First off I just want to say that this is a stressful time for almost everyone. This is not an easy period that we are living through – whether we’re accustomed to ongoing crises or we’re more recently waking up and feeling it. My heart and love goes out in solidarity to all of us who are experiencing fear, grief, anger, uncertainty, disillusionment, and many other challenging emotional states and real life consequences resulting from the crisis in the capitalist system.
But there is “hope”, many say, as evidenced by participation in the April 5th protests around the United States, broadly cast as “anti-Trump and Musk”.
My socials are filled with folks proclaiming how “hopeful” it is to see so many people take to the streets in these symbolic protest actions. And along with that “hope” comes the withering criticism of those of us with a “critique”.
We’re just so naive/misguided they say. “How can anyone sit there and criticize folks who are getting activated for not being “correct” or “radical” enough? We have to meet people where they are!”
And to that – I completely and unequivocally agree! My criticism is not with the people who showed up for this rally. That would be ridiculous. We need masses of people taking action together, now and always!
But I don’t believe that the turn-out is in and of itself a beacon of hope. It’s an indication of possibility, but it will take much more to turn that possibility into real hope. Just as faith without works is dead, hope without clear, connected, competent and committed leaders is empty.
Do you remember, or have you ever heard or read about what happened on February 15, 2003? 6-10 million people worldwide took to the streets to protest the Second Gulf War. The largest protest in human history, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Wall Street interests prevailed, the war proceeded, slaughtering 1,000,000 Iraqi people in the course of the war and its aftermath. The U.S. service members who were forced to wage this war were crushed by Gulf War Syndrome, depression, and PTSD, as well as chronic health conditions from toxic exposures.
On November 4, 2023, the largest protest in solidarity with the Palestinian people took place around the globe, with estimates of more than half a million in the streets. The Israel-led and U.S. backed genocide rages more ferociously than ever. One child is killed every 30 minutes in Gaza.
In the course of the summer of 2020, an estimated 26 million people participated in protests connected to the George Floyd uprising. 4,600 people were killed by the police in the U.S. during the Biden administration. White people comprise the largest number of those killed by the police, while Black people are 3 times more likely to be killed by police with figures for Indigenous people ranging from 3-7 times more likely.
In his important book “If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution”, journalist and author Vincent Bevins examines the global wave of protests between 2011 and 2021, asking the critical question: Why have the upsurge of protest movements around the world not resulted in serious and lasting change?
Which brings me back to my point – what exactly is my criticism? Do I stand against “hope”?
Of course not!
And yet, I do believe that our hope must be based in reality, not fantasy.
Our hope must be based in each other, not the misleaders who have kept us on a treadmill of hope and despair, mobilization and demobilization, lying to us about the source of why things have gotten steadily worse across the entire working class in this country for the last 50 years.
Our hope must be based in each other, not the party that the ruling class used to continue to degrade the position of the working class through NAFTA – the North American Free Trade Agreement (1993) which resulted in massive industrial job loss; Welfare Reform (1996) which replaced a social safety net with market-driven “workfare”; the Telecommunications Act (1996) which led to the rise of media monopolies and the age of disinformation; financial deregulation and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (1999) which led to the 2007-2008 financial crisis; the Troubled Asset Relief Program (2008), or the bailout of Wall Street at the expense of the working class, and the Affordable Care Act (2010) which preserved, expanded and protected the private insurance system that profits off our sickness and death.**
These are among the policies that helped pave the way for the degradation of our living conditions such that we now count 140 million people in the ranks of the poor or those of us one healthcare or housing emergency away – nearly half the country.
Just like we can’t expect an engine that runs on fossil fuels to belch out anything but polluted air, we can’t expect an economic and political system that runs on systemic racism, poverty, environmental devastation and militarism to produce anything but more of the same.
So I’m here for the big tent – believe me! The tent I’m building is big enough for 140 million people – and guess what – those people are hurting – across the color line, the party line, and the urban/rural divide. I’m not here to listen to anyone speaking from the podium who says that the problem is chiefly or exclusively Trump. I don’t want to go back to the normal of 2023-2024, when 25 million people were kicked off of Medicaid in this country. We need to go forward.
I’m here for the big tent – but my tent does not include the billionaires and Wall Street – the economic forces behind the two party system in this country.
I’m here for the big tent – but I refuse to be operationalized and co-opted by one section of the capitalist class in order for another section to prevail. We’ve been there before – we went from the period of Reconstruction after the civil war to the backlash of the Redeemers. We went from the upsurge of independent working class organization in the wake of the Great Depression to the New Deal Coalition which saved capitalism from itself. I refuse to set the table for the capitalist class to continue to eat while we starve.
The nationwide rallies can be hopeful IF:
The people attending and organizations turning out their members demand of the official sponsors that no politicians be allowed to speak from the podium. The primary task of these figureheads is yoking us to a hamster wheel of 1) mobilization, 2) demobilization and 3) voting for the bad or the worse because they are yoked to a system that puts profit over our lives and planet. Here’s a great example of what it means when poor folks take the stage.
They become moments to raise class consciousness, unite across issue silos, and talk about the fundamental problem. We are not a compendium of identity groups who need “allies”. We are a diverse working class trying to survive a war being waged on us by Wall Street, whether we currently know it as such or not. We need to get together, desperately, and see our common problems. We need people from the ranks of the organized poor to grab the mic, teach the historical and economic roots of this current crisis, shift the focus away from “experts” and “VIPs” and help the poor and dispossessed to understand ourselves as the only people capable of unsettling this society and putting us on a path of transformation. Here’s a great example from the Rev. Joe Paparone in Albany, NY.
We use them to bring people into the politically independent organizations of the poor and dispossessed. Many people are ready to mobilize, but not yet ready to organize. However, we need to train thousands of leaders NOW as we prepare for much bigger eruptions and outbursts that will inevitably result from the unsustainable organization of and relationships that govern our global economy. Those upswings and outbursts will not as easily be led, co-opted, and directed by the powers that be. As we raise the consciousness of the people turning out for “Hands Off”-style demonstrations, we can immediately begin to help those who gravitate toward us to see themselves as PART of the working class, not simply the “middle class”. This is the beginning of the journey for many folks getting mobilized right now. The work of member-led, staff free networks like the National Union of the Homeless and the Nonviolent Medicaid Army point the way forward.
Thank you for all that you do every day to put people first.
Some more helpful reading:
**[For further reflection: For those of us who voted for this party that has pursued these policies for the last 50 years – have we been voting against our own interests? Should we be held accountable – as everyday people with no property and power to speak of – for the massive social dislocations, hollowing out of our industrial base, depression of wages, culture of misinformation, out of control healthcare costs, the opioid crisis, deaths of despair? Are these things our fault for voting this way? Or were we simply making the best choice we felt we had at the time?]