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"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Instead of encouraging and participating in identity demonstrations 1
--demonstrations involving only a single-identity group such as a racial group, a gender group, or a single-issue movement group (e.g. environment, absentee voting, etc.), Americans should be joining together as Workers to oppose our most deadly and persistent enemy: the capitalist class.
The core of a left politics is its critique of and resistance to capitalism
Black Lives Matter activists, including Marissa Johnson (holding microphone), prevent Bernie Sanders from speaking at Westlake Park in Seattle on August 8, 2015.
"In the promotion of racial politics, there is a division of labor between the Democratic and Republican parties. Trump and the Republicans pitch their appeal to the most politically disoriented elements in American society, manipulating their economic insecurities in a manner intended to incite racial antagonism and deflect social anger away from the capitalist system.
"The Democratic Party employs another variant of communalist politics, evaluating and explaining all social problems and conflicts in racial terms. Whatever the particular issue may be--poverty, police brutality, unemployment, low wages, deaths caused by the pandemic--it is almost exclusively defined in racial terms. In this racialized fantasy world, 'whites' are endowed with an innate 'privilege' that exempts them from all hardship.
"This grotesque distortion of present-day reality requires a no less grotesque distortion of the past. For contemporary America to be portrayed as a land of relentless racial warfare, it is necessary to create a historical narrative in the same terms. In place of the class struggle, the entire history of the United States is presented as the story of perpetual racial conflict. "Reject Racial-communalist politics
Identity groups (such as Black Lives Matter) are
now opposing the more inclusive progressive movement
(Wikimedia Commons)Trump's Thugs The misuse of a period of time when a particular identity group happens to be in the spotlight is a terrible waste of impetus to forward the larger, more important progressive cause. At this time it happens to be the black movement which commands the news-cycle, but other identity groups have similarly squandered the chance for broader reform, indulging in mere egomaniacal display and thuggish violence. We must keep in mind constantly that the primary enemy of all oppressed groups is the capitalist class which has, since Franklin D. Roosevelt's reforms, put its own people into positions of power and worker oppression in the United States.
(Click on the image below)
A True Progressive Movement
A True New Deal [from the Roosevelt Institute] for the COVID-19 Era outlines nine essential policy proposals that would address our current crisis, rebalance power in our economy, and build the institutions necessary to seed lasting, equitable change:
- Canceling student, housing, and medical debt--and implementing structural change to address the accumulation of debt
- Creating a federal jobs guarantee
- Federalizing and expanding unemployment insurance
- Building a modern Reconstruction Finance Corporation
- Guaranteeing universal childcare
- Mandating sectoral bargaining
- Ensuring corporate accountability through federal chartering
- Reinvigorating antitrust law for real trust-busting
- Rebalancing political power through institutional reform
Notes:
1 Demonstration:
- The act or circumstance of proving or being proved conclusively, as by reasoning or a show of evidence
- Something serving as proof or supporting evidence: They sent a check as a demonstration of their concern.
- A description or explanation, as of a process, illustrated by examples, specimens, or the like: a demonstration of methods of refining ore
- The act of exhibiting the operation or use of a device, machine, process, product, or the like, as to a prospective buyer
- An exhibition, as of feeling; display; manifestation: His demonstration of affection was embarrassing.
- A public exhibition of the attitude of a group of persons toward a controversial issue, or other matter, made by picketing, parading, etc.
Updates:
