Post-Election

Vol. 1, No. 4--Post-Election, 2004

You've probably already seen the map equating red states with slave states but Robert J. Vanderbei has created a more useful map of the United States using county-by-county 2004 election return data. The resulting map is a sophisticated depiction of how polarized our country isn't. There's blue in Maine, red in California, and a lot of purple everywhere.

What does that tell us? That there are very few states in our country where everyone is voting one way or another. That every state is a battleground state. No matter where you live in the United States, there are people like you. Get connected with them, and start pushing your state toward your 'moral values.' "Of all the sins and sinners in the world," said Dante, "the hottest rings of fire in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in a crisis." At this time of great crisis and controversy, refuse to stand neutral. Insist on telling the truth about both the nation that we are and the people we aspire to become.

At PDA, we aspire to broaden the public policy conversation, to pressure the structures of power, and to inspire new generations of progressive activists. We seek to shift the center of gravity of American politics, so that many of the ideas considered "too far left" today will be accepted as mainstream tomorrow. If politics is the art of the possible, then our mission is to expand the parameters of future possibility. We can be beacons in the American political night.

We want to bequeath our gifts to our descendants--long down the line into the remote human future. But we are driven equally by the profound obligations we owe to our ancestors, those who strived to build the one world civilization where all of us, as temporary custodians, now reside. We do our work because we owe it to Cesar Chavez, Dorothy Day, Margaret Mead, Albert Schweitzer, Jane Addams, Norman Thomas, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Sanger, Eugene Debs, Harriett Tubman, Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, and Sojourner Truth.

We know that we stand on the shoulders of giants like Bolivar and Beethoven, Magellan and Michelangelo, St. Francis and St. Augustine, Augustus and Ashoka.

It is up to us to complete their work.

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