Redefine “taxpayer”.
Plutocrats have set taxpayer against taxpayer, taxpayer against beneficiary, taxpayer against public sector worker, taxpayer against climate and environment, taxpayer against government.
I wonder when the taxpayer will be turned against the military and police, just to complete the full number of demographics and institutions the “hard-working taxpayer” hates their “hard-earned money” going to, just so that we’ll get on with Civil War II.
Thought:
As non-electoral movements, Occupy and Indivisible may be years apart in age, but I think they compliment each other.
Occupy was (and in some areas, still is) the urban tent revival which sought revival in the face of persistent economic inequality. Indivisible is the direct district-by-district action against politicians (mostly at the federal level) who seek to further multiple inequalities.
Occupy was limited by being an urban movement which centered their actions in urban spaces and needs, but it also pushed mightily for income inequality to be considered a massive political crisis. Indivisible is still unfolding as a political force, but it is centered around influencing legislators and their often rural-spread districts.
Indivisible may go to places where Occupy largely could not.
Mitch Landrieu’s speech is the sort of conversation that more Southern White working class men need to have with each other, especially if they’re descendants of Confederate soldiers.
They need to question who this war benefitted, because it wasn’t their farmer ancestors who gained anything beyond death, destruction and deprivation. What class did the framers of the Confederate government come from? Why did these aristocrats prize their way of life as the “Southern” way of life, and not that of the majority of White men who didn’t own slaves?
Why did so many working class White men go along to war and not resist the Confederate draft? Why didn’t more men desert the ranks like Newton Knight did?
The severe class divide between the Dixie aristocracy and the soldiers sent to die in Gettysburg and Antietam is embarrassing. White men who are descended from those soldiers should ask themselves and each other if the fight was worth it or if they got played like an Appalachian fiddle.
A bit of a background: there’s a city council special election in LA today, pitting a biking rights activist, Josef Bray-Ali, against incumbent Gil Cedillo. It came out today that Bray-Ali, who has touted his progressive bonafides in the run-up to the election, has been a frequent poster to far-right and racist forums on Voat and the misogynist “Red Pill” forum on Reddit.
But this article from an activist in this council district talks about his past problematic behavior, both online and offline, against those who advocate for intersectional justice in biking rights advocacy.
Vent:
I wish White conservatives and libertarians could understand that African-Americans are perhaps most skeptical to this constant tug of war between federal and state governments.
We don’t really see state governments as the arbiter of liberty against the federal monster that they’re made out to be by White conservatives and White libertarians.
People like us have never been in the position of a majority clinging jealously, desperately to their corner of regional power against federal will.
I wish they could explain to us why state government autonomy should be as important and obsessive to us as it is to them, even at the expense of healthcare and other human services which are taken for granted elsewhere but which horrify the sensibilities of federalist ideologues in this country.
We can understand the role of cities, counties and federal governments. You have Black mayors, aldermen/councilmembers and county execs and commissioners all over the country within the limit of your typical majority-Black municipality. We have Black congressmembers from numerous regions of mostly-urban and some rural import.
But states? Governors? States usually do their damnedest to screw us over. States have never been the friend of Black people in this country. States don’t have much of a purpose to us except as a double-enforcer of government violence, as an expression of suburban and rural anxiety about the “crime-infested” urban locales, as a burdensome middleman between us and the federal government. States lease the majority of prisons in this country to the highest bidder and execute the vast majority of death row inmates.
If all states were abolished tomorrow and this country became a centralized, unitary republic, Black Americans wouldn’t miss the states nor their power over our lives. Not Georgia, not Alabama, not California, not Illinois. No more Electoral College to placate the rural areas.
We’d have to deal with a much closer relationship between the federal government and cities, between feds and counties. Mayors wouldn’t have to go through the state to receive federal help, nor would feds have to go through states to intervene in municipal affairs.
this may yield some unintended consequences, but I think I can live with those better than this terrible system we have now.
But in the meantime, I simply can’t sympathize with, nor understand, this constant need for distance between state and federal government when it comes to the governance of individual citizens. It’s harming the American working class as a whole, and minority suspect classes (like those of us who did not “immigrate” to this country) in greater intensity. It is harming the accountability of this federal government to the citizenry while hiding the hand of state-level fiefdoms in depriving the citizenry of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
You know what I saw a lack of last year?
1-on-1 video debates/discussions between the most hardcore of both Hillary supporters and Bernie supporters.
We continue to litigate last year in remote textual debates, but not in person, not in real time.
We’re talking about impeachment when we don’t even have fully-acceptable candidates to lead Dems to a majority in Congress.
Get your shit together, progressives and liberals. talk to each other! Reach out!
I think the states where initiatives and referendums are legal – most of which are out West – will see the greatest advancements against criminal justice abuses in the coming years.
I can’t see Georgia or most other Southern states legalizing recreational marijuana anytime soon. Florida could, since they almost did not long ago.
I’d say that legalizing marijuana and de-felonizing state drug laws is the great cross-racial, cross-religious, cross-class criminal justice struggle of the moment.
But even as more states out West legalize possession and regulate distribution, the racial disparity has persisted in Colorado and Washington with police now targeting predominately young Black/Latino male street dealers for felony distribution instead of possession. I expect a similar report from California in the near future now that weed is legal there.
If racial justice, economic justice and marijuana legalization can intersect anywhere, it’s at this location. Street sales need to be decriminalized, amnesty should be granted to past arrestees, taxes should be temporarily reduced to undercut the underground market, and arrestees should be provided job counseling.
I want to see 0 arrests for anything marijuana-related, 0 people denied jobs for anything marijuana-related, 0 people having to sell weed on the street to feed their family.
In the UK’s local elections over last weekend, the only left-wing party to do well was the Green Party of England and Wales.
Why is Labour doing so terrible under Corbyn? Why did the Lib Dems do so poorly under Farron?
Greens under Lucas+Bartley are doing well where other center-left parties are doing poorly. Why?
Sometimes, I wish that [working-class] #WhiteLivesMatter-ed to Republicans, cuz they sure as shit don’t act like it.
There are way too many people who sincerely believe that Black voters are “slaves on the Democratic plantation”.
This meme, which I’ve seen trafficked by Republicans, Greens and other partisans, will draw us to your party cadre…. NEVER.
