Van Jones took the podium exhorting writers to hang on to our notes, which are a first draft of history.
He spoke of the Tea Party's "wrecking ball" that, unopposed, is demolishing the middle and working classes. The people are standing up to say, "Enough is enough."
The banks would be out of business without us, he said. A sleeping giant is awakening. We're a better country than this, with college graduates $100,000 in debt.
The well-organized Tea Party knocked the whole country off track.
Borosage spoke of the six hundred thousand group leaders already signed up to support the Dream, with the goal of an ultimate million on this list. Involvement of every congressional district is involved, with another goal: 2,012 progressive candidates to run for office in 2012.
"We'll shake up politics."
He recalled the thrilling start of the Wall Street occupation, which started with 267 brave souls on September 17. We have zero faith, he said, having gone from hope to heartbreak in the preceding three years.
There was talk of clean-energy jobs as our number 2 priority and the unfortunate bankruptcy filing by Solyndra, which defaulted on its $2.4 million government loan, part of a program launched by Bush 43 that was actually praised as one of that president's positive contributions to our side of things.
That meant that the government loan program to green energy enterprise has been 99 percent successful.
According to the Brookings Institute, there are now 2.4 million green jobs operative in this country, and the green economy is growing twice as quickly as any other nationwide.
Questions were few, one comically dismissing our entire project as totally off the mark and quixotic, more like a rally than a serious planning event to answer tough questions. She also noted that the Koch brothers were using our tactics toward their destructive ends.
Van Jones stood up to her with strength and conviction, saying that this movement will go on and on; those who know about the middle class will fight for it and rescue America's finest invention, the middle class. "We're building an independent movement," added Borosage. The woman sat down laughing loudly, who knows why?
After the proceedings I went up to ask Bob Borosage whether there's been any progressive push to bring our two Nobel prize winning Keynsian economists into the Obama administration.
Only at the pundit level [you rang?], he answered, turning the subject to a recent Obama appointee of labor expert Alan Krueger as Obama's top economic adviser, whom he praised in a luke-warm fashion.
(more to follow on 10/5)
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