What is to be done – NOW?
By Robert J.S. Ross, PhD
“The task of the democratic renewal is to create face-to-face organizations and relationships”
Claiming no great originality, I here list the guidelines for political activity that aims to protect human rights, preserve material decency, and prepare for future advances towards more equal and participatory democracy.
The first note is one of frank recognition: this is a defensive moment. The proto fascists have control of the government and as evidenced by Trump’s first week both the will and the knowledge to subvert constitutional guarantees of equal rights and due process. Indeed, one hopes any future democratic government will take note of and emulate the preparation the MAGA’s have made for their takeover of state power.
With goals in mind: protection and potential advance, here is a broadly painted agenda.
- The Dam is breached: fill the holes with lawyers
The initial surge of Executive Orders range from the nasty but probably legal (remove funding for abortion, interpreting support broadly) to obvious constitutional breaches (removing birthright citizenship with the stroke of Presidential Pen). In cases we will win and in those we might not, the moment requires at first legal action to slow the process down. Use Trumpian means of delays; appeal every semi-colon. All those idealistic lawyers – now’s the time to burn the pro bono hours. It will take a while for many of these cases to become either newly enacted law or settled bad decisions. In the meantime…
- Win the House in ‘26
The reason to emphasize legal delay however costly in people-power and attention is to give time for the popular majority for humane solutions to exert itself in the Congressional campaigns of 2026. The House can become majority Democratic/left independent with only a handful of flipped seats. This majority will NOT be able immediately to deliver on ambitious promises: but it has a decisive role in the constitutional restraint on the president. Republican House majorities have brought Democratic presidents to their knees with such bargaining power. We can too.
One unknown in grasping for the constitutional straw of a Democratic majority House is the potentially wicked role that might be played by the collaborationist Supreme Court. Let’s not pretend to see into crystal balls. Things could get much worse…
- How did we survive Reagan? Use the States
In their flawed wisdom the deal between what became Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians produced a federal system with powerful States. Once thought of as the laboratories of democracy now they can become the defenders of human rights and decency. When the Reaganites attacked the federal budget progressives around the nation responded with state and local policy ideas and initiatives. Abortion rights were preserved though federal Medicaid funds would not cover them; housing was supported (at much less than actually needed) with varieties of tax and other subsidies; localities and states upped the minimum wage and many have stronger labor protections than the federal structures.
Even in states won by the MAGA’s support for such policies is greater than support for Democrats. Now is a moment to get everything that can be got from state government.
In the meantime, many Blue state governors will be stressed by the possibility of dangerous legal action against them by the feds and against protection of human and labor rights locally. We should be mindful of that and similar points of attack and support/press these Dems to do the right thing.
- Wake Up about strategy: build the labor movement
Social movements arise in a confluence of circumstance, hard to predict. Why one murder (George Floyd) sparks a nationwide of protest and another does not always has a story – always told in retrospect. The needs in the long run, as Carl Davidson and Bill Fletcher, put so well is for organizations to bridge the moments from peak to tough to peak. (Revisiting Our 2020 Post-Election Hypotheses, four years on)
The general lessons – build them! In the context of politics and policy, support initiatives that build, support, enhance the ability of working people and their allies to advance the causes of equality and equity. Most obviously this means, on its face, support, building, joining the labor movement.
In earlier eras when addressing advocates for equality and human rights one would take such advice for granted. But strategic discussions among the educated classes no longer have labor unions and workers’ rights as the default beginning of their understandings. Apart from the empirical impact on reducing inequality and injustice on the job, organized labor, except for liberal billionaires, is the largest source of support for progressive candidates and policy.
Union members in their millions, vote more Democratic than other workers of comparable demographics. Their phone banks and volunteer efforts are huge strategic assets: protect them, advance them.
The particular matters and instant moments when Seasmus Heaney observes:
“ the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.”
Whether or not our own issue engagements produce surges of mobilization, or whether they come from regions of social space now unplumbed, the task of the democratic renewal is to create face-to-face organizations and relationships that will outlast surges and win more than once.
And did I mention: Win Back the House!
…
I have not studied politics, but I can disagree with a thing or two.
Democrats are now running around saying there are “good billionaires” and republican “evil billionaires”.
How did we get here if not on the backs of democrats? Was not 2020, the return of the 1994 Crime Bill?
Is not the murders of innocent bystanders by police the fruition of biden’s 1994 masterpiece?
Seriously, ol’joe came straight out of the fight against jim crow. biden’s crime bill along with a whole bunch of other legislation brought jim crow into the modern age.
musk and the trumpanzee wouldn’t be here without the democrats. The most successful, and influential republican after regan was bill clinton.
Where would trump be if not for hillary and her emails back in 2016?
Rebuild the dem party? Win the House with them?
Where does that get us?
Same sh… just being sh… on by the less evilier corporations and billionaires?
Our foreign “policy” is pretty much made up primarily of war crimes and misdemeanors. Kamala Harris absolutely refused to call for a cease fire (if she had, she’d be president today)
Sanders, as I write this, is calling for entirely new political call, from the ground (street) up.
I love Sanders, but after 2016 and 2020, he has some explaining to do. Endorsing the sh… you’re running against, as they disenfranchise your voters is no way to win an election.
We need a Convention of progressive independents, 3rd parties, environmental and social justice organizations, and Labor.
We need people to come together, and organize around shared principle.
And yes, we’re going to have to take it to the streets, to get it done.
But to put this together again, like we did in 1996, only to go home telling people to “stick with the democrats”…. screw that.
I’ll stay in the streets.
In response to the question of the role of “white collar and college educated folks” in relation to labor there are two or three robust approaches, I respectfully submit:.
1. Many people so described are in occupations which are highly unionized (teachers), getting unionized (grad students at large universities) or have sporadically seen organizing attempts (engineers and technical workers in aerospace). Their best roles are as active members.
2. The labor movement has always had (and needed whether it acknowledged that or not) allies from reform minded middle class people. Here the role of ally is not merely passive. For one thing it requires judgment as to which are the progressive or democratic forces within a union or coalition and which should not be seen as leaders. This is allyship of discernment. The recent referendum in MA on Uber/Lyft drivers was not well understood by labor’s allies (including myself) and what passed was a law that made those drivers a third class of worker, not fully protected by labor laws. An example of allyship that need more attention.
3. At crisis moments or strategic confrontations, the forces of democracy and equality always need allies, often in the form of mass physical presence. Being attuned to these events in the labor movement and creating channels to be alert is part of this role. Example: A workers and labor committee of our synagogue populated by leaders of local solidarity coalitions.
There is an important contextual matter here. Many of the people now mobilized for democracy are ill-acquainted with unions, their practices or traditions or their contribution to our common well-being. It is a bit pallid and surely late to reeducate the educated middle classes in the midst of counter-revolution, but there may be no choice but now.
Thanks Bob, appreciate these thoughts. How do you see white collar workers/college educated folks supporting labor? Want to be helpful, but not patronizing.