Take Back the American Dream Conference 2011 Highlights

Co-director Roger Hickey appeared on the Dylan Ratigan Show Tuesday to discuss the influence of big money in politics and whether progressives could find common cause with tea party activists on giving power in the democracy back to ordinary people. Hickey said common ground does exist, and progressives are leading the way in forging it.

Courtney Foley, the Starkville, Miss. native responsible for making sure that a referendum to bring down an anti-worker bill in Ohio qualifies for the ballot, received this year's Maria Leavey Tribute Award at the Take Back the American Dream conference on Wednesday.

This will be a disappointment for the political reporters always looking to gawk at "hot Dem-on-Dem" action or what Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., at the Take Back the American Dream conference this week called a "progressive food fight," but the straw poll taken at the conference shows there's not a lot of daylight between progressive activists and the president on his jobs agenda.

Attendees at the Take Back the American Dream conference piled into buses at high noon Wednesday and took their stand on the grounds of the Capitol, joined by hundreds of other demonstrators, from grassroots activists to dozens of unemployed people.

After the Take Back the American Dream conference Dave Johnson attended a Jobs Not Cuts rally at the Capitol. A few hundred people came from the conference to attend this rally, asking Congress to fix the country's problems by creating jobs to modernize our country's infrastructure instead of cutting essential social services.

On Tuesday morning of the Take Back the American Dream conference, a standing-room-only crowd got to hear the story told by a dozen of the people who lived through the march on the Wisconsin Capitol. The conversation, moderated by John Nichols - a Wisconsin-born journalist for The Nation who found himself at the center of the story - was given deeper context by the Occupy Wall Street protests, which everyone recognized as the next step in the movement that they started.

The Annual Gala Dinner at the Take Back the American Dream conference honored several people at the front lines of the progressive movement's most critical battles.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., continued his crusade for defense spending cuts at the Take Back the American Dream conference on Monday, calling on participants to pressure a congressional deficit-reduction "super-committee" to focus all of its spending reductions on the military budget. In a video from the conference, he offers a typically blunt explanation of why he thinks its justified to call on the military to bear the burden of budget cuts, and mocks what he calls the "military keynesnism" of the right.

Van Jones of Rebuild the Dream told reporters and bloggers at a news conference, on Tuesday during the Take Back the American Dream conference, about the "American Autumn". Van Jones and other progressives are calling the recent mobilization of protesters as the "American Autumn" who are pushing for electoral action to rebuild the American dream for working people. Co-director Robert Borosage also laid out "the goals that we will hold ourselves accountable to" over the next few months.

The Take Back the American Dream conference opened Tuesday by discussing the Contract for the American Dream. Deepak Bhargava of the Center for Community Change began by saying that "there is a movement in America today and its not the Tea Party, it is the American Dream Movement. People are working to build a huge movement that can meet this huge moment.

AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka called for a "mighty movement for jobs and a just economy" today at the Take Back the American Dream conference in Washington, DC. In a speech titled, "American Wants to Work," Mr. Trumka described the unequal state of affairs in the country today.

Western and Lake got down to the details of how to speak to progressives during their presentation at Take Back the American Dream on Monday afternoon. "Without vision, the people will perish," said Western, quoting from the Book of Proverbs in the Bible. And right now, he continued, the right wing's vision for America seems limited to death and no taxes.

There is a green manufacturing revolution occurring in the world - the rest of it, anyway - and it is on track to create millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of new wealth. The Take Back the American Dream conference session titled "Stop Outsourcing the Dream: How America Can Revive Manufacturing in a Green Industrial Revolution" discussed how to bring a chunk of the green manufacturing revolution to the US to create badly needed jobs.

As the Occupation of Wall Street enters its third week, the group has been criticized by the media as not having a coherent message, as if a PR firm was a precursor to membership in our democracy. But from out here in Wisconsin, their message rings clear and true. The 99% has been shafted, our economic system is broken, and we need an economy that works for all.

If there was one message that united the various speeches that launched the Take Back the American Dream conference in Washington, it was perhaps summed up by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. What's worse than the conservative penchant for the Big Lie, he said, is the right's ability to make the public demoralized and cynical about the government that is supposed to be their instrument for change.

Van Jones put to rest the notion of a divided Left, as he kicked off the Take Back the American Dream conference today. To solve the job crisis, to rebuild our infrastructure, to restore tax fairness, to renew a vibrant middle class, we don't need to agree about Barack Obama. Because as Van Jones said, the slogan in 2008 wasn't, "Yes HE Can." It was "Yes WE Can."

Thousands rally to defend worker rights in Wisconsin, then nearly a million force a referendum in Ohio to repeal a similar assault. Tens of thousands fill congressional town meetings to demand "Jobs, not Cuts" in August. Over 100,000 join in vetting provisions for a Contract for the American Dream. Nonviolent protestors occupy Wall Street, and stay restrained despite police provocation, and now demonstrations are spreading to financial districts in cities across the country. The press isn't looking, but there's a movement building of citizens challenging the gridlocked debate in Washington.

On October 3 activists from across the country will gather in Washington at the Take Back the American Dream conference, in the belief that only a citizens movement can save an American dream that grows ever more distant. In the face of a failed economy and a corrupted politics, the only hope for renewal is that citizens lead and politicians follow.