The Power Behind the Next Progressive Movement

by Robert Jennings, InnerSelf.com

We’ve been sold a comforting myth: that history’s turning points happen because a single brilliant leader emerges, cape billowing in the political wind, to save the day. It’s a nice bedtime story, but it’s a lie that keeps movements weak. Roosevelt didn’t “give” the New Deal out of benevolence; he delivered it because the streets, the unions, the farmers, and the veterans wouldn’t let him do otherwise. The Great Depression didn’t just create misery; it created organization. Strikes shut down factories. Veterans marched for their promised bonuses. Farmers blocked roads to prevent foreclosures. That’s not hero worship; that’s power applied with precision.

The Right’s Long Game vs. the Left’s Moral Assumptions

While progressives have clung to the belief that moral rightness will naturally triumph, the right has spent the last half-century proving the opposite. After corporate lawyer Lewis Powell’s infamous 1971 memo, conservative elites didn’t just wring their hands; they built an army. They funded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, established media outlets to disseminate their message, and invested in candidate pipelines to infiltrate every level of government. Project 2025 isn’t a sudden brainstorm; it’s the harvest of seeds planted decades ago.

Meanwhile, the left often assumed that if you shouted “justice” loudly enough, people would listen. Spoiler alert: they didn’t. Moral arguments might stir the already converted, but without the machinery to sustain them, they fade. The right understood a fundamental psychological truth: repetition, combined with infrastructure, beats a moral lecture every time. They built echo chambers; we built Twitter threads. Guess who’s winning?

Why the Grassroots Is the Only Engine That Works

Every profound political shift in modern American history has been driven from the bottom up. The civil rights movement didn’t wait for Lyndon Johnson to wake up one morning and decide to champion voting rights; they marched, sat in, filled jails, and refused to be silent until it became politically costlier to ignore them than to act. Labor unions didn’t beg for crumbs; they organized strikes that froze production lines. Even the American Revolution wasn’t the polished work of powdered-wig elites; it was agitators, pamphleteers, and local militias that made British rule ungovernable. This is the power of grassroots movements, and it's within our reach.

Top-down movements, no matter how charismatic the figure at the center, eventually collapse under their own weight. Why? Because when the figure stumbles or simply fades, the movement has no muscle memory to carry it on. A well-trained grassroots base, on the other hand, operates like a swarm: cut off one leader and a dozen more step forward, each fluent in the mission, each capable of carrying the torch.

The Danger of Bringing a Butter Knife to a Gunfight

Progressives often mistake visibility for power. A million-person march might make for a stirring aerial photo. Still, without a plan to convert that energy into sustained political pressure, it’s just a day out in comfortable shoes. Symbolic protest has its place, but without follow-through, it’s the political equivalent of posting an angry Facebook status—momentarily satisfying, utterly forgettable.

Being “militant” in organizing doesn’t mean violence. It means discipline, persistence, and a refusal to play the game on the opposition’s terms. It means anticipating their moves before they make them. The right excels at this. They hold think tank sessions years before the public even hears the buzzwords they’re preparing to unleash. Progressives? Too often, we’re busy reacting to yesterday’s outrage while the right is quietly drafting tomorrow’s laws.

A Framework for the Progressive Roosevelt Strategy

If we’re serious about creating a Progressive Roosevelt moment, we need to act like it. That means building durable infrastructure that won’t collapse the minute an election cycle ends. Start with community media, not just social media posts that vanish in 24 hours, but actual platforms that can reach, teach, and mobilize. Create funding pipelines that are independent of billionaire donors whose interests may fluctuate with market conditions. Host policy workshops where activists learn not only what to demand but how to defend it from hostile amendments.

We also need to steal a page from the opposition’s playbook by framing progressive values in language that doesn’t trigger reflexive opposition. Talk about fairness, opportunity, and responsibility, terms even the most self-described “conservative” voter values. Call it a Progressive Conservative vision if you must. The point is to make progressive goals feel like common sense, not an ideological leap.

And perhaps most critically, train grassroots leaders to be politically dangerous, not in the sense of breaking laws, but in the sense of being impossible to ignore. They should be as comfortable dissecting bad policy in a town hall as they are rallying their neighbors. They should know the opposition’s talking points better than the opposition does. When the window of opportunity opens, and it will, we need people who can run through it without stopping to ask permission.

Moving From “Me” to “Us”

Charismatic leaders have their uses, but they’re accelerants, not foundations. They can spark a movement, but they can’t sustain one without an organized base. That’s why so many once-promising movements fizzle: they become about the person, not the cause. History offers better models, moments when diverse groups set aside personal ambitions to push in unison. The early labor movement was a complex coalition of immigrants, radicals, and reformers. Still, they recognized that their survival depended on unity. The suffrage movement fractured more than once, yet ultimately aligned on the essential goal.

I recently had a long conversation with a county party leader about a voter suppression scheme unfolding in his own backyard. We spoke for nearly half an hour, laying out the details and the danger. He promised to get back to me with a plan. Weeks have passed, and there is silence. Not because he doesn’t care, but because the system itself is comfortable with delay. Delay is its own form of surrender. If we sit around waiting for someone with a title to move, we’re already losing. Movements that endure understand the quiet truth: personal glory is irrelevant compared to collective victory. And collective victory doesn’t wait for permission slips.

The Call to Arms (Without the Guns)

The moral fight we face isn’t theoretical; it’s alive and happening. Take the “50501” movement: 50 protests across 50 states in one day, with over 5 million people showing up to resist authoritarianism and defend democracy. This is not imagination; it’s what ordinary people can do when they stop waiting for leaders and start taking action.

Or consider the Fighting Oligarchy Tour, where Sanders, AOC, and thousands rallied in cities like Denver and Los Angeles to fight back against corporate dominance, and drew crowds bigger than many political campaigns.

The Poor People’s Campaign, led by Reverend William Barber, is building a moral movement grounded in disciplined nonviolence, not just protest, but also practice, with weekly Moral Mondays demanding justice and accountability.

I’m a trained military man. While I never saw combat, I understand the violence of war every time I visit my local VA hospital for treatment, and the necessity of strategy, discipline, and focus. However, our strength here isn’t in launching a war; it’s in organizing a relentless, strategic, and nonviolent civic force. The movement is already underway. What’s missing is more pressure on leaders, elected officials, party chairs, and community authorities to act now, effectively, and without delay.

When I spoke with a county party leader about massive voter suppression happening in his jurisdiction, we talked for half an hour. This is well known, and similar tactics are happening all over America and the world. Too little is happening. That's a failure, not because our leaders are morally bankrupt, but because systems reward inertia. If we remain silent, waiting for someone to act, we become complicit through our waiting. We must demand action at every turn relentlessly.

Leaders need to feel the heat. You don’t have to build a movement from scratch; you have to demand that the movement you see in the streets and online becomes a reality in policy. Insist that those in power defend democracy and justice, or step aside for those who will. Show them you’re paying attention. Show them we won’t wait. Because the right had decades to build its infrastructure, it had to, because its cause needed camouflage. We don’t need 50 years. The truth sparks faster than lies, and most of humankind is already on our side.

And we will. Win. If we only make just an adequate response, because good wants to triumph over evil, and a movement already lived can ignite a future that acts. But make no mistake, we and our descendants will perish from this earth if we don't make the effort now.

About the Author

Robert Jennings is the co-publisher of InnerSelf.com, a platform dedicated to empowering individuals and fostering a more connected, equitable world. A veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Army, Robert draws on his diverse life experiences, from working in real estate and construction to building InnerSelf with his wife, Marie T. Russell, to bring a practical, grounded perspective to life’s challenges. Founded in 1996, InnerSelf.com shares insights to help people make informed, meaningful choices for themselves and the planet. More than 30 years later, InnerSelf continues to inspire clarity and empowerment.

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Article Recap

Grassroots strategy, not political celebrity, fuels real progress. History proves that only a united, organized base can force sweeping change. By building durable infrastructure, speaking in accessible language, and preparing for decisive moments, the progressive movement can rise to meet this challenge , and create its own Roosevelt moment.

#grassrootsstrategy #progressivemovement #politicalchange #activism #organizing #socialjustice #progressivepolitics #communitypower #movementbuilding #rooseveltmoment

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