Thread by @ggreeneva

One of the worst annoyances I’ve encountered in progressive politics is how some people and institutions, when push comes to shove, eschew the values they preach in public.

If progressive leaders say they want paid family leave—or want workers to have the freedom to organize for good pay & working conditions—it undermines the movement to say, when people in progressive institutions ask for those things, “maybe this isn’t the line of work for you.”

Maybe, to be charitable, such leaders forget that they got into this work to show that a better world is possible. Maybe.

Still, it’s incumbent on our institutions to _demonstrate_ that a better world, that a better way of working, is possible.

Even without government power at their fingertips, progressives can model the norms they’d like to see in society. Of course, limits exist; most consulting firms can’t absorb the cost of offering free health care to employees, for instance.

But paid leave for workers who face a family emergency? That should be doable. Especially since someone experiencing a family emergency is _extremely_ unlikely to do do their best work even if they intend to.

Maybe this is an in-movement corollary of ‘deliverism’: executing our ideas when and where possible, so the public can see the results.

Refusal to do that where progressives have some power just makes us look preachy and risible. We should stop that. prospect.org/politics/case-…

If people can see that progressives aren’t serious about the values they profess, how can progressives ask others to take those values seriously?

It’s a self-defeating habit. If progressive leaders can’t understand that, well, maybe this isn’t the field for them.