I write this in honor of Michael Parenti – working class hero!
His book, Blackshirts and Reds is one that I recommend to everyone looking to do self-study.
Amid everything that’s going on – it’s been a time of such raw emotion. But what finally broke through the numbness for me was this:
I saw this in my local newsfeed and I couldn’t hold in the tears any longer. It’s from a local news report – presumably placed by “law enforcement” – that lists a bunch of petty infractions (basically, the crime of being too poor to renew your license, get your car inspected, or pay a speeding ticket). What I cropped out of this screenshot is that the news published these peoples’ names. Their NAMES. Their counties. And their “crimes”. Essentially enlisting the help of the public to “hunt them down”.
I started riffing some words that come to mind when I think about the condition of our class. Hunted. Disparaged. Slandered. Criminalized. Caged. Ripped apart. Humiliated. Demeaned. Hidden. Disregarded. Exploited. Forgotten. Attacked. Killed. Denied. Oppressed. What comes to mind for you? What are you seeing and experiencing in your community and in your family?
ICE killings are murder out loud. One of the most visible expressions of state violence in this time.
We have to join the outrage about the loud murder with a deeper agitation and understanding of the quiet murder.
Rugged individualism is embedded in everything we do – even “social justice”.
We get trained in individualism:
Individual stories
Individual impacts
Individuals matter and move people
We don’t get taught to see patterns or the interconnection between things. We get trained neither to zoom out to the big picture, nor to dig deep and understand the root of the problem. We just see what is right in front of us.
We generally aren’t moved by the mass struggle of life and death for our class. Not yet.
Developing class consciousness means understanding that these different tentacles of the fundamental problem are not separate from each other.
It means facing and feeling the quiet murder of letting pandemic protections expire in the Great Medicaid Purge of 2023 when 27 million people were kicked off of Medicaid leading to at least 15,000 additional deaths.
It means facing and feeling the 73% decline in wildlife populations; and 42 million people killed by sanctions – both since 1970.
It means facing and feeling the 25-30 year reduction in the life expectancy for people who are unhoused, while 20-30 homes sit vacant for every person who doesn’t have a place to stay.
It means facing and feeling the reality that nursing homes controlled by private equity have led to an increase of 10-15% in mortality rates, or 22,000 additional deaths over the course of 12 years.
It means facing and feeling that poverty kills 800 people every day, or 292,000 people every year in the United States.
It means facing and feeling the reality that there are 48,000 suicides yearly, many linked to the chronic stress of living in this society. Alcohol and drug related deaths – coping behaviors – lead to 100,000 deaths yearly. The police killings of 1,000 humans and 10,000 dogs on average each year. The microplastics and forever chemicals in our bodies linked to heart disease deaths – and much more.
All the centers of profit-making and the forces of capital are arrayed against our very lives and existence.
These are systemic crimes, but the perpetrators of these crimes don’t get put on blast in the newspaper, they own the newspaper. And social media. And the private equity firms. And the stock market. And Silicon Valley. And our political system is the committee for managing their affairs.
It is the millions suffering from quiet murder that will make history. Our task is to build the necessary unity, organization and understanding to assist in that process.
The following is a rough transcript of a presentation I did on the July Statewide Call of Put People First! PA
Put your seatbelt on, we’re about to go for a wild ride.
We’re going to try to do something really important and special which is to talk about federal policy from the perspective and the analysis of the working class.
Not what the mainstream media is giving us, not filtered through the lens of one section of the ruling class or another, but based on our own understanding, our own analysis coming out of our study, our history, our experiences and our reading and understanding of what is happening.
We’re going to talk about what we in the Nonviolent Medicaid Army call the “Big Beautiful Bill for Billionaires”. It really is a big beautiful bill, if you’re a billionaire – so we want to put that right out there.
This bill is 900 pages, so it’s a bit intimidating to read it closely and understand it. First I want to say that when Put People First! PA introduced our own bill in the Pennsylvania legislature in the 2021-2022 legislative session, to institute a Public Healthcare Advocate, our bill was 18 pages long. We got all this pushback from state legislators who said “This bill is WAY too long, no one’s going to read it. Can you get this bill down to 2-3 pages?” But we notice that’s a bill that’s coming out of the working class struggle. But when there’s a bill that’s coming out of the billionaire class it can be 900 pages and it’s not a problem.
The length of the bill is actually significant here.
We have to first ground ourselves in the fact that this is our money!! The federal revenue, where do we get the money that’s in our budget? Forty-eight point five percent (48.5%) comes from individual income taxes. The taxes that we pay on the money that we make by selling our labor – the exploitation of our labor. Then payroll taxes, which is another form of taxation on our labor. So 83% of the money that the federal government has comes from our taxes. In other words, it’s OUR money. This is our money that they control. We as a class do not control OUR money. The billionaires, the ruling class that is behind our political system, are deciding what to do with OUR money.
Breakdown of where money comes from in the federal budget
What’s in the budget? Here’s a breakdown, this is an overview. Social Security, Medicare, Militarism – I’m not going to say “national defense”. It’s really not defense, it’s militarism, it’s the war economy. Health, including Medicaid and other health programs. Interest on our debt, and “other” things.
Pie chart of federal budget
The “other” category is a lot of really important stuff. It includes all of SNAP which is our food, TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) also known as welfare, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, Housing Assistance. All of that is less than 10%. Veterans benefits and services – less than 5%. When you see that money for militarism, remember that none of that is going to veterans. Education, transportation, all of these are in the “other category” and they’re very small amounts of the total federal budget.
So now let’s get into the Big Beautiful Bill for Billionaires. One of the reasons we want to break it down and break it down from the vantage point of the working class is because you’re going to see different things in the media depending on the sources that you’re looking at. Depending if it’s coming from the Democratic Party perspective or the Republican party perspective. So the Republicans are selling this as “working family tax cuts” and then we’ve got Bishop Barber calling it the “Big, Ugly, Destructive, Deadly Bill”. So we’re seeing this polarization where one side is like “this is awesome, this is actually going to help working people” and the other side is “this is evil, this is mean, this is cruel and cruelty is the point”. But I don’t think that either of those perspectives are coming from the lens of really trying to understand what’s going on here, and also let’s put it into a context of “how did we get here?”
It’s not enough to stay in this battle of “oh it’s good, no it’s evil”. I think that’s not really going deep enough. And we really have to go deeper in understanding what’s happening here.
So let’s look at some of the things that are being touted as the positive things in this bill. It would be a lie to say that the bill is just an expression of pure evil. Something that came up from the Eye of Sauron. There’s a lot of stuff that is in the interest of the billionaire class. And we know that those things are not in our interest and that’s where the conflict arises. That’s where the problem actually comes in. It’s not because of EVIL people. It’s because of a system that is structured to prioritize the needs of capital accumulation over human life. Is that evil objectively, is that morally wrong? Sure it is.
But it’s not because those individual people are evil and greedy, it’s because we live in a system that prioritizes the needs of capital over human life. And that means that we’re going to die. That’s what that literally means. But we have to understand what’s beneath these narratives.
So there’s a few things that you’re going to hear when you see the headlines and you see Congresspeople touring across PA or our state, touting the benefits of the “Big Beautiful Bill for Billionaires”
There’s an expanded low income housing tax credit in the bill, which is supposed to increase the affordable housing supply – BUT that’s a tax credit for developers. That is money going to people with money. It is not going to us, it is not giving us money to get access to housing, it’s not making housing a human right, it’s not making housing free for all. It is money going to developers to “incentivize” them to build affordable housing. Similar to the way that the ACA gives money to insurance companies to “incentivize” them to cover people. So again, it’s taking our money to subsidize the developers and the capitalists to “do the right thing”. So it’s a false solution in that way. But it’s there. Will it result in more low income housing? Who knows. It’s not a real solution. But they’ll say that it is something that’s going to benefit the working class. Specifically in the realm of housing, which as we know is impossible to get, it’s impossible to afford.
Some of the crumbs for the working class included in the bill
There are these “Trump accounts” for newborns. So this is a new thing that’s in the bill. Every child born gets a $1000 government funded account and tax deferred contributions. So that’s a little bit of crumbs. There’s something there that they can say that they’re doing.
No taxes on tips, that’s been a big talking point. There is tax relief for service workers, up to $25,000 in tipped income, and $12,500 in overtime pay that can be deducted. But that is phased out for anyone making above $160,000 and it expires in 2028. So one of the things we’re going to see over and over again is that the tax cuts for the wealthy are made permanent and the tax cuts for us are all temporary.
And then there’s this child tax credit increase. They’ve said that they’re boosting the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,200 to $2,500 per child. But a lot of low income families won’t actually qualify for the full amount if they’re not already paying $2,500 in federal taxes. So this is another thing, it looks good on paper but it may not actually provide the benefit that it appears to.
They’re also touting no taxes on social security. I got an e-mail from the federal government for some reason about taxes on social security saying that 88% of seniors will pay no taxes on their benefits. But the reality is that 64% of seniors are already exempt. So it’s not going from 0 to 88% it’s going from 64% to 88% and it does not eliminate taxes but it creates a new deduction which will shrink the portion of benefits subject to taxation. It will ALSO expire in 2028.
So once again, there are some things that they are going to be talking about on these tours but we have to know that they are not real solutions, that they are not providing the kind of real benefits that we actually need. They essentially amount to crumbs. And all of the benefits are temporary when it comes to the working class.
We’re not trying to sit here and be partisan about this. We are politically independent. We do not take our marching orders from either of the two parties of Wall Street.
Here’s how you will be affected:
Summary of the distinction between the benefits to the ruling class vs. the working class
So when we think about who this bill is really for, this is why we call it the “Big Beautiful Bill for Billionaires” because they say “Oh we’re going to cut taxes for people making this amount” but it’s basically chump change. Here’s why we always talk in Put People First! PA about both raw numbers and disproportionality. Sometimes people are constantly trumpeting this disproportionality piece, which is important – but they leave out the raw numbers. For example, they leave out the fact that there are 66 million poor white people in the U.S. today. But in this case, I want to draw out the disproportionality. They’re going to be like “Well in raw numbers, the people making between 53k and 93k that’s where most of the tax cut is going” because that’s like 75 million people or something. But it DISPROPORTIONATELY benefits not only the top 1% but the top .1% But I was on a Town Hall with a Congressman the other day who said “No no no, it’s not true that this is a tax cut for the wealthy because ‘most’ of the tax cut is going to middle class people. But the reality is that working class people (because middle class is a false narrative) – working class people are getting crumbs, even if because of our vast numbers they can add it up and say “most of the tax cuts are going to working class people”. But in reality it is disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest people in our society.
For example, this bill is a big boon for folks who own private jets or who want to buy private jets. If you go out and get a private jet you can now deduct %100 off of your taxes. So the private jet companies are super excited about this bill and they think it’s going to open up a new era of people traveling in private jets.
News headline about private jet companies excited about the bill
So what else are they doing with our money?
ICE funding is going to jump from 10 billion to 27.7 so it’s almost tripling. There’s a 150 billion increase for the war economy or militarism. There’s a billion in new tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry. And the bill adds 3 trillion to the national debt. As we can see when it comes to billionaires, the whole question of the national debt just gets thrown out the window – it’s not an issue anymore. It’s only an issue when it comes to funding for healthcare, and for food, and using OUR money to benefit the masses of people in OUR country. Which is the way that you know that we are not in power, the working class is not in power, and we weren’t in power BEFORE this election either, let’s be real!
Overall, what are our takeaways? How can we generally understand the Big Beautiful Bill for Billionaries?
Summary of how we can understand the “Big, Beautiful Bill for Billionaires”
Now let’s talk about Medicaid. As Rica said, we approach our understanding of this from a place of political independence. We have been fighting Medicaid cuts since the great Medicaid purge under the Biden administration. You wouldn’t know it from watching the news, from even seeing the protests and mobilizations that are happening on the ground. You wouldn’t know that 25 million got cut from Medicaid under President Biden, because it’s not really talked about as being a problem. This image is from the Department of Human Services website where they were tracking the cuts that started on April 1, 2023. Over the course of 1 year, more than 600k people in PA were cut from Medicaid. Over 280,000 because of paperwork issues, and more than 350,000 were cut because of income fluctuations. That’s more than 600k in just ONE year. That’s why we have been conducting our Medicaid cut-offs Organizing Drive. As Frank said in the video that we watched, we have been letting everyone know that when you get cut from Medicaid you have the legal right to file an appeal, and last year PPF-PA had a 93% success rate in winning those appeals and we’re going to keep doing that.
Graphic showing the Medicaid cut-offs in PA between May 1 2023 and May 1 2024
So these are the cuts that actually happened under the last administration. We know about them – they actually happened. The projection of healthcare cuts in PA due to the Big Beautiful Bill for Billionaires: 270,000 projected to be cut from Pennie. 323,400 projected to be cut from Medicaid. That’s a total of 593,000 over the next 10 years. So let’s think about that for a minute. More than 600k cut from Medicaid in 1 year, under president Biden. Approximately 600k are projected to be cut from healthcare over the next 10 years under Trump. So that’s really interesting. This is still a problem, Medicaid cuts = death. We know that, we lived through it, we have been living through it.
But we need to be aware and understand the context of how we got here, because in the first place, if the last administration had actually enshrined the Medicaid Expansion, maybe we wouldn’t be here now. They’ll tout Medicaid expansion all day long. We need Medicaid expansion. These terrible Red States need Medicaid expansion, they’re so evil. Well guess what, we had Medicaid expansion and then they took it away. They took it away from the entire country. And if they had enshrined Medicaid expansion, instead of just using it as a political football, maybe we wouldn’t be in the situation that we’re in today, with the administration that we have today, with the 90 million people who didn’t even vote in the last election. Maybe we wouldn’t be in that position now.
Take a breath.
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s comments upon the passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill for Billionaires”
This is the narrative (the speaker’s comments above) and I think it’s a very powerful narrative. It’s going to be very persuasive for people, so we have to think about not just “this is mean and this is evil” but understanding that when they’re talking about healthcare costs, and they have to do this to preserve Medicaid because healthcare costs are out of control – it is true that healthcare costs are out of control. That’s not a lie, that’s not a fabrication. But why?
Why is that? One third of people in the U.S. don’t have a primary doctor. 40-50% of us delay or don’t get care because of costs. Our working conditions, our housing conditions, our food system, our environment and our overall living conditions are making us sick. And the lack of preventative care in the healthcare system means that by the time we’re forced to get care we’re much sicker. 60% of adults in the U.S. have chronic health conditions and 40% have two or more. So we’re being set up and by the time we get healthcare we’re very sick. Another reason healthcare costs are out of control is because of price gouging by big pharma. I could have included here a photo of 5 cents to manufacture a common pharmaceutical but they charge $1000 a pill for it. At the end of the day the reason healthcare costs are out of control is that Wall Street owns our healthcare system and they are trying to make as much money as possible off of it. That’s the reason why healthcare costs are out of control, not because my neighbor is on Medicaid, or my cousin or my partner is on Medicaid, that’s not the reason.
Other aspects of the bill:
Summary of some other aspects of the bill
So what do we do? Organize, organize, organize.
We gotta tell the truth. We’re not here to do partisan politicking. We’re not here to lie to the people about Medicaid cuts and how they’ve been happening and when they started and what this real fight is.
We’re not here to lie to the people and tell them this is just about mean, greedy, evil people doing mean, greedy, evil stuff.
We’re going to tell the truth about how we got here.
We’re going to tell the truth about why healthcare costs are out of control.
We’re going to tell the truth about people on or excluded from Medicaid.
We’re going to tell the truth about the need for political independence.
We’re going to tell the truth about how we must build permanently organized communities.
And we’re going to tell the truth, that Healthcare is a Human Right!
Fight, fight, fight!!
View the full recording of the statewide call here.
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.
**[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?]
Every King Day, invariably the same silly debates arise.
“King was cool, but he was into that nonviolence bullshit, and I don’t believe in that.”
“I know right? That shit ain’t gonna work. I’m more of a Malcolm X person myself.”*
This King Day, don’t waste your time debating about the “radicality” of violence vs. nonviolence. That’s making the mistake of confusing tactics and strategy.
What radical really means is “getting to the root”. Radicalism is not a function of tactics but of strategy.** It’s about whether or not your tactics are part of an actual strategy for transformation that gets to the root of the fundamental problem at hand. Any effort lacking an assessment of the root cause, and a course to address that root cause, is simply not radical. The question of “violence or nonviolence” doesn’t begin to address whether one has a clear understanding of the fundamental problem, why the problem, who can solve it, and how.
What made King radical (in the sense of getting to the root) was not nonviolence. What made King radical was that as he evolved as a leader through the experiences of the civil rights movement he began to place himself explicitly on the side of the poor of all races. He began to conceive of a strategy to end the root causes of the interconnected evils of racism, poverty and militarism – first making the correct assessment that all three actually cannot be separated from each other or solved independently of each other. Specifically, linking up with the National Welfare Rights Organization and leaders like Johnnie Tillmon helped stoke the flames of King’s growing radicalism and would lead to the development of the first Poor People’s Campaign of 1968.
These days, it’s possible for some people to make a damn good living off of endlessly describing all the symptoms and manifestations of the fundamental problem that we face. Very few actually offer an actual assessment of what needs to happen – based in a study of history, a scientific understanding of the basis for change, and an assessment of the current conditions and terrain. Fewer still are actually moving on that path with other people to unleash the human possibilities of our time.
Most (so-called “progressive”) leaders speak from the vantage point of their own experience, ignorant to the historical experiences of the working class over time. They have the wrong diagnosis of the disease, therefore they cannot write an accurate prescription. Their diagnosis of the problem is that it’s “white people”, Republicans, “the racial wealth gap”, and a myriad of other (literal) dead ends. They don’t actually focus on the system that concentrates great wealth in a very few hands, is destroying the natural world, and continuously reproduces the false ideologies that sustain it.
Learning the legacy of King – and particularly the deepening awareness he developed over time which brought him from a civil rights framework to a human rights framework, means committing yourself to a collective process of liberation. It means divesting yourself from the false solutions of “buying up the block” or “using passive income from rental properties”. If the solutions someone is preaching are individualist then they are not radical. Period.
Demands for “access”, “affordability” and “opportunity” are not in keeping with King’s legacy. As described in Dr. Colleen Wessel-McCoy’s definitive book on this topic, King argued that economic opportunity was not the same as the right to employment, decent wages, or a minimum income. We must speak and lead from the position of guaranteed human rights as our basic needs that must be secured by the society regardless of whether or not it’s good for Wall Street.
And it’s not just about our understanding – this is not an academic exercise. Humanity and the very planet is at stake. This is about taking action together.
Quoting from Wessel-McCoy: “The maintenance of oppression depended on the cultivation of a sense of incapacity and bewilderment among those who in reality hold the power to transform society. King argued the oppressed were ‘schooled assiduously to believe in their lack of capacity,’ blocked from understanding their own ‘latent strengths’. But taking action together would help them ‘break out of the fog of self-denigration’, study ‘the science of social change’, and ‘embark on social experimentation with their own strengths to generate the kind of power that shapes basic decisions. (Where do we go from here: Chaos or community)
Like Jesus, King was executed by the state.***
So let’s continue to deepen our understanding of King – particularly his evolution as a leader, the lessons he learned throughout the phases of his life, as well as why he was killed.
This King Day let’s take some moments to light a candle and say a prayer for the state of our nation and of our world – for all that has been lost because of the deep failures of distraction, division, false solutions, sectarianism, syndicalism, individualism, opportunism, co-optation and collaboration that have plagued the working class on its path to power.
Can you imagine, where we might be now if a national Poor People’s Campaign, wielding liberation theology with U.S. characteristics, had been building continuously since 1968? If we had continued to love our class, and to work to “kill the system before it kills us”? (Willie Baptist).
We don’t have a moment to lose. Every day we’re not organizing the working class, as a class, united across lines of division, is a day we’re losing ground.
——————————————————————————–
*[Malcolm X was a genius who deserves our love, respect and sincere study of his development over the course of his life (spoiler alert – neither King nor X were static figures and their thinking actually developed and changed significantly over the course of their lives)]
**[oversimplified definition for the purpose of this writing] Tactics are the like the tools in a toolbox, whereas strategy is like the blueprint of the house that you’re about to build.
***For more on that, check out “The Plot to Kill King” and “Orders to Kill” by William F. Pepper.
Here are some snapshots from my organizing over the years in terms of some of the issues and campaigns that I’ve worked on, and the trajectory of my political orientation and theory of change.
Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival
I fast to slow down and notice what’s happening inside and outside my body. I fast to enhance my discipline and my ability to examine my own habitual patterns. I fast to give my system a rest.
For me, fasting is a proactive decision to slow down. I work a lot and can sometimes find myself in the position of my body shutting down or becoming ill in order to stop me. This is not a positive pattern and fasting is one way of interrupting it and making a conscious decision to reduce my activity on my own.
For me, fasting is not a quick way to lose weight or a crash diet. In fact, I don’t fast to lose weight at all. Fasting for me is a spiritual practice.
Fasting brings me closer to the natural rhythms of my own body which are connected to rhythms in nature. Therefore it brings me closer to all life. It gives me the opportunity to re-evaluate what I “need” and also the relationship between food and my emotional life. I recommend keeping a journal, or adding what comes up for you during fasting to the journal you already keep. Fasting invites us to notice what comes up and deeply feel it while carefully choosing our reaction to it. That’s a powerful practice that we can apply to other areas of life.
In my experience, the best times to fast are when I have a reduced workload and when I’m not travelling. When I have time to prepare juice (which is time consuming) and also the space to rest and take naps as necessary.
You may want to consider fasting for a day or over the weekend just to get started and you can try out longer periods as you make other space available in your life.
I have a device (refurbished Vitamix) that pulverizes all parts of the fruit and vegetables, so I’m not losing any fiber. Traditional juicers often separate the fiber from the juice. Either way is okay, and you should be aware of the difference.
And lastly, I don’t do any strenuous exercise during a fast. The everyday walking and moving coupled with some light yoga or stretching is all that I do during a fast. Lastly, please remember to drink LOTS of water!
Pictured: My mother’s maternal grandparents, immigrants from the Levant (at the time known as “Greater Syria” including what is now Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine/Israel), pre WWI
There is a petition circulating right now in Pennsylvania asking Governor Wolf to reject Syrian refugees. Over 70,000 people have signed it. One of the most frequent reasons petition signers give for their position is that there are hundreds of thousands, millions even, of people in our state who are suffering, and who don’t have what we need. If you signed this petition you may have real concerns about your neighbors, friends and even family members who are trying to make ends meet and dealing with unemployment or underemployment, challenges around housing, healthcare, education or childcare, or caught up in the system in some way.
And you’re right that there are altogether too many people here in Pennsylvania who are struggling. One fifth of our children are living in poverty. We have over 15,000 homeless people, and 50,000 thousand people locked in cages due to mass incarceration. The number of our homeless veterans increased by nearly 50% in the last six years. Nearly one and a half million Pennsylvanians live in poverty. That’s over 1 million/10% of whites and 28.7%/370 thousand African-Americans. A full-time, full-year minimum wage worker earns $15,080 annually, an amount still below the poverty line for a family of four.
However, we have to ask ourselves, are the Syrian refugees the source of these problems? Will not admitting refugees fleeing war and poverty solve the problems that we as poor and working people have in Pennsylvania? Will refusing refugees help homeless veterans? Will it house those who need housing? Will it provide medical care to those who need it? Will it feed the people who need fed? Will it educate the students who need education?
Not only will refusing refugees fail to make any of these situations better, it also won’t create more resources for any of these things – because as we can see, we are already don’t have them. The only way to get what we need is to stop blaming each other and come together. By doing this, we can begin to understand how we got here and what we need to do to change it. We only get what we are organized to take and we aren’t asking for anything but the basics that we need to live. You are right to sense that the priorities of the powers and principalities are not working in your interests. But the refugees are not to blame.
Let us not allow ourselves to be motivated by fear. Let us now allow ourselves to be motivated by despair. Let us not be fooled into thinking that there isn’t enough to go around. Love knows no boundaries and no borders. Let us feel and be motivated by love. And in doing so work for a world in which the last, whomever and wherever they are, shall be first.
Discussion Questions:
Pennsylvania has a flat tax system meaning that whether your family makes $15,000 or $15,000,000 dollars, we are all taxed at the same rate. Do you think that is fair? Why or why not?
Has anyone in your family/anyone you know ever held a job that hurt/polluted themselves, other people, or the air, land, and water? How do you feel about the choices that we have to make to survive?
What is the history of your family? How did your ancestors come to be in the US? Were they brought here by force as enslaved people? Were they immigrants? Refugees? Are they Indigenous people?
Have you or someone in your family gone to war? How did it impact you/them? What were the stated reasons for the war? What were the real reasons?
Sources and further reading:
http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/index.ssf/2010/03/living_below_poverty_in_pennsy.html
http://www.spotlightonpoverty.org/map-detail.aspx?state=Pennsylvania
http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/philadelphia/62343-despite-national-trend-more-veterans-homeless-in-pennsylvania
