Other third parties on the left need to drop their individual agendas and work towards unity, especially with the labor movement, in order to create a broad-based left party that doesn't have litmus tests for inclusion""just broad principles like steeply progressive taxation, an end to NAFTA and the WTO, democratization of the Federal Reserve Bank, national health care, a wholesale slashing of the military budget, by perhaps two-thirds or more, free education through four years of college for all, and a crisis plan to attack climate change.
If the ever fractious US left, and the somnolent labor movement, cannot come together as one, there is little hope of political change in America. At that point the alternative would be an increasing militancy over these critical issues, outside of the electoral arena""something that has to happen anyhow, regardless of whether a real third party force can be put together. We know that simply organizing occasional polite marches in Washington, or in key cities, accomplishes nothing. We have learned that email campaigns to deluge members of Congress with canned opinions don't work. What has worked, and will always work, is massive campaigns of civil disobedience, tent cities in Washington, organized disruption of war preparations, and door-to-door organizing. The corrupt hacks who inhabit the halls of Congress and the White House will not do the right thing just because it is the right thing, or because we ask them nicely. They may, if we make them fear that they will actually lose our votes in the next election. For the most part, incumbent Democrats know that the people who peacefully march down Connecticut Avenue are still likely to vote for them come the next election. They're not going to be so sure about people who are being hit by tear gas and water cannons and who are being hauled off en masse to jail at protests.
We may need to start sending that stronger message.
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