The Grassroots Electoral Movement Reshaping Rural Politics
By Mason Adams - Barn Raiser
This story was originally published by Barn Raiser, your independent source for rural and small town news.
In many rural areas, races go uncontested. That’s changing in 2024 thanks to grassroots efforts to contest every election
Wenda Sheard became a candidate for public office not because she thought she’d win, but because nobody else was willing to run.
The self-described grandma, attorney, former teacher and trained mediator is running for state representative as a Democrat in a rural district near Athens, Ohio. She’s running for an open seat after her representative, Jay Edwards, a Republican, reached his term limit. The district’s partisan tilt—Edwards regularly won by a 60/40 split—scared potential Democratic challengers away. After a trip to Guatemala during which she saw widespread protests against the government’s efforts to overturn the presidential election there, Sheard came back fired up and filed to run for office the Friday before the state deadline in December.
“We have to contest every race,” Sheard says. “Otherwise, instead of elections, we have coronations.”
Sheard is one of a growing number of progressives across the United States whose work is supported by a network of political groups targeting small towns and rural communities. These organizations vary in their structure and tactics, but they all intend to generate enthusiasm and spur engagement from political progressives in areas the Democratic Party given up on since 2000.
Many of these rural places were once an important part of Democrats’ coalition, but they’ve trended Republican over the last generation. That trend was accelerated by a GOP push to fund candidates in state house races ahead of the 2010 Census and midterm elections, which allowed states to redraw district lines for state and federal elections for the next decade. Republicans that year took control of 29 state governorships (a net loss of six for Democrats) and gained more than 690 seats in state legislatures—the largest gain for Republicans since 1928. Such wins allowed the GOP to control redistricting in 17 states.
Meanwhile, Democrats debated how much emphasis to place on rural America. Howard Dean, then-chairman of the Democratic National Committee, argued for a “50-state strategy” to bolster the party’s support in areas where it was losing races. Dean clashed with Senate and House campaign committee heads Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel, who wanted to focus on swing districts. Schumer and Emanuel ultimately won out as Democrats saw more success winning suburban areas, and the Party placed less effort into winning more sparsely populated regions.
That began to change again after the 2016 election, when Donald Trump spiked GOP margins in rural America. In the aftermath, a slate of left-leaning organizations formed to organize rural communities through a variety of tactics.
According to Matthew Hildreth, the founder of Rural Organizing, and current rural vote director for the Harris-Walz campaign, the push to organize rural Democrats began years earlier, during the lead-up to Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. Hildreth grew up in South Dakota, got into advocacy and politics in 2007, and moved to Iowa in 2011. Hildreth had seen the Obama campaign run a sophisticated rural operation that was built from its 2008 push to win the Iowa Caucuses.
However, the Obama campaign is better remembered for its sophisticated approach to voter contacts. And folks drew the wrong lessons, Hildreth says.
“The problem is we’ve become over-obsessed with predictive analytics,” Hildreth says. “By 2012, digital took over all of our campaigns and told us they know this house will be Democratic, this one Republican. If you live in Raleigh-Durham and move out to a more rural area, the voter file will penalize you for moving. The assumption is a person living in rural North Carolina is more conservative than a person in urban North Carolina. That’s what we’re fighting against. There’s a whole group of people who have been made invisible by analytics. That algorithm has cost us more votes than racism.”
In 2012, Hildreth launched a website, RuralOrganizing.org, to connect rural organizers. He saw its contact list swell to more than 600,000 addresses and by 2018 was able to make it a full-time job. Rural Organizing built out multiple operations that included a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization and a super PAC to spend money on elections.
Rural Organizing’s (c)(3) nonprofit is focused on flipping stereotypes about rural areas.
“So much of what happens in small towns is decided in places other than those small towns, whether it’s state capitals or Washington, D.C.,” Hildreth says. “Rural people solve local problems. Rural folks know what their communities need—the solutions to economic decline, population loss, opioids and all the things should come from rural folks.”
The (c)(4) leverages lobbying and grassroots activism to press for rural-centric policies, including the RECOMPETE (Rebuilding Economies and Creating Opportunities for More People to Excel) Act that authorized more federal funding for economically distressed communities. Other priorities include the Child Tax Credit, health care, child care and lowering the cost of living.
Finally, the super PAC has distributed over 62,000 rural-related yard signs across five battleground states ahead of this year’s presidential election, including non-partisan issue-only signs, Harris/Walz signs, and Senate signs to support Democratic incumbents Jon Tester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio.
In September, Kamala Harris hired Hidreth as her rural engagement director. Campaign officials said his goal is to trim Republican margins in rural areas, which in highly-contested swing states like Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania could be enough to tip the state in the 2024 election.
‘We need someone on the ballot everywhere’
Other organizations take a different approach. Contest Every Race recruits candidates in races that otherwise would be uncontested, a feature all too common in rural politics. The group launched in 2018 and has recruited or helped support more than 7,500 down-ballot candidates in 45 states, says executive director Lauren Gepford. Contest Every Race primarily targets candidates at the local level for offices that often prohibit party labels.
“The majority of the candidates we’ve recruited have been in nonpartisan races,” Gepford says. “We start by getting in touch with state and local Democratic parties to get their analysis of which candidates are on the right or wrong side, generally which ones are progressive and they support.”
The group’s working theory is based on the idea of “reverse coattails”—that supporting progressive candidates to contest more county-level, down-ballot races will lead to better margins for Democrats at the top of the ticket.
In recent years, Contest Every Race has turned its attention toward school boards, which have been targeted by conservative activists and so-called “parents’ rights” organizations like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education who want to influence curriculum, restrict books in school libraries and otherwise set school policies. Contest Every Race is also working with candidates for state legislatures across the United States.
“This is the first time I’ve ever run for office,” says Rick Delaney, a Democratic candidate in northwest Arkansas running for the state House of Representatives. “Contest Every Race is what spurred me along. We need someone on the ballot everywhere.”
In Ohio, Victoria Maddox grew increasingly frustrated over increasing costs and the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade.
“I wondered why our representatives are not doing anything, and then I did some research and realized, ‘Oh, because they’ve been in office for 50 years, and there’s no one running against them,’ ” Maddox says. “If I’m not running, I’m a bit of a hypocrite.”
Contest Every Race also worked with Wenda Sheard, the Ohio State House candidate near Athens.
“I went into the race thinking I’d simply be a name on the ballot,” Sheard says. “Then, I realized people were excited.”
Since entering the campaign in December, Sheard’s been on the go, doing all the things it takes to run a campaign. She knocks on doors, speaks to groups, seeks endorsements, raises money.
Regardless of the outcome, Sheard says, “I’m winning. I am winning because all of my people, everyone who talks about my race and other races — we are providing hope, we are providing a choice, and we are informing voters.”
But she’s also learned some hard lessons about campaigning.
“It’s sad,” Sheard says. “I’ve learned you need money to run, and the people most likely to win are the people who have the rich people supporting them. Most of the people the rich people support are the people continuing making sure they’re rich, who will pass policies that will continue benefits to the wealthy.”
Contest Every Race’s Gepford says that’s a common sentiment.
“We’ve more and more heard, ‘I was excited to run but didn’t receive any support when I was running,’ ” Gepford says.
So far, the group has relied on local and state party committees to fund candidates it helps recruit.
Down-ballot races get a boost up
Although many groups offer support in the form of phone banking, canvassing and other in-kind contributions, most don’t offer direct financial contributions for anything other than hotly contested races in seats considered flippable and those in battleground states.
Determining how much financial support rural candidates have received versus those in metro areas is tricky, both because of the lack of clarity in how rural areas are defined and because of variance in cash contributions and in-kind support. Every State Blue has funded 121 Democratic candidates in statewide races in Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee through mid-October, beginning with those who have the least resources, according to Executive Director Michele Hornish.
One of Every State Blue’s affiliate organizations is Blue Missouri, which concentrates on financially supporting rural candidates regardless of competitiveness.
“Just last Friday I was on phone calls all day long, we gave away $173,000 to 43 down-ballot candidates in Missouri,” says Blue Missouri Executive Director Jess Piper. “We fund the neediest first. We call it the bathtub method: we start from the bottom and fill it up. Because we did that, there’s no Democrat running in any state or state senate race with less than $6,500. It’s a massive shot in the arm to the reddest, the most rural, the most difficult districts in Missouri.”
Piper joined Blue Missouri after her own experience as a candidate in 2022, when she left her job as a teacher to challenge an otherwise uncontested state representative Jeff Farnan. Although Piper lost the election, she raised $275,000. “It made a light click on for me,” she said. “I know money can’t buy a race, but it sure does help a message get out.”
Today, Blue Missouri has built a network of nearly 900 donors who make monthly donations. The organization holds monthly meetings with candidates and party nominees, and builds them up with campaign contributions—more than $550,000 in Missouri since the organization was founded in 2017.
Importantly, Blue Missouri does not base its contributions on a race’s competitiveness. “The way we do things just flips everything on its head,” Piper says. “We focus on nominees who are in really tough places to get them to run and hopefully build a bench.”
It will take Democrats longer than a single election cycle—much longer in some cases—to start winning back rural districts they’ve ceded for the last decade-plus. Building a bench of candidates and providing them sustained support is a key part of that, Piper argues.
“It’s knocking on doors, it’s having conversations with people who haven’t heard the Democratic message in a decade or better,” Piper says. “The only we get that message out is to have someone on the ground, and the only way we get someone on the ground is to fund them.”
Organizers take their ground game to red states
Rural mason GroundGame operates mostly in Virginia, where elections are held every year. The organization supports individual candidates as well as helping Democrats maintain a visible presence year-round through billboards, newspaper ads and barn signs.
“We’re in this moment now, for rural organizing in particular, where you have to hold so many things in your hands at once,” says Lynlee Thorne, Rural GroundGame’s political director. “What is it we can reasonably accomplish to be part of larger rural push, to move margins that can ultimately win states?”
For People’s Action rural organizer Kellon Patey, making a difference on the ground requires long-term organizing and campaign plans.
Patey coordinates a network of rural partner organizations across the country, including Iowa CCI (Citizens for Community Improvement), Down Home North Carolina, the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, Pennsylvania United, Pennsylvania Stands Up, VOCAL-KY (Voices of Community Activists and Leaders), Citizen Action of Wisconsin and the Maine People’s Alliance.
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) is organizing around the political fight against a controversial carbon-capture pipeline that’s galvanized opponents. The group opposes the pipeline, calling it a greenwashing effort by corporate backers who claim they are helping counter climate change but in reality only exacerbating it. Iowa CCI is also working with allies fighting the pipeline for a variety of other reasons, ranging from support for property rights against eminent domain to worry about water quality.
Opposition to the pipeline has emerged as a bipartisan issue in the state, with 14 Republican members of the Iowa legislature joining Democrats in supporting a lawsuit that alleges state regulators violated the state constitution by approving the project.
By participating in the anti-pipeline community push Iowa CCI is helping build a political movement that may yield future candidates for office. Iowa CCI supports the candidates it endorses through phone banks and canvassing. Organizer Katie Biechler says that making real change in rural communities depends on following the lead of people in those communities.
“Change only ever comes from the bottom up and not the top down,” Biechler says. “That’s how we approach everything, is with the sense that folks in their own communities know what they need for their communities. Politics is the way to get that change—but through people, not through expecting politicians to do the right thing or what we ask of them.”
Building those coalitions, even with people who may have different values, is a key part of organizing rural areas, says Ava Auen-Ryan, Iowa CCI’s farm and environment project director.
“The CO2 pipeline is a simple, everyday people versus corporate power story,” Auen-Ryan says. “This issue cuts across the political divide. There are people who outside of this fight have very different values than us as an organization. Maybe you’d assume two or three years ago when this started, they only cared about eminent domain, but now when they’re up there, they talk about safety and water.”
That sort of experience is why rural organizers hold out hope.
“Rural people are worth organizing,” Patey says. “We shouldn’t give up on rural turf, on rural people in red states. Yes, we absolutely need to boost major metro turnout. Organizing in cities is crucial. It’s essential to winning. But cutting margins in rural communities is also essential to winning. The winning strategy for progressives includes the one-two punch of major metro turnout and rural persuasion.”
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One More Rally – Harris at Homestead
By Len Shindel
“The hallowed venue made Vice President Kamala Harris’s call to protect freedom and democracy ever more powerful. Here, workers sacrificed their lives for the right to organize. Here, steel was made to support the war against fascism in Europe.”
I wanted a day off from driving. But Kamala Harris’s rally in Pittsburgh was too close to miss. Her campaign had moved the event from the center of Pittsburgh to Carrie Blast Furnace National Historic Landmark to prevent confrontations with MAGA followers who were rallying at PPG Paints Arena. Thousands of attendees, including many first-time voters, parked in the lot of famed Kennywood Amusement Park and then took shuttles to the location, walking a healthy distance on a gravel path to the furnaces.
The location was deeply moving. The blast furnace, illuminated by lights on cranes, was once part of the Homestead Works of U.S. Steel where, in 1892, brave strikers, organizing against Carnegie’s wage cuts, battled the company’s Pinkertons and the National Guard. The militant legacy of USW Local 1397 in Homestead continued into the 1970s.
I was honored to meet and know some of the leaders there. After the mill’s shutdown, they helped push for the national landmark where I now stood. The hallowed venue made Vice President Kamala Harris’s call to protect freedom and democracy ever more powerful. Here, workers sacrificed their lives for the right to organize. Here, steel was made to support the war against fascism in Europe. Would the workers of Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania defend this birthright tomorrow? Would the hopes and aspirations of the young folks, waving our nation’s flag before this furnace be temporarily (or permanently) dashed? Or will they be encouraged and reinforced? Amidst the joy and hard work that brought folks there, these hovering questions carried solemnity and purpose.
After the Vice President’s speech, our exit was delayed by police as her motorcade departed. I watched the black limousines move out. And I tried to weigh the acute personal sacrifice it takes for one to accept a challenge of this magnitude. Whatever the election results this momentous evening, Thank You, VP Harris and Gov. Walz for working so hard to define today’s choices.
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“What’s at Stake in the 2024 Elections”
By Myrna Santiago
This piece is from a panel sponsored by the Center for Women and Gender Equity, Women’s and Gender Studies, Community Life, Counseling & Psychological Services, the Intercultural Center, Mission & Ministry, Politicals Department, Committee on Diversity, Belonging, and Liberation, Bridge USA
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Anti immigrant positions are low hanging fruit historically. Politicians, political candidates, newspaper or media moguls, have whipped up anti-immigrant sentiment in this country as part of right-wing populist tactics for a very long time, particularly during economic downturns. The consequences have been real: total exclusion and mass deportations. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first law the US government passed to exclude a whole group of people—after their labor power was no longer needed to build the railroad, for example. But the Japanese were excluded, too, through a “Gentleman’s Agreement” the US government imposed upon Japan in 1908, after the San Francisco Chronicle campaigned for it, in a wave of anti-Japanese sentiment that included the legal segregation of Japanese and Korean kids in schools away from white children.
The idea that the Republicans are marketing this election of mass deportations of immigrants also have precedents. During the Great Depression, the US government rounded up and deported almost 1 million Mexicans, plus almost another million of their children, who were born in the US and thus were US citizens. Imagine, just for a minute, the pain and anguish the deportation of nearly 2 million people caused to those families and those communities. Of course, as soon as the US entered WWII, American capitalists pressured the US government to bring back Mexican workers and the US government complied, inaugurating the Bracero Program which went to little Mexican villages to convince Mexicans to come back to the US to work temporarily because American men were at war in Europe (that’s when my grandfather first came to the US, by the way. Not because he was looking to immigrate, or chasing “the American dream,” but because the US government recruited him on behalf of American agribusiness). The Bracero program lasted from 1942 to 1964. Here we see again that capitalist need for immigrant labor trumped all other concerns.
Anti-immigrant sentiment, then, is a spigot that American capital and American governments turn on and off, depending on economic needs and political expediency at any given moment. It works because it is much easier for Republicans to blame immigrants for the lack of jobs, inflation, lack of housing, or crime than to explain neoliberal economics and the recessions and depressions that are part and parcel of capitalism. So there are no jobs because corporate America sent them all abroad since Reagan was elected because labor was cheaper elsewhere in the world, unions were banned in other countries, and foreign governments promised no environmental protections, no regulations, no labor protections, no taxes. All that as a prelude to then doing the same within the United States too. But that’s too complex for a sound bite, when you can just claim that immigrants are eating your pets.
Blaming immigrants is also easier than telling the truth about why immigrants or refugees come in the first place. There were no mass waves of Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Hondurans, or Nicaraguans coming to the US until the US government promoted, financed, and sponsored wars against the left in all of those countries, destroying those economies and creating refugees in the hundreds of thousands. Blaming immigrants is also easier than telling the truth about how the US government has fueled, funded, and promoted massive violence in the 70-year old war on drugs, which has been a total failure in stopping drug trafficking, while it has meant millions and millions in profits for the American weapons industry, which provides all the weapons the drug cartels use to terrorize people. Thus, the US government and private industry, again, have created more refugees searching a safe place to live. Imagine for a second the desperation that is involved in walking from Central America to the US border.
These discourses, thus, have serious consequences. First, they can incite individuals to engage in violence against immigrants or refugees, like we saw with the guy who stabbed the little Palestinian boy 25 times. We’ve seen that happen in every single anti-immigrant wave in US history (I remember when the US invaded Iraq and my uncle immediately shaved his beard because he was afraid someone would mistake him for a Middle Easterner and beat him up, as some men were doing in Los Angeles). Second, these discourses announce to us that a Republican White House and Congress have no intention of addressing the real issues at stake: not only reforming the immigration apparatus (which is truly not broken as even the Democrats say; it is functioning perfectly as it was designed to do, to the detriment of immigrants and refugees, to keep them vulnerable and in fear, a docile workforce for American capital and small businesses alike), but also not dealing with any seriousness with a whole host of issues: drug consumption and thus drug trafficking, unconditional support for exclusionary governments abroad, unconditional support for rapacious American corporations abroad that leave US workers without work and exploit workers, resources, and ecologies in other countries, for example. In other words, anti-immigrant rhetoric that blames immigrants for a whole lot of the problems that US society faces today signals that a Republican administration will do nothing about the major problems facing the US and the world today: climate change, deepening extractivism on land and in the deep sea, unending resource wars. That is what is at stake.
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Knockin’ Uniontown PA
By Len Shindel
Banners and signs don’t vote
We are door knocking in Uniontown, Pa. Two prominent brick homes display 10-foot banners. One says “Harris-Walz.” The other screams, “ULTRA MAGA-VOTE TRUMP!” Rounding the corner, a smaller home’s banner taunts, “Make Liberals Cry-Trump Again in 2024.” We visit a 60-something man in his driveway. He says he hasn’t voted for years and is no longer registered. He lives on Social Security disability. “I don’t care what the politicians do,” he says. “What will happen will happen. I have my hole picked out.” We gently suggest that what politician is elected could determine what happens to the government program under which he survives. We thank him for his time. A while later, we knock on the door of a registered Democrat across the street. The man’s brother walks down the driveway toward us. He tells us the woman that lived there is now in a nursing home. She was being cared for by a niece in her 50s who tragically died of cancer. He says he used to cut their lawn before it became too hard for him. We recount the discussion with his brother. The brother has had brain aneurisms and other health problems. “I take care of him,” says the man, likely in his 60s. We talk about life and jobs. He’s a retired construction worker and a member of the Teamsters. “We did pretty well because we stuck together,” he said. “I think Kamala Harris is smart and would be a good president because she cares about middle-class people like us.” He says many of his fellow Teamsters agree, even though their international union has voted “no endorsement.” Banners and signs don’t vote. Between the prevalent Trump signs in this welcoming Western Pennsylvania neighborhood are enthusiastic Democrats, independents and some Republicans, too, young and old, who are more quietly voting for Kamala Harris. They and their families are struggling, cooperating and sticking together like the Teamster who warmed our day. This area was once a Democratic stronghold. That dominance is gone in this corner of Steeler Nation, whose flags will be here after most of the others come down. The presidential race? It’s everyone’s guess, the angst and hope of millions. Back to work.
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ISRAEL, MY ISRAEL? A POEM-ESSAY
By Gene Bruskin
ISRAEL, MY ISRAEL?
A POEM-ESSAY
ISRAEL
Will never be the same
Its viciousness untamed
Universally shamed
Appropriately blamed
Zionist mythology unframed
And forever stained
People’s souls chained
Hitler’s atrocities
Excusing current monstrosities
At an unimaginable velocity
Never again
Comes again
And again, and again
The victims of the past
Inundated by the echoing pageantry of the government’s traumatizing machine
Become the victimizers of the present
Creating new victims
Whose survivors will turn against them
And create more victims
This is certain among much uncertainty
Young soldiers as monsters
Instagraming their crimes
To a cheering population
Kill them all
Cry the people
Free our precious sons
BACK AT THE RANCH
The tail wags the dog
US leaders smile sternly
Taciturnly
Change the subject
Muttering
Mealy-mouthed
Peace now
Bombs on the way
Rules based disorder
Respect no borders
As our 250th year nears
All the world can see
Our deceitful moral pose
The Empire has no clothes
BACK AT THE RANCH
Our president is of half a mind
To only use half a mind
His bones soaked by 50 years of Zionism
Willing his legacy to the devil
Endangering a nation, disheveled
Ignoring the uproar
From shore to shore
Risking fascism at home
Begging his insidious nemesis abroad
To throw him a bone
Instead, he is humiliated from afar
By this murderer with a Jewish star
Barely exposed beneath his bloody cloak
As he mouths empty shibboleths of
Self-defense, a moral army
While our President humbly bows
Till death do him part
THE SPOILS OF WAR AND EMPIRE
ISRAEL MY ISRAEL
A nation created to replace another people
Herr Balfour
British Lord
Closing the Arab door
Putting in European types
Even Jews that he abhors
The oil is coming
The oil is coming
Spare no cost
Set the impossible in motion
Then exit self righteously
With the damage done
Never to be undone
But alas, today, the Arabs are tamed
While the region is enflamed
All are willing to play the US game
Even the Saudi’s
In their luxury Audis
With so much money to be made
Their greed precedes them
Israel actually impedes them
With endless expanding wars
And yet it goes on
The Palestinians as the permanent pawn
BACK AT THE RANCH
After more than a century of progress
Against the scourge of home-grown antisemitism
Jews shockingly choose
Netanyahu
Who believes in everything they hate
Except the Jewish state
Whose friends are too ugly to contemplate
Breaking from their historic allies against white supremacy
Stoking the fires of antisemitism once again
Hugging Jew-hating Christian nationalist Zionists
Who are waiting for the Second Coming
To wave goodbye while Jews burn in hell
And they go to heaven
With the Z word tattooed in Henna on their Ak47
But the Jewish light survives
With the idealist youth
Who daily defy
Refusing to lie
Valuing all lives
Upholding our great tradition
Tikkun Olum
They are the keepers of the Faith
With odd initials
JVP
INN
NIMN
My generation celebrates
The future leaders of our Jewish community
Welcome my Jewish comrades
Welcome
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Hope and Heroes – Stewart Acuff’s Poems from the Frontlines of the Class Struggle
By Peter Olney
For four years Stewart Acuff lived in a small Appalachian village called Shepherdstown in West Virginia above the Potomac. There he wrote a poem a day from 2020 to 2022. Many of these short works are collected together in Love is Solidarity in Action. The poems reflect not only on the natural beauty of the town and the region, but the deep and rich experience of Brother Stewart’s organizing trajectory:
“Yeah I stayed pissed off.
Sitting on a hotel room bed in Center, Texas home of Lightning Hopkins listening to women wonder which would be fired first cause we lost the union election
I drank a couple barrels of bourbon getting over that night and I still get pissed off
when I remember
Seeing and smelling the insides of county jails across South Georgia fighting for
Jobs and a life beyond working like a mule
Getting out and getting drunk
Fighting the Ku Klux Klan in East Texas on a picket line of Black women scared
But overcoming with courage ready to fight every night
And I still get pissed off”
May 12, 2020
The collection is best read at the pace of a poem or two a day, which means the 130 pages, may take a while. But read, pause and reflect on the richness of Acuff’s experience reflected in these short works. He has certainly personally been on the front lines of the class struggle in America and particularly the effort to rebuild a vibrant labor movement by organizing millions of new workers. He is retired now, but I first met him when he was head of the central Labor Council in Fulton County Georgia (Atlanta). He was leading an effort to make sure the 1996 Atlanta Olympics meant justice for workers. He also was a force within the movement to reform the AFL-CIO with the election of John Sweeney as President. In 2001, a few years after the the New Voice movement took over the AFL, Acuff was appointed Organizing Director, and I collaborated with him as Organizing Director of the West Coast Longshore Union. We have been friends ever since.
I also have discovered that Acuff is not alone in the aspiration of writing a poem a day. This appears to be a tradition in the form. Anita Barrows has written a poem a day since the beginning of Israel’s assault on Palestine. And then there is the poem a day website
Acuff’s poems resonate with outrage over man made climate change, racism and the treatment of working people. He also teaches history by referencing one simple historical fact or often-unsung heroes of our movement in each poem. Reverend James Orange is a particular comrade favorite of Stewart’s. He is a man brought up in the civil rights movement who worked later with Stewart for the AFL-CIO. Stewart pays tribute to him often in a manner that suggests that Orange gets too little credit for his role in the civil rights movement and labor.
“A night of six of us in Dekalb County custody won medicines for poor, homeless and weak
Reverend Orange leading our sit in at the commissioner’s office winning safe staffing
There is power only known to those confronting wrong with our own bodies”
February 15, 2021
Acuff’s poems send you running to the Wikipedia search engine to unearth the history of heroes and particularly unknown heroines of the movement:
“Sing this weekend for the unsung
Who sang freedom with their actions
Like Carrie Williams in East Texas
Leading her co-workers to justice
Etra Mae and Mae Nell in small towns like Palestine
All the folks across Georgia standing against plantation thinking.”
September 4, 2021
Acuff has great pride in his two children, Sam and Sidney,s and visiting or communing with them is the subject of many poems.
“Hurricane Ida in the magic city of our culture
And fires where son Sam labors
With thousands of others to save our Earth
From human destruction
We did it
Now time to fix it.”
September 9, 2021
Poetry has never been my thing and certainly the free form that Acuff writes in is an acquired taste. But that taste I have indeed acquired out of respect for a comrade brother. I promise to dig deeper into the art form, maybe even read a poem a day! This collection is easy to order and is a great bedtime companion. Acuff reflects on the stakes in the election of 2020 in a poem that resonates again in 2024
“Folks fight for justice and democracy
Folks fight for Hitlerism and white supremacy
Everything good about America at risk
The promises of freedom, democracy, justice
I feel the shift somewhere inside
If we hold up love, that’s what America will decide.”
June 11, 2020
Take Stuart’s collection for evening reading and inspiration as you knock on doors in battleground districts and states!
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Love is Solidarity in Action – Stewart Acuff, International Publishers 2024
Desert Conversations
By Fred Glass
My Reno trip to canvass against Trump
I spent three days last week in Reno, Nevada under the auspices of Seed the Vote, volunteering as a canvasser for the Harris-Walz campaign. Having canvassed in many campaigns over many years my expectations were low. I imagined I’d mostly knock on the doors of empty houses and apartments. That expectation was fulfilled.
Since our lists were of low-propensity voters, I also guessed when I did find people home I’d encounter large gaps where political knowledge should be. This too proved true. My personal goal was modest: stop 2024 in the United States from becoming 1933 in Germany (see my earlier Jumping Off Place article). I am less enthusiastic about the people I’m urging everyone to vote for than the historical function they will perform if elected: stopping the ascent of fascism.
Over seventy-two hours I had about ten actual conversations, including a couple potentially meaningful ones, and one honest-to-god conversion moment. I’m reporting here on three of the more interesting interactions, which occurred on the first day while trudging in ninety-degree desert heat from place to place in a working class suburb.
Conversation One: John, the nice Trumper*
You remember during the first years of the Trump administration when pundits and shellshocked naifs urged us all to reach out to uncles and nieces and former friends on the other side and “just talk” and then we’d find out how much we all really had in common? I found one in a trailer park rental complex, a tall, gaunt white seventy-nine-year-old named John.
When I told him I was a volunteer for the Harris campaign he asked if we could “just talk”, and told me he’s going to vote for Trump no matter what, but he wanted to hear what I had to say, because he doesn’t know what’s happened to this country that people can’t just talk with one another, and is that OK? I agreed to his terms. With each point I made (protection of the American Care Act, which Trump tried to repeal; Trump’s tax cuts for the rich, which meant less money in the federal budget for the needs of everyone else; his declaration that on Day One he’d be a dictator, etc.) John had a ready answer, none of which corresponded with any known reality, and a bottom line—“I trust him to do the right thing.”
When I left he said we’d given each other something to think about and politely thanked me for the discussion. This reception sharply contrasted with ones I received from other Trump supporters, the most civil of which was another old white guy who told me to leave so that he wouldn’t have to insult me. (On the opposite extreme, one of my canvassing partners was told through a smart doorbell to “get the fuck off my property and take your sacks of shit with you.”)
Conversation Two: The anarchists
In front of many homes in this neighborhood motorcycle, bicycle and car parts decorated the dusty yard; this was no exception. When I told Aurora, a thirty something Latina, I was there to ask for her vote for Harris she stepped out from behind the screen door onto the wooden porch and engaged. She said she couldn’t vote for Harris because she hadn’t distinguished her policy from Biden’s on Palestine, where United States bombs have been involved in an ongoing genocide. I surprised her by agreeing with the need for a ceasefire and withdrawing US military aid to Israel until that happens. But, I said, Trump would be no better on the issue and probably worse. Just as she was expanding her voting prohibition from Harris to all Democrats a voice said, “Behind you.”
A man about the same age as Aurora walked up with a machine part in his hand. We introduced ourselves and continued the conversation. Trevor repeated what Aurora had said, adding that he could no longer vote for Democrats after the way the party had treated Bernie; they’re as corrupt as the Republicans. I said while that’s true of the neoliberal half of the Democratic Party, the other half is made up of labor, women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights and environmental groups and sometimes it’s possible to get some progressive things done; meanwhile that’s completely impossible with the Republicans.
I said that what we’ve been talking about is only part of the picture; every US president is imperialist-in-chief internationally and it’s a mistake to think they can easily be persuaded to act differently. But there’s also the national side of the job, which involves important functions like appointments—to the courts and lesser-known agencies like the National Labor Relations Board, which can have an enormous impact on the working class, our rights, and daily life in the country. They listened but seemed unmoved.
I pulled out my trump card (sorry); under a Democratic administration there’s at least the room to move to protest destructive policies like Israel and Gaza. If Trump gets into office along with a Republican Congress, it’s going to be a police state this time around; things could look like Nazi Germany and much harder to mount any resistance. Aurora and Trevor nodded, like they had thought about this before, but didn’t comment on it.
Then Trevor said, “This is off to the side from what we’re talking about, but what do you think about no parties? Parties are how we have these problems.” Putting on my labor history hat, I said, “That’s what the Industrial Workers of the World wanted over a hundred years ago. Society would be run by workers’ committees, elected in each workplace. Their representatives would go to assemblies where decisions would be made.” He nodded. I said, “But unless you can tell me how we do that before November fifth….” He laughed.
Then he said that he knew of things that were going on that might “take Trump out” before Election Day. I asked what he meant. He said he couldn’t talk about it, but when that happened he hoped Kennedy could get back into the race and win. At this point I decided the conversation had achieved all its potential. We parted on friendly if inconclusive terms.
When I reported on this event with one of my canvassing partners she said, “Hunh, that’s different. Usually they kill the Kennedy and then someone else gets elected.”
Conversation Three: The truck driver
There’s no telling beforehand what issue might resonate with someone. Social Security typically works best for older people. But not always. At first, the twenty-seven year old man who came out to the porch after my canvassing partner Ralph and I knocked told us he had no intention to vote; politics didn’t matter; it’s all the same no matter who’s elected.
I said, “I assume you work for a living?” He said yes. What do you do? I’m a truck driver. You pay into Social Security? He nodded. I said, I’m retired, and I’m on Social Security. You’ve heard that they say Social Security might run out of money at some point down the road? He nodded again. I’m guessing you’d like to collect that money back that you’ve been putting into it? I had his attention.
I spoke about how Social Security is funded: payroll taxes. Workers pay in on their wages, and employers pay in a matching amount. But only up to $170,000 a year; anything over that is no longer subject to Social Security taxes. This is what puts Social Security in danger down the road: the many ways rich people have to get around paying their fair share of taxes, including this one. All we have to do is raise the cap so that rich people continue to pay in after $170,000 on all the money they make and Social Security will continue to be here for you, I said.
So who is better on this, and does it make a difference? We know that Trump won’t do that. In his first term he didn’t raise, he cut taxes for the rich. Kamala Harris wants to return taxes on the rich and corporations to higher levels. If you want to keep Social Security vote for Harris. So what do you think?, asked my partner Ralph. Juan smiled slightly: “You convinced me,” he said, and I could tell he meant it.
An encouraging sign
The three days in the hot sun were exhausting, but we were well-supported by our Seed the Vote organizers, who met with us each morning, gave us our lists, supplied us with water, phone batteries and snacks, and met again at the end of the day to debrief. One recurrent story gave some anecdotal hope for a victory margin in one cohort against Trump—and that’s what it was, less a vote for Harris and more an anti-Trump vote.
We heard this from people on the second day. One, a flight attendant in a more middle class suburb, told me she and her husband had been lifelong Republicans. But the craziness of MAGA plus persuasion from their two daughters, who had gone off to universities and come home politically transformed, put them over the edge. Now she was going to canvass for Harris, despite “some disagreements” that we didn’t get into.
The other, a retired architect in a very upscale neighborhood, spoke with my wife about his disenchantment with the Republican Party under Trump. He was an educated and cultured man, and couldn’t stand the lies and the vulgarities. He was going to vote the straight Democratic ticket. The seven people in our pod of canvassers had a number of similar stories from anti-MAGA ex-Republicans.
I haven’t seen any polling numbers among the old country club Republican ruling class set. Historically, ascendent fascism initially repels, and then reels in this demographic. It seems, however, from these encounters, and the growing number of Cheney types opposed to Trump, that the historic pattern might be abrogated here. We can hope.
.
*All the names are changed.
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Nevada Unions, Democrats and the Fight for the Soul of Our Nation
By Joe Keffer
Voter Turnout Will Determine The Fate of Democracy
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Freedom and democracy stand in the balance. Union workers could well be the difference in a Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz November election victory.
This year, Nevada is one of seven battleground states that will likely determine the outcome of the presidential election and control of Congress. Since 2008, Nevadans have voted Democrat for president but by razor thin margins. Both U.S. senators and three of four Nevadans in the U.S. House of Representatives are Democrats; all women.
The AFL-CIO — and the affiliated federation of unions — have pledged millions of dollars nationally via donations, phone banks and door knocking to support Harris and Walz and down-ballot Democrats. Grassroots organizing paved the way for the recent victories. The Nevada AFL-CIO State Labor Council have mobilized its 120 union locals and 150,000 diverse members in building, construction and service trades, public worker sectors and more. Numerous other groups, such as Seed The Vote, Indivisible, the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN) and the Third Act are spearheading voter turnout.
The politically powerful Culinary Workers Union Local 226, which represents 60,000 hospitality workers, — the largest Latinx/ Black/Asian American Pacific Islander/ immigrant organization in the state — is turning out an army of precinct volunteers in support of Harris and Walz and down-ballot races.
Union President Peter Finn, speaking for 300,000 Joint Council 7 & 42 West Coast members, includingNevada Teamsters, has endorsed Harris, Walz for president and to re-elect Sen. Jacky Rosen. As truck drivers, rail workers and freight handlers, their working class credentials and votes hold importance. Finn says we “refuse to be divided by extremist political forces or greedy corporations that want to see us fail.”
At the Sept. 10th presidential debate, one question posed to Harris and former President Donald Trump squarely placed the strength of the economy as the centerpiece of the election. Voters’ pocketbooks have traditionally played a huge role in the outcome of presidential elections. In 1992, Bill Clinton’s campaign captured this sentiment with the famous quip, “It’s the economy stupid.” Recently, housing costs have had a significant economic impact as fewer people can afford a house or pay the increased rental costs.
A Las Vegas Review-Journal article reinforces the argument that housing is a top issue in Nevada, and nationally. It blames the 2008-2009 financial crash, the COVID pandemic, and corporate investors who have purchased many of the available houses and turned them into exorbitantly high cost rental units. Harris has shown an understanding of the issue’s severity and proposed a detailed remedy.
Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), chair of the Democratic Black Caucus and co-chair of House Labor Caucus, blasted the corporate investors’ takeover of the housing and rental markets, and last year sponsored a bill to cap predatory investor home renting and selling practices.
Biden and Harris pledged hundreds of millions of dollars for affordable housing initiatives. Early on, they signed the Build Back Better and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs acts that include rental assistance for Nevadians. Horsford says that the acts “create millions of good paying union jobs, cut taxes for most Nevada families that have children, and lower the costs of essentials like housing, health and child care.”
The infrastructure law earmarks $3.5 billion for Nevada including more than 275 projects for roads, bridges, public transit and airports. This includes funding for Harry Reid International Airport, the high-speed rail line between Southern California and Las Vegas, electric vehicle charging, cost-free high-speed internet, and amelioration of the Lake Mead and Las Vegas Wash drought conditions.
Biden and Harris passed the Inflation Reduction Act that confronts the climate crises by expanding tax credits for clean energy and electric vehicles that will reduce the need for oil and other fossil fuels. Its goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. More than 100 million people face extreme heat, forest fires and violent storms. Coastal communities are predicted to experience a 10–12-inch rise above sea level. The law provides $52.7 billion for semiconductor research, workforce development, domestic manufacturing, and creation of zero emission technologies. Nevada is well situated with an abundance of lithium, copper, magnesium, barium, and vanadium that are non fossil fuels and “critical” to meet the goals of the Inflation Reduction Act, and a greener future. This has the potential to create whole new industries and jobs.
The problem for Biden and now Harris is whether the benefits of the legislation will come in time to influence voters in November. The law “has undoubtedly been a boon
for Nevada, bringing in unprecedented federal dollars, spurring private investment and creating jobs. But, the gap between its passage and tangible results could be its undoing. If they win in November, Republicans have threatened to revoke many of the law’s provisions, halting progress before it even begins.
Rob Benner, secretary-treasurer of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Northern Nevada, says the union has already secured a project labor agreement to do construction. “We have all these burgeoning industries getting ready to just take off and totally transform Nevada … That could all stop and then we are back to square one…” Experts and industry watchers say a perfect storm of factors makes Nevada poised to capitalize on the laws. Nearly 250,000 clean-energy jobs have been announced in Nevada since the laws’ passage.
Harris and her allies must convince the public that, while voters have a right to feel anxious about the delays, given Republicans threats to revoke the legislation, her election is the only way that they will likely see significant job increases and lower energy prices.
Republicans are well financed. Megadonor, Miriam Adelson, owner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is the lead financier of a spending group backing Trump. She plans to do whatever it takes to help him win. Her family gave $218 million (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republican-mega-donor-adelson-back-major-pro-trump-spending-group-2024-05-30/) in the 2020 election cycle and is expected to give similar amounts this year— all to Republicans and conservative groups.
At the Republican National Convention (RNC), Trump said he supported unions. His pitch, in the 900-pageProject 2025, developed by 140 former staff and associates of his administration, flies in the face of pro-worker and green economy policies for running the country. As Michelle Maese, president of the Southern Nevada SEIU Local 1107, a public employees union says, “Their goal isn’t to fix our government or our country. It’s to break it even more … “It would be an absolute disaster.”
With the nomination of Harris and Walz, Democrats have the momentum. Democrats accuse Republicans of having presented no substantive policies but to base their campaign on hate, fear, lies, gross exaggerations, and past grievances. Commentators report that Republicans appear to be on the defensive and that blunders have damaged their campaign. They believe that crowds at his rallies are down. Plus, questions exist about whether his ticket has the energy, character and mental stability to lead the county, and the free world.
Biden and Harris have made major efforts to prove their labor bonafides. They walked picket lines, backed labor legislation and appointed strong worker advocates to the National Labor Relations Board. Biden has been called the most pro-union president in history. Harris has visited Nevada at least eight times. Unions, Democrats and progressives have the power and unity to win.
On the first night of the Democratic National Convention (DNC), Democrats showcased leaders of unions and their allies amidst deafening chants of “Union Yes” and “We Are Not Going Back.” The crowd exploded in response to Harris’ acceptance speech. She called out to go forward with strength, empathy, joy, and unity. Former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama wrapped up day two of the DNC with the admonition that we have to spend all our energy fighting for democracy. In support, the unions have near unanimity on who is on their side. With that thought in mind, convention attendees took up the chant: “When We Fight, We Win!” Labor will be a big part of that fight.
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“A CALL TO ACTION” – The Case for a Professional Combat Athlete Union
By Ernest DiStefano
Abraham Lincoln said, “If you want to know a man, give him power.” Well, UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) President Dana White has certainly made himself and his attitude toward power known to all of us. It’s simple: he abuses it. We need only to listen to his words and witness his actions to know this. Here are just a couple of examples.
- On UFC Fighters’ pay raise and benefits, he said the following about unionization:
“It’s never gonna happen while I’m here…Fighters get the pay they deserve. They eat what they kill.”
“Right now in our society, everybody gets a fucking trophy. Well, this is the fight game, and we don’t give out fucking trophies.”
Professional combat athletes have earned and deserve their so-called “trophies” of fair financial compensation and benefits through the countless gallons of blood they have shed, bones they have in broken, and in many cases, lives they have lost in Mr. White’s octagons and boxing promoters’ rings throughout the world. As long as there are people like Mr. White running the combat sports industry, there will always be a need for professional combat athletes to protect their interests and their families’ interests through union organization. In this essay, I will address the “Why” and “How” for this long overdue undertaking.
“Because it’s all I know.”
An illustration of this reality is the life of former professional boxing champion, Brian “The Bull’ Barbosa. Through my personal experience assisting Brian, I have come to know the incredible challenges he faced at a very young age. Brian endured extreme poverty and abuse as a child, which drove him to the boxing gym, which in turn resulted in a professional fight career. Although Brian was rewarded for his efforts in the ring with a world championship, he also sustained serious brain trauma and injury, as well as manipulation and mistreatment by the fight professionals who were supposed to be looking out for his best interests. When I first spoke with Brian, he expressed a desire to resume his fight career. When I asked him why, Brian said, “because it’s all I know.”
On September 21, 2021, Brian courageously shared his story on the Dr. Phil Show. Brian continues to battle the inner demons created by his physical and personal trauma and is currently receiving treatment to exorcise those demons.
During my conversations and my professional experiences with other combat athletes, they have consistently identified the following two issues as priorities with respect to their fight careers:
- Brain Health and Brain Injury Prevention
- Fair and Equitable Distribution of Revenue
The following facts will illustrate the importance of addressing these two areas.
Brain Health and Brain Injury Prevention
Brain injuries impact any human being’s ability to function on a daily basis, which in turn negatively impacts one’s ability to make a living for themselves and their families. In the past 131 years, 1,878 boxers have died as a direct result of injuries sustained in the ring. This is an average of more than fourteen deaths per year and more than one death each month. Prior to that, from 1740 to 1889, when boxers fought bare-knuckled (a sport which is currently growing in popularity), there were 266 documented deaths (Source: “Death in the Boxing Ring,” by Rupert Taylor). Since MMA’s inception in the mid-1990’s, there have been sixteen reported deaths among MMA fighters directly related to injuries sustained in the Octagon (Source: “How Many Fighters Have Died in the Ring: Boxing and MMA,” by Ross Canning).
A 2015 research study, “Epidemiology of Injuries in Full-Contact Combat,” written by Reider P. Lystad of Central Queensland University, Sydney Australia, found that the proportion of neck and head injuries for the sport of boxing was 84%; 74% for karate; and 64% for MMA. This research showed that Karate had a concussion rate of 19%, Boxing had a concussion rate of 14%, and MMA had a concussion rate of 4%. Further it showed that MMA had the vast majority of life-threatening or life-changing injuries as a result of heard trauma, while also revealing that professional boxers were: 1) more likely to experience loss of consciousness, 2) more likely to suffer eye injuries (detached retina), and twice as likely to sustain concussions that involved loss of consciousness. This research showed that medical suspensions for boxers were a minimum of twenty-six days, compared to medical suspensions for MMA fighters, which are for an average of twenty days.
On the question of “why,” many non-fight fans have undoubtedly wondered why they should care about the men and women who choose to participate in a sport where the amount of pain and injury they inflict on their opponents are markers of success, well Walter Mosely summed it like this, “poor men [and women] box because it’s the only choice they have. A poor man [or woman], of any color, is fighting for their life in the ring. And the only reason they’re fighting for their lives in the ring, is because it’s a little bit safer than fighting for [their] life on the streets of America.”
My own experiences working with professional combat athletes, criminal offenders, and prison inmates, (three categories that way too often overlap) have taught me that desperate human beings without hope will resort to behaviors that endanger the lives and property of other human beings, including non-fight fans, and THAT is why they should care.
Fair and Equitable Distribution of Revenue
An article published online by Huddle Up Magazine on 5/31/23 convinces me that Dana White has taken his greedy, narcissistic sociopathy to a disgusting new level. In that article, it was reported that although the Ultimate Fighting Championship organization’s (UFC) annual revenue increased from $1.03 billion in 2021 to a record $1.14 billion in 2022, the percentage of revenue that the UFC paid to its fighters decreased over that time from $178.8 million to $146 million in 2022. Huddle Up further reported the following comparison between professional sports leagues of the percentage of annual revenue paid to athletes:
MLB-54%
NBA-50%
NHL-50%
NFL-48%
UFC-13%
There is one glaring difference between the UFC and the other aforementioned professional sports leagues that accounts for this immense discrepancy in revenue distribution: the MLB, NBA, NHL, and NFL all have players’ unions.
“How?” – Legal Precedent
With respect to combat athlete unionization, the legal question that must be resolved is whether combat athletes are employees of their promoters or independent contractors. On this question, a legal precedent was established by the California State Supreme Court on April 30, 2018, in the case of Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court and Charles Lee, Real Party in Interest (Sources-CA.gov and Wikipedia). In that case, a class of drivers for a same-day delivery company, Dynamex, claimed that they were misclassified as independent contractors and thus unlawfully deprived of employment protection under California’s wage orders.
In a unanimous opinion, the California Supreme Court held that workers are presumptively employees for the purpose of California’s wage orders, and that the burden is on the hiring entity to establish that a worker is an independent contractor not subject to wage order protections. The Court also held that in order to establish that a worker is an independent contractor, the hiring entity MUST prove each of the three parts of the “ABC” test. The three conditions of this test include the following:
- Part A: The worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact;
- Part B: The worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and
- Part C: The worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed.
Now, let’s examine the ABC test as it applies specifically to the combat sports industry. This examination is based solely on the observations and assessment of this writer and not on any Court rulings pertaining to the combat sport industry. Remember, under the ABC test of the Dynamex ruling, if the answer to any of these three tests is “No,” the worker is legally required by California law to be classified as an employee of the hiring entity.
Part A:
Is the professional combat athlete (the worker) who is under contract with a promoter (the hiring entity) free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work (i.e., boxing/martial arts bouts) both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact?
When a professional combat athlete (the worker) signs a contract with a promoter (the hiring entity), said combat athlete is legally bound to perform his/her work (boxing/martial arts bouts) solely for his/her promoter. Furthermore, the promoter has final say over who and when the contracted combat athlete fights, and the amount of the combat athlete’s compensation for the work performed. Furthermore, the contracted combat athlete is not permitted to perform the work for entities other than the promoter.
Answer: NO.
There we have it. There’s no need to go further, but I will.
Part B:
Does the combat athlete perform work that is outside of the usual course of the promoter’s business?
Answer: NO.
Part C:
Is the combat athlete customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed?
Answer: NO.
What does it mean if fight promoters are the employers of professional combat athletes? It means that promoters are legally required to follow employment laws governing working conditions including minimum wages, and all laws pertaining to conditions of employment. It also means that promoters are required to pay taxes for social security, workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, as well as payroll and unemployment taxes. It could also possibly require promoters to recognize and collectively bargain with a combat athlete union. This premise will be tested when combat athletes organize and petition for a union with the National Labor Relations Board.
I now ask a question to licensed professional combat athletes-boxers, martial arts fighters, and wrestlers-especially those licensed in the state of California: Based on your experiences in the professional combat sports industry, do you honestly believe promoters would voluntarily pay any of the aforementioned fighter benefits? If your answer is what I think it is, then your course is clear!
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The Cornel West campaign, third parties and the nature of the moment
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
The most obvious example of this was the victory of Barrack Obama in 2008 as President. It is not that the victory was without historic significance. Rather, the historic significance dwarfed discussions about program and action, particularly in the first year of his Administration.
I have known Cornel West since 1972 when we met during my first year at Harvard. I have followed him over the years and felt, at points, that I could call him a friend. That said, his campaign for the Presidency raises some very serious questions regarding both his judgement and what seems to pass for strategy, not only for West, but for many others on the Left and in the progressive movements. My views are focused on his decision to run and the campaign that he allegedly is conducting, rather than on personal allegations raised about him, most visibly in Forbes.
Are progressives interested in winning, and if so, what?
Since the late 1970s, progressives have been largely fighting a rear-guard defensive battle against the assaults from capital and the increasingly brazen political Right. The public has observed the morphing of a conservative movement into a rightwing populist movement with fascist or post-fascist tendencies. Though there have been successful defensive fights and periodic offensive victories by progressives, e.g., on LGBTQ, the tendency has remained one of a strategic defensive.
An ideological reflection of the strategic defensive has been the victory of Reaganism through ridicule and dismissing of collective action in favor of individual action and, indeed, individualism and entrepreneurialism. Even in progressive circles, the obsession with “brand” and individual achievement has become pronounced. This has worked its way into non-profit circles, where collective or joint action is rarely championed (or rewarded), whereas the uniqueness of each organization or network is applauded…until it is not. Everyone wants their ten minutes in the Sun, even if it leads nowhere.
In this context, a few things became noteworthy. Victories, when won, became increasingly victories in form rather than substance. The victories of “representation,” in the sense of historically marginalized groups appearing to break through the glass ceiling is a case in point. The most obvious example of this was the victory of Barrack Obama in 2008 as President. It is not that the victory was without historic significance. Rather, the historic significance dwarfed discussions about program and action, particularly in the first year of his Administration.
The net result is that progressives have become used to losing. Losing can be glorious, after all. One can lose by oneself or with others. One can lose ‘speaking truth to power.’ One can lose and be remembered for having taken a heroic stand. Regardless, one loses.
The difficulty with winning, or at least attempting to win, is that it can be messy. Rarely do the advocates for a particular cause, demand, etc., win alone. Normally, victory necessitates alliances, and alliances necessitate compromise. As a result, there is no purity in winning even if one wins exactly what one sought to win.
As such, it is easier and more valiant to lose than to win. In losing, one can hold onto one’s conscience. One said what needed to be said. One need not have made any compromises with those less pure. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, one lost.
Winning necessitates strategy and organization. It is never about pronouncements alone. It involves the cultivation of a base that believes in and is prepared to sacrifice for a particular cause or demand. Winning, except under very unusual circumstances, necessitates the identification of tactical steps necessary to bring about victory. This might range from increasing pressure to building even broader alliances. Victory may come quickly, but normally not. It may, however, come suddenly, sometimes when one least expects it.
And winning must be secured. Once something has been won, it must not only be defended, but used as a launch pad for additional struggles and campaigns, all with the end of decisively defeating one’s opponents and liberating one’s base.
Politics of self-expression and frustration
Which brings us to the Cornel West campaign and other third-party bids during the 2024 election cycle. What is the essence of such ventures?
If one is interested in building a struggle for power, one does not begin by running a Presidential campaign, and certainly not a campaign with no organized base and no possibility of victory. If, however, one is concerned more with asserting one’s beliefs and expressing one’s frustration and antipathy toward the existing system, one can view a campaign for the Presidency as an on-going platform to both hear oneself talk, but also to try to captivate and entertain an audience. Such politics become not the politics inherent in a struggle for power, but the politics of self-expression. The objective becomes expressing one’s views, anger, etc., rather than seeking to achieve anything. In effect, it becomes the politics of defeat, in that one has no plan, knows one cannot win, and therefore cries out in hopelessness.
The West campaign and other third parties will virulently object. They will assert they are taking a stand against the two-party system of the capitalist class; a stand against imperialism; against the criminality of the US support for Israeli genocide. And they will be correct! They are. Yet, they have no plan, nor sufficient organization, to transform their assertions into political power. Thus, they can only rely on magical thinking in the hopes—and this is a best-case scenario—that their plea to the masses will resonate and result in a great wave of revulsion against the system, thrusting them into office…alone.
The moment
Leaving aside, for a moment, that minor parties in the USA have rarely been successful due to the undemocratic nature of the US electoral system, the actions of the Cornel West campaign and other third parties would be comical if less were at stake. And there have been times when comedians have run for President to make a satirical statement, e.g., Pat Paulsen.
Current third-party candidacies, including West and Jill Stein, either ignore or deny the dangers inherent in the current moment. West, for instance, acknowledges the dangers of a Trump victory but asserts, in part due to the Israeli genocide in Gaza, there was no difference between Trump and Biden and, apparently, no difference between Trump and Harris. Stein’s views carry on from the historic and, unfortunately, dogmatic stand of the Green Party on the need for formal political independence from the two-party system.
None of them are coming to grips with the dangers over the horizon. There is nothing, for instance, on the Harris side that is comparable to the plans of the MAGA movement such as Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s hatched idea for a rightwing authoritarian overhaul of the US government. There is nothing comparable on the Harris side to the proposals that the American Legislative Exchange Council’s ongoing work to advance a Constitutional Convention to alter the US Constitution in favor of business and the Christian Right. Nothing.
One cannot conclude ignorance on the part of any of these campaigns. One cannot imagine that any of these campaigns believe that progressive politics and policies will survive a second Trump presidency. Or perhaps they do? As many of us have heard over the months, there are those who believe that Trump will not be but so bad and, yes, there will be suffering, but we will come through it.
Who is “we”? Those picked up in military scoops of immigrants and placed in concentration camps? Those assaulted or killed should Trump utilize the 1807 Insurrection Act against protesters? Those killed through the use of paramilitary extrajudicial violence by fascist supporters of Trump? Workers who lose out when the National Labor Relations Board regresses to the anti-worker animus, or when the National Labor Relations Act is eviscerated? Women, whose bodies increasingly become the terrain of rightwing, male politicians? Or, is the “we,” those from the professional-managerial strata who believe they can hunker down and wait for the turbulence to subside?
The choice has never been between an enemy and one of us
The politics of self-expression makes three mistakes. First, it assumes that we can reject the two candidates and, by doing so, a third will ultimately emerge. Second, that an enlightened leader can emerge without an organized social base and, in the absence of support in Congress, introduce dramatic changes that will bring us closer to utopia. Third, that the two main candidates will demonstrate the corruption of the current system and will encourage the masses to turn in a revolutionary direction. Fourth, a Trump victory will allegedly punish the Democrats so that in four years they will pick a better candidate.
What is striking about each of these notions is that there is no historical basis to see any of this happening. There are, however, plenty of examples where abstention, for instance, has created an opening for a nefarious political force to emerge and win office. In fact, one can look at Germany in 1932 and see one of the results of a failure to build a broad front to oppose the Nazis because, in that case, the Social Democrats and the Communists so hated each other, they lost sight of what could happen should the Nazis win.
The second and fourth mistakes, though, are the ones that are the most interesting. The assumption that a third-party candidate, in the absence of organization at the base and any support in Congress could do anything is mind-boggling. Consider the Obama administration and the difficulties it had in its first two years—when it had majorities but believed it could play adult with Republicans—not to mention what succeeded that after 2010. This thinking evidences the absence of any conception of a fight for power. It is either magical, or it is yet another example that the politics of self-expression is the politics of defeat.
The fourth mistake is one that is heard frequently. It is less the politics of self-expression and more the acceptance of the permanence of the system and the inability to conceptualize that a strategy can be constructed that goes beyond pleasing or punishing the existing parties, and instead offers an alternative based on real mass work, organization, and strategy.
Going forward
It is less important to get inside Cornel West’s head, or the heads of the other candidates, than it is to question not only their intent, but why they garner any attention. The answer is simple. Frustration with the system; the fact that the lives of the majority of people are miserable; and a belief that regardless of what we do, nothing will change, leads to treating the November 2024 elections as if it is an election in American Idol, that is, entertainment where the result will be completely irrelevant to the daily lives of the viewers.
Those of us who appreciate the stakes in 2024 must use the coming weeks to point out precisely what the possibilities are. This is not an election between a hero and a demon. This is an election where a semi-fascist mass movement, MAGA, seeks to upend constitutional democracy in order to introduce rightwing authoritarianism. And this upending will be paradoxically quick as well as spaced out over time. That is the way authoritarians operate. They almost never clamp down on everyone at once, even in military coups. There are always parts of the population who believe—hope—they are exempt from repression. At least until there is that knock at the door…
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