A People’s Agenda for a Better Nation

The Poor People's Campaign and Congressional Progressive Caucus team up to chart a course for the future.


Erik Gunn



https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/12/25/peoples-agenda-better-nation




“Everything you hear tonight resonates with the call of our deepest moral values to establish justice and promote the general welfare, and our deepest religious values to love our neighbors and to lift from the bottom. And everything here, we are willing to fight and push for, because it is not about compromise. It is about deciding the future of this nation will be compromised if we don’t do at least the things that are here in this people’s agenda.”


In a ninety-minute program livestreamed on Facebook, the caucus and the Poor People’s Campaign teamed up to deliver a message that mixed Social Gospel sermonizing and rally-the-faithful appeals to the prospect of shifting the focus in Washington, D.C., during the first six months of Joe Biden’s presidency.With those words on December 21, the Reverend William Barber II, the nation’s most prominent progressive preacher, lent his moral authority to a sweeping agenda for governance as the Congressional Progressive Caucus unveiled its priorities for the first six months of the new year.

The Progressive Caucus agenda is the product of more than three dozen participating activist groups, including the Poor People’s Campaign, said caucus chair U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal, (Democrat of Washington). Jayapal called it an agenda “that puts people first, centering poor and working people of all races, who have been left out and left behind.”

This agenda, the speakers noted, was necessary even before the advent of COVID-19, but it has been made still more so by the social and economic fault lines that the pandemic has exposed.

The seven-point platform is both a fundamental and ambitious list, ranging from specific policies to broad, aspirational goals:
COVID-19 relief that “meets the scale of the crisis” and directly addresses the pandemic’s disproportionate harm to Black, Indigenous, people of color and “other vulnerable communities”;
Programs to put people back to work, with a focus on moving the economy to clean, renewable energy—but also restoring and expanding worker rights, including union rights;
Ensuring health care for all;
Defending and expanding voting rights—including proposals to end gerrymandering and rein in corporate money in electoral campaigns;
Attacking institutional racism and white supremacy;
Turning away from militarism and “endless wars” in favor of a commitment to peaceful diplomacy;
Rejecting corporate greed and ending corporate monopoly.

Throughout the program, Jayapal acted as a sort of emcee while a mix of activists and Progressive Caucus members took turns endorsing the agenda and bolstering the underlying demands.

“The Progressive Caucus policies for COVID-19 will make sure that we have money in our pockets to stay at home, clear student debt payments, address medical debt,” said Zillah Wesley of the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C. “They will protect our essential workers, our frontline workers who are low wage. They will make sure that we care for each other for now and for our future and expand our health care system, we need this.”

Eshawney Gaston, a North Carolina home health care worker and Fight for $15 activist, spoke of provisions relating to worker and union rights. “Pass the $15 minimum wage in the first 100 days,” she said. “Make it easier for home health care workers, fast food workers, and all workers to form a union, because we need a voice on the job. Pass legislation that will protect the health and safety of frontline workers. And these are the top priorities for working people like me.”


“When she came out of that hospital, she had three new diagnoses: hypertension, diabetes, and leukemia, and she died three months later. This is what poverty looks like here—this is the lack of the ability to pay for insurance or medical bills,” said Shanklin, adding later that change is imperative “because the for-profit health care system we have now is inhumane, immoral, and it’s failing us.”On health care, Kansas farmer, retired nurse, and Poor People’s Campaign participant Mary Jane Shanklin spoke of her uninsured mother-in-law’s death in 2012, after a broken leg required her to get treatment at a hospital in Wichita, a two hour drive from her home.

While reaching high, the agenda also suggests a spirit of working step-by-step toward more ambitious long-term goals. On health care, for example, the caucus doesn’t shy from backing Medicare for All—but it also doesn’t treat that as an all-or-nothing objective. Instead, the health care plank, said Shanklin, vows “to ensure health care for everyone by taking important steps to expand health care and make equitable investments into public health infrastructures, as we work toward Medicare for All.”

Disability rights and health care activist Ady Barkan bluntly acknowledged political limitations, while seeking to inspire those listening with a vision of how partial measures could advance the ultimate goal.

“Of course, we wish we had the power to pass Medicare for all this year,” Barkan said. “But we know that we are not there yet.”

For that reason, he continued, the agenda emphasizes “big strides forward to getting more people to the health care they need and making structural changes that will help us reduce the power of the for-profit health care industry.”




The agenda is “ambitious, it’s bold, and it’s achievable,” said Barkan, who listed some of its goals: expanding Medicare by lowering the eligibility age to fifty and covering all children up to age twenty-five; allowing government health insurance programs to negotiate with drug companies directly over pricing; expanding public health funding—especially for providers that serve urban and rural communities as well as Indian health providers; and protecting access for health care—including reproductive health care for women, trans people, and others.

“By combining the energy of our movement activists with the savvy and the growing power of our champions inside of Congress, we can actually enact some of these proposals into law in the coming year,” Barkan declared.

The Progressive Caucus message also sought to lay down a marker early, both with the broader Democratic leadership and with the Biden-Harris team. Progressives should rightfully take credit for helping rid the White House of Donald Trump and maintaining Democratic control of the House of Representatives, Jayapal said.

“Poverty, unemployment, racial injustice, homelessness—these are all policy choices, driven by structures that both Democrats and Republicans have refused to tackle,” Jayapal said.

She explained Trump’s victory in 2016 was “because people in both parties lost faith in the government to stand up for regular folks, instead of the biggest corporations and thousands of lobbyists that line our door every day in Congress, even before COVID-19 hit.”

“An agenda that centers people will always win,” Jayapal declared, citing the 2020 victories of incumbents in swing districts who ran on Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, and the passage of ballot measures—“even in states that voted for Donald Trump”—for a $15 minimum wage, decriminalizing marijuana, and instituting paid leave for workers.

“We have one shot to get it right in 2021,” she added. “Thanks to the demands of this inside-outside movement, President-elect Biden ran on the most progressive policy platform of any President in recent history. He and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have a clear mandate to fight for us to respond to the root causes of suffering and to transform the structures of our country, so people can thrive, not just barely survive. Now it’s time to deliver.”

In enlisting Barber and the Reverend Liz Theoharis, the national co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign, the event was one of the most unabashed mingling of faith and politics on the political left in recent memory. And, whether intended or not, it served as a rebuttal to the increasingly misplaced critique that Democrats and progressives are out of touch with “people of faith.”

The event’s appeals to faith, however, were also inclusive of non-Christian perspectives. At one point, Barber broke into a segment in which Apache Activist Vanessa Nosie was describing the copper mining project that threatens the Oak Flat sacred land in Arizona where she lives.

Barber urged the Congress members in the Progressive Caucus to push for House Democrats to zero out a pending budget line that he said would cover the paperwork to complete the transaction on the site. Canceling the item “could stop them from stealing the Apaches’ holy land, which is as important to them as the Vatican in Rome and Jerusalem in Israel.”

Indeed, as he has done since his days organizing the Moral Mondays political action events in North Carolina, Barber evoked a movement that welcomes and includes the strictly secular as well as the explicitly religious.

“I pray God’s anointing of strength upon every member of the Progressive Caucus whether they’re Christian or Jewish or Muslim or not even people of faith,” Barber said toward the end of the event.

Still, appeals to faith traditions as liberation remained close to the surface. Early in the evening, Barber quoted from the most militant passage of the Christmas song, “O, Holy Night”: “Chains shall God break for the slave is our brother, and in God’s name all oppression shall cease.”

Barber elaborated: “This is the present that America and the world needs right now. For chains of inequality to be broken. And for all oppression to cease. And this agenda starts us on that journey.”

Republicans BLOCK Trump $2,000 Stimulus Checks supported by Democrats

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_oQH4tyxgk&ab_channel=ChristoAivalis

Recidivist Criminal and Constitutional Outlaw Trump Rushes to Pardon Criminal Lawbreakers

Trump and future presidents cannot be allowed to brazenly dishonor justice and undermine the rule of law.


Ralph Nader



https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/12/25/recidivist-criminal-and-constitutional-outlaw-trump-rushes-pardon-criminal




Serial lawbreaker Donald J. Trump is embarking on the most sordid presidential pardon spree in American history. He has already pardoned convicted crooks, thieves, and violent outlaws. Trump’s pardon lawyers are frantically assembling more MAGA besotted individuals and groups to be pardoned wholesale. The number may climb into the hundreds. The queue is long. Trump corruptly doles out pardons to spite his list of archenemies and to reward his sycophants as many people are pleading with Trump for pardons. (For a partial list of Trump pardons see here.)

Trump thrills at what he considers his absolute power to pardon, including family members and himself. He is wrong. No constitutional right or power is pursued at all costs. All have limits. The power to pardon is limited at least by prohibitions on bribery, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and the 400-year honored maxim that “no man can be a judge in his own case.” Further, the Constitution’s framers specifically described corruptly motivated pardons as impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors and specifically authorized criminal prosecution of the President after impeachment and removal from office. The latter would become an overthrow of lawful orders with presidential self-pardons.

No president has displayed the audacity or depravity to self-pardon. In 1974, the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department concluded that the president cannot self-pardon.

Legal scholars differ on whether pardons must specifically describe the crimes and persons to be pardoned and whether the beneficiary must confess guilt. Trump’s cynical pardons could provoke Congress and the courts to set procedural and substantive limits.

President Gerald Ford pardoned former President Richard Nixon in the aftermath of his resignation to avoid impeachment and conviction for defying a congressional subpoena, obstruction of justice, and misuse of government agencies. On September 8, 1974, in broad and sweeping language, Ford declared that pursuant to Article II Section 2 of the Constitution “I … do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969, through August 9, 1974.” Nixon’s pardon was never challenged for non-specific descriptions of the pardoned offenses.


President Carter specified the offense but did not name the thousands of Americans pardoned. He simply established a Justice Department procedure for the beneficiaries to obtain a certificate of pardon. President Jimmy Carter, on January 21, 1977, pardoned violators of the draft laws, known as draft resisters, many of whom fled to Canada. He granted “a full, complete and unconditional pardon” to “all persons who may have committed any offense between August 4, 1964, and March 28, 1973, in violation of the Military Selective Service Act or any rule or regulation promulgated thereunder.” He included in this pardon “all persons heretofore convicted,” of any such offense, “restoring to them full political, civil and other rights.” Excluded, however, were all persons “convicted of or who may have committed any offense involving force or violence.”




With four weeks of Trump’s tenure remaining, rumors of what he could or should do are multiplying. Will he pardon all inmates in federal prisons convicted of nonviolent marijuana or other drug offenses? Will he pardon a wide network of people who could otherwise be compelled to testify against him? Will he pardon former business associates or future business partners of all federal offenses? (He cannot pardon for state offenses.)

Trump can issue anticipatory pardons before an individual is formally charged with a crime.

Thus far, of the over 60 pardons or commutations issued by Trump, the vast majority of recipients have featured a personal connection or political affinity. Speculation has centered on pardons for Edward Snowden or Julian Assange to leaven Trump’s overt favoritism.

Trump’s corruptly motivated pardons will continue until President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. He will probably refrain from resigning in favor of Vice President Pence in exchange for a pardon for himself and family members. The stench of bribery would be too great.

In the final days of his four-year chronicle of statutory criminal and constitutional violations (See: December 18, 2019, Congressional Record, H-12197 and many past articles by writers on Trump’s lawbreaking), Trump will give both the Congress and the courts great incentive to set specific limits on the pardon power.

Trump and future presidents cannot be allowed to brazenly dishonor justice and undermine the rule of law.

Congressional abdication and public indifference will pave the way for the kind of monarchical power so resolutely dreaded by our Constitution’s framers who fought to defeat King George III and repudiate tyranny. Unless resisted by a resolute, aroused citizenry.

Meet The Pseudo-Left Imperialists Fighting Against Universal Healthcare

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6Hb7J5yFPg&ab_channel=BehindTheHeadlines

Sanders Rips GOP for Happily Endorsing Trump's Assault on Democracy But Refusing to Back His Call for $2,000 Checks

"Pathetic," said the Vermont senator.



by
Jake Johnson, staff writer





https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/12/25/sanders-rips-gop-happily-endorsing-trumps-assault-democracy-refusing-back-his-call




More than half of the House Republican caucus readily supported President Donald Trump in his last-ditch—and ultimately failed—attempt to overturn the November election through the Supreme Court earlier this month, but the president's endorsement this week of $2,000 relief checks for desperate Americans was a bridge too far for the GOP.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) noted that fact with disgust Thursday, shortly after House Republicans blocked a Democratic attempt to pass $2,000 direct payments by unanimous consent.


Earlier this month, as Common Dreams reported, more than 100 House Republicans signed on to a Texas-led lawsuit that sought what one analyst described as "the single biggest incident of voter nullification in American history." The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit just days after it was filed."Republicans in Washington are happy to cheer on Trump's bogus conspiracy theories on non-existent election fraud, but refuse to support him when it comes to providing a $2,000 direct payment to working-class Americans facing economic desperation," the Vermont senator tweeted. "Pathetic."




"House Republicans are spending critical time when people are starving and small businesses are shuttering trying to overturn the results of our election," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said just before the Supreme Court rejected the suit.

On Thursday morning, despite the president's demand for larger checks, the House Republican leadership refused to allow Democrats to advance an amendment that would increase the direct payments in the newly passed coronavirus relief bill from $600 to $2,000. House Democrats plan to force a floor vote on the direct payments on Monday.

"House Democrats today offered to send you $2,000 stimulus checks. Republicans rejected it," Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.) tweeted Thursday. "In May, we voted to send you $1,200 stimulus checks. Republicans rejected that too. The Republican Party does not give a damn about you."

The Year That Labor Hung On By Its Fingertips

Disasters, missed opportunities, and a few bright spots in 2020.




December 26, 2020 Hamilton Nolan WORKING IN THESE TIMES




https://portside.org/2020-12-26/year-labor-hung-its-fingertips





A lot of things hap­pened for work­ing peo­ple this year, and most of them were bad. But even in a year as deranged as 2020, the broad­er themes that afflict and ener­gize the labor move­ment have car­ried on. If you are read­ing this, con­grat­u­la­tions: There is still time for you to do some­thing about all of these things. Here is a brief look at the Year in Labor, and may we nev­er have to live through some­thing like it again.
The pan­dem­ic

Broad­ly speak­ing, there have been two very large labor sto­ries this year. The first is, ​“I have been forced into unem­ploy­ment due to the pan­dem­ic, and I am scared.” And the sec­ond is, ​“I have been forced to con­tin­ue work­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, and I am scared.” America’s labor reporters spent most of our year writ­ing vari­a­tions of these sto­ries, in each com­pa­ny and in each indus­try and in each city. Those sto­ries con­tin­ue to this day.

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment left work­ing peo­ple utter­ly for­sak­en. They did not cre­ate a nation­al wage replace­ment sys­tem to pay peo­ple to stay home, as many Euro­pean nations did. OSHA was asleep on the job, unin­ter­est­ed in work­place safe­ty relat­ed to coro­n­avirus. Repub­li­cans in Con­gress were more intent on get­ting lia­bil­i­ty pro­tec­tions for employ­ers than on doing any­thing, any­thing at all, that might help des­per­ate reg­u­lar peo­ple. And, of course, Trump and his allies unnec­es­sar­i­ly politi­cized pub­lic health, lead­ing direct­ly to hun­dreds of thou­sands of unnec­es­sary deaths and the eco­nom­ic destruc­tion that goes with that. It was a bad year. The larg­er polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions cre­at­ed to pro­tect work­ers did not do their jobs. The labor move­ment was left very much on its own. And its own track record was mixed.
Front-line work­ers

The year of the hero! We love our heroes! Our front-line work­ers, our deliv­ery peo­ple and san­i­ta­tion work­ers and bus dri­vers, our para­medics and nurs­es, our cooks and clean­ers and gro­cery work­ers: We love you all! Sure, we will bang pots and pans to cel­e­brate reg­u­lar work­ers who had to push through dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, and we will write you nice notes and have school chil­dren draw signs cel­e­brat­ing you. But will you get paid for this?

How well have unions rep­re­sent­ing these front line work­ers done this year? In many cas­es, not well. I think first of the gro­cery work­ers, rep­re­sent­ed by UFCW, who were gen­er­al­ly award­ed with tem­po­rary ​“haz­ard pay” bonus­es rather than actu­al rais­es. Or of the UFCW’s meat­pack­ing work­ers, whose plants were encour­aged to stay open by an exec­u­tive order, and who suf­fered ter­ri­bly from the coro­n­avirus and from management’s utter dis­dain for their wel­fare. These are work­ers who, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the ear­ly phase of the pan­dem­ic, had a ton of lever­age. Had they struck, or walked out, ask­ing for basic safe­ty and fair pay for risk­ing their lives, the pub­lic would have neared pan­ic, and their demands prob­a­bly would have been met. Their employ­ers would have had no choice. Instead, there was a great deal of out­cry from their unions, but no real labor actions at scale. Thus, the meat­pack­ing work­ers con­tin­ued to suf­fer, and the gro­cery work­ers saw their ​“haz­ard pay” bonus­es dis­ap­pear, and here we are.

The point of this is not to be harsh. Faced with an unex­pect­ed dis­as­ter, most unions have spent this year scram­bling des­per­ate­ly to keep them­selves and their work­ers afloat, and have been flood­ed with the task of deal­ing with the cat­a­stro­phe that has cost mil­lions their jobs. But when this is all over, there should be a seri­ous post­mortem about what could and should have been done bet­ter. And that will include, right up top, the fail­ure of front line work­ers to turn their new­found hero sta­tus — and the tem­po­rary, absolute neces­si­ty that they con­tin­ue work­ing through life-threat­en­ing con­di­tions — into any last­ing gains. It is easy to sur­ren­der to the feel­ing of just being thank­ful to be employed while oth­ers sink into pover­ty. But we need to be ready with a bet­ter plan for next time. Bil­lions of dol­lars and a good deal of poten­tial pow­er that work­ing peo­ple could have had has evap­o­rat­ed because unions were not pre­pared to act to take it.
Pub­lic workers

Teach­ers unions con­clu­sive­ly demon­strat­ed their val­ue this year. In gen­er­al, in cities with strong teach­ers unions, pub­lic schools did not reopen unless the teach­ers were sat­is­fied that ade­quate work­place safe­ty pro­ce­dures were in place. (In prac­tice this meant that many school dis­tricts sim­ply kept instruc­tion online.) While this earned the ire of some par­ents, they should think it through: Work­place safe­ty in Amer­i­ca only exist­ed where unions were strong enough to see to it that it hap­pened. Schools were the most promi­nent exam­ple of that.

Else­where, the news for fed­er­al gov­ern­ment employ­ees was gloomy. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion waged a years-long war against the labor rights of fed­er­al work­ers, and it is fair to say that the unions lost that war. Fed­er­al employ­ee unions in par­tic­u­lar, and state employ­ee unions in Repub­li­can states, have become pathet­i­cal­ly weak. Much of their bar­gain­ing pow­er has been out­lawed by Repub­li­can politi­cians. The unions have been reduced to writ­ing polite­ly angry let­ters as their work­ers are abused while wait­ing for a new Demo­c­ra­t­ic admin­is­tra­tion that they can beg to restore their rights. It is not a work­able mod­el for a union. These unions must decide at some point that they are will­ing to break the law in order to assert the fun­da­men­tal rights of their mem­bers, or they will grow increas­ing­ly less able to demon­strate to mem­bers why they have any value.

That may not be fair, but it’s the truth.
Orga­niz­ing

The biggest issue for unions in Amer­i­ca — big­ger than any pan­dem­ic or pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cycle — is that there are sim­ply not enough union mem­bers. Only one in 10 work­ers is a union mem­ber. In the pri­vate sec­tor, that fig­ure is just over 6%. The decades-long decline of union den­si­ty is the under­ly­ing thing rob­bing the once-mighty labor move­ment (and by exten­sion, the work­ing class itself) of pow­er. If unions in Amer­i­ca are not grow­ing every year, they are dying.

Dis­as­trous years like 2020 tend to put struc­tur­al issues on the back burn­er, but they can also serve as inspi­ra­tions for peo­ple to join unions to pro­tect them. The annu­al fig­ures for the year are not out yet, but anec­do­tal­ly, union lead­ers and orga­niz­ers are opti­mistic that the pandemic’s hav­oc will serve as fuel for future orga­niz­ing. Most unions man­aged to at least con­tin­ue major orga­niz­ing efforts that were already under­way this year, like SEIU’s suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of a 17-year bat­tle to union­ize 45,000 child care providers in Cal­i­for­nia. Indus­tries that were already hotbeds of orga­niz­ing tend­ed to remain so. The safe­ty net of a union con­tract clear­ly demon­strat­ed its val­ue far and wide this year, at least in the abil­i­ty of union mem­bers to nego­ti­ate terms for fur­loughs and sev­er­ance and recall rights and all the oth­er things that mat­ter dur­ing dis­as­ters, as non-union work­ers were sim­ply cast out on their own.

Still, it is up to unions them­selves to have a con­cert­ed plan to take advan­tage of the wide­spread nation­al suf­fer­ing and chan­nel it into new orga­niz­ing. Since unions have spent the year trans­fixed by the elec­tion and by try­ing to respond to the eco­nom­ic col­lapse, it is safe to say that such a con­cert­ed plan does not real­ly exist yet. That needs to be done, soon, or this moment will have been wasted.

Strikes

Dur­ing the ear­ly months of the pan­dem­ic, a frag­ile sort of labor peace reigned. The grip of the cri­sis was such that most work­ers were sim­ply try­ing to hang on. As time went by, and the fail­ures of employ­ers became more clear, that peace began to evap­o­rate. Teach­ers unions around the coun­try used cred­i­ble strike threats to head off unsafe school open­ing plans. And in the health­care indus­try, unions have had mul­ti­ple strikes, as nurs­es and hos­pi­tal work­ers have passed their break­ing points.

Lever­age for work­ers varies wide­ly by indus­try right now, as cer­tain indus­tries are besieged with unem­ployed work­ers look­ing for any job they can get (restau­rants), and oth­ers are des­per­ate for skilled work­ers, who are extreme­ly vital (nurs­es). At min­i­mum, every union should look at its lever­age in the spe­cif­ic con­text of the pan­dem­ic and ask if they should act now, lest an oppor­tu­ni­ty be lost forever.
Gig work­ers

You can think of many enor­mous com­pa­nies as huge algo­rithms that are mak­ing their way through the Amer­i­can labor force, turn­ing employ­ees into inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors or free­lancers or part-timers. There is mon­ey to be made in free­ing busi­ness­es from the respon­si­bil­i­ty and cost of pro­vid­ing for employ­ees (a sta­tus that comes with ben­e­fits and a host of work­place rights, includ­ing the right to union­ize). The ​“gig econ­o­my” is not just Uber and Lyft and Instacart and oth­er com­pa­nies that exclu­sive­ly work in that space — it is an eco­nom­ic force of nature push­ing every com­pa­ny, includ­ing yours, to get your job off its books, and to turn you into some­thing less than a full employee.

Coun­ter­ing this force is prob­a­bly the sin­gle most impor­tant legal and leg­isla­tive issue for labor as a whole, because this process inher­ent­ly acts to dis­solve labor pow­er. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the most impor­tant thing that hap­pened on the issue this year was the pas­sage of Prop 22 in Cal­i­for­nia, leg­is­la­tion specif­i­cal­ly designed to empow­er the gig econ­o­my com­pa­nies to the detri­ment of work­ers. Scari­er yet is the fact that the suc­cess­ful leg­is­la­tion in Cal­i­for­nia will now be used as a blue­print for state leg­is­la­tion around the coun­try. Com­pa­nies are pre­pared to spend hun­dreds of mil­lions or bil­lions of dol­lars on this issue, because they save far more mon­ey on the back end and pre­serve their busi­ness mod­el, which depends in large part in extract­ing wealth that once went to work­ers and redi­rect­ing it towards investors. Either Amer­i­ca will have a nation­al reck­on­ing with what the gig econ­o­my is doing to us, or we will con­tin­ue bar­rel­ing towards a dystopi­an future of the Uber-iza­tion of every last indus­try. Includ­ing yours. If ever there were a good time to launch a work­er coop, it is now.
The elec­tion and Washington

After an ear­ly peri­od of hope for a Bernie-led insur­gency of the left, unions coa­lesced around Biden. They spent a ton of mon­ey on him, and indeed, his rhetoric and his plat­form are both more defin­i­tive­ly pro-union than any pres­i­dent in decades. Unions expect a lot of things from Biden, and expe­ri­ence tells us that they will not get many of them.

What they will prob­a­bly get: a much bet­ter NLRB, a func­tion­ing OSHA, a pro-labor Labor Depart­ment rather than the oppo­site, and, par­tic­u­lar­ly for unions with long­stand­ing ties to Biden, rel­a­tive­ly good access to the White House. What they prob­a­bly won’t get: pas­sage of the PRO Act, a very good bill that would fix many of the worst prob­lems with U.S. labor law, but which has no hope in a divid­ed Con­gress. (And, I sus­pect, even with full Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol of Con­gress, many of the more cen­trist Democ­rats would sud­den­ly find a rea­son to oppose the act if the Cham­ber of Com­merce ever thought it might actu­al­ly pass). It is true that the cen­ter of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is slow­ly mov­ing left, but Biden is a man who nat­u­ral­ly stays in the mid­dle of every­one, and he will be con­ser­v­a­tive in his will­ing­ness to burn polit­i­cal cap­i­tal by push­ing pro-labor poli­cies that don’t enjoy some amount of pub­lic bipar­ti­san sup­port. The polit­i­cal cli­mate for unions will be sim­i­lar to what it was under Oba­ma. The words will be nicer, but any action will have to be pro­pelled by peo­ple in the streets.

The nine-month odyssey between the pas­sage of the CARES Act and the next relief bill that Con­gress actu­al­ly passed is a use­ful demon­stra­tion of the lim­its of labor’s lob­by­ing pow­er. While par­tic­u­lar unions, espe­cial­ly those in trans­porta­tion and the USPS, showed skill at get­ting con­crete mate­r­i­al gains for their mem­bers into bills, the inabil­i­ty to force any sort of time­ly action from Con­gress in the face of mas­sive human suf­fer­ing shows that labor as a spe­cial inter­est will nev­er have the polit­i­cal pow­er it craves. Until many, many more Amer­i­cans are union mem­bers, it will be impos­si­ble to break out of this trap.

The labor move­ment at its high­est lev­el must break itself of the addic­tion to the false belief that sal­va­tion will be found if only our Demo­c­rat can win the next elec­tion. It won’t. Orga­nize mil­lions of new work­ers and teach them to always be ready to strike. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty must be dragged towards progress by an army, and our army is weak. The AFL-CIO got burned in the protests this year. It remains to be seen if it learned any­thing from that.
End­ing on a pos­i­tive note

It may be the per­pet­u­al nature of unions that the lead­er­ship is often dis­ap­point­ing, but the grass­roots are always inspir­ing. The big pic­ture for orga­nized labor in 2020 has been… close to okay, in some aspects, but cer­tain­ly not great. But when you pull out a mag­ni­fy­ing glass and look at what indi­vid­ual work­ers and work­places and units are doing, you will find thou­sands and thou­sands of inspir­ing things. And not even a pan­dem­ic has changed the basic fact that orga­niz­ing is the most pow­er­ful tool that reg­u­lar peo­ple have at their dis­pos­al in a sys­tem that val­ues cap­i­tal over humanity.

If you are an employ­ee, you can union­ize your work­place. If you are a gig or tem­po­rary work­er, you can orga­nize with your cowork­ers. If you are unem­ployed, you can march in the streets now, and union­ize your next job. All the labor move­ment is is all of us.

BIDEN: Status Quo Protector -- "Nothing Will Fundamentally Change"

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2v8EUnC0uc&ab_channel=SUVRVingSUVRVing