Christopher Schroeder

Category: politics

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Revolutionary Thinking

    I had been encouraged after a conference session to read Heather Ford’s (2022) Writing the Revolution, and can understand after having done so why this book was recommended.

    Ford in it offers her decade-long digital ethnography of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution Wikipedia entry from its emergence and through its evolution and uses it to challenge conventional ideas about facts in the digital world. To do so, she outlines a framework for facts that includes allies, or those who author or edit Wikipedia content, and companions, or sources that validate and verify these assertions.

    Ford uses these results to challenge conventional Wikipedia principles, such as neutral point of view, verifiability of facts, and prohibitions against primary research. Instead, she argues that facts are contested and change, and as such illustrate the reality that knowledge is not objective but rather situated, especially in a digital world.

    This account systematically examines her observations and consistently supports her claims. Moreover, it establishes context through interviews with central participants, including those who led early efforts to establish this page, and in so doing shaped the narrative around this event, such as whether, and when, to call it a revolution.

    I wanted more synthesis, implications, and even application, especially beyond the Wikipedia world, but I admit that at least the latter wasn’t the ostensible purpose of this book, which is a successful account of academic research. As such, it illustrates a way of bridging the academic and the public, and offers a way of thinking about more relevant research.

    And I found it to be useful in ways I didn’t expect. For me, its engaging style consistently demonstrated a grad school tenet — knowledge as situated — that seemed intuitively true, and yet to have wide-ranging implications, especially for institutionalized practices, which I could never confront.

    I think Ford’s account clearly illustrates an interim step in an effort to transform a grad school stipulation into a useful foundational principle.