Progressives “crashed the party by sort of becoming part of it, but also fundamentally changing its course,” said Heather Gautney, associate professor of sociology, in regards to her book Crashing the Party: From the Bernie Sanders Campaign to a Progressive Movement. “In the book, what I do is outline the development of the new Democrat model in which the Democratic Party was shifting rightward.” 

Gautney and Zephyr Teachout, associate professor of law, discussed the progressive movement and their respective books for Fordham Law’s Behind the Book series, organized by the Maloney Library and moderated by Todd Melnick, clinical associate professor of law and director of the library.

In the Nov. 16 event, the two professors offered thoughtful analysis of the future of the progressive movement, punctuated by details from their many active years in politics. 

Teachout, who has been at Fordham Law since 2009, ran for governor of New York in 2014 and for the United States House of Representatives in New York’s 19th congressional district in 2016. She published her antitrust book Break ‘Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money this past May. 

Gautney, who published her book in 2018, has worked on both Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns—as a senior policy adviser in 2020 and a volunteer organizer and researcher in 2016.

Defining Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism comes up in both books, Melnick noted. Gautney said for her, the definition of neoliberalism is less about what it is, and more about what it has accomplished and defeated. “I don’t have the exact words, but the concept is that neoliberalism has achieved the successful removal of working-class resistance,” she said. She gave the example of Reagan firing thousands of air traffic control workers who were on strike in 1981, saying “It was a message to labor: ‘Hey, you’re not safe anymore. The protections that you think that you enjoy, you don’t enjoy anymore.’” 

“All of these forces kind of coming together and pushing down working people and moving resistance aside—and fundamentally neoliberalism is about the primacy of the market.”

Similarly, Teachout defined neoliberalism as “the belief that markets are the best mechanism for allocating goods and services as opposed to publicly elected officials.” She said this depends on the fantasy that markets exist before people, and is an attempt by neoliberals to “naturalize what is wholly unnatural,” by framing market regulation as hampering the growth of something natural.

“Laws that enable workers to organize are absolutely essential,” Teachout continued, tying back to her book. “And the key tool to prevent capital from organizing is antitrust.” 

The Impact of the Sanders Campaign

According to Gautney, neoliberal identity politics also played a role in the end of Bernie Sanders’ campaign. Neoliberals considered diversity within the “1%” enough, she said, and they tried to paint Sanders as someone who didn’t care about diversity when what he really cared about was dismantling the 1% and helping the less fortunate. 

Gautney said both she and Sanders himself were surprised about his appeal to young people, since a good chunk of his political career was spent fighting for social security and working with seniors. But she believed that young people flocked to him because he ran a “very counter-cultural” campaign in 2016 when people were disillusioned with what the democratic party had become. And, she said, young people aren’t afraid of socialism the way that older generations are.

Gautney pointed out that even though Sanders lost, progressives who were inspired by his campaign like Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were elected. 

“In a way he didn’t lose because he shifted the horizon of possibility back,” she said. “We have people who clearly were running on the same agenda that Bernie had injected in 2016… having a substantial appeal. … I would consider that big wins.”

The Future of the Progressive Movement

In terms of the future of the progressive movement, Gautney said that Sanders had negotiated a number of task forces with the Biden campaign after the primary, one of which she co-chaired on education. These task forces, which in her view are “pretty darn good,” coupled with the possibility of a Democratic Senate due to the Georgia runoff, means that the progressive movement could have power in the Biden administration.

Teachout offered the next steps for the progressive movement from both an antitrust and a non-antitrust perspective. On the non-antitrust front, she said organizational work within Congress is essential. 

“Use the power you have,” she advised congressional leaders. “Use subpoena power. Take on those hospitals that are merging and overcharging people. Do the investigations. Show that you are fighting for people against the middlemen that are squeezing them. And you can do that even without the Senate.” 

On the antitrust side, Teachout said that Biden has the power to revive the economy using anti-monopoly policy. “And it’s not just that he should. It’s that I think, eventually, he’s going to have to, because if you are running into a wall on a Senate that will not pass a stimulus package, you know what a stimulus package is? Anti-monopoly. There’s recent research showing that $15,000 a year is being taken away from workers per year, from each worker per year, to investors, because of concentration in our society.”

When asked by Melnick about whether she felt optimistic moving forward, Gautney replied, “I’m somewhere in the middle, I have to say.”

But she believes Sanders’ influence on this Senate will make a big difference. “[Bernie] is running around with the manifesto and really trying to make sure that the Democratic party and Biden in particular sticks to it.” She said his pragmatic attitude, the force of the movement, and his popularity is what’s made him so successful. “I think he’s ready to go.”

Watch the conversation in full here.

Fordham Law Professor Jennifer Gordon and Christina Greer, Ph.D., associate professor of political science,  discussed a multitude of issues during the hour-long conversation, including the importance of language in the context of the immigration debate, the role of sanctuary cities in today’s America, the fallacy of portraying some immigrants as good and others as bad, and how each of their ideas has evolved since their books were published.

The program, titled “Immigration Nation: Identity & Labor in American Politics,” also highlighted the ways the Trump administration in its first eight months has targeted immigrants, whether through increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests, ending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or the various iterations of the travel ban.

The professors noted that in the xenophobic atmosphere that President Trump has created immigrants are increasingly targets of attack. “The racism and xenophobia inherent in the [Trump] policies, combined with the new permission to speak in ways that are racist and xenophobic, make life very hard for immigrants,” said Gordon, author of Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights (Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2005).

These factors make it harder for low-wage immigrant workers to defend their rights through worker centers, noted Gordon, who founded and ran the Workplace Project, a nonprofit labor rights center, from 1992 to 1998. However, the model is still “urgently necessary,” Gordon said, because it allows workers to use their collective strength to fight for improved work conditions and pay, organize community education, and devise legal strategies.

Trump’s appointment of then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general sent a clear message of intent with regard to the administration’s hostility toward immigrants and its “maintenance of whiteness,” said Greer, the author of Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream (Oxford University Press, 2013). The Trump administration’s hardline immigration stances—and the potential for encounters with ICE agents— have inspired fear among many communities, leading people to keep their children home from school, families to stop attending church, and women who are victims of domestic violence to avoid the police, Greer told the standing room–only audience of students and faculty.

The Trump administration’s rhetoric is also having an adverse effect on local law enforcement’s relationship with communities. Greer cited St. Louis police officers chanting “Whose streets? Our streets” during a protest earlier this month as one prominent example of this development.

“That’s a really clear indication to not just marginalized communities but especially immigrant communities that they’re not welcome here,” Greer said, noting this message emanates from the White House.

In this political environment, the words that people use to describe immigrants are telling, the professors agreed. A person is not “an illegal” because they have violated an immigration law, any more than they would be if they ran a red light, Gordon noted. She added that the use of the term “alien” makes it easier to conceive of immigrants as “not fully human” and therefore deny that they should have rights.

“The low-wage labor market of the United States is dependent on undocumented immigrants, and to me that makes it a much more complicated question than who follows the rules and who doesn’t,” Gordon explained.

“Not only are you asking people to clean the house and mow the lawn but the sign on the door says, ‘We’re a nation of immigrants, please if you’re tired and hungry and poor, come on in,’” Greer added, expanding on a metaphor Gordon used to pinpoint the oftentimes hypocritical nature of U.S. immigration policy.

Lost in the public discourse about immigration is the fact that most undocumented immigrants have overstayed visas after being legally admitted, rather than crossing the border without authorization. The largest group of people who have overstayed visas are from Europe. This refutes assertions that Trump has made that undocumented immigration from Mexico is the principal problem and justifies the need for a border wall along the southern United States.

How sanctuary cities will protect their residents at risk of deportation remains an open question. Cities and states do not possess the power to grant immigration status or prevent deportation, but they can refuse to hand over non-citizens to ICE after criminal accusation or conviction, Gordon said.

Victor L. Essien, international law librarian at the Maloney Library and adjunct law professor, moderated the event.

The Behind the Book series, sponsored by the Maloney Library, serves as a bridge between the Fordham University academic community and Fordham Law School, fosters dialogue between people with different ideas, and provides background on the writing and publishing process. Previous installments have highlighted debates surrounding the Second Amendment and the media and politics.

—Ray Legendre

The archive includes personal correspondence and other materials from John Feerick, who helped draft the 25th Amendment as a 27-year-old lawyer fresh out of Fordham Law School while working as an associate at Skadden Arps. Feerick went on to serve as dean of Fordham Law from 1982 to 2002 and currently holds the school’s Sidney C. Norris Chair of Law in Public Service. He and members of the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham Law collaborated with The Maloney Library to develop this online resource for use by scholars, journalists, and citizens.

The archive offers an interactive timeline of the history and events that prompted Congress to create the amendment, which provides legal mechanisms for handling presidential inabilities and filling vice presidential vacancies. In addition, the archive provides access to the legal and scholarly discourse on the 25th Amendment since its ratification on February 10, 1967.

Materials also include law review and scholarly articles, books, congressional reports, executive branch documents, conference and symposium videos, photographs, and think-tank reports. All items in the archive may be viewed or downloaded. The repository will continue to grow in size and scope as additional materials are added.

As of August 9, 2017, materials from the archive have been downloaded approximately 42,127 times by users from 134 countries.

Feerick received the ABA Medal on August 12 at the 2017 ABA Annual Meeting in New York. The medal is the highest honor awarded by the American Bar Association.

On September 27, in conjunction with Feerick, Fordham Law School will present a symposium on the 25th Amendment. Learn more about Feerick and Fordham Law’s history with the 25th Amendment via Fordham Lawyer magazine.

These were some of the questions addressed in a wide-ranging conversation held on April 5 at Fordham Law.

“Fake News & Twitter Wars: Media & Politics in the Trump Years” brought together Jessica Baldwin-Philippi, Ph.D., assistant professor of communication and media studies and author of Using Technology, Building Democracy: Digital Campaigning and the Construction of Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Zephyr Teachout, associate professor of law and author of Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United, (Harvard University Press, 2016).

When it comes to political campaigns, the speakers noted that some politicians run campaigns that decentralize tasks while others’ campaigns decentralize power. However, the traditional structure has changed very little, consisting of a finance director, a communications shop, and a political/field operations area. This arrangement caused endless conflict when the internet became a tool of campaigns, and hasn’t entirely abated.

“In 2008, ‘digital’ was under communications in almost every single campaign. In 2010, it was still under communications in almost every campaign. Even where they started to have their own fourth pillar, the [two]would fight constantly,” Baldwin-Philippi said. “And it continues. Most campaigns still have those three pillars.”

Baldwin-Philippi said that when she began researching her book in 2010, campaigns were painstakingly fact checking to prove their points. It was, she said, a short-lived phenomenon, however. Today, Americans need to become more adept at recognizing propaganda if they are to be a well-informed citizenry.

“Traditionally, we’ve measured being informed as knowing there are three branches of government, and knowing who the vice president is. I think we really need to move beyond these ways of measuring and pointing to good citizenship,” she said.

Teachout cautioned against the rise of media outlets that are ostensibly conservative but are “actually nihilistic.” There’s some merit to the saying that politics and the truth have never had a good relationship, she said—but at the same time politics cannot exist without a belief in the possibility of facts.

“Skepticism is one thing. But a radical cynicism actually makes conversation extremely difficult because then there is no final reference to which one can go to,” she said. “This kind of postmodern approach is incredibly dangerous for our discourse.”

Both speakers said that corruption was a central theme of the 2016 presidential election. Many voters chose Donald Trump because they felt the entire system was corrupt and wanted to throw it all out and start fresh.

Teachout noted that we can’t actually tell if another person is corrupt, or using public power for private, selfish ends, because we can’t look into another person’s heart. However, we can enforce laws that prohibit selfish behavior.

She criticized President Trump for refusing to separate himself from his businesses while in office, which she called a clear conflict of interest.

She also had harsh words for Hillary Clinton. When questions were raised about connections between The Clinton Foundation and her service as Secretary of State, Clinton simply said there was no “smoking gun” that proved obvious quid pro quo transactions.

“[The statement] suggests we should only be concerned about those circumstances, when we can see a smoking gun,” she said. “It actually pushes on a heavy legalism, which our current president has adopted and exaggerated.”

“It’s important that we respect conflict-of-interest norms,” she said.

The event, which was moderated by Eric Sundrup, S.J. associate editor of America magazine, was the second in the Maloney Law Library’s Behind the Book series, which brings together scholars to discuss their research on contemporary issues and the publishing experience.

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