Pulling together, saying goodbye.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: EDITOR'S NOTE - Editorial

On September 13, The Progressive helped bring together more than 4,000 energized activists at Fighting Bob Fest in Baraboo, Wisconsin, to take on what our founder, Fighting Bob La Follette, called "the forces of greed." Speakers, thinkers, and rabble-rousers from around the country fired up the crowd.

Bernie Sanders gave a barn-burning speech before taking his nascent Presidential campaign to Iowa. (See page 16.)

Mary Burke, who is running for governor of Wisconsin against the odious Scott Walker, came out to address her base at a moment when the polls show she has a real chance to win (if citizens' groups can overcome the new, incredibly restrictive voter ID law in Wisconsin).

But the real energy came not from partisan politics, but from the drive to build a movement.

"I've got fifteen minutes to start a revolution," Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges told the crowd. Hedges denounced the "corporate coup d'etat" in the United States. (See page 20.)

Here at The Progressive, we're pouring our energy into exposing that corporate coup, and into building what Hedges and Kevin Alexander Gray (page 24) call for: a nonviolent popular movement to restore democracy.

Despite the daunting forces we are up against, I am continually inspired by the people who are working to build a real, grassroots democracy.

At a recent forum on the threat to public schools, I was on a panel that included the last moderate Republican state senator in Wisconsin, Dale Schultz. Schultz was the lone vote in his party against Walker's rightwing assault on democracy, public education, the environment, and organized labor. We have to talk to each other, Schultz told the small-town audience.

We have to come together, despite our differences, to protect the things we value most in our communities, including our public schools.

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