In the otherwise dismal presidential campaign, one of the few local highlights was the Green Party’s Oct. 18 rally for Ralph Nader. More than 5,000 people filled the Toney Burger Center, paying $10 each to hear a variety of local music, watch an animated film by cartoonist Tom Tomorrow (Nader-san and Sparky-san the Penguin win chop-socky debate victory against nefarious Bush and Gore), and hear the Texas Green candidates, culminating in an unsurprisingly articulate but surprisingly rabble-rousing speech by Nader himself.
The rabble-rouser who introduced Nader was local author, radio personality, former ag commissioner, and Chronicle columnist Jim Hightower, who took a lesson from the Austin rally and similar Nader events elsewhere. In the wake of the October cancellation of his syndicated Hightower Radio show, Hightower has been organizing and fundraising for a new “Rolling Thunder Chautauqua Tour,” inspired in part by his Green Party experience. If his new Chautauquas can catch fire, Hightower hopes they will become the basis of a new city-by-city, national progressive coalition, bringing single-issue activists together for more broad-based organizing campaigns in their hometowns.
The Chautauqua movement, still sustained in a few places around the country, was founded in 1874 in the New York town of Chautauqua, where people gather for days at a time for speeches, entertainment, and public discussions of political issues. Hightower hopes to use that model to build a new traveling Chautauqua movement, for which he and other national activists would unite with local organizations in order to help each other.
“From the speeches I’ve been giving across the country,” Hightower told the Chronicle, “and from our work on the radio show, it’s apparent to me that the people are ready to start moving again. And it’s not necessarily the usual suspects from progressive organizations. At the Nader rally here, I’ll bet I didn’t know 200 of those people, out of a crowd of 5,000. And yet they sat there for several hours, listening to music and cheering the speeches — and there wasn’t even any beer!”
Hightower says he won’t make that mistake at the Rolling Thunder Chautauquas, which like their predecessors will combine music and entertainment with political speeches, discussion forums, and organizing workshops — ideally homemade — to encourage activism in the towns where they take place. “Too often, the problem with big rallies and onetime events,” said Hightower, “is that once the rally is over, the energy quickly dissipates. And even in the same town, the folks working against a toxic waste dump may not know the folks organizing for a living wage.
“The idea of the Chautauqua,” he continued, “is to foster a coalition among these various activists. We’re asking leading groups in each area to reach out to others and form a Chautauqua, to bring me or other speakers in. And we want them to make a special appeal to young people and minorities, who so often get ignored in organizing, and have them get involved in the planning from the beginning. We’re looking to broaden and deepen the pool [of populist activism], and get away from only coming out at election time.”
Hightower says he’s already received interest from several rock and country musicians (along with the more predictable folksingers) willing to appear at the Chautauquas in several cities. “You know, Pete Seeger‘s old enough to have attended Chautauquas back in the old days,” said Hightower, “and he told me he got his politics from Chautauquas. He went for the music and the women, but listened to the speeches as well.” Local microbreweries and food stores will also be asked to provide or sell food. “We want families to come, and we’ll tell them, ‘We’re going to put the party back in politics.'”
Hightower plans to begin the Chautauquas this spring, initially to take place monthly over the next year or so. Groups in Austin, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Seattle, Wisconsin, and Colorado have already expressed interest. The intent is to use the event to help build local campaigns. “We’re asking local groups to focus on a particular action to take on after the event — maybe a living wage campaign, public financing of elections, instant run-off elections — some campaign that isn’t necessarily a particular issue, but that can unite together all of the groups participating.”
If it works as planned, says Hightower, the party is just the beginning. “We’re trying to have the progressive movement be better off the day after the event than it was the day before.”
This article appears in 2000.
