Supported Senator Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign
Calls for the Iraq War to be ended as soon as possible
Opposes U.S. military action in Afghanistan
Urges the U.S. to "turn towards peace and conflict-resolution in the Middle East and the Muslim world."
Established in March 2008 under the name Progressives For Obama, Progressive America Rising (PAR) was co-founded by Tom Hayden (a Students for a Democratic Society organizer who collaborated with North Vietnamese Communists during the Vietnam War and organized riots at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago); Danny Glover (an actor and leftist ideologue who has ardently supported the regimes of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro); Barbara Ehrenreich (Honorary Chairwoman of the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA); and Bill Fletcher, Jr. (a former Maoist and current DSA leader who serves as executive editor of Black Commentator, and who co-founded the Black Radical Congress, which has close ties to the Communist Party USA).
PAR's initial mission was to help Senator Barack Obama defeat his chief Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton, in the quest to win the party’s presidential nomination. Said PAR at its inception:
“Clinton's most bizarre claim is that Obama is unqualified to be commander-in-chief. Clinton herself never served in the military, and has no experience in the armed services apart from the Senate armed services committee. Her husband had no military experience before becoming President. In fact, he was a draft opponent during Vietnam, a stance we respected. She was the first lady, and he the governor, of one of our smallest states. They brought no more experience, and arguably less, to the White House than Obama would in 2009.”
After Mrs. Clinton conceded defeat to Obama in the summer of 2008, PAR turned its attention to beating Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
Claiming to represent “the proud tradition of independent social movements that have made America a more just and democratic country,” PAR exhorts “all American progressives” to “unite for Barack Obama.” The organization condemns “the narrow interests of private corporations in an unregulated global marketplace,” and instead favors “globalizing the values of equality, a living wage and environmental sustainability in the new world order, not hoping our deepest concerns will be protected by trickle-down economics or charitable billionaires.” “The Obama campaign,” said PAR in March 2008, “will stimulate a vision of globalization from below.”
A key element of the PAR platform calls for the Iraq War to “end as rapidly as possible, not in five years.” “All our troops must be withdrawn,” says PAR. “Diplomacy and trade must replace further military occupation or military escalation into Iran and Pakistan.”
PAR also views military action in Afghanistan as unwarranted, advising against “simply transfer[ring] American combat troops from the quagmire in Iraq to the quagmire in Afghanistan.”
In its literature, PAR refers to the “war on terrorism” with sneer quotes, to indicate that it is an unnecessary war fabricated for political reasons by President George W. Bush:
“The Bush Administration has replaced the cold war with the ‘war on terrorism,’ led by the same military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned against. The reality and public fear of terrorism today is no less real than fear of communism and nuclear annihilation a generation ago.”
In PAR's calculus, American military interventions in Muslim countries can serve only to increase “the vast number of violent jihadists against us” and to put Americans “at permanent risk of another 9/11 attack.”
PAR's prescribed remedy for international strife is for America to “turn towards peace and conflict resolution in the Middle East and the Muslim world.” The organization proposes, as two concrete steps for a move in that direction, that the U.S. commit itself to: (a) “getting out of Iraq” at the earliest possible convenience, and (b) “sponsoring a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.”
PAR seeks to help Obama by raising funds for his campaign, using the Internet to reach “millions of swing voters,” and defending their candidate against negative advertising. “Progressives can make a difference in close primary races like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Oregon and Puerto Rico, and in the November general election,” say PAR's founders, who consider it “crucial to form a grassroots leftist movement to ensure Obama does not stray too far to the center.” They claim, moreover, that previous grassroots liberal movements successfully pressured past U.S. presidents to implement policy changes:
“It was the industrial strikes and radical organizers in the 1930s who pushed Roosevelt to support the New Deal. It was the civil rights and student movements that brought about voting rights legislation under Lyndon Johnson and propelled Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy's antiwar campaigns. It was the original Earth Day that led Richard Nixon to sign environmental laws.”
Other notable members of PAR include: Senator Bernie Sanders (the only openly socialist member of the U.S. Senate); political scientist Andrew Hacker (author of the 1992 book Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal); Leslie Cagan (the pro-Castro co-chair of United For Peace and Justice); Brown University professor Paul Buhle; labor activist Anna Burger; Occidental College professor Peter Dreier; Daniel Ellsberg (responsible for the release of the infamous "Pentagon Papers"); actress and political activist Jane Fonda; antiwar activist and former New Leftist Todd Gitlin; longtime radical Marilyn Katz; Frances Fox Piven (co-creator of the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" for societal transformation); Andrew Stern (President of the Service Employees International Union); Harry Targ (a pro-Castro professor at Purdue University); Marxist professor Cornel West; "anti-racist essayist" Tim Wise; and four members of the Vietnam War-era domestic terror group Weatherman -- Howard Machtinger, Jeff Jones, Steve Tappis and Mark Rudd.
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