The importance of local progress

Nick Licata is a member of the Seattle City Council

Nick Licata, Huffington Post -  One thing that's certain is that we can't keep doing things the same way and expect different results. The only real way is by engaging in hard grassroots work: We need to rebuild the foundations of progressivism with clearly defined goals that connect to regular people. We need to get back to the tradition of passing local progressive legislation. We can do this by strengthening the ties between our community based organizations outside of government with our allied elected officials inside government. This is the path of revitalizing our nation's democracy through our cities, where labor and community-based organizations are working with local politicians to make dramatic improvements in people's daily lives.

Local Progress, the nation's largest collection of progressive elected representatives from cities and counties, is taking the lead. Launched just over two years ago, Local Progress has already been featured in The Nation, which delightfully called us "Pothole Progressives." We have grown from fewer than fifty members to over three hundred members from forty states, one-third of whom attended its third annual meeting earlier this month in New York City, which featured an introductory speech by Mayor Bill de Blasio ("We all reference each other," de Blasio noted, "We all build on each other's work. Every time we succeed, it builds momentum for other cities."). We attended wonky but inspirational lectures about the economy, social justice, livable cities, and effective government; we talked, and we learned.

Housing, sustainability, police-training and procedure reform - there is a lot going on at the local level. We are conditioned in this era to expect big change now, but that hasn't worked for us, so why not try to build our successes more deliberately, so that our impact is something stronger than a media sound bite?

Local Progress members have scored victories already, passing paid sick days, minimum wage and living wage legislation in over two dozen cities since its formation.

With over fifty percent of the population living in our biggest thirty-five metropolitan areas, it is critical to organize urban areas and pass legislation that demonstrates to the nation that progressive solutions strengthen our democracy. Moreover, we can't sit around for the Presidential election in 2016 and hope for a strong progressive turnout; every year there are important council laws, elections and ballot issues that present that opportunity. We must demonstrate to the average citizen that change is possible now, in order to build momentum toward victories in future elections. Otherwise, we will only see further gains by those intent on dismantling a government by and for the people. It's a downward slide that we can't afford to have.