Episode 7: Electoral Strategies with Maurice Mitchell

Many progressives are cynical about electoral politics. But our guest today explains why engaging in electoral politics is crucial for building the kind of society we want. Maurice Mitchell is the National Director of the Working Families Party, a savvy, independent political organization that has given progressives greater voice and leverage in cities and states around the country, most notably by taking advantage of fusion voting. Maurice describes his own trajectory, from being a local organizer to a leader in the Movement for Black Lives, who ultimately came to see movements alone as limited without the organizing force that a political party provides. 

He offers an insightful analysis of our present conjuncture, shaped by a ruthless right committed to minority rule through the courts, decades of neoliberalism, and an information environment that breeds atomization and loneliness. As neoliberalism’s legitimacy crumbles, and the post-neoliberal, authoritarian right speaks to popular concerns, Maurice argues that WFP’s strategy of winning elections to achieve governing power and engaging everyday people in the work of governance offers a hopeful path forward. 

Maurice concludes by reflecting on the questions that fill him with the same excitement he had as a young organizer: “What are you building? Who are you choosing to be? And who are you choosing to be with?”

Links:

Maurice’s 2022 highly influential essay “Building Resilient Organizations” is a must-read for everyone in progressive politics. And now, there’s a workbook, too.

We mentioned Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice, a terrific new training institute at CUNY for early- and mid-career organizers where Maurice has been a regular guest instructor. 

Maurice’s argument about the present conjuncture compliments one made by Shahrzad Shams, Deepak Bhargava, and Harry W. Hanbury in a new report for the Roosevelt Institute: The Cultural Contradictions of Neoliberalism: The Longing for an Alternative Order and the Future of Multiracial Democracy in an Age of Authoritarianism