV cross country, creating dozens of rallies for
comprehensive health care reform
How: We intend to pull off this last minute rally with a little help from
our friends like you
***
AFSCME approved this, and I sent it out to local lists of
activists.  I asked a number of local and national organizations to
send it to their local lists, and they did so.  I agreed to speak at
the rally, as did some other good speakers from this area.  But come
Sunday night we were all disinvited: anyone who had ever been a supporter
of single-payer.  We were told that single-payer could not be
mentioned at the rally, and that only the public option could be
discussed.  Or, rather, this was the new list of demands:
public option, no taxation of benefits (especially for the middle
class), and shared responsibility.   No joke. 
Shared responsibility.   Can I get a side of earmarks
with that?
I told the AFSCME staffer that I was disappointed by her procedure of
approving of a more inclusive message as a means to bait people to come,
and then switching to a policy of self-censorship for the event
itself.  I told her that I thought we should all unite against the
insurance companies, which would only delight in our divided and weakened
movement.  I told her that a labor union must know that the push for
single-payer makes the public option a compromise, whereas demanding only
the public option makes something less than that the compromise.  I
told her that there was not any conflict between passing a public option
and leaving states their constitutional right to do better if they choose
to.  She told me she agreed 110 percent with everything
but that she was following her instructions.  I said that I
understood, but that she undoubtedly had known AFSCME's policies last
week when she approved my announcements, and she had no reply.  In
fact, I had discussed the three demands with a more senior colleague of
hers on the phone last week, and he hadn't raised any concern
either.
What makes this more than a silly mistake is the fact that those at
AFSCME giving this staffer her orders were almost certainly themselves
taking their orders from Democrats in Congress.  It's not as if they
surveyed AFSCME's membership and came up with the ban on mentioning
single-payer healthcare.  AFSCME nationally endorses HR
676 (a bill to create single-payer) as do at least 22 AFSCME locals that
I know of.  I'm willing to bet that AFSCME's membership would be
outraged at the tactics funded by its money.  These are union
members.  They know that people who want single-payer and people who
want a baby step in that direction are united against the insurance
companies and the corporate media and the party leadership.  And
they know that you don't begin a negotiation asking for the least you'll
take.  No, the orders come down from the Democrats.  So people
are being organized to rally Democrats in Congress to do what the
Democrats in Congress have already approved being asked to do.  How
is this not astroturfing?  How is this different from what the right
does (I mean other than the absence of guns and outright
lunatics)?
By self-censoring, we don't just shrink our crowds at rallies.  We
don't just divide people (I've heard single-payer supporters say they are
going to protest this rally, when they should have been invited to be
there in support of better healthcare.)  By self-censoring we risk
short-term and long-term failure.  Our local right-leaning
Democratic congress member here in Charlottesville has told me that he
approves of leaving in the bill the language to permit states to create
single-payer.  He opposes national single-payer and probably the
public option - depending on the details.  So what are we
doing?  We're banning any mention of the one demand we might be able
to get him to act on.  Is he likely to put in a word with the Rules
Committee or the leadership about states' rights to single-payer if we
don't even mention it?  And we're turning the public option into the
extreme-left position, making it exceedingly unlikely he'll support
that.  If the progressives in Congress stand firm for the public
option, but we have not pressured other congress members to come around,
we'll end up with no bill at all.  This will be much better than a
counter-productive bill.  And it will set a very useful precedent
for the progressives to have taken a stand for the first time.  But
then what? 
We could then build a strong movement for single-payer healthcare, for
healthcare as a basic human right.  We could build it very well at
this moment and force a better bill through Congress in the near
future.  After all, allowing everyone to have Medicare is simple and
easy and clear.  It saves money over the current wasteful
system.  And it does not create new entities that can be falsely
labeled death panels or anything else.  Of course, the
reaction from the right will be exactly the same, but that's the
point.  If you're going to be attacked as murderers of old people
when you propose a bailout for health insurance companies with a teeny
bit of reform tacked on, why not get attacked as murderers of old people
for insisting on healthcare for all?
I asked Tim Carpenter, the National Director of Progressive Democrats of
America, one of the national groups that was generous enough to send my
event announcement out last week, what he thought of the latest
development, and he said, This is a time when we need more honest
discussions and debate, not censorship.