On Momentum, new ideas, and Mr. Hazen
I sit here watching two high performance sailboats getting ready to race on this crystal clear day in San Francisco. It’s a wonderful time of year in the late summer, when the fog retreats and the people come out to the shore. Absolutely glorious. But me? I’m hunkered down in front of my screen trying to sort through my opening remarks for Momentum, our fourth conference highlighting the best of new ideas to advance progressive public policy.
Don Hazen, the character who conceived of and has built AlterNet, the wonderful aggregator of progressive news and commentary, has asked me a couple of provocative questions about Momentum. Several revolved around the idea that progressives are confused about how to speak to the new Administration. Are we supporters or critics? Have we already been so burned by the healthcare debate that we are ready to turn on the new team, or what? He wanted to know if our conference, very nearly sold out, much to our surprise in this most difficult of years, was going to answer some of these questions.
As I told him in response, that’s not really our role. First, the progressive community is larger — much larger — than the 300 plus folks who will assemble on Monday afternoon at the W (SF). One would have to be seriously delusional to think we might speak for the entire progressive community, although to hear Glenn Beck talk about us, well maybe we do! However, I digress.
News people, like Hazen, want a story, and they are very good at getting them. At Momentum, though, we are looking for what might become a story in the future. All good political stories begin with ideas that somehow take flight, get traction, and sometimes become policies, or at least political fights about policy, that really are newsworthy. At Momentum, we concentrate on the ideas. Last year, for instance, Jacob Hacker held forth on the transition from our current broken healthcare system and argued brilliantly for an approach that saw a "public option" as a pivotal tool that would help move the chances for change forward. Little did he know that his "compromise" position might so quickly have become the lightning rod for the debate we see this year.
One voice on this year’s program that should be galvanizing is Sony Kapoor from Europe. He will be talking in very direct and compelling ways about the critical need for international financial reform, picking up from last year’s speaker Rob Johnson who sharply depicted an "oligopoly" comprised of 6 firms that traded derivatives among themselves while telling all it was a "marketplace." Some of us, of course, wish we’d paid just a tad more attention to Johnson. We could have avoided much of the meltdown, but that’s another story. Kapoor, who worked in the belly of the beast, will describe how the problem is really much bigger than the U.S. Solving it, needless to say, will take more than reforms in Washington. And speaking of that fair city, we’ll also be hearing from Laura Quinn about Catalist, one of the most important new tools for progressive advocacy and voter engagement groups in a generation. Then, early Wednesday, we’re delighted to have John Kao (author of Innovation Nation) talk about what is needed to truly foster imagination and innovation in society. It’s all going to be quite a ride.
So, this all is probably not a very good answer to Mr. Hazen, but what I can assure him is that if he spends a couple of days next week with us, he will likely take away more than a few ideas that he probably hasn’t heard before. For change really to happen, isn’t that where it all begins?