Unity '09: Democratic groups quietly align

By GottaLaff

Well look at us, all unified and organized and stuff!

A broad coalition of left-leaning groups is quietly closing ranks into a new coalition, "Unity '09," aimed at helping President Barack Obama push his agenda through Congress.

Conceived at a New York meeting before the November election, two Democrats familiar with the planning said, Unity '09 will draw together money and grassroots organizations to pressure lawmakers in their home states to back White House legislation and other progressive causes.

The online-based MoveOn.org is a central player in the nascent organization, but other groups involved in planning Unity '09 span a broad spectrum of interests, from the American Civil Liberties Union to the National Council of La Raza to Planned Parenthood, as well as labor unions and environmental groups. [...]

Unity '09 comes at a time of increasing coordination on the left, including an effort this week by the Democratic National Committee, Obama's grassroots network and other groups to defend Obama's budget and attack the GOP as obstructionists.

But Unity '09 is setting a broader, and longer-term agenda, aiming to exert grassroots pressure on lawmakers in their home states over the next several years on the entire spectrum of political issues. [...]

Unity '09 is, informally, the field organizing compliment to another new organization, Progressive Media , which launched a month ago to coordinate the liberal groups' messages and their attacks on Republicans and on critics of Obama's policies.

For more info, I wrote about Progressive Media in this post.

But while Progressive Media is an in-house project of two existing organizations, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters, Unity '09 requires more commitment from its members in the form of a $25,000 contribution to the group's future organizing campaigns, a source said.

Unity '09 is conceived as ultimately including 20 to 30 organizations, people familiar with the planning said. The groups have overlapping, but different, groups of members and financial resources at their disposal, and the idea behind the organization is that they can share resources to fill in geographical and organizational gaps. Labor unions could, for instance, put their weight behind environmental campaigns in regions where environmental groups are relatively weak, and vice versa.

Along with the groups previously mentioned, others involved in planning discussions include the Sierra Club, Media Matters for America, and Health Care for America Now. [...]

The new organization is likely to stir fears among conservatives already feeling organizationally outgunned and flatly alarmed by the new progressive infrastructure.

The red part is my favorite. I'm reading it over and over and over again. I may even say it out loud, right here and now. Don't you love it when we finally get our act together? Isn't it way more fun than what we were doing before?

If I didn't know better, I might come to the conclusion that community organizing works. Shhh. Don't tell Grabby McEarmarks.