The Tip of the Spear: Engaging with Progressives in Congress
This discussion of lessons learned in 2009 and 2010 about engaging with Congress to advance progressive policies will include emphasis on the Congressional Progressive Caucus and draw contrast with the Blue Dogs. We'll have a frank discussion of how House progressives choose issues to organize around; factors that increase or decrease the likelihood of successful organizing around an issue; the mechanics of moving policy through Congress, and where key leverage points for the Netroots are; case studies on healthcare reform and Afghanistan; House-Senate dynamics and what changes can be made to push progressive ideas more successfully onto the President's desk.
Darcy Burner is the President and Executive Director of ProgressiveCongress.org and the Progressive Congress Action Fund. A candidate for Congress in 2006 and 2008, she was the principal author and organizer of the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, endorsed by more than sixty candidates for the U.S. House and U.S. Senate. She is also a member of the Afghanistan Study Group.
From 1995 until 2004, she worked in technology at companies including Lotus Development Corporation and Microsoft.
She has been a guest featured on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, the Ed Show, C-SPAN, ABC, NPR, Pacifica Radio, and a host of local programs, and featured in Roll Call, Politico, The Hill, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Huffington Post, DailyKos.com, The Nation, Mother Jones, and as a keynote speaker at Netroots Nation alongside Bill Clinton and Howard Dean. She is a regular front page contributor to OpenLeft.com discussing matters pertaining to Congress, and writes occasionally for DailyKos, Crooks & Liars, and Huffington Post as well.
She’s a member of the board of Council for a Livable World’s PeacePAC, the SNAP PAC Advisory Board, the Progressive Ideas Network Advisory Board, the Center for International Policy board, and chairs the Netroots Foundation board. She is a former board member of NARAL Pro-Choice America. In her spare time, she runs the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC.
Burner holds a BA from Harvard College in computer science with a special field of economics.
Over the past 40 years, Raúl has built an exceptional record of public service. He began his public career when he joined with other advocates to encourage local governments to invest in older and minority neighborhoods in Southern Arizona. Raúl served on the Tucson Unified School District Board from 1974 to 1986 and the Pima County Board of Supervisors from 1989 to 2002. While on the Board of Supervisors, he worked to improve domestic partner benefits, labor rights, and transparency in government. His environmental leadership led to the creation of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, one of the most successful and innovative conservation systems in the country.
Since his election to Congress in 2002, education, employee rights and the environment have been among Raúl’s top policy concerns. He has played an active role in oil drilling oversight since before the Deepwater Horizon disaster and led the progressive effort to improve the Affordable Care Act. His tenure as co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus has seen major successes for the progressive movement, including the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and many of the provisions in the recently enacted Wall Street reform law. Raúl has a long history of both grassroots action and effective Congressional leadership, and he looks forward to continuing his work with outside groups to achieve the best policy outcomes and make government responsive to the people once again.
