[WSMDiscuss] 2020 Election Year Is An Opportunity For Transformational Change If We Embrace Our Power (Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance)

[Kevin Zeese]

Thanks for sharing. Here is a link to the full article that Margaret
Flowers and I wrote:
https://popularresistance.org/2020-election-opportunity-for-transformational-change-if-we-embrace-our-power/

KZ
*@KBZeese*
*Build power and resistance*
*Popular Resistance*
*www.PopularResistance.org <http://www.PopularResistance.org/>*
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*www.ItsOurEconomy.US <http://www.ItsOurEconomy.US>*


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On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 10:22 AM Jai Sen <jai.sen at cacim.net> wrote:

> Monday, April 20, 2020
>
> *The US in movement…, **Resistance in movement…, Power in movement…*
>
> People have power. We need to make the General Strike a campaign that
> continues throughout the 2020s. It needs to become the US version of the
> Yellow Vest movement. And, the strike can evolve with new disruptive
> tactics that force whoever is elected president to address the people’s
> issues.
>
> Saying we ‘will not go along with your charade’ tells the political elites
> that people have minds of their own and will not be manipulated into voting
> for candidates who they know will sell out the people on behalf of the
> wealthy. Combining that with an ongoing campaign of general strikes in 2020
> and beyond will show the political and economic elites that the people are
> taking power. The only path to victory is for people to organize and show
> we are not afraid to take action. It is time to embrace our power, not fear
> it.
>
> In the US :
>
> *2020 Election Year Is An Opportunity For Transformational Change If We
> Embrace Our Power*
>
> Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance
>
>
> https://popularresistance.org/2020-election-opportunity-for-transformational-change-if-we-embrace-our-power/
>
>
>
> Although we do not tie our organizing to the election cycle, the 2020
> election is an opportunity for the people to set the agenda for the 2020s.
> We need to show that whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden are elected, the
> people will rule from below. We need to build our power to demand the
> transformational we need.
>
> We are living in an opportune time, as has existed previously in the
> United States when many of the issues people have fought for have come to
> the forefront, but the two parties disregarded the people. Similar to the
> abolition movement in the 19th century and the progressive/socialist
> movement in the early 20th century, this is our moment in the 21st century
> for systemic changes that fundamentally alter our healthcare system
> <https://popularresistance.org/decade-of-transformation-health-care/>,
> economy
> <https://popularresistance.org/the-decade-of-transformation-is-here-remaking-the-economy-for-the-people/>,
> foreign policy
> <https://popularresistance.org/the-decade-of-transformation-remake-international-relations/>,
> environmental policy
> <https://popularresistance.org/the-decade-of-transformation-being-in-balance-with-nature/>
> and more.
>
> As Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson said in our recent Clearing the FOG
> interview <https://popularresistance.org/podcast/> (available Monday),
> the right-wing is using this time to push through their agenda of corporate
> bailouts, deregulation, and worker exploitation. If the left doesn’t
> organize and counter this, the country will continue on its current
> destructive path. The changes we want won’t come from the top. Both
> corporate duopoly candidate’s priorities are the wealthy investor class and
> big business. We are going to have to organize and mobilize for the
> necessities of the people from below.
>
>
>
> Join our *May Day General Strike Call on Wednesday, April 29 at 7:00 pm
> Eastern/4:00 pm Pacific* to learn how to participate in the general
> strike from home. *Click here to register
> <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeEF2NNPQ2iHhHqO0ySqsMAUG6CErvU9zS52TFi3aD984Svvg/viewform>*
> .
>
>
>
>
> *Don’t Fall For The Illusion Of Democracy, Create Change*
>
> The reality that democracy is an illusion in the United States has been
> made much clearer in the 2020 election cycle. While Democratic voters
> supported the Sanders reformist agenda, Democratic elites, including the
> DNC and the Obama and Clinton teams, and members of the Progressive Caucus
> organized to stop Sanders and make Biden the likely nominee despite his
> terrible nearly 50-year political history of corporatism and militarism and
> his current incompetence.
>
> Many people still feel trapped in the endless cycle of “lesser evil”
> voting that has driven a race to the bottom in the United States. Voting
> for either of the corporate parties reinforces their corporate-militaristic
> agendas and takes away the people’s power to force changes. Voters are
> taken for granted by both major parties who know their scare tactics work.
>
> If there was any question, the handling of the current health and economic
> crises clearly demonstrates the duopoly does not work for us. As trillion
> dollars lifelines are thrown to big business and finance, people lack
> health care, protection of their homes from eviction, food, worker rights,
> and financial support. All of these could be provided easily and are being
> provided to people in other countries, many of which are poorer than the US.
>
> Taiwan
> <https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/taiwan-covid-19-lessons-1.5505031>,
> China
> <https://popularresistance.org/how-china-broke-the-chain-of-infection/>,
> Venezuela,
> <https://popularresistance.org/venezuela-has-the-lowest-covid-19-rate-in-latin-america/>
> and Nicaragua
> <https://popularresistance.org/nicaraguan-opposition-misrepresents-government-response-to-covid-19/>,
> to name a few, are responding to the pandemic effectively while the US is
> failing. They have public health systems with health workers and doctors
> embedded in communities. They are able to go door-to-door to check on
> people and provide advice, testing, and treatment. In the US, COVID-19
> has become a top killer
> <https://popularresistance.org/brooklyn-er-doctor-life-and-death-on-the-frontlines-of-covid-19/>,
> killing more people each week than cancer, and nearly as many as heart
> disease, the two highest causes of deaths. These mass deaths are occurring
> at a time when the economy is virtually closed. If it were open, there
> would be hundreds of thousands, if not more than a million deaths.
>
> The contradiction has never been clearer. The government does not serve
> the people, especially the working class, it serves the wealth-class. We
> will not vote our way out of these crises. However, we can learn from
> previous movements that had significant impacts on power holders.
> Huey Long’s third party challenged FDR’s presidential race in 1936.
>
> *Lessons From History*
>
> This is not the first time in history where the two dominant parties have
> been out-of-touch with the necessities of the people. In those times,
> political movements organized and led from below by doing two things: (1)
> building mass social movements, and (2) putting the movement’s issues on
> the political agenda through third party campaigns.
>
> Although third party campaigns cannot win in the manipulated presidential
> election, even without winning, third parties combined with movements have
> transformed the nation. Understanding how social transformation occurs is
> critical for those who feel trapped in the duopoly system. We discuss this
> in more depth in the sixth class
> <https://popularresistance.org/popular-resistance-school-class-6-overcoming-obstacles/>
> of the Popular Resistance School <https://popularresistance.org/school/>.
> In our mirage democracy, voting doesn’t have much impact because the
> outcome of the election is predetermined in most states due to the
> Electoral College.
>
> From the colonial era to the Civil War one of the most extreme forms of
> capitalism – owning people as property – dominated US politics. The
> founders of the country, slaveholders and businessmen, protected their
> valuable slave property by drafting a property rights constitution. This
> was reinforced by the two parties, the Whigs and Democrats, who prohibited
> discussion of the abolition of slavery in Congress. Chattel slavery was the
> most valuable business of the era — more than railroads, banking, and
> industry combined.
>
> Throughout that time, there was a movement to end slavery. By the time the
> country was formed, Vermont had abolished slavery. Abolitionists kept
> struggling through protests, slave revolts, writing, and speeches. With
> Westward expansion, the contradiction of slavery escalated as the debate
> became whether new states would be slave states or free.
>
> Abolitionists decided to enter electoral politics. They formed new
> anti-slavery parties and ran a series of candidates including former
> president Martin Van Buren, with the Free Soil Party in 1848, and former
> President Millard Fillmore, with the American Party in 1856. Like third
> party candidates today, abolitionists were called “spoilers,” but they
> persisted. The Whigs weakened to virtually disappearing and the Democrats
> divided. As a result, Abraham Lincoln won a four-way race with 38 percent
> of the vote and ‘ended slavery’, the first third-party president elected in
> US history
>
> In other cases, third parties won without winning the presidential
> election by putting the issues of social movements into the national
> debate. This is how we achieved the 8-hour work-day, ending child labor,
> women’s voting rights, breaking up monopolies, gaining union rights, the
> minimum wage, unemployment, worker’s compensation, and massive public works
> projects as well as retirement security and more. The entire New Deal was
> built on the platforms of  the Progressive Party
> <https://ashbrook.org/library/document/progressive-party-platform/> and Socialist
> Party
> <https://www.niu.edu/~rfeurer/labor/Socialist%20Party%20Platform%201912.pdf> in
> 1912 and 1928
> <http://libertarianmajority.net/socialist-party-of-america-1928-platform>,
>
> FDR did not come into office advocating the New Deal. It was political
> movements like the Bonus March of 1932
> <https://www.thoughtco.com/bonus-army-march-4147568>  and 1936
> <https://www.britannica.com/event/Bonus-Army> that led to people
> receiving federal support. There were also protests by farmers
> <https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/money_11.html> and strikes
> by workers <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_strikes#1930s> during
> his presidency. And, there was the threat of a third-party challenge by Huey
> Long on the Share Our Wealth
> <https://www.hueylong.com/programs/share-our-wealth.php> ticket, which
> had thousands of chapters across the country. All of this pushed FDR away
> from his concern about deficits to massive spending on the New Deal before
> the 1936 election.
>
> In the 190s, as the union movement continued and the civil rights movement
> grew, the Progressive Party with Henry Wallace, FDR’s vice president, urged
> the end of Jim Crow laws and segregation in the South, the advancement of
> women’s rights, the continuation of many New Deal policies including
> national health insurance and unemployment benefits, the expansion of the
> welfare system, and the nationalization of the energy industry, among
> others.
>
> In this century, it was Ralph Nader in 2000 who first advocated
> single-payer, Medicare for all. Jill Stein ran on the Green New Deal in
> both her Green Party campaigns, after Howie Hawkins
> <http://HowieHawkins.us>, the current leading candidate in the Green
> Party in 2020, advocated for a Green New Deal in a gubernatorial run in
> 2010. Every Green since Nader has criticized corporatism, the wealth
> divide, and Wall Street corruption as well as never-ending wars and US
> imperialism. All of these issues are advocated for by social movements and
> now have majority support. They are on the national agenda.
> General Strike protests in Oakland. From CNN.
>
> *Building Popular Power in 2020*
>
> The quadruple threats of the pandemic, economic collapse, climate crisis,
> and nuclear war have changed the national dialogue.  Institutionalized
> racism is being acknowledged as black and brown people are disproportionately
> contracting COVID
> <https://popularresistance.org/covid-19-and-deadly-health-care-for-black-people/>-19
> and dying from it. Worker exploitation is starkly visible as essential
> workers
> <https://popularresistance.org/essential-workers-of-the-world-unite/> are
> underpaid, lack paid sick leave and are mistreated with inadequate job
> safety. The fragile debt-riddled economy is evident as food lines grow with
> a record 22 million newly unemployed in the last month.
>
> Many groups, including Popular Resistance, are urging a campaign of
> general strikes. A coalition has called for a general strike beginning on
> May 1
> <https://popularresistance.org/a-call-to-action-towards-a-general-strike/>
> and has made specific demands. People are sharing information about how
> to conduct a general strike
> <https://popularresistance.org/everything-you-need-to-know-about-general-strikes/> so
> people know what it takes
> <https://popularresistance.org/heres-what-a-general-strike-would-take/>
> and how a general strike would look
> <https://popularresistance.org/what-would-a-general-strike-even-look-like/>.
> Even before COVID-19, in the last two years, there were record numbers of
> strikes and now a wave of wildcat strikes
> <https://popularresistance.org/from-strike-wave-to-general-strike/> is
> evolving.
>
> Organizers of the general strike campaign are using the hashtags
> #GeneralStrike2020
> <https://twitter.com/search?q=%20%23GeneralStrike2020&src=typed_query>,
> #Coronastrike
> <https://twitter.com/search?q=%20%23CoronaStrike&src=typed_query>,
> #MayDay2020
> <https://twitter.com/search?q=%20%23MayDay2020&src=typed_query>, and
> #StrikeForOurLives
> <https://twitter.com/search?q=%20%23StrikeForOurLives&src=typed_query>.
> There are many ways people can participate whether they are currently
> employed or not. If people refuse to pay their debts or rent, the financial
> system will collapse. And there are ways people can connect to the strike
> from home through social media.
>
>
>
> Join our *May Day General Strike Call on Wednesday, April 29 at 7:00 pm
> Eastern/4:00 pm Pacific* to learn how to participate in the general
> strike from home. *Click here to register
> <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeEF2NNPQ2iHhHqO0ySqsMAUG6CErvU9zS52TFi3aD984Svvg/viewform>*
> .
>
>
>
> People have power. We need to make the General Strike a campaign that
> continues throughout the 2020s. It needs to become the US version of the
> Yellow Vest movement. And, the strike can evolve with new disruptive
> tactics that force whoever is elected president to address the people’s
> issues.
>
> This election, there is only one left-progressive candidate who will be on
> most ballots across the country, the leading Green candidate Howie Hawkins
> <http://www.HowieHawkins.us>. If his campaign is heard, the agenda of the
> movement <https://howiehawkins.us/platform/> will be elevated. He is
> making progress to achieving federal matching funds,
> <https://howiehawkins.us/statematch/> which would greatly amplify him and
> his strategy to unite the left
> <https://howiehawkins.us/howie-hawkins-wins-socialist-party-usa-nomination-green-candidate-seeks-to-build-left-unity-with-multiple-nominations/>
> will strengthen the challenge against the two parties.  Gloria La Riva
> <https://www.larivapeltier2020.org/> is another left candidate running
> with the Party for Socialism and Liberation and Jeff Mackler
> <https://socialistaction.org/2019/07/06/jeff-mackler-for-u-s-president-in-2020-socialist-action-campaigns-for-socialism/>
> is running with Socialist Action. Both will be on the ballot in some
> states. All three of these candidates are putting forward the agenda of the
> popular movement. We need to build a left party from the grassroots up
> <https://howiehawkins.us/donate-to-get-a-copy-of-the-case-for-an-independent-left-party/>.
> The two Wall Street-funded parties need to be challenged by a party that
> puts the planet and people first.
>
> The Democrats have insulted progressives for years with corporate
> candidates because they think progressive-left voters have nowhere else to
> go. They need to see that voters have an alternative and are withholding
> their votes. They also need to see us building an alternative that is
> aligned with popular movements for economic, racial and environmental
> justice as well as peace.
>
> There are more thought leaders standing up to the Democrats in 2020. This
> includes Krystal Ball of Hill TV’s Rising
> <https://thehill.com/search/query/Krystal%20Ball%20on%20Biden> who has
> repeatedly criticized Biden and has not endorsed him, as has Sander’s press
> secretary Briahna Joy Gray.
> <https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/492995-sanders-former-press-secretary-my-objective-is-to-push-joe-biden-into-being-a> and
> the executive director of Justice Democrats, Alexandra Rojas
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=pX3tOn8IXNw>. Multiple
> new media outlets including the host of the largest podcast in the nation, Joe
> Rogan <https://www.joerogan.com/>, and podcasts with hundreds of
> thousands of listeners like Chapo Trap House
> <http://www.chapotraphouse.com/>, Kyle Kulinski <https://seculartalk.net/>
>  and Jimmy Dore <http://thejimmydoreshow.libsyn.com/> have all criticized
> Biden and said that they are unlikely to support him. The new media reaches
> millions of people and is challenging the old media narrative of pushing
> voters to ‘hold their nose’ and vote for unacceptable candidates.
>
> Saying we ‘will not go along with your charade’ tells the political elites
> that people have minds of their own and will not be manipulated into voting
> for candidates who they know will sell out the people on behalf of the
> wealthy. Combining that with an ongoing campaign of general strikes in 2020
> and beyond will show the political and economic elites that the people are
> taking power. The only path to victory is for people to organize and show
> we are not afraid to take action. It is time to embrace our power, not fear
> it.
>
> ____________________________
>
> Jai Sen
>
> Independent researcher, editor; Senior Fellow at the School of
> International Development and Globalisation Studies at the University of
> Ottawa
>
> jai.sen at cacim.net
>
> Now based in New Delhi, India (+91-98189 11325) and in Ottawa, Canada, on
> unceded and unsurrendered Anishinaabe territory (+1-613-282 2900)
>
> CURRENT / RECENT publications :
>
> Jai Sen, ed, 2018a – *The Movements of Movements, Part 2 : Rethinking Our
> Dance*. Ebook and hard copy available at PM Press
> <http://www.pmpress.org/>
>
> Jai Sen, ed, 2018b – *The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us
> Move ?* (Indian edition). New Delhi : AuthorsUpfront, in collaboration
> with OpenWord and PM Press.  Hard copy available at MOM1AmazonIN
> <https://www.amazon.in/dp/9387280101/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1522884070&sr=8-2&keywords=movements+of+movements+jai+sen>
> , MOM1Flipkart
> <https://www.flipkart.com/the-movements-of-movements/p/itmf3zg7h79ecpgj?pid=9789387280106&lid=LSTBOK9789387280106NBA1CH&marketplace=FLIPKART&srno=s_1_1&otracker=search&fm=SEARCH&iid=ff35b702-e6a8-4423-b014-16c84f6f0092.9789387280106.SEARCH&ppt=Search%20Page>,
> and MOM1AUpFront <http://www.authorsupfront.com/movements.htm>
>
> Jai Sen, ed, 2017 – *The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us
> Move ?*.  New Delhi : OpenWord and Oakland, CA : PM Press.  Ebook and
> hard copy available at PM Press <http://www.pmpress.org/>
>
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