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By Deb Jospin, sagawa/jospin on Monday, January 21, 2008

I guess it was inevitable that issues of race and gender would creep (some might say “rush”) into the race for the Democratic Presidential nominee. Many of us consider these issues to be major distractions, taking everyone’s eyes off of the real issues and creating an internal gang war that will not end well for the Democrats. The good news (for Democrats, at least) is that last Tuesday night—on what would have been Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 79th birthday—during a debate in Las Vegas, the candidates called a “truce” and blamed their surrogates for the recent skirmishing. Senator Clinton called them "exuberant" and sometimes "uncontrollable supporters." Senator Obama acknowledged that staffers and other backers of his campaign occasionally "get overzealous" and say things "I would not say."

At the heart of that skirmishing (but by no means the only source of the tension) was Senator Clinton’s remark before the New Hampshire Primary, that “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a President to get it done.” According to Kevin Merida, in the Washington Post, this comment sparked a “bristling debate about leadership in the streets and leadership in the suites.”

In the same Washington Post piece, Taylor Branch, who has written an acclaimed trilogy of books on America in the King years, says “something fundamental has been absent from the discussion about the roles of King and Johnson in the civil rights era.”

“I think the discussion so far has been almost entirely misguided because it has been about who is insulting whom," Branch says. "The discussion should be about what the relationship was and should be between a citizens' movement and leaders in a democratic government. King's whole career was a petition to the federal government. He was appealing to Americans through their government to keep faith and be true to democratic ideals. So it was never contemplated that the movement could accomplish these things alone. And it was never contemplated that the government was going to make these changes on its own without a movement of its citizens.”

If this discussion sounds familiar it should—it sits at the core of America Forward. Working in isolation, neither a citizens’ movement, an innovative nonprofit, or a government agency can bring about transformative change. But working in true partnership, each bringing to the table what they do best, they can.

Deb Jospin is a partner at sagawa/jospin and is assisting the America Forward coalition with policy development.

Posted in Election Insight, Innovation