Word: da
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last weekend, however, the swimming stopped. Folding chairs and activists replaced chaise lounges at poolside, and the sign outside read: "Workshop at 2:30--Fighting Corporations From the Inside." In the midst of Washington wealth, the national conference of the Democratic Agenda (DA)--a broad but shaky left-liberal coalition seeking to "set an agenda for the 1980's"--was in high gear. And after three days of meetings, plenary sessions, workshops, a luncheon and a dance, the disparate assortment of 2000 or so students, trade unionists, consumer activists, veteran '60s radicals (including former SDS and Harvard strike leader Michael...
Which is what DA is, to an extent, all about. One other similarity links Harrington and Georgine--they're both Democrats. DA, as its literature proclaims, is "the major coalition within (emphasis added) the Democratic Party concerned with developing and fighting for progressive economic and social programs." Expect no Port Huron statement from DA; the International Inn is no place to foment revolution...
...change within the system, i.e., the Democratic Party. The abundance of Kennedy buttons and workshops like "The Platform Process and Political Action Committees" made that clear, although some participants, like Barry Commoner and his "Citizens' Party," have written off the Democrats as a total loss and gone elsewhere. While DA leaders, like William Winpisinger of the machinists union (and heads of the Citizen/Labor Energy Coalition), are eagerly jumping on Kennedy's bandwagon, some of the younger activists seemed less anxious to embrace Teddy...
That was and is DSOC's line; in practice, its first forays into coalition politics came with Democracy '76, when DSOC concentrated on shaping a progressive party platform while Jimmy Carter garnered the nomination. The result, DA literature says, was "one of the most socially important documents of our time." In 1978, the coalition, by then named the Democratic Agenda, surprised Carter forces at the Democratic midterm conference in Memphis with a strong push for delegate selection reforms and resolutions aimed at holding the president to previous commitments on tax reform, health insurance, social services, and other campaign promises...
This time around DA is again targeting the Democratic platform as a lever to speed "real social change in the U.S." Harrington disputes the common assumption that DA will be "playing the old game of drafting a fine program and then throwing it in the wastepaper basket the day after the Convention," arguing that the conventional wisdom doesn't hold for next year because "the roof is caving in on the American economy...