Panel in S.F. explores how left can rebound

Co-founder of the Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza, talks during the Chronicle Chats series at Herbst Theater in San Francisco, Calif. Wednesday, April 19, 2017. Co-founder of the Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza, talks during the Chronicle Chats series at Herbst Theater in San Francisco, Calif. Wednesday, April 19, 2017. Photo: Mason Trinca, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Mason Trinca, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 14 Caption Close Panel in S.F. explores how left can rebound 1 / 14 Back to Gallery

With Republicans firmly in command of Congress, the White House and about two-thirds of all state legislatures, it would be easy for an overwhelmingly left-wing crowd gathered in San Francisco Wednesday night to feel like the political equivalent of crushed bugs. Or at least voiceless ones.

Forget that, insisted the panel of political activists and experts they came to see at the Herbst Theater in a presentation entitled “Can the Trump Resistance Grow Beyond Protest?”

What progressives need to do is what the right wing did beginning in the late 1970s, the panel advised: start organizing at the ground level, taking back school boards and city councils, not just aiming for the big federal offices.

Listen — really listen — to your neighbors, even the ones you don’t fully agree with, to figure out what your commonalities are, they said. But all through this, added Becky Bond, one of the speakers, remember to also think big.

And above all, they agreed, don’t wait for someone to prod you into action. Get moving now.

“We don’t have to agree on everything, but we have to understand that we’re all in it together, and it’s going to take a multiracial coalition working for an economy that works for everyone to actually change things,” said Bond, a senior adviser to Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and co-author of the book “Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything.”

To get that, she said: “We’re going to need a big majority, and not just a majority of the people that currently vote.”

The panel, moderated by author and Chronicle columnist David Talbot, consisted of two other progressive activists and one former Republican strategist. It was the first in a series of similar events being presented by The Chronicle called “Chronicle Chats,” featuring news makers, thought leaders and trend setters.

The unquestioned advocacy from the stage for activism on climate change, racial equality and other pet causes of the left drew rousing cheers from the theater’s packed crowd. But by the end of the evening, even the former conservative strategist, Dan Schnur — now politically unaffiliated and director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California — managed to draw some hurrahs of his own.

The anguishing over where to find towering Democratic or progressive leaders to lead the left beyond merely waving picket signs by the millions is not a new dilemma, Schnur said. It comes in cycles. And that cycle will swing back.

“This is not a challenge or frustration that is unique to the left,” he told the crowd. The quest for the right is the same as the left when it comes to capturing leadership, he said. And right now, in places like Bakersfield and Orange County, he said, conservatives are probably anguishing as well over where the next star will come from.

The commonality, he said, is this: Candidates and parties need to “motivate, inspire and excite.”

There was more of a ballot-box street-fight attitude from the other two panelists, Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza and Laura Guzman, founder of the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center for homeless and low-income people.

Denouncing the current national political system as soiled with racial insensitivity, they said radical change needs to happen most now on the ground level, community by community. Guzman said sanctuary city statuses need to be expanded to include minorities of all kinds, and Garza said her organization is actively working to get leaders elected to office on its platform.

Garza said Black Lives Matter has influenced the passage of dozens of laws for racial equality in the past two years and has in mind building a “movement in the millions.”

“We have a lot more work to do than just waiting to see what happens,” she said.

For many who came to hear the panel, much of what was said in the left-wing discussion in the decidedly left-wing city of San Francisco was not particularly surprising. But it was motivating.

“My takeaway was that we have to get involved — don’t just wait for someone to ask you to,” said Suzanne Krivoy, who came in from Walnut Creek. “It’s good to be reminded of that.”

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @KevinChron