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Elected Officials

Inspiring Fear and Loathing

Ernesto Cortes, Jr., organizer of the Industrial Areas Foundation network in Texas and the San Antonio–based Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS), has plainly described activists’ necessary relationship to elected Officials: “It’s unfortunate that fear is the only way to get some politicians to respect your power. They refuse to give you respect. They don’t recognize your dignity. So we have to act in ways to get their attention. In some areas, what we have going is the amount of fear we can generate. We got where we are because people fear and loathe us.”¹

This assessment by one of the United States’ premier community activists and tacticians is harsh but accurate. Today’s activists all too often work tirelessly to elect “progressive” politicians who then require strong prodding before trying to implement their progressive campaign goals. Without such pressure, self-identified progressive elected Officials frequently prefer to “broaden their base” rather than deliver for those responsible for their election.

The backgrounds typical of “progressive” officeholders explain much of the problem. Their career path no longer begins with years of grassroots activism; instead, one becomes an aide to a legislator, a job that provides access to funders and puts the aspirant in the position to be tapped for electoral openings. Today’s “progressive” Official rarely achieves power through a grassroots or democratic nominating process, and views politics as a career vehicle rather than a means for redressing social and economic injustice. He or she is not ideologically driven, takes pride in “pragmatic” problem solving, values personal loyalty over ideological consistency, and views social change activists as threatening because they place their constituency’s interests ahead of the official’s political needs.

When candidates from a neighborhood or other grassroots base do get elected, they often soon become like other politicians. Their drive for reelection or to attain higher office leads them to make new or stronger connections with a whole range of financial interests. After all, even grassroots field campaigns cost money, and progressive candidates require significant funding if they are to prevail in all but the smallest local races. The ever-growing power of money in politics has led most politicians to put their funders’ interests above those of their volunteer base. Raising money nationally through small online donations has helped restore some of the connection between politicians and their funders, but statewide or national races still require large donors. Even before Citizens United opened the floodgates to corporate donations, the best-intentioned, most progressive candidates still had to seek out potential funders who were more conservative than the candidate’s core supporters.

Once in office, grassroots politicians are contacted by representatives of financial interests who opposed their candidacy. These representatives soon ingratiate themselves by offering to help retire the inevitable campaign debt. Many local elected Officials receive low salaries, making them receptive to offers of the luxurious fund-raising events that are a regular part of political business. Like most other people, elected officials are awed by power and wealth. They don’t go home and report, “I met with some poor people from the Tenderloin, and it was exciting”; rather, they boast, “I met with the president of Wells Fargo!” The trappings of power and the social component of their new status easily excite them. The election-night celebration is often the last opportunity for meaningful personal contact between the candidate and the volunteers who sacrificed their personal lives to walk precincts, staff phone banks, and get out the vote on his or her behalf.

Although some progressive politicians help bring social change, far too many suppress activists’ agendas as effectively as clearly labeled enemies do. This occurs because progressive constituencies feel loyalty toward the politicians they help elect. This loyalty leads progressives to avoid holding politician “allies” accountable for their campaign commitments and to refrain from criticizing them for acts they would strongly oppose if undertaken by conservatives. Concerns over maintaining access, appearing “reasonable,” and fulfilling the personal ambitions of organizational leaders contribute to this pattern of nonaccountability. Progressive constituencies’ failure to demand accountability of the Officials their votes and volunteer labor put into office is a major obstacle to achieving social change. In fact, it might be the biggest obstacle, since it means that progressives do not produce the sweeping results from election victories that conservatives secure from their wins. Activists must understand that people feel betrayed when politicians fail to deliver on their campaign promises to support progressive change, and they respond with cynicism to subsequent social change efforts. Some join the ranks of nonvoters, impairing the election prospects of authentic progressive candidates. Without political accountability, working to elect candidates to office becomes a fool’s errand.

It seems obvious that activists would focus on results rather than promises when it comes to elected Officials. After all, this is how we evaluate performance in our workplaces, investments, and consumer choices. But in my experience, activists often view elected Officials as allies without their having done anything to earn the moniker. Politicians need only agree to take certain positions in the future to earn the support of many progressive organizations. This makes strategic sense for politicians but not for advocates of social change. Given the ease with which they can achieve progressive credentials, politicians have no incentive to actually do anything to serve progressive constituencies. As a result, few Officials feel it politically necessary to wage a major fight against the status quo on behalf of progressive reform. As a former leader of San Antonio’s COPS (Communities Organized for Public Services) puts it, “When politicians deliver, we applaud them. Not until then. . . . Politicians’ work is to do your work. When you’ve got somebody working for you, you don’t bow and scrape.”²

Adopting a “fear and loathing” approach toward elected Officials, particularly self-identified progressives, is essential for achieving social change. Activists must focus on results, not promises; they must pursue their agenda, not the politician’s. The Obama administration’s first term showed that many activists allow great speeches to substitute for concrete actions; only the latter bring progressive change. Political accountability is even more difficult when organizational leaders form close ties with politicians that subtly (or not so subtly) affect how the group deals with constituent issues. Progressive politicians understand the value of forming these relationships. They know that a union leader or progressive activist repeatedly invited to the White House or governor’s mansion is prone to become more protective of the politician that grants such access. Even when an organization wants to hold a supposedly friendly politician accountable, the politician has many tactics to delay, damage, or deny fulfillment of the organization’s agenda. Politicians employ highly paid consultants to develop strategies for achieving their goals; social change activists must employ their own strategies for using politicians to fulfill their agendas.

“WE’RE WITH YOU WHEN YOU’RE WITH US, AND AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU’RE NOT”

After Jerry Brown’s reelection as California governor in 1978, an unusual alliance developed between Brown and antiwar activists Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda. Hayden had formed a statewide citizens’ organization in the mid-1970s called the Campaign for Economic Democracy (CED) and had run a high-profile, though unsuccessful, challenge to California’s incumbent Democratic senator, John Tunney, in the 1976 primary.

When Hayden was challenged over his organization’s apparent alliance with the then–very fiscally conservative Brown, he claimed that CED would support the governor when he supported the group’s stand on issues and oppose him when he opposed its position. While some saw Hayden’s assessment of the ideal relationship between social activist organizations and elected Officials as simply designed to bring CED more power, this ideal is the best model for tactical activists in dealing with elected Officials.

The ideal of supporting candidates only when they support your positions may seem obvious; the difficulty lies in the implementation. Elected Officials value personal loyalty above all else; because tactical activists must place their constituency’s agenda over the politician’s, the potential for conflict always exists. The strains of this tension are most severe when a self-styled neighborhood activist or progressive is elected to office. These Officials, feeling entitled to the unwavering loyalty of neighborhood and progressive organizations, argue that any criticism from the political left lends comfort to their conservative enemies. Adopting a “tough love” stance toward such Officials thus makes many activists feel disloyal or, even worse in the current political world, “unreasonable” or “too idealistic.” Nevertheless, for tactical activists striving to accomplish social change, an independent stance brings both power and respect; to succeed, they must accept the credo that, in regard to elected Officials, it is better to be feared than loved.

Let us recall what Texas organizer Ernesto Cortes, Jr., said: “We got where we are because [politicians] fear and loathe us.” Cortes arrived at this conclusion not after years of battling exclusively with conservatives who refused to deal fairly with his Latino constituency, but rather after dealing with his many political allies. Among COPS’s closest allies was then–San Antonio mayor Henry Cisneros, later Clinton’s secretary of housing and urban development. Rather than revel in Cisneros’s historic victory as the city’s first Latino mayor and then sit meekly by as promises were broken and commitments left unfulfilled, COPS demanded performance. When Cisneros failed to perform, COPS publicly attacked him for ignoring his constituency’s concerns. Unlike far too many progressive groups, Cortes says, COPS does not endeavor to be liked by politicians: “When we start worrying whether or not politicians like us . . . then we’ll be just like everybody else.”³

I wish I could say that Cortes is wrong and that fear need not be used to motivate elected Officials. It would be so much easier if progressive constituencies were treated with the same respect as large financial donors. It would also be great if activists could relate on some basis other than intimidation to politicians they have supported. Cortes’s comments, however, mirror my own experiences with many politicians. Far too many take the low-income constituencies whose votes help elect them for granted. Activists who put their constituencies’ needs ahead of the politician’s agenda must be willing to sacrifice friendship with the Official in order to achieve their goals.

Tactical activists must let Officials know when they are right and when they are wrong. Politicians deserve public credit when they fight hard for fairness and social justice. The favorable publicity they receive will prompt similar conduct in the future. But there is virtually never an excuse for silently allowing a supposed ally to act against your constituency. Particular members of an organization or constituency may have personal reasons not to protest, publicly or privately, a wayward vote, but tactical activism requires that some element of the constituency take such action. Organizations that engage in the necessary strategic and tactical discussions in formulating a proactive agenda will have determined in advance when and how to respond to betrayal by a supposed political friend.

This chapter offers both local and national case studies of political accountability. I begin with my personal experience dealing with San Francisco mayors, and go on to discuss how the lessons that national environmental groups learned about “fear and loathing” early in the Clinton administration helped the movement strengthen the Clean Air Act in his second term and delay and potentially defeat construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline during the Obama administration. I then describe how immigrant rights’ and gay rights’ groups initially took contrasting approaches toward holding President Obama’s feet to the fire on key campaign commitments. A less experienced immigrant rights movement failed to hold Obama accountable for inaction on comprehensive immigration reform, and was quiet too long as the administration increased the number of deportations. It was not until young DREAM Activists applied a fear-and-loathing approach to the president that progress was made on immigrant rights. In contrast, gay rights activists took a fear-and-loathing approach from the outset toward Obama’s failure to promptly repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) and to take legal action against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Their success not only advanced the movement but greatly helped President Obama politically.

FOCUS ON RESULTS, NOT PROMISES

I witnessed firsthand the damaging consequences of going easy on progressive Officials during Art Agnos’s tenure as mayor of San Francisco. Agnos ran for mayor in 1987 as a self-identified progressive. His eagerness to wear this label, coupled with his excellent record as a state legislator, brought him broad support among social change constituencies. Activists saw the race as their big chance to win City Hall after enduring nearly ten years under Dianne Feinstein, a centrist who had failed to identify herself with any of the powerful movements—gay liberation, anti-development/neighborhood preservation, or rent control—sweeping San Francisco during the 1980s. There was a general feeling that the city had undergone great changes but the person in charge hadn’t grown with it. By 1987 the gay community had built its own political organization and wanted a mayor who would support “domestic partners” legislation and appoint more gays and lesbians to city commissions. Anti-development forces, which had won a critical battle to restrict high-rise development through a 1986 ballot measure, wanted a mayor who would appoint a Planning Commission favoring the preservation and development of affordable housing. Rent-control activists particularly felt the need for a new mayor. The key issue on their agenda—the imposition of rent control on vacant units—had twice passed the Board of Supervisors, only to be vetoed by Mayor Feinstein. Rent-control advocates felt it essential to elect a mayor committed to signing a vacancy control law; Agnos’s promise to do just that gave him the nearly unanimous support of tenant groups.

Agnos and his tacticians created a grassroots campaign organization unprecedented in the city’s history. The campaign included more than five hundred precinct leaders, many of them motivated primarily by the candidate’s support for stronger rent control. I was extremely enthusiastic about Agnos; my wife and I spent most of our nonworking time contacting voters for the campaign. My own interest centered on Agnos’s commitment to enact a new homeless policy, his personal interest in improving the Tenderloin, and his support of various measures to preserve and expand low-cost housing. I never had great expectations that Agnos would back strong vacancy control legislation, but I believed political factors would force him to sign whatever measure his tenant supporters passed through the Board of Supervisors.

Agnos was elected with a staggering 70 percent of the vote. Rentcontrol activists should have had no problem quickly cashing in. However, they violated the fundamental rule of dealing with elected Officials: demand results.

Soon after taking office, Agnos met with rent-control activists to discuss a strategy for enacting vacancy control. After establishing a clear tone of friendship, Agnos explained that he had promised real estate industry representatives that he would at least “sit down with them” prior to moving forward with vacancy control. He requested that tenants meet with landlords in his presence to see if a “win-win” compromise on vacancy control could be reached. Agnos emphasized his continued support for rent control but felt he must first attempt to mediate a settlement.

Rent-control activists expressed virtually no protest against Agnos’s plan. A few pointed out that dialogue with landlords on the issue had already been tried and had failed, and others argued against wasting time on such a charade. Nobody asked Agnos why he never expressed a desire to mediate between landlords and tenants during a campaign in which he consistently identified tenants as his allies. Neither did anyone question his sudden concern for a constituency that had actively worked against his election and funded his chief opponent.

Why did rent-control activists meekly accept Agnos’s waffling on the chief issue on their political agenda? Because Agnos’s carefully crafted campaign identity as a friend of tenant interests overshadowed postelection reality. This led tenant activists to accept as good-faith action a clear betrayal of their constituency. Agnos had done nothing as mayor to demonstrate his pro-tenant stance; he had merely created personal relationships with leading rent-control activists during the campaign, which became “proof” of his support for tenant interests. The consensus among rent-control activists was that Agnos was “our” mayor, whom “we” had elected. Denying Agnos the political space he claimed to need, it was argued, would be the height of arrogance and eventually could turn him against tenants. Having felt left out for more than a decade, rent-control activists did not want to jeopardize their new access to power by fighting over what seemed nothing more than a procedural delay. A course was thus established whereby Agnos would have no reason to fear the tenant constituency. As a result, for the balance of his term he afforded tenants and their chief agenda item no respect.

Agnos’s “procedural delay” was only the first of many clever strategies he used to brush aside vacancy control while steadfastly proclaiming his commitment to it. After several months spent in pointless meetings with landlords, Agnos was forced to admit the failure of the “mediation process.” He then announced a new justification for his failure to enact vacancy control: lack of votes on the Board of Supervisors. This excuse had superficial validity during Agnos’s first year in office, but by 1989 the newly elected Board of Supervisors could have passed vacancy control if Agnos had made it a priority. But the reputedly pro-tenant Mayor Agnos did not.

Agnos’s lack of commitment to passing vacancy control became clearer in 1989 when he showed the kind of fight he could put up for a goal he really wanted. This involved his all-out effort to pass a November ballot initiative for a new stadium for the San Francisco Giants baseball team. To achieve a goal that he had never backed in his mayoral campaign and that his core neighborhood supporters opposed, Agnos used every political chit at his disposal. He had gay and lesbian leaders announce that the stadium would (somehow) increase funding for AIDS services; he got the Sierra Club to support the proposed stadium as good for the environment; and he made political deals with various supervisors in exchange for their backing. Despite all this, the stadium initiative failed.

Meanwhile, Agnos still had not lifted a finger to help the passage of vacancy control. I was not alone among tenant activists in recognizing the discrepancy between Agnos’s vigorous work on the stadium initiative and his lack of effort on vacancy control. Despite their recognition of Agnos’s inaction, however, leading rent-control activists continued to view him as committed to their cause. Had these activists evaluated the mayor’s actual accomplishments in the same way they would evaluate the performance, say, of any consumer product, they would have concluded that Agnos was, on his own, never going to produce on vacancy control. Nevertheless, as long as the mayor remained publicly committed to the proposal, rent-control leaders continued to identify him as tenants’ friend.

The November 1990 election offered a prime opportunity for vacancy control advocates. With a governor’s race, high-profile statewide environmental and consumer initiatives, and strong local candidates from the gay and lesbian community, the election promised to attract an unusually high progressive-voter turnout. But Agnos, and hence rent-control advocates, ignored this special opportunity to submit vacancy control to the voters, instead working to elect a clear pro– vacancy control majority on the Board of Supervisors. When this majority was achieved, vacancy control was finally enacted in 1991 (with Agnos’s approval). Almost immediately, however, the measure became subject—as advocates had always predicted it would—to a landlord-sponsored referendum on the November 1991 ballot. After the landlords qualified the referendum for the ballot, Agnos held a meeting with rent-control activists. He observed that, fortunately, the referendum would appear on the same ballot on which he sought reelection; therefore, his campaign could also fund the pro–vacancy control effort. I was not alone in recognizing the true import of the mayor’s statement: he had intentionally delayed vacancy control so as to assure a high tenant turnout for his reelection bid.

Ironically, Agnos’s secret strategy resulted in both his and vacancy control’s defeat. The real estate interests Agnos had tried so hard to placate in 1988 poured more than $1 million into defeating vacancy control. When other mayoral candidates who supported vacancy control unexpectedly entered the race, Agnos compounded his betrayal of tenants by playing down the issue and failing to provide the funding he had promised. The result: lacking both money and any grassroots campaign, vacancy control lost in a landslide. The candidate Agnos finished second to in November, former police chief Frank Jordan, drew strong support from elderly tenants who, having reaped no benefit from Agnos on rent-control issues, went instead with the law-and-order candidate.

Jordan failed to muster a majority, however, necessitating a December runoff between him and Agnos. That election crystallized the deep hostility that rent-control activists felt toward the mayor. Agnos and tenant activists met soon after the runoff campaign began, and, for the first time since Agnos took office, tenants spoke bitterly of his betrayal of their interests. I began the meeting by confronting the mayor with my belief—shared by many others—that he had sabotaged vacancy control by waiting until November 1991 and then breaking his promise to fund the campaign. Agnos agreed he had broken his promise, claiming his “political survival” was at stake. The meeting continued in this vein, with tenant activists torn between their anger at Agnos and their fear of aiding Jordan.

Agnos lost in the runoff—glaring proof of his personal unpopularity. Although I ignored his campaign in the general election, I believed his reelection was preferable to four years under his anti-poor, pro-landlord opponent. I contacted dozens of tenant activists about working for Agnos in the runoff but made no effort to change their minds when they declined to participate. They had good reason to shun Agnos, and I was not about to jeopardize my credibility by defending him. Some savvy political activists refused to endorse Agnos in the runoff, and though I took a different approach, their position was understandable.

Rent-control activists made a major tactical error at the beginning of Agnos’s term in establishing a relationship with him based on friendship rather than fear and in allowing him to substitute promises for action. When, right after taking office, the mayor sought to mediate between landlords and tenants, rent-control activists should have refused. Tactical activism required tenants to make it clear at the outset that, having helped elect Agnos, they were now entitled to results. Silence in the face of a politician’s initial betrayal sends a clear message that your constituency feels itself too weak, too confused, or too afraid to merit respect.

Suppose Agnos had employed the tactics of most politicians and expressed hurt and dismay at rent-control activists’ refusal to meet with landlords. Suppose he had also claimed that the activists were being “unreasonable,” were only “shooting themselves in the foot.” What should have been the response? Tactical activism would have had the rent-control activists give the mayor an ultimatum: either be our ally or be widely publicized as our betrayer. The activists should have declared that the campaign was over and that the time had come for results, not promises. By thus demonstrating their willingness to stand up for their agenda, rent-control activists would have conveyed a sense that they believed in the power of their constituency and were not afraid to take on the mayor. Had they done so, one of three possible results would have followed. First, and most likely, Agnos would have backed down. He was not seeking a political fight with tenants, but merely trying to manipulate them in furtherance of his own agenda. Second, Agnos might have sought to divide the activists by offering to meet with whoever was willing to attend. This strategy probably would have failed, because rent-control activists unified enough to give the new mayor an ultimatum would not be so easily divided. Third, Agnos could have announced his refusal to work further with rent-control activists. This would have been the most unlikely scenario of all, because a new mayor hardly wants to break with a main campaign constituency early in his term.

Had rent-control activists carefully analyzed the tactical and strategic avenues available both to them and to the mayor, they would have recognized that they would gain more credibility with the mayor by refusing his delaying tactic than by agreeing to it. Because they caved in at the outset, Agnos came to count on their subservience to his political agenda in the years ahead. The result four years later was a landslide defeat on rent-control activists’ chief issue, the temporary decline of San Francisco’s once-powerful tenant movement, and the election of a new mayor openly beholden to real estate interests. The bright hope of the Agnos years ended in tragedy for progressive interests.

The model of the relationship between rent-control activists and Art Agnos has been repeated many times with other constituencies and other elected Officials throughout the country. San Francisco’s rent-control activists are certainly not alone in erroneously identifying elected Officials by their promises rather than their actual performance. And to their credit, when Willie Brown was elected as a “pro-tenant” mayor in 1995 and began breaking commitments after taking office, San Francisco tenant activists responded differently. Tenants became the first group to hold a protest event against Brown, encircling his car in a direct action that brought multiple arrests. Unlike Agnos, Brown saw tenants as a constituency that would cause him trouble if he failed to deliver on his commitments. The most sweeping pro-tenant legislation in the city’s history would pass during Brown’s first term.

Today’s self-styled progressive politicians are uniquely adept at using their power and winning public personalities to distract social change activists from their agendas. These politicians are experts at the psychology of “win-win”—they know how to make their campaign supporters feel bad for demanding action instead of promises. Moreover, their patronage power enables them to make strategic allies of social change leaders. By appointing such leaders to prestigious boards, commissions, or task forces, the politician can display loyalty to social change constituencies without implementing their agendas. The elected Official can also use these leaders to suppress dissatisfaction with Official policies at the grassroots level and to provide press quotes disputing charges that the officeholder has betrayed her or his base. Neighborhood activists who have toiled for years in obscurity are understandably flattered at being invited to meet with the mayor, the governor, or a legislator. It is not easy to attend such a meeting and then strongly oppose the Official’s reasonable-sounding plans.

Political leaders have such an array of tactics to divert social change that tactical activists must demand results and the fulfillment of campaign promises. Once activists understand and accept this fundamental relationship between social change groups and elected Officials, they will avoid the principal pitfalls preventing change. Elected Officials spend millions of dollars on campaign consultants to develop tactics and strategies to woo voters; social change activists must engage in their own, less costly but equally productive tactical sessions to create the relationships with politicians necessary to achieve progressive aims.

PURSUE YOUR AGENDA, NOT THE POLITICIAN’S

Self-styled grassroots officials are also effective at subordinating activists’ agendas to their own. This commonly occurs when politicians and activist groups start out on the same page but then find their agendas diverging. In one typical scenario, a politician commits to an issue and then learns that certain other constituency groups oppose it. The politician does not want a big political fight with the opposition group, but he or she also does not wish to be seen as having betrayed the social change organization. The solution? Reframe and repackage the activists’ agenda so that the politician can claim “victory” and convince the activists of the same.

Politicians commonly accomplish this by vowing action to address a problem but then forming a task force to find the “best” solution. The creation of a task force is an ideal strategy for new-style “win-win” politicians to subsume activists’ agendas into their own. They subtly switch the agenda from “We demand action now” to “We created a task force to address this critical problem.” As the politician gives victory pats on the back, the activists’ goal of getting something concrete done disappears.

Task forces sponsored by government Officials are usually boondoggles. Approach them with caution. Elected Officials seeking to avoid real change often use them as appeasement measures. How many times have you seen the announcement, amid great fanfare, of a new task force, one that will take twelve months to produce a report on an “urgent” problem? Task forces are excellent weapons for slowing activist momentum. They can divert activists from their real goal, and nearly always eat up a lot of time that could be better spent. Yet serving on a task force can be an attractive proposition for a grassroots organizer, who may get no other sign of recognition from the powers that be. However, such Official flattery can undermine activist goals. Similarly, serving on a task force may appeal to politically ambitious activists whose real agenda is personal advancement. Those personal goals often end up conflicting with the goals of social change. Activist organizations should determine the function of any member assigned to serve on a government task force and hold him or her rigorously accountable for promoting the organization’s views.

Progressive social activists who enthusiastically participate on task forces usually argue, “If we don’t participate on a task force, it will come out with horrible recommendations.” I say, so what? If that happens, discredit the recommendations. Discrediting task force reports is a fairly simple exercise. One can point to the group’s biased composition, question individual member’s agendas, point to the heavy political pressures placed on the task force, or note its failure to consider vital information. In any case, after an initial splash, most reports from task forces, commissions, and the like are widely ignored. The task force tactic has become so transparent that it is a wonder that anybody outside the Official’s staff accepts its legitimacy.

Besides creating task forces, politicians also supplant activist groups’ agendas with their own by holding a public hearing to address an activist organization’s concerns. Public hearings may be more effective even than task forces in funneling activist energy into the politician’s agenda. Typically, the social change organization seeks a government response to a problem. A politician, seeking to play the white knight, announces a hearing to investigate the issue. Social change groups agree to the hearing because it gives them both a chance to mobilize their members and the expectation of tangible results. The organizers pack the hearing room, and the crowd cheers as speaker after speaker rails against the injustice in question. The Official who called the hearing plays to the crowd and shows that he or she is squarely in its corner. The media are out in force, and excitement is in the air.

There is only one problem. All too often, such hearings are held by Officials with no legal authority to address the targeted problem. Or the hearings occur prior to the drafting of legislation on the subject, whereas the real work for accomplishing change—through either legislation or public-pressure campaigns—occurs afterward. The politician accomplishes his or her goal through the hearing itself, gaining the audience’s loyalty and the general public’s approval for promptly responding to an injustice. After the hearing, the politician moves on to other issues, leaving the activist organization on its own. Social change organizations rarely achieve their goals through public hearings. Tactical activists can avoid this pitfall by making their agenda clear at the outset to the politician seeking involvement. If a politician is not committed to fighting beyond the hearing, do not allow said Official to reap the publicity benefits of the event.

Hearings can energize a constituency base, but this benefit will backfire if people see that nothing concrete has come from their trip to City Hall. Tactical activism requires that groups work only with Officials committed to fulfilling the social change agenda. The smart politician understands that working for the group’s agenda is also the best strategy for achieving his or her own political aims.

FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE ENVIRONMENTAL TRAIL

Since Earth Day 1970, the United States environmental movement has made tremendous gains. The nation’s air is cleaner, its waterways are less polluted, its communities are healthier, and a mass environmental consciousness has prompted mandatory recycling laws in cities large and small. But most environmentalists remain frustrated by the failure to accomplish more. Climate change threatens the future of species and the planet’s long-term survival, industry and business groups work overtime to subvert environmental health measures, and we are still engaged in the false choice between jobs and the environment that should long ago have been resolved.

Many grassroots activists blame the environmental movement’s failures on the strategic shortcomings of national environmental organizations. These groups are said to be so concerned with appearing “reasonable” to the Washington, D.C., establishment that they unnecessarily compromise on key environmental goals. They are also criticized for failing to hold politicians accountable. We saw a textbook example of both problems in the first year of the Clinton-Gore administration.

As Goes East Liverpool, So Goes the Nation

The battle waged by Greenpeace and residents of East Liverpool, Ohio, to force the Clinton-Gore administration to keep a well-publicized campaign promise to prevent the opening of a dangerous incinerator should not have been necessary. Rejecting a permit for the proposed Waste Technologies Industry (WTI) hazardous waste incinerator was easily justified: the proposed site was close to houses, churches, and schools, and the incinerator would emit such toxics as lead, mercury, and dioxin into a low-income neighborhood. During the 1992 Clinton campaign bus tour, Democratic vice presidential candidate Al Gore described the WTI incinerator as an unbelievable idea that highlighted the concrete differences between the parties on environmental issues. Speaking of the incinerator in Weirton, West Virginia, in July 1992, Gore said, “I’ll tell you this, a Clinton-Gore administration is going to give you an environmental presidency to deal with these problems. We’ll be on your side for a change, instead of the side of the garbage generators, the way [previous presidents] have been.”⁴

Because Gore’s environmental treatise Earth in the Balance attacked solid-waste incinerators and praised their grassroots opponents, environmentalists saw the election of Clinton-Gore as the death knell for the WTI facility. This expectation was heightened when the vice president issued a press release on December 7, 1992, stating that “serious questions concerning the safety of an East Liverpool, Ohio, hazardous waste incinerator must be answered before the plant may begin operation. The new Clinton-Gore administration will not issue the plant a test burn permit until these questions are answered.” Attached to Gore’s release was a letter to the comptroller general raising several questions about the impact of the incinerator and how it had been approved. Gore and six U.S. senators signed the letter. The New York Times interpreted Gore’s statement as “sending a clear signal” that the “new administration plans an aggressive approach to enforcing environmental laws.” Incinerator opponents had even greater reason to cheer when the new administration appointed Carol Browner to head the Environmental Protection Agency. In the early 1980s, Browner had worked on anti-toxic issues for Clean Water Action and Citizen Action.⁵

But the Clinton administration broke its pledge to environmental supporters by issuing a temporary permit in March 1993 that allowed the incinerator to begin commercial operation. It did so despite the Ohio attorney general’s assertion that the facility violated state law and the EPA’s own assessment that it could pose health risks 130 times above the agency’s acceptable level.⁶

The Clinton-Gore-Browner flip-flop on the WTI facility was an early test of environmentalists’ willingness to hold the new Democratic administration accountable. It was no different from San Francisco mayor Agnos’s asking his core rent-control supporters to meet with their opponents as a condition of fulfilling his promises to their constituency. Just as the tenants’ surrender early in Agnos’s term paved the way for four years of broken promises and political inaction, Clinton’s betrayal on the WTI project, if unchallenged, would set a precedent for future betrayals on other issues. Every major environmental group, along with grassroots activists, should have recognized Clinton’s agenda and demanded accountability. Clinton, Gore, and Browner should have been heckled and protested at every public appearance. This confrontational approach was essential because the response to the WTI flip-flop would determine environmentalists’ power during the balance of Clinton’s term.

But Greenpeace was the only major national environmental organization to join the East Liverpool struggle. Greenpeace recognized that “if Clinton-Gore can break their promise on WTI—their first environmental commitment after the election, their first promise to an individual community—they can break them all.” Rick Hind, legislative director of Greenpeace’s toxics campaign, has learned from experience that politicians “only give you attention when you blast them, and in some cases activists must use the equivalent of a two-by-four.”⁷

Greenpeace and East Liverpool activists used a number of confrontational tactics to pressure the Clinton administration. In March 1993, anti-incinerator leader Terri Swearingen and seven other East Liverpool residents took the public tour of the White House. Once inside, they refused to leave until they could speak to Clinton. The eight activists were then arrested. Following this action, Swearingen and her fellow residents joined with Greenpeace for a “Put People First, Not Polluters” national bus tour. The motto perfectly captured the contradiction between Clinton’s campaign bus theme of “putting people first for a change” and his sacrifice of the people of East Liverpool to benefit garbage interests.

The bus tour began in April 1993 and traveled across the nation to twenty-five communities with hazardous waste incinerators. It won publicity for the East Liverpool campaign in local papers wherever it went. The tour arrived in Washington, D.C., on May 17, 1993, and more than two hundred people protested in front of the White House, chanting for Al Gore to “read his book” and singing “We Shall Not Be Moved.” Seventy-five people were arrested, including actor Martin Sheen and Greenpeace executive director Barbara Dudley. The Washington Post noted that the demonstrators seemed to be Clinton voters who never expected to march against him; one East Liverpool mother of three said of Clinton, “We have got to make him more afraid of us.” Terri Swearingen observed, “Clinton talks about change and about giving us an environmental presidency. And so far, where is the change? There is no difference between Clinton and Bush.”⁸

Regrettably, other national groups and grassroots activists throughout the country failed to mobilize around this litmus-test issue. As Greenpeace’s Hind put it in April 1993, “The dirty secret is that we have been soft-pedaling this administration because we hoped that they would live up to their commitment. But it’s clear that they are either totally incompetent or are on the other side.”⁹

Predictably, the failure of national organizations to attack Clinton-Gore over the issuance of a permanent permit for the WTI incinerator wreaked further damage to the environmental cause. After twelve years of anti-environment Republican presidents, the first two years of the Democratic Clinton administration brought only one significant piece of national environmental legislation. This measure, the California Desert Protection Act, was passed at the last minute of the 1994 congressional session solely to assist California Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein in her tough reelection battle. Even worse, national environmental issues receded to the deep background of the public agenda; public opinion polls in 1994 regularly found that fewer than 5 percent of Americans viewed such issues as among the country’s most pressing problems.¹⁰

Strengthening the Clean Air Act

Some national environmental groups learned from Clinton’s first term that this was a president and an administration that responded only to the fear-and-loathing approach. Al Gore had declared in his popular book Earth in the Balance, “The people in a democratic society need to be prepared to hold their elected Officials accountable.” Yet national groups in the East Liverpool struggle passed up the opportunity to target Gore, who should have been held accountable for his broken promise on the WTI facility and for the Clinton administration’s entire record of environmental failure.

In 1997, environmental groups got a chance to revisit this issue. On November 27, 1996, EPA chief Browner announced long-awaited new standards for protecting the public from breathing smog and soot. Supposed to have been issued within five years after amendments were made to the Clean Air Act in 1990, these standards were finally released after the American Lung Association sued the EPA and the court ordered the agency to act. Browner’s proposed standards were far stricter than anticipated, and her announcement set in motion a public hearing process that would culminate in President Clinton’s decision to accept, reject, or modify the new standards.

In other words, the future of the Clean Air Act regulations would be decided through the political process. And rather than trusting Bill Clinton and Al Gore to do the right thing, national groups led by the Sierra Club and the national network of state and local Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) built a national campaign to pressure the Clinton administration to do the right thing. In contrast to the WTI struggle, this battle made Al Gore a public target. Gore had long claimed to be an environmentalist (this was a decade before he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change), and his personal relationships with environmental leaders had protected the Clinton administration from attacks despite repeated betrayals during much of its first term. The willingness of national environmental leaders to sacrifice green interests in exchange for continuing invitations to the monthly Al Gore power breakfast symbolized the inside-the-Beltway approach to national politics that grassroots activists condemned.

When Gore was silent about the new standards, some suspected that the leading contender for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination feared alienating organized labor and Democratic mayors and governors in the Midwest, who did not want the new clean air regulations adopted. These suspicions were heightened when a May 30, 1997, unbylined news brief in the Wall Street Journal claimed that pressure was mounting on the EPA to “ease proposed antipollutant rules.” Reporting that the White House had “privately ordered EPA head Browner not to sign the tough regulations until weaker measures got another look,” the brief added that “environmental groups complain Browner hasn’t gotten support from Gore, her former boss.” Would environmental groups adopt the fearand-loathing route of grassroots activists and make Gore publicly responsible for the regulations, or would they follow the “Don’t blame Al, he’s our friend” approach that had brought failure in the past?¹¹

The answer was soon revealed. On June 3, 1997, Kathryn Hohmann, the Sierra Club’s director of environmental quality, launched the organization’s “Where’s Al?” Northeast tour. Speaking from New Hampshire, the site of the first primary for Gore’s expected presidential bid, Hohmann told Reuters News Service: “We’re here to say ‘come out, come out wherever you are.’ Our goal is not to bash someone, but there are some very large shoes he needs to fill in leading environmental causes.” Hohmann’s “Where’s Al?” tour sent a message to the presidential aspirant that his environmental credentials were on the line in the clean air campaign. It also used the Club’s Northeast chapters to build local media pressure on the region’s politicians to formally endorse the new standards.¹²

The strategy of focusing on Gore soon paid off. The lead story in the Sunday, June 1, issue of the New York Times, “Top EPA Official Not Backing Down on Air Standards,” had the subtitle “Gore’s Voice Could Be Pivotal in Contentious Baffle over Tighter Pollution Rules.” Noting that Gore would play a “major role—probably the decisive one—in deciding whether to back up Ms. Browner,” the article reaffirmed Hohmann’s argument that the clean air outcome would affect “how enthusiastically environmentalists support his presidential effort in 2000.”

U.S. PIRG’s Gene Karpinski was given the front page of the most widely read edition of the nation’s most influential newspaper to state: “Since this is the top priority issue for the national environmental community at this time, any weakening of public health protection by the White House would certainly be a huge negative for Vice President Gore that would not be forgotten.” A June 5 USA Today story on clean air noted that Gore “has been particularly conspicuous in his low-key role,” and quoted Paul Billings of the American Lung Association, who said that “the silence from the White House has been deafening. There’s a Gore watch out. We can’t find Al.”¹³

The pressure on Gore intensified. On Sunday, June 22, a front-page, unbylined story in the New York Times, “Environmental Groups Say Gore Has Not Measured Up to the Job,” further explored the issue. “Organizations that have sided with the vice president throughout his public career,” the article stated, “are now using extraordinarily blunt language to warn that ‘green’ voters might abandon him in the Democratic primaries in 2000 unless he delivers now.” Deborah Callahan of the League of Conservation Voters found it “perplexing” that the vice president would “step back from providing the leadership” that she and her colleagues expected. Phillip Clapp of the National Environmental Trust told the Times that “the failure of the White House to provide any leadership on the clean air standards raises real questions about what real environmental progress Vice President Gore can point to in claiming the mantle of the environmental candidate in the year 2000.”

But the article also noted that complaints about “Al Gore’s silent spring” had begun to bring results. It stated that Gore had recently moved to act “behind the scenes” to ensure that the clean air decision would satisfy environmentalists. Environmental groups’ adoption of the fear-and-loathing approach would soon bring victory.

“I Think Kids Ought to Be Healthy”

On June 25, 1997, President Clinton announced his approval of virtually every aspect of Browner’s original Clean Air Act proposal. Ironically, while the president was making his announcement at a fundraising dinner, three members of the PIRG’s Nashville canvass were outside wearing gorilla suits and holding signs saying “See the smog,” “Hear the EPA,” and “Speak up for Clean Air.” When the organizers learned that Clinton had used the Nashville event to announce support for the standards, they changed their messages and were shown on television with a sign reading “Thank you, Mr. President.” Calling Clinton’s action “one of the most important environmental decisions of the decade,” the New York Times reported that the administration credited the intervention of Al Gore, “after lobbying by environmental groups,” for resolving the “fierce behind-the-scenes battle” over the standards. Environmentalists’ aggressive targeting of the vice president had clearly paid off, and it was no coincidence that Gore was present for the president’s announcement and that it occurred in the presidential aspirant’s home state.¹⁴

OBAMA AND THE KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE

The Clean Air Act campaign’s grassroots mobilizing strategy provided a road map for the movement’s future. After eight years of the anti-environmentalist presidency of George W. Bush, environmentalists’ next chance to hold a president they politically supported accountable occurred when Barack Obama took office in 2009.

Unlike Bill Clinton, Obama got off to a good start with environmentalists. During 2009–10, when Obama enjoyed large Democratic majorities in Congress, he increased fuel efficiency standards twice and made significant investments in clean energy. His EPA took hundreds of administrative actions that got little media attention but made a big difference to the environment. Some criticized Obama for failing to enact a broad climate change bill during these years, but getting such sweeping new regulations through the Senate during a recession was likely beyond even the most aggressive president’s ability. It was not until 2011 that environmentalists saw Obama as clearly backtracking on his green agenda, and it would be the Keystone XL pipeline that would test their ability to challenge the president with a fear-and-loathing approach.

Little known to most Americans prior to 2011, TransCanada’s proposed seventeen-hundred-mile Keystone Pipeline XL extensions would transport synthetic crude oil and diluted bitumen from the Athabasca Oil Sands in northeastern Alberta, Canada, to multiple destinations in the United States, including Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council in March 2011 concluded that it would bring “dirty fuel at high cost, lock the United States into a dependence on hard-toextract oil and generate a massive expansion of the destructive tar sands oil operations in Canada.” The extension also “threatens to pollute freshwater supplies in America’s agricultural heartland and increase emissions in already-polluted communities of the Gulf Coast.” Bill McKibben, a longtime environmental activist who founded 350.org to focus on climate change, spearheaded what became a worldwide campaign to pressure Obama to deny the Keystone XL pipeline permit. McKibben and the entire environmental community saw the Keystone project as undermining the positive impact of nearly all of the Obama administration’s new environmental protections.¹⁵

To call public attention to Keystone, McKibben and 350.org began civil disobedience in front of the White House on August 26, 2011. McKibben drew publicity by being among the first to be arrested. The crowd of protesters grew from 300 in the first week to well over 1,000, with 1,254 people committed enough get arrested. By the following week hundreds of thousands of people had sent in petitions opposing Keystone to the White House and the State Department. Participants in the protests included such “unusual suspects” as ranchers, members of indigenous groups, and even many representatives of labor unions. Wisely making sure that everyone knew that it was the president who should be targeted over Keystone, McKibben announced, “President Obama can stop this climate killing disaster with the stroke of a pen,” and vowed: “We will be outside the White House hoping we can inspire the president to live up to the promises that so inspired us in his 2008 campaign. And without Congress in the way, this is the clearest test he’ll ever have.”¹⁶

As pressure on Obama over Keystone was building, the president made the shocking and unexpected announcement on September 2, 2011, that he was reversing the EPA’s proposed new restrictions on smog. As seen in the account of the 1997 Clean Air Act struggle, reducing smog is a top priority for many national and local environmental groups. All were outraged by Obama’s action. In March the EPA’s independent panel of scientific advisers had unanimously recommended strengthening the smog standards. The panel had concluded that the evidence was “sufficiently certain” that the range proposed in January 2010 under Obama’s EPA would benefit public health. Now Obama was citing the regulation’s alleged negative impact on jobs to justify ignoring the scientific experts whose assessments he had long pledged to follow.

“The Obama administration is caving to big polluters at the expense of protecting the air we breathe,” said Kate Geller, press spokesperson of the League of Conservation Voters. “This is a huge win for corporate polluters and huge loss for public health.” Even Al Gore, who had rarely publicly criticized the president up to that time, wrote on his blog, “Instead of relying on science, President Obama appears to have bowed to pressure from polluters who did not want to bear the cost of implementing new restrictions on their harmful pollution—even though economists have shown that the US economy would benefit from the job creating investments associated with implementing the new technology. The result of the White House’s action will be increased medical bills for seniors with lung disease, more children developing asthma, and the continued degradation of our air quality.” The green reaction was echoed by broader progressive organizations like MoveOn.org, whose executive director, Justin Ruben, said, “Many MoveOn members are wondering today how they can ever work for President Obama’s re-election, or make the case for him to their neighbors, when he does something like this.”¹⁷

Among those quoted in the New York Times story on Obama’s reversal was Bill McKibben, who found the president’s move “flabbergasting,” adding, “Somehow we need to get back the president we thought we elected in 2008.” McKibben’s words were clearly aimed at influencing Obama’s decision on Keystone. National environmental groups did not mobilize against Obama’s reversal on the smog regulations, because his action was entirely unexpected. But after the president disregarded the scientific experts on smog, the environmental movement went into high gear to prevent him from backing a project that would bring 3 million barrels of tar sand oil into the United States each year; this hardly comported with Obama’s promoting a national shift from oil to renewable resources.

Jobs versus the Environment

Keystone backers portrayed the pipeline as a jobs creator. But estimates of how many permanent jobs would actually be created varied widely. An expert on Fox Business News estimated the project could create “one million high paying jobs.” And conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh told listeners that the pipeline would create 200,000 jobs when completed. But an independent study by Cornell University researchers found that only 2,000 to 3,000 jobs would be created, and that they would be temporary construction jobs. When asked by CNN about the contrasting job estimates, TransCanada vice president Robert Jones denied that thousands of permanent jobs would be created and instead placed the number in the hundreds. Despite the inflated job claims, the endless repetition of false jobs projections created a stiff challenge for environmentalists in persuading a president running for reelection on a jobs platform to deny the pipeline permit. Obama had used the jobs issue to justify reversing smog regulations, and many feared he would apply the same reasoning to back Keystone.¹⁸

McKibben recognized organized labor’s need for jobs, but told labor leaders in early September 2011 that, for environmentalists, the Keystone pipeline was “our Wisconsin.” He was referring to labor’s recent occupation of the Wisconsin Statehouse to prevent legislation ending collective bargaining for public employees; just as unions saw the Wisconsin fight as a life-or-death struggle, they should understand the depth of green feeling about the pipeline. The AFL-CIO ultimately stayed neutral on the pipeline, as opposition from the nation’s two largest public transit unions balanced strong support from the Building Trades Council. On November 6, more than 12,000 people encircled the White House to demand that President Obama stop the pipeline. As the crowd linked hands to surround the executive mansion, demonstrators chanted, “Yes, we can / stop the pipeline,” evoking the 2008 campaign rallying cry that Obama borrowed from Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers’, “Sí, Se Puede.”¹⁹

On November 10, 2011, President Obama announced that he was delaying a decision for twelve to eighteen months, pending further State Department review. Pressure from environmental groups had clearly paid off. As McKibben described the development in his email announcing the victory, “Six months ago, almost no one outside the pipeline route even knew about Keystone XL. One month ago, a secret poll of ‘energy insiders’ by the National Journal found that ‘virtually all’ expected easy approval of the pipeline by year’s end. As late as last week the CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] reported that TransCanada was moving huge quantities of pipe across the border and seizing land by eminent domain, certain that its permit would be granted. A done deal has come spectacularly undone.” Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune attributed Obama’s decision to “people power,” noting that “the earth moved in Washington, D.C., today” and that “without such a strong, organized, and righteous movement, we never would have prevailed.”²⁰

McKibben, Brune, and other environmental leaders recognized that Obama might simply delay Keystone’s final approval until after the election. He could use the temporary denial to secure environmentalist support for his reelection campaign, then uphold the pipeline during his new administration. But they also believed that a State Department review would almost certainly find the pipeline impact report deficient, making the project as proposed unlikely to ever be built.

GOP Plan Backfires

But there would be yet another twist to the story. As part of a December 2011 deal on extending popular payroll tax cuts, Republican pipeline supporters demanded that Obama make a decision on Keystone within two months of the budget agreement. Although initially opposed to such a rider to a debt ceiling measure, Obama angered environmentalists by reversing course and agreeing to the two-month deadline. Sierra Club president Michael Brune described the inclusion of Keystone in the tax deal as “bullshit.” McKibben made sure that anger over the reversal targeted Obama: “People literally put their bodies on the lines and they thanked the president when they took him seriously. And the president said he was acting on principle and that it was important and if that resolve lasts five weeks and that’s it, if all it takes is Newt Gingrich getting up and expostulating San Francisco and environmental extremists for him to turn around, that’s really sad.” Betsy Taylor, a philanthropic adviser to climate donors and foundations, helped organize more than eighty-five donors and volunteers for the 2008 campaign to send a letter to Obama urging him to reject Keystone. Taylor echoed McKibben’s theme: “If the president waffles on this or fails to act decisively, it will send a huge chill through the community. Will people vote for him? Yes. Will they work for him, raise money for him and activate their networks for him? Not likely.”²¹

To maintain pressure, 350.org scheduled a mass rally at the White House on January 24, 2012, only days before Obama’s expected decision on the permit. But on January 18 the president preempted this event by denying the permit. “The rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans,” Obama announced, “prevented a full assessment of the pipeline’s impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment.” McKibben, astutely using the positive side of the fear-and-loathing strategy, responded to Obama’s denial by saying, “The knock on Barack Obama from many quarters has been that he’s too conciliatory. But here, in the face of a naked political threat from Big Oil to exact ‘huge political consequences,’ he’s stood up strong.” Obama’s decision allowed TransCanada to make another application for the pipeline, but McKibben noted that even a “re-route will do nothing to address the climate impacts of burning tar sands, the economic downside of continuing our addiction to oil, the risks the pipeline poses to other states along the route, or the political influence Big Oil continues to use to override the interests of the American people. If this pipeline comes back, so will we.”²²

The Keystone XL campaign illustrates how far the environmental movement’s strategic savvy has come since Bill Clinton’s first term. Environmental groups that did not want to burn bridges with the Clinton-Gore administration over the East Liverpool incinerator chose a different course here. Part of this shift was due to the framing of Keystone as a national and even international climate change issue that demanded an all-out fight. But equally important was that environmental groups had learned that giving politicians a pass on breaking environmental commitments to one constituency leads to further betrayals. As a result of environmentalists adopting a clear fear-and-loathing approach, a “done deal” for Big Oil unraveled and green political clout grew.

On February 17, 2013, an estimated 50,000 anti-Keystone activists convened at the Washington Monument and marched past the White House in the largest climate change rally in U.S. history. Primarily organized by the Sierra Club, 350.org, and the Hip Hop Caucus, the event urged President Obama to move “ForwardOnClimate,” cleverly using the president’s 2012 campaign theme of “Forward” to hold him accountable on climate change. Four days earlier, on the day after Obama vowed to combat climate change in his 2013 State of the Union address, the Sierra Club engaged in civil disobedience for the first time in its 120-year history when its executive director, Michael Brune, was among dozens of activists arrested at a White House anti-Keystone protest. Keystone had become the key environmental litmus test for the president, and a case study for how green activists should hold politicians accountable.

NO SE PUEDE ON IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

Like environmentalists, immigrant rights activists began the Obama presidency with high hopes. Their chief goal was comprehensive immigration reform that would create a path to citizenship for 8 to 12 million primarily Latino undocumented immigrants. Momentum appeared to be on the activists’ side. The movement had brought millions into the streets in support of comprehensive reform in the spring of 2006. In 2008, a higher Latino voter turnout helped Obama win four states that had gone Republican four years earlier (Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Florida). Many believed that the Republican Party could not afford to sacrifice Latino votes in future elections by opposing immigration reform, and President Obama was publicly committed to its enactment. Immigrant rights advocates regarded Obama as an ally; his administration would provide the movement its first real test of its ability to hold a Democratic president accountable.

Unfortunately, as too often happens after a long-disenfranchised constituency gains additional power and helps elect a political ally, immigrant rights leaders failed to confront Obama with the fear-and-loathing approach necessary for success. Like San Francisco tenant leaders after helping elect Art Agnos as mayor, immigrant rights activists continued to trust Obama well after it became clear that he would not honor his commitments. The president had close relations with many of the key immigrant rights movement stakeholders, including the president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Andy Stern, who often talked about his many invitations to the White House. These relationships and other factors allowed Obama to entirely ignore comprehensive immigration reform during his critical first year in office, and, even worse, to set new records for deportations.

Danger signs about Obama’s commitment to enacting comprehensive immigration reform emerged even before he took office when he selected Arizona governor Janet Napolitano to be secretary of homeland security. Napolitano had maintained popularity by allowing antiimmigrant attitudes to fester in her state, which was becoming notorious for the racist outrages of Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio. Obama’s appointment of Napolitano reflected a defensive strategy that sought to reduce opposition to comprehensive reform by addressing opponents’ demands for strengthened border control and increased deportations. Napolitano’s replacement as Arizona governor was a Republican, so Obama’s appointment of her also increased the power of the state’s anti-Latino forces.

Immigrant rights activists understood that getting an economic stimulus bill through Congress was President Obama’s first priority. They also recognized that his next priority was health care, but were told that this would not sidetrack work on immigration reform. Here’s where activists made their first mistake. As the above examples from San Francisco and the Clinton administration show, politicians use their first months in office to test activists to see what they can get away with. And what Obama learned during this period was that he could maintain good relations with key immigration reform leaders without providing a specific timetable for action on their top legislative goal.

Obama announced in early April 2009 that he would begin looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal in that year. A senior administration Official announced that President Obama “plans to speak publicly about the issue in May, and over the summer will convene working groups, including lawmakers from both parties and a range of immigration groups, to begin discussing possible legislation for as early as this fall.” This timetable, the Official said, was consistent with pledges Obama had made to Hispanic groups in the previous year’s campaign, including the promise that comprehensive reform would be a priority of his first year in office. Immigrant rights leader and Congress member Luis Gutierrez discussed Obama’s approach to comprehensive reform at the 2009 UNITE HERE convention in Chicago in late June. Gutierrez, a Chicago representative who went way back with Obama, described a serious meeting he and others had had with the president in which they had expressed concern about his lack of action on immigration reform. Assuring his audience that Obama remained committed to the issue, the congressman said he expected a comprehensive measure to pass by Christmas. While echoing activists’ disappointment over the slow pace of progress, he and the larger movement still believed the president would come through.²³

Gutierrez expressed this measured optimism before Obama turned health care reform over to “moderate” Republicans, and before Tea Party activists disrupted town hall meetings in August as part of a concerted strategy to derail health care. When Congress returned to the Capitol in September 2009, health care was the talk of the town, and immigration reform was completely off the political radar. This undermined faith in the Obama administration’s early assurances that health care would not crowd out other priorities. Activists responded by having Gutierrez introduce a comprehensive immigration reform bill on October 13. The introduction was accompanied by large rallies in Washington, D.C., and twenty other cities, but the effort appeared to be more of a strategy by immigrant rights groups to placate an increasingly anxious base than a serious step toward enacting comprehensive reform.

As early as fall 2009, the once-high hopes for comprehensive immigration reform were on life support. Obama’s election had moved the Republican Party even further to the right, so that one-time immigration reform supporters like Arizona’s John McCain—who had once sponsored a reform bill with Ted Kennedy—would no longer touch the issue. After House moderates cast a tough vote to narrowly pass a climate change bill that never went anywhere in the Senate, Speaker Nancy Pelosi realized that she could not ask her caucus to repeat this pattern and agreed with Senate leader Harry Reid that action on immigration reform had to begin there. In light of the Republicans’ strategy of filibustering everything they opposed, this meant that all sixty Democrats might be needed to pass immigration reform. This was a highly unlikely event, as some conservative Democrats always opposed reform and success had long depended on at least some Republican support. (Even the modest reforms President George W. Bush had supported would have been impossible in the fall 2009 political climate.)

Meanwhile, President Obama was missing in action. And immigrant rights groups allowed him to stay missing. They engaged in no public protest over his failure to follow through on immigrant rights. After losing political momentum by subsuming their political timetable to the president’s, activists had a golden opportunity with the October 13 nationwide rallies to force Obama to at least explain why his administration was increasing enforcement and deportations without doing anything to mitigate the harm such actions did to undocumented immigrants. Instead, the rallies created a misleading impression of progress toward reform, reducing rather than increasing pressure on the president.

In addition to giving Obama a pass on comprehensive reform, leading immigrant rights groups also failed to publicly demand that Obama take administrative actions that did not require congressional approval. For example, he could have used his executive power to protect students who would qualify under the DREAM Act bill. First introduced in 2001, this measure offered a path to citizenship to undocumented young people who graduate from U.S. high schools and then complete two years in the military or two years at a four-year institution of higher learning. Obama could also have declared a moratorium on deportations that break up families or do not involve serious criminal conduct (he did the latter in 2011).