The Company We Keep

prospect.org — We can't work from sweeping visions of liberalism on down. We have to work from concrete rights and opportunities on up. The people most likely to identify with the liberal worldview — women, people of color, LGBT people, disenfranchised workers — are those who have experienced a lack of freedom and opportunity themselves. They are then motivated to broaden their scope and see how injustice also affects other Americans. It is the progressive movement's commitment to these people — its base, its core — that will ensure its long-term survival. If we continue to compromise on the concerns of those people, or dismiss them as "special interests" working against an imaginary greater good, we will ultimately render our shared concept of liberalism totally meaningless.

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