A Think-Tank Leader Puts Progressive Causes Center Stage

The crowd gathered at Katherine Forrest’s house in Portola Valley, Calif., wanted to hear from

Barry Kendall, the new executive director of the Commonweal Institute.

What they got was a song.

Mr. Kendall ended his first speech to supporters of the progressive think tank with a a verse of “America the Beautiful.” He asked the crowd to join in.

Dr. Forrest, a physician who helped start the Menlo Park, Calif., organization in 2001, was not surprised.

“We talk a lot about how to motivate people, how to show them a reason to take part in the political process,” she says. “And Barry can do that. He has a way of pulling people together, and then educating them, that is outside of the ordinary.”

Mr. Kendall, 33, credits his ability to his roundabout route into the political arena. Born in Arkansas, he followed a dream of working in the theater to Atlanta, where he managed 7 Stages, an acting company with a progressive bent. (The 2007 season included Marx in Soho, in which the founder of communism is reincarnated in hipster New York.) He worked for the Olympic Arts Festival, and he taught drama at Stanford University.

“For me, the arts are about connecting people, about creating shared experiences that expose us to new ideas and collective emotions,” Mr. Kendall said at Ms. Forrest’s house party. “In other words, the arts are about effective communication — reaching an audience, grabbing them by the lapels, and showing them a new way of seeing things.”

He expanded his own view in 2000, when he worked for New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley’s 2000 presidential campaign. Out among the voters, he says, he saw the rise of the political right, which combined religious faith and stagecraft for success at the polls.

“Religious belief has been at the bedrock of some of the most important social changes in our history,” Mr. Kendall said at the house party. “Sadly, though, religion has become as much of a divisive force as it is a unifying one, and has been robbed of its association with a vision for progress in American society.”

At Commonweal, Mr. Kendall’s job will be to market progressive causes, both on the Web and in traditional policy circles. The group is pushing for changes to improve the electoral process, increase government spending on public education, and protect the separation of church and state.

Mr. Kendall also hopes to buck the talk-radio buzz that he says made “liberal” a dirty word.

“If you look at surveys and polling data, the majority of people generally align in their values with progressives,” he says. “But they don’t identify themselves with that label.

“The liberal brand is out of whack with liberal values,” he says. “Our efforts are to bring those two things closer to alignment.”

Mr. Kendall will be running his efforts to change the image of liberals on what appears to be a slender annual budget. Although neither Mr. Kendall nor Dr. Forrest would discuss how much money the organization operates on, Commonweal’s informational tax filing for the 2006 fiscal year revealed that the group generated $168,383 in total revenue.

Likewise, neither Mr. Kendall nor Ms. Forrest would discuss his compensation, other than his comment that, like Commonweal’s previous leader, he is being paid as an independent contractor. “This is how you launch,” says Dr. Forrest, who adds that fund raising will be a priority for the new leader. “You’ve got to get to a specific base of support before you can count on people being salaried.”

In an interview with The Chronicle, Mr. Kendall discussed the next step for his group.

Why have liberals and progressives been so good at getting their message online?

One of the reasons is that the barriers to entry are so low. On talk radio, and in much of the mainstream media, the extreme or sensational voices get all the airtime. That’s what attracts listeners. But those voices drown out the more moderate voices. They push them away from the conversation.

Those extreme voices can’t dominate the conversation in the same way online. Moderates have the chance to talk back, and to say their piece.

Does it translate to real-world action?

Absolutely. The net-roots community played a huge role in Ned Lamont’s victory in the primary against [Connecticut Senator] Joe Lieberman.

But Senator Lieberman ran again as an independent, and won the general election.

The Web is no substitute for shoe leather, for hitting the pavement and knocking on doors and making phone calls. All of those pieces are still going to be in place. The online activity is not going to replace that. What it can do is provide a forum and an online community where those activities can be organized and orchestrated.

Have the conservatives caught on to that opportunity as well?

They are certainly making significant strides on the Internet. Anyone who argues that progressives have a natural advantage in that medium is fooling himself.

Where does the Commonweal Institute fit into the mix?

We are a marketing shop for promoting progressive values. When issues emerge in the public discourse, we take that opportunity to offer guidance to progressives. We say, “This is how you speak about these specific issues.”

Who is your audience?

We try to bring new people into the fold. There’s always a need to cultivate the base. But you also have to grow the base.

The question I ask is, How do you reach those unaffiliated people who agree with your values but don’t necessarily think of themselves as part of your movement?

The opportunity is out there. This coalition of traditional-value conservatives has become a victim of its own success. Their ascendance has left a lot of fiscal conservatives and libertarians feeling pretty alienated. And more and more, they’re looking to us.

You left the theater world to study religion, with a focus on evangelism. How did that happen?

I was trying to understand something about American culture. I wanted to study the question of how communities are formed, and I got interested in the mutual blind spots between our religious and artistic communities. When I saw the rise of the religious right, I knew that that gap had some political ramifications.

How does a background in stagecraft help in your current work?

Throughout American history, the arts and religion have both been very effective ways of reaching out to people and creating a common cause.

One of the things I hope to bring to the organization is the ability to build bridges, to reach out to artistic communities and religious communities and to open conversations about what it means to be part of a community in America, and what it means to fight for progress.