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 [Please welcome Mike Lux and Host, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky]

I first met Mike Lux when he was director of the Iowa Citizen Action Network in the mid-1980s.  With his wife Barbara Laur – herself a progressive leader – I knew Mike was someone to watch.  Citizen Action was designed to connect local organizing efforts across the country – to build power from the grassroots up.  I was part of Citizen Action Illinois and our goals were – and still are – to give people a sense of their own power and to make immediate/concrete improvements in people’s lives. 

Mike Lux was a leader in winning those improvements in Iowa – as head of ICAN and later at the Iowa Federation of Labor.  Together, we worked on energy pricing, health care, farm policy and toxic waste site cleanup.  Mike had the extraordinary ability to think big about policy and strategy while also being one of the best on-the-ground organizers in the network. He combines the knowledge of what needs to be done with the organizing skills needed to get people engaged and empowered.  

Since Iowa, Mike has been a valued presence nationally and in DC – working on health care with the Clinton Administration, helping direct People for the American Way, providing strategic guidance to organizations like Women’s Voices/Women Votes and Progressive Majority. 

Mike also understands that grassroots organizing must be combined with electoral activity in order to make meaningful change.  He has practiced his political skills at the local, state and presidential levels.

Mike is a person of many talents – policy, communications, electoral.  And, in his new book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, he has shown that he is also a serious student of progressive history and political trends.

Mike’s book documents periods in our history when conservative domination led to progressive renewal.  Lux’s book describes the five “big change” moments in American history and how the progressive movement was responsible for those moments.  Mike clearly lays out an argument backed by historical evidence that progressives have been the agents of change while conservatives have fought to maintain the status quo.

Mike writes:

Progressives invented the American ideal and inspired the American Revolution.  Conservatives, then known as Tories, opposed it.  Since then, every major advancement in American freedom, democracy, social justice, and economic opportunity has been fostered, fought for, and won by progressives against conservative resistance. Now who’s anti-American?

Last Tuesday, we ushered in a new progressive era in America with the swearing of President Barack Obama.  We stand on the precipice of a transformational time in our history in which progressive values will lead our country out of the challenges we face today.  In just the last few days, we have already seen President Obama reverse many of the regressive and misguided policies of the Bush Administration that have put this country on a perilous path – reversing the global gag rule that harmed women across the world, pledging our opposition to torture and closing Guantanamo.   Much more progressive change is coming…..