Christopher Schroeder

Category: community and culture

  • A Less Divisible Indivisible

    The progressive organization Indivisible, which started in 2016 as a response to Trump’s first election, persuaded more than 7 million people to march against the authoritarian actions of his current administration. However, it is risking this success with its recent response to the votes about reopening the federal government.

    This organization claims that those who marched “have been failed by the Democratic leadership again” and that the Senate minority leader has “surrender[ed].” It also argues that its members “must ensure” that this “failed leadership” doesn’t “doom a future Democratic majority” by participating in its latest primary election initiative.

    Democrats can, and should, do more to oppose this “authoritarian regime,” but Indivisible in this instance is promoting an incomplete perspective. For example, it assumes that Democratic leaders could control the outcome, which is unclear, and that such votes were mistakes.

    Reasonable liberals could have a different explanation. Some for instance might think that the Democrats tried “to protect the American people” from MAGA and the Republicans who refused to negotiate, and these politicians rejected “minor concessions,” which actually don’t address the underlying health care problem, and that they accepted the political realities and agreed to reopen the Republicans’ government (Gorn 2025).

    The reality is that options available to Democrats are limited at least until they are the majority in at least one house, including the White House, or until they can convince their Republican colleagues to prioritize principles over party, which is actually the same mistake Indivisible seems to be making.

    Indivisible web site screenshot

    The problem in other words is that Indivisible is using unrealistic and unresponsive language, and in so doing seems to have switched its focus from principles to parties.

    Indivisible and other progressive organizations must remember the realities of limited attention and air time, and in so doing select issues that have the widest appeal. The issue isn’t that representation doesn’t matter, which it obviously does, but that success cannot come from identity politics, especially the kind that appeals to small segments of society.

    These organizations would be smarter in other words to focus on the issues and principles that cross current divides and speak to the most people. In doing so, these organizations need to make such arguments, and to explain why caring for communities is always better in both practical and philosophical terms for everyone.

    Such frames and arguments might differ from one part of the country. What works in New York City for example might not work in New Jersey or Virginia. Regardless, the underlying (progressive) principles would remain the same concerns for community, which exist in foundational American texts.

    This approach increases the appeal to voters while continuing to expand coalitions, and actually is why these organizations must support competitive elections and fair maps once the recent gerrymandering surge has subsided (see, e.g., these or these).

    These together increase the chance that organizations are less likely to get lost in litmus-tests, which are often a proxy for party over principle, and more likely to have repeated and regular success. These moreover could encourage candidates to connect with their constituents through progressive principles rather than political party.

    Indivisible has brought hope to many of us, which was actually the best part of the recent No Kings marches. Standing among the thousands in Grant Park, I was reassured that so many people shared these concerns and aspirations and care about Chicago and our country.

    Perhaps that explains why I’m concerned about its seemingly unrealistic and unresponsive language. Instead, I urge it to avoid criticizing political parties, and risk reinforcing existing divisions, and instead refocus on creating the largest coalition, one of we the people that was central to who some imagined we could be, a people who were in this fight together, still trying to form a more perfect union.

    That is what Indivisible has done so well, and what it does best.

  • The Kick We Might Need

    The recently released movie If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, which is written and directed by Mary Bronstein, might not seem obviously relevant, but it’s worth the effort and the experience.

    A therapist named Linda (Rose Byrne) and her unnamed daughter (Delaney Quinn) who has an eating disorder return to their apartment to find a flood in their bathroom and soon thereafter a hole in a bedroom ceiling. Her husband Charles (Christian Slater) is sailing for two months, so Linda is responsible for coordinating these repairs and resettling her daughter in a nearby hotel without disrupting her treatment while maintaining her own private practice.

    Linda finds support in the hotel manager James (A$AP Rocky) and her own therapist (Conan O’Brien), who is also her supervisor. However, her shortcomings are exposed when Charles unexpectedly returns, so she runs to the beach and rushes into the ocean only to be repelled each time by crashing waves. She is found stretched out on the sand by her daughter, whom she promises that she will do better.

    The lead performance is particularly powerful, and according to Bronstein and Byrne purposely particular, which makes it a puzzle.

    For some, it represents the challenges confronting mothers who are told to lean in and have it all. Such an impression is obvious for example in the scene in which Linda challenges the physician (Bronstein) who is treating her daughter and other mothers’ children in a group session.

    This movie for others might be an account of the ways that men fail women. Such failures can be found for example in Linda’s husband Charles, who continually minimizes the challenges she is confronting, or her supervisor, who does help with a professional crisis but later terminates her therapy with him.

    It could be for still others a story about the ways that women cannot see and support each other. That in addition to the group session scene is also evident in the exchange between Linda and a client named Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), who after abandoning her newborn in Linda’s office later tells her that their recognition isn’t mutual.

    This exchange however suggests a larger link among these possibilities, which is the way that anyone can be unseen even by the people who could, and should, see us. Linda not only cannot see this client or for that matter others, but she also cannot recognize the humanity in the hotel manager James, whom she abandons in her damaged apartment after he fell through the ceiling hole and broke his leg.

    This movie in other words is more a cautionary tale about the ways that we can miss others’ suffering, and in so doing might make it worse. Even the parking lot attendant (Mark Stolzenberg) in his insistence upon the rules is yet one more person who cannot offer compassion to another suffering human.

    Suffering, which might be central to the human experience, is powerfully presented in this movie, which is why it cannot be a comedy even though some think it is. It’s less amusing and more unsettling, and certainly offers no connection or communion at its end.

    That isn’t funny or fun, and can never be, which could very well be why we all might need a kick in the pants.

  • Not Again WBEZ

    WBEZ is fund-raising again this week.

    The ostensible goal is replacing the remaining rescinded federal funds — around $150,000 of about $3 million as of yesterday morning — by the end of this week. The station in other words has reportedly replaced about $2.85 million, or ninety-five percent, as of this week and had about five percent more to go at the start of this “pop-up” fund-raiser.

    I still believe in public media, and wish these were fully funded with our tax dollars although I’m less sanguine about such a model than ever. I just think WBEZ is still operating on a flawed assumption, and in so doing insulting its listeners’ intelligence.

    One on-air person for example suggested yesterday that this loss was the equivalent of a month of broadcasting. She asked listeners to imagine eleven months of news and then one month of nothing.

    Such a scenario not only is unrealistic and unnecessary but also would be irresponsible. Moreover, this funding loss shouldn’t have surprised any perceptive person who knows that federal funding threats appeared long before the second Trump administration, which only increased their likelihood.

    Budgets are obviously choices. As a result, WBEZ could, and perhaps should, reconfigure its budget without this federal funding, and only expand it based on additional reliable funding.

    The station obviously should pursue additional reliable funding now perhaps more than ever. It could also reimagine its contributions and function, especially now that it needn’t worry about placating politicians anymore.

    WBEZ at least is no longer beholden to the federal government for the equivalent of one month of funding. Now it can boldly, and even brazenly, reimagine its role in metro Chicago and American democracy.

    Such a response would reassure existing donors that the station has been a good steward of our contributions. It also could inspire individuals, both new donors and existing ones, to contribute to this bold and brazen alternative, one that gives hope to the future of public media and our country.

    That beats begging for bucks to replace what this bully has taken.