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Democrats bet on appeals to neoconservatives — including war criminals like Dick Cheney — and touted harsh border policies, bolstering rather than challenging Republican anti-immigrant frameworks.
Kamala Harris may have relied on women to vote for abortion rights, but she promised little more than a potential return to the flawed and insufficient norm of Roe v. Wade, at best. Like President Joe Biden, she supported a genocide and failed to distinguish herself from extremist Zionists like Trump.
For Democrats, appealing to the right has been a disaster of realpolitik, especially in an electoral system that structurally favors Republicans anyway. But what’s worse, Democratic strategies have failed and harmed the most vulnerable communities both in the U.S. and those who suffer under the yoke of U.S.-backed wars.
There is an urgent need for social justice movement organizing, growing unions and union power, antagonism rather than acquiescence to existing power structures, and expansive networks of care and support. The most powerful social movements of the last decades did not primarily build on support from Democratic leadership under Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, or Joe Biden. Nor did they collapse during Trump’s first tenure.
As a foreigner looking in, I’m worried about how things like widespread protest suppression and union-busting will affect the called-for attempts at change. Some of that stuff was bipartisan, and it’s unlikely to get better now that the far right has control of the Presidency, Senate, SCOTUS, and perhaps the House.
It’s definitely a valid concern. In 2020, Trump had federal police descend on Portland in plain clothes and unmarked vans to literally kidnap protestors off the streets.
Oh it’s 100% going to suck for sure. It will be hard and difficult and painful. But our ancestors fought for unions when unions were illegal, and union busting didn’t just mean saying “stop” or “you’re all fired”, it meant hiring private mercenaries to spray bullets into crowds and beat unarmed people with sticks. Women got the right to vote with protests and were often arrested for vandalism, arson, and all sorts of shit they did during them (and for prohibition, which I know didn’t really work, but hey, they got that amendment in anyway).
And I don’t even mean ancient ancestors, I mean like great grandparents. If they did it, so can we.
Less surveillance and death machines back then. Resistance will be harder.
True. Paying attention to our online footprint, keeping privacy technology and encryption available will be a huge part of it. No more “if you aren’t doing something wrong then you don’t need to worry about it” or whatever people said that Snowden tried to point out was dumb.
My GG grandfather was killed when soldiers fired into an unarmed crowd that was protesting for basic human rights. This was in Marineo, Sicily, on 3 January 1894. His widow had to flee to the NYC tenements with their 6 children to start fresh - as progressive sympathizers were not safe.
She was poor in Sicily, she was destitute when she arrived in the US. Like many others, she did garment piece work to get by. Other Sicilian immigrants arrived in a wave and they made a new community.
When the Triangle Fire happened, real labor reform began to happen through the work of the ILGWU and others. They did not stop protesting until they got results.
Yes. Hard times ahead. Hard times behind may show us the way forward. Ad astra per áspera.
Oh it’s 100% going to suck for sure. It will be hard and difficult and painful. But our ancestors fought for unions when unions were illegal, and union busting didn’t just mean saying “stop” or “you’re all fired”, it meant hiring private mercenaries to spray bullets into crowds and beat unarmed people with sticks. Women got the right to vote with protests and were often arrested for vandalism, arson, and all sorts of shit they did during them (and for prohibition, which I know didn’t really work, but hey, they got that amendment in anyway).
And I don’t even mean ancient ancestors, I mean like great grandparents. If they did it, so can we.