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People make history. Phillip Cryan, program director for Iowa Citizen Action Network, says that's the basic message he hopes participants in values workshops take home with them.

"The mainstream political agenda is shaped by organized people," he expanded, "and by the coherence of the values and vision they put forward."

In recent years, according to Cryan, the forces of the political right have done a very good job shaping the national political conversation around their values and beliefs and also organizing people around those values. He points to the progressive positions in the mainstream political agenda in the 1970s as an example of what happens when people organize effectively.

"Richard Nixon supported all kinds of progressive policy positions," he said. "This was a product of the movements of the 1960s, especially the civil rights movement and its powerfully clear values and political vision of equality and justice.

"In other words, our elected leaders operate within the political agenda of their times, and that political agenda is not something they control. People do. It's up to us to figure out what core values, and what political vision, we want at the heart of the mainstream political conversation, and then it's up to us to put them there."

It's a process of moving beyond individual issues and policy positions, to a broader vision and the values which form it. That process has been the driving force behind ICAN's "Our Common Values" initiative. Phase one has been one-hour introductory workshops with interested groups throughout the state. The workshops explore how the "rightwing worldview" works and offer discussion of the themes most central to a progressive worldview.

Workshops have been completed on the western half of the state and now those groups will come together on Saturday, May 12, for a regional summit in Urbandale (PDF registration form) to determine which two or three themes will become the overall focus. A strategy for implementation will also be developed.

Groups continue to meet on the eastern half of the state with the next workshop scheduled for Monday evening, May 14, in Cedar Rapids with Working Families Win. Individuals interested in participating in that workshop should meet in The Java Creek Cafe on Boyson Rd. at 7 p.m. The regional summit for Eastern Iowa is scheduled for Saturday, June 16, in Iowa City. (PDF registration form)

"One of the main goals of 'Our Common Values' is to help all the energy and activism leading up to the caucuses to articulate a clear political vision," Cryan said. "We want to help the public see that progressives aren't just a bunch of groups that care about specific issues -- in isolation from others -- but that the various issues we care about and work on are rooted in a shared set of values and vision."

Because ICAN wants to work with many different groups who are themselves targeting candidates directly, the public should not expect to see ICAN taking an active role with the candidates.

"We think it will be most effective for us to stay out of the arena of taking issues directly to the candidates," he said. "Otherwise groups running caucus projects might have a harder time seeing us as a facilitator of this collaboration if we were 'right in there' with them trying to get the candidates attention."

Once the workshops and regional summits are complete, the initiative will move into a more hands-on phase which will provide tools and training to help groups use the selected themes in messaging, campaigns and other public relations work. This process continues to build on three years of work ICAN has led with unions and organization around the state, exploring the role of rightwing and progressive worldviews in setting the terms of political discourse. It is open to every organization, community group, union, church and individual in Iowa committed to building bedrock themes to be amplified by all the varied campaigns, caucus projects and political struggles.