Actions that capture this type of energy are eviction blockades in Boston organized by Vida Urbana/City Life, the tenant union organizing happening in Miami, and the “progressives for Obama” blog of activists and intellectuals committed to ensuring Obama doesn’t drift to the center.

If there is any hope of building a better world we must be more than the sum of our parts. With capitalism in decline in the U.S. and the emperor exposed as having no clothes, the time is ripe to build a broad movement big enough to not only hold Barrack Obama accountable to the interests of racial, economic, and gender justice, but big enough to actually shift society at the roots.

Building a broad movement means building with sectors, organizations, and people who you may disagree with on particular issues. It is the job of principled leftists to mainstream our ideas and practices through engaging in coalitions, united fronts and movements, and winning people to our side, thus expanding our influence and pulling movements left. The fight is in the movement.

The task of maintaining principled left ideals while engaging in broad coalitions, united fronts, and movements is difficult. There is always the question of the edge of one’s politics; the point at which compromise is actually selling out a principled stance regardless of supposed unity or advances, and not compromising is a dogmatic clinging to the security of pure politics standing in the way of advancing the fight. But if we don’t take risks and throw our lot in with hope and growth over guarded skepticism and stagnation (which is failure in the end), how can we reach the majority of people, how can we truly build a better world? Let our goals be our guides to making allies and naming enemies in each fight.

With an Obama victory I am closer now than I ever was to the White House. Friends of friends are getting appointments with the new administration. As much as this presidency signals a historic shift, it is still a presidency within the U.S., and therefore certain lines must be maintained. Those friends who move inside the administration will certainly be forced to hold those lines, and those of us on the outside have to be clear about those dividing lines as well.

Now is the time to take advantage of the cover of an Obama presidency and build independent organizations, electoral machines, and movements.  We must understand the limitations of the positions of the president, and make our role be to change the ground beneath his feet.