Many Left organizations are facing serious internal struggles as they work to balance a growing membership on the one hand and a myriad of political challenges on the other. Internal debate and conflict can be healthy, leading to sharper analysis and tighter unity. But conflict is often destructive and leaves us weaker. Indeed, many Left organizations have split or died because members were not…
Archive for category: ORGANIZING UPGRADE
Our political terrain has changed and the Left needs to adapt quickly. Neoliberalism, which came to prominence first within the Republican Party and then achieved dominance in the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton, had been on the defensive since the 2008 Great Recession. Now, even the Financial Times has declared its demise. The Republican Party has shifted from a primarily neoliberal agenda to…
The state of Sunrise Movement, one of the more successful and visible U.S. Left organizations to emerge in the last five years, reflects trends in the broader Left. We hit a high-water mark with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ February 2020 victory in the Nevada caucus. Shortly after, the revenge of the Democratic establishment and the COVID pandemic halted all momentum and put Sunrise into a rear-guard…
The 2020 presidential election saw the clash between two broad fronts: advocates of a white republic hell-bent on impeding democracy versus an array of constituencies and organizations that recognized Trump as a threat to democracy and racial justice, as they understood both. The latter was energized by both Trump’s attacks against people of color in the U.S. and across the globe…
Convergence is a magazine for radical insights. We work with organizers and activists on the frontlines of today’s most pressing struggles to produce articles, videos and podcasts that sharpen our collective practice, lift up stories from the grassroots, and promote strategic debate. Our goal is to create the shared strategy needed to change our society and the world. Our community of readers…
“Thank you essential workers!” by spurekar is licensed under CC BY 2.0
By Samantha Ferraro
I am sitting at my desk on December 18, 2021, although it’s the Saturday before Christmas and I should be at work. The holiday season is one of the most lucrative times of the year for a server, one that many of us had been looking forward to since our post-summer slowdown. But these are not normal times. The Omicron variant has descended upon New York just in time to squash any remaining holiday cheer and financial hope. The book at my restaurant, which just three days ago stood at 120 covers, has seen 114 cancellations in the last 24 hours. Unfortunately, it was my turn to take the cut and say goodbye to what would have been a $400 night.
The shift has been rapid, ruthless, and unexpected in a city that has been doing all it could to stave off this disease. Catching COVID-19 feels all but inevitable at this point, yet getting sick has dropped to the bottom of my coworkers’ and my list of concerns. As we stare down three months of winter, with no relief in sight we wonder, what is to become of us? How can a nation so rich leave so many out in the cold? And as the industry begs for guidance, will anyone finally seize the opportunity to create an equitable plan forward?
Traditionally, restaurant workers have been perceived as difficult to organize. While the industry employs more than 15 million people, the bulk of workers are not concentrated in large facilities. This could make cultivating a sense of collective consciousness and militancy, a vital factor during the height of labor’s power in the 1940s and ‘50s, more difficult.
‘Yet the conditions the industry continues to suffer due to COVID-19 have provided us with a sense of collectivity that may otherwise have remained inconceivable.’
Another stigma tied to restaurant organizing stems from the belief that employment within the sector has historically been transient—that restaurants offered temporary jobs for teenagers and young adults or places to land for those needing income in between “adequate” employment.
Just two years ago, I would have described myself as one of those temporary workers, caught up in the industry while I “figured out my life.” I knew restaurant employment was precarious and that I could be replaced at any moment, but I felt empowered by the fact that my employer was replaceable too.
All that changed in March 2020. When the world shut down overnight, I felt a sense of fear and neglect that I had never known before. The privilege I held as a white woman in the U.S. suddenly meant a lot less. Our futures all relied on the same dilapidated unemployment website, while fears of probable infection from our final week of exposure only compounded our shared anxieties.
ANGER TRUMPED FEAR
As quarantine went on and we were called back to work that summer, frustration and anger overtook fear as we all realized we were about to be sacrificed for the good of the economy.
Thrust back onto the front lines, sans health insurance, hazard pay, proper personal protective equipment or vaccines, we felt like lab rats in a dangerous experiment.
No one was clapping for us at 7 pm or advocating for us in Congress. And why should they? We were not saving lives—just sacrificing our own. There was a time when we were the only people in New York City that it was legal to speak to without a mask. We were getting sick and being let go for missing shifts. Our sole purpose was to bring a sense of normalcy to those who had the luxury of working from home. We became invisible behind our masks. A truly disposable workforce.
As the summer continued, I witnessed class distinction in a way I never had before. Most customers at my Prospect Heights restaurant were presumably “liberal”-leaning Democrats, yet they did not have any problem breaking the bare minimum COVID protocols that had been put in place to keep waitstaff safe.
We were what Karl Marx called the “class of laborers, who live(d) only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital.” We were selling ourselves like commodities. We moved about the restaurant in one body, PPE masking our humanity. Online menus and electronic ordering replaced our skills and the guests made sure to reflect this shift in our tips. But collectively, our eyes were opened. Our community grew to include waitstaff from other restaurants, commiserating over our current conditions.
SOLIDARITY GROWS
Engaging with past coworkers, we compared how other establishments were handling the crisis. Instagram became an important space to watch for engaging in actions, seeking relief and connecting with organizations that sought legislative measures for our health, safety, and welfare. We helped each other with unemployment claims and rent payments. We brought food and medicine to those who got sick, and offered up our shifts to them when they returned. We were no longer artists, actors, cooks, and freelancers: we were all restaurant workers, trying to survive.
Last winter, many employees were still eligible for enhanced unemployment benefits. As unvaccinated workers, we hoped each day for a shutdown to keep us safe until preventative medical options became available. Quitting was not an option as it meant the possibility of losing your unemployment in the event of a shutdown. Back then we were trapped in dangerous jobs, our health and economic status held in the hands of our employers and the government.
While this current turn of events feels eerily similar, much has changed. For one, we know more about the virus and have all met vaccination requirements demanded of us by the law. There does not seem to be any relief anticipated for the industry, and as it stands now, many of us have already run out our legal amount of unemployment due to last winter’s shutdowns. Most of us have no benefits tied to our jobs. We are making no money with the sudden drop in business, and some of my coworkers have begun to get audited on their unemployment claims from 2020.
‘WE ARE READY TO WALK OUT’
Omicron has reinvigorated our resolve to change. We are ready to fight, but we need leadership and education. The transient nature of the industry could be looked at as a positive condition of our employment, one that can be harnessed by the right people to generate huge actions throughout neighborhoods, cities, and states. With the shift to online communication, the opportunities to connect are more accessible and far-reaching than ever before.
My co-workers and I didn’t know about the rights guaranteed to us under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Yet we are now desperate for information to protect ourselves so we can seize this momentum by activating strikes, with leaders who are able to control the narrative and direct mass actions across the city and the whole country.
LEARNING FROM THE CIVIL RIGHTS TRADITION
In the summer of 2020, we saw what people were capable of when desperation overcame fear. The Black Lives Matter movement shook us out of our COVID paranoia. We poured onto the streets, walked out of our jobs, and stood tall against armored tanks and the National Guard, tear gas and rubber bullets. In fact, I was at work when I witnessed the police run over protestors on Flatbush Avenue, a surreal moment played on national news, with my restaurant right in the background.
The racial justice uprisings led us to think about the power of worker organizing that drew on the successes of the Civil Rights Movement, on tactics undertaken by those not represented by traditional methods nor supported by institutional law. Among these: the Memphis sanitation strike of 1968, and the organizing efforts of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM). Members of DRUM took matters into their own hands, circumnavigating the union and flexing their majority by threatening to shut down production if over 3,000 Black workers refused to work. Restaurant workers have power in numbers, but we need connections across many workplaces if we are going to have a chance of inciting impactful action.
RESTRUCTURING OUR INDUSTRY
COVID-19 has only exacerbated longstanding cracks in the hospitality industry. We understand that the tipped wage system is steeped in racism, and unviable in the face of industry-wide disasters such as the pandemic. It is also responsible for the vast inequity in compensation between the front and back of the house—the tipped workers who interact directly with the public, and the regular wage workers like dishwashers and cooks who do not.
Many “progressive” restauranteurs have moved to eliminate tipping all together, a move that may seem noble and selfless to the public, who don’t understand the context of the industry. Yet moving to an hourly wage system has the potential to cut many front-of-house employees’ incomes in half, forcing them to take on overtime to be able to pay for necessities such as rent and food. The repercussions would be great; the restructuring of the industry is complicated and the narrative around it is currently being controlled by the wrong people. If those at the top are sincere about fixing these disparities, they must include engagement from the bottom to establish fair, enduring solutions.
Many restaurant workers are up for the challenge and ready to collaborate. Teamwork comes instinctively to workers who pool tips, a system that forces us to labor collectively to ensure a high tip average, which we then split equitably at the end of the shift.
Furthermore, today’s workers are notably the most educated generation to enter the workforce. We are all too aware of our lack of autonomy and the ever-growing wealth gap capitalism has created. Technology allows us to see how well workers in other countries can be treated, and how the U.S. has provided its citizens with far less pandemic support.
BEYOND THE SHOP FLOOR
Our demands stretch beyond the shop floor because we have been deprived of basic human rights: healthcare, housing, education, and food. At the restaurant, we cannot even demand change from our employers, who have themselves been brought to their knees by COVID-19. They too have joined our chants for widespread structural change in the industry. They are hemorrhaging money in an industry with historically razor-thin margins. They can barely afford to keep the heaters running outside let alone provide us with higher wages.
Customers too are unsure of what to do. Should they go out and support their neighborhood restaurants, or does that contribute to the spread of disease? Many are beginning to question their role as the true employers of tipped wage workers.
Last night, my manager walked up to me and said, “I’m sorry, Sam. I don’t think we’re going to need you tomorrow…What are we going to do? What are we supposed to do?” A positive, upbeat guy in his late twenties who rarely shows his emotions, he looked at me like he was about to break down right there at the end of the bar, in the middle of service.
He then told me he had not received his booster yet, because for the last two months he had been experiencing concerning swelling in the glands under his arms. His fear was palpable as he explained to me how he wanted to get it checked out before receiving another vaccine dose, but he did not have health insurance. Now, without his booster, he found himself compromised in the face of Omicron, a strain that has infected half our vaccinated staff in the last week. This is where we are in the restaurant industry. This is where we are in America. Not even our bosses are able to obtain an acceptable quality of life.
Postscript: Organizing in the Restaurant Industry
In 2016, the singing servers at Ellen’s Stardust Diner in New York City decided to unionize as Stardust Family United, a branch of the Industrial Workers of the World. The restaurant agreed to recognize the union more than a year later, rather than face trial for around 19 violations of labor law. Photo from Stardust Family United.
By Stephanie Luce
The restaurant industry in the U.S. has historically had low rates of unionization, but there are exceptions. The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union represented waitresses in cities around the country for many decades, but due to union-busting, the spread of national restaurant chains and internal differences over strategy, restaurant union density fell drastically in the 1970s and ‘80s. Still, some restaurants remain unionized today, including high-end establishments like the Rainbow Room, which is represented by the Hotel Trades Council in New York City. In 2016 workers at Ellen’s Stardust Diner in New York City organized with the Industrial Workers of the World, and workers helped each other survive the pandemic. And while not a restaurant, the recent union victories at Starbucks suggests that food service industry workers can still successfully unionize, even at a large corporation.
Workers have also built workers centers to support restaurant industry employees. One of the first workers centers, Chinese Staff and Workers Association, was formed in 1979 by restaurant workers in New York City. They have fought for unpaid back wages, fought gentrification in Chinatown, and helped workers at the Silver Palace restaurant form an independent union.
The Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) was founded after 9/11 to help those workers impacted by the tragedy. The organization is now national and has lobbied for a range of legislation that would improve conditions for workers. They have conducted research showing pervasive sexual harassment in the industry and subsequently worked with legislators to introduce legislation penalizing harassment. They have also been at the forefront of working to eliminate the tipped wage system, which grew out of racist origins and has discriminatory impacts even today.
ROC has worked with some restaurant owners to improve working conditions. For example, Danny Meyer, one of the country’s best-known restaurateurs at the helm of Union Square Hospitality Group, attempted to eliminate tipping back in 2015. But as Samantha Ferraro notes, many seasoned servers would never agree to work for the no-tip models, preferring a lower base pay which is padded by tips accounting for an additional $60+ per hour. And in either model, restaurant workers depend on customers to make a living. This became a serious problem during the pandemic when the number of customers dropped dramatically. Danny Meyer suspended the no-tip practice in his restaurants in July 2020, reasoning, “We don’t know how often people will be eating out, we don’t know what they are willing to pay…We do know that guests want to tip generously right now.”
Even before the pandemic the restaurant industry was vulnerable to booms and busts, completely dependent on customer spending. One way to smooth out the risks for workers (and small restaurant owners) would be a universal basic income (UBI). Several countries and cities have tried out versions of the UBI, including a recent modified effort in Stockton, California. Most research finds the UBI has positive impacts on workers’ well-being, including reducing income instability and poverty, as well as decreasing anxiety and depression.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has a national Restaurant Organizing Project that has helped support unemployed restaurant workers throughout the pandemic. The aim is to organize workers in the industry to reshape it in the long run.
The post Dying to Serve? A Restaurant Worker’s Plea for Organizing appeared first on Organizing Upgrade.
Valencia Gunder, national organizing lead for the Red, Black and Green New Deal
Montague Simmons Interviews Valencia Gunder
The Movement for Black Lives is launching its Red, Black and Green New Deal (RBGND) initiative with a virtual National Black Climate Summit Tuesday, May 11. Drawing on a movement legacy that stretches from the civil rights movement through environmental justice organizing and the more recent climate justice work, the RBGND will be a many-sided, Black-centered initiative. It is “designed to educate, catalyze, and empower Black people to take actions that mitigate the impact of the climate crisis on our families and our communities.”
RBGND National Organizing Lead Valencia Gunder spoke with host Montague Simmons on the April 21 episode of Frontline Dispatches. Gunder co-founded the Smile Trust Inc., formerly known as Make the Homeless Smile Miami/Atlanta, and The Black Collective, and has organized mass grassroots disaster relief efforts for Black communities along the Gulf Coast and in the Caribbean. A returning citizen, she also led in the 2018 effort to pass Amendment 4, which restored voting rights to 1.4 million Floridians. This is an excerpt of her comments to Simmons.
I got into disasters through climate work, working here locally. I always quote my grandfather. Many years ago, when I was a child, he used to say, “They’re going to come take Miami. They’re going to take Liberty City, because it doesn’t flood.” And I’m like, “Grandaddy, nobody want Liberty City,” and I left for college and I came back and they wanted it, and they’ve been taking it ever since. And I learned about sea level rise, and elevation, and sunny day flooding. And I understand about how it was affecting our housing market, how it was pushing folks out of communities, how they use “climate gentrification” after storms to do land grabs. We see that in Black communities, under-resourced communities, all the time.
Ever since then I’ve known we need to save the earth, and if we save Black people, we save everybody. We’re going to be in a new climate reality, if we like it or not. And I wanted to learn as much as possible, to share as much as possible, to educate as many people as possible.
And not just educate, but create alternative systems, grassroots disaster relief models for us to be able to help each other, ‘cause that’s what we do anyway. We are our own first responders. If you look at under-resourced communities, that’s what you see every time there’s a disaster. Neighbors helping neighbors. Community helping community. The churches open the doors. That’s the work, that’s the organizing. No big institution can serve your community better than you. We can get it done.
WE ARE THE FACE OF DISASTER – AND OF THE SOLUTION
There’d be no environmental justice movement without the civil rights movement. We want to give a shout out to our ancestors who’ve been doing this hard work for a long time, and our elders who still be holding this work, land sovereignty work, food justice work, fighting big oil companies, fighting against big agriculture. This has been aligned with our Black liberation work since we’ve been doing Black liberation work. It’s always been a part of our framework. … M4BL fights for Black lives. We’re not going to stand back with anything that’s harming Black people. If that’s climate injustice, if that’s environmental injustice, if that’s patriarchy, we’re standing up against it. If your clean energy includes black death, it’s no solution for us.
Climate is a threat multiplier. Communities already have stressors because of capitalism and white supremacy and patriarchy. People don’t have access to a lot of food, to safe housing, educational opportunities, jobs, water, breathable air. Then a shock hits. A shock is a hurricane, a wildfire, an uprising. An uprising is a disaster because of the government responding and creating a disaster. Usually the people who are already oppressed, marginalized, or don’t have what they need struggle even more when a shock hits them…. Yes, we are the face of disaster, but we also are the face of the solution.
A lot of times in climate spaces, in environmental justice spaces, Black folks, under-resourced populations, are left out of the conversations, or they’re tokenized, solutions are not centered, or parts of movement accept false solutions that still lead to Black deaths.
When we say “RBG” we’re talking about Pan Africanism. We want folks to know we’re centering our ancestor Marcus Garvey, uplifting our flag as a people.
NO ‘GREEN’ SOLUTIONS THAT COST BLACK LIVES
The Red, Black and Green New Deal is a national initiative that uses bottom-up organizing, political education, and direct action organizing to advance a radical Black climate agenda….and solutions that center Black people. This is not just for the United States. This is a global vision for our brothers and sisters across the diaspora…
Bottom up organizing looks like all the Black folk across the country who do climate and environmental justice work…. It also looks like working with local organizations and statewide organizations, coming together to build climate solutions locally. … We can’t do nothing without our communities. Without our people who have community gardens, our brothers and sisters in Flint and Detroit fighting to get water, in Cali fighting wildfires, to our folks in the Gulf South, to our folks up in New York. We need everybody. Our folks in the Midwest who deal with the flooding from the Mississippi River. …
When we say we’re not going to deal with false solutions, it’s hey, we’re going to fine this oil company, and they’re going to put money into schools, but they still get to burn all this stuff into our air, and we still have to breathe it in, and we’re going to lose Black lives. We’re not doing that. No matter how many jobs…We can create jobs and solutions that aren’t harmful to our people. Those fines aren’t solutions.
We want to divest from big oil companies, divest from big coal-burning companies, divest from fracking that’s messing up our water system, from pipelines. Also we want to invest that into the health of our communities, to amazing jobs that do not harm our communities and the employees. And we want to re-invest. Our reparations is “give us the space, the resources and the time to build a sustainable Black future.”
To register for the May 11 National Black Climate Summit or get more information on the Red, Black and Green New Deal, click here.
The post We Need the Red, Black and Green New Deal appeared first on Organizing Upgrade.
On a day that saw Minnesota break a record high of 8,703 COVID cases, far-right conspiracy theorists QAnon and “Stop The Steal” followers stood maskless shoulder to shoulder outside the Minnesota State Capitol. Speakers led the crowd in bizarre COVID/election chants. Taken in St. Paul, MN, Nov. 14, 2020. Photo by Chad Davis, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0
By Max Elbaum
Sun Tzu’s famous dictum about how to prevail in war applies to politics too. We have to know our enemy and know ourselves.
For the know-our-enemy part, understanding the underlying system we are up against is essential. But it is only a starting point. On the terrain of politics, partisans of social justice do not fight capitalism as such. Rather, we contend with specific political actors who have agendas different from ours. First and foremost, we square off against whatever specific bloc constitutes the biggest obstacle to winning the democratic and socio-economic gains that are the flashpoints of contention in any given period.
To “know” that enemy, we need to grasp its essential character, its strengths, and its vulnerabilities.
That translates today into getting the clearest possible picture of the racist and authoritarian coalition that has “Make America Great Again” emblazoned on its banner.
“THE GOP IS A PARTY-FOR-DICTATORSHIP”
The MAGA bloc has many features, but its core is identified in a recent article by Bill Fletcher, Jr:
The MAGA movement has captured the Republican Party and turned it “from being a hard right-wing party to becoming a party-for-dictatorship.”
Today’s GOP disdains democracy and aims to impose long-term rule by a minority of the population. Republicans’ unanimous support for voter suppression is the clearest example. As the Washington Post put it:
“The GOP’s national push to enact hundreds of new election restrictions could strain every available method of voting for tens of millions of Americans, potentially amounting to the most sweeping contraction of ballot access in the United States since the end of Reconstruction, when Southern states curtailed the voting rights of formerly enslaved Black men.”
The classic authoritarian weapon, the Big Lie, fuels the GOP’s campaign to prevent millions from voting. Despite copious evidence to the contrary, 60% of Republicans say the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. And as Trump continues to push this fictional justification for voter suppression, 81% of Republicans maintain a favorable opinion of him, and the GOP Senate leadership gave him their newly created Champion of Freedom Award.
MAGA MANTRA: THE “GREAT REPLACEMENT”
The passionate loyalty to facts-be-damned thinking in the core of the MAGA bloc is rooted in racism. Even the racist bullhorns that replaced earlier dog whistles are no longer enough for top MAGA spokespeople: Fox News star Tucker Carlson, whose name has been floated as a possible Trump-backed 2024 presidential candidate, now overtly links the curtailment of voting rights with the “Great Replacement” theory.
According to Carlson, “the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.”
Carlson’s remarks were too much even for groups as backward as the Anti-Defamation League. ADL head Joseph Greenblatt noted the Replacement Theory’s roots in the fever swamps of racist and anti-Semitic hate-mongers and called for Carlson’s resignation. Fox News defended Carlson, Republican leaders stayed silent, and Media Matters reports that since Carlson opened the door the Replacement Theory is “all over” Fox News.
WHO IS A “REAL AMERICAN”?
The GOP’s transformation into a party of racist authoritarianism did not start with Donald Trump. It’s been underway since the backlash against the Civil Rights gains of the 1960s began five decades ago. But the Great Recession following the 2008 financial crisis and the way the election of the first Black President catapulted demographic change onto the consciousness of racially anxious whites created a tipping point.
Trump’s succeeded because he was willing to burst through previous “norms” and make sentiments that had been cultivated among Republicans for decades the centerpiece of his drive for power. Those sentiments – which define who is a “real American” in a very particular way – are rooted in how white supremacy was structured into U.S. society from its inception. Finian O’Toole in the New York Review of Books explains:
“It is not wrong to call the allegations of a rigged election the “big lie” of Trumpism…But it’s a lie that was already there.… it is both old and mass-produced, made by fusing the idea of entitlement to privilege – which is being stolen from white Americans by traitors, Blacks, immigrants, and socialists – with the absolute distinction between real and unreal Americans. The concern is not, at heart, that there are bogus votes, but that there are bogus voters, that much of the U.S. is inhabited by people who are, politically speaking, counterfeit citizens.”
MAGA CORE: MIDDLE- AND UPPER-CLASS WHITES
Despite endless punditry about Trump’s base in the working class, the forces driving the Trumpist project are lar predominantly from the middle and upper classes. A cohort of right-wing billionaires and chieftains in the fossil fuel industry have bankrolled Trumpism’s ascent from the Tea Party through “Birtherism” to the presidency. The owners and leading figures in the right-wing media machine (Fox News, One America News Network, Newsmax, Sinclair Broadcasting, Talk Radio) are swimming in dollars. The social layer that is most committed to turning out when their cult leader issues the call is revealed by a recent study of the January 6 “insurrectionists”:
“Most of the people who took part in the assault came from places… that were awash in fears that the rights of minorities and immigrants were crowding out the rights of white people in American politics and culture… You see a common pattern in the Capitol insurrectionists. They are mainly middle-class to upper-middle-class whites who are worried that, as social changes occur around them, they will see a decline in their status in the future.’”
Large numbers of workers who are white also have gathered under the Trumpist banner. All too many have embraced its most racist and conspiracy-mongering aspects. And many others are vulnerable to endlessly repeated GOP arguments. But except in the rhetoric used by some of its pitchmen, MAGA is not a movement driven by a workers’ upsurge from below.
A RIGGED SYSTEM
The “survival-of-white-Christian-America-is-at-stake” belief that permeates today’s Republican Party is a powerful force. And it doesn’t act only in the electoral arena. The MAGA core has an armed wing: a combination of non-state militias and members of police forces, ICE, and the military under its influence. Throughout U.S. history, denying the vote to people of color and repression via state and non-state violence has been the combination of choice for defenders of white supremacy and capitalism.
But for the next four years and likely longer, the outcome of electoral battle will determine whether the country descends into dictatorship or takes a path toward multiracial democracy and economic transformation.
The electoral terrain we are forced to fight on is rigged in the GOP’s favor. The structure of both the Electoral College and the Senate favors small-population states that are overwhelmingly white. The Electoral College skew allowed Trump to win in 2016 despite losing the popular vote by three million. If in 2020 fewer than 100,000 votes had switched columns in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin, Trump would have won re-election despite losing the popular vote by double that amount. The Senate is split 50-50 but the 50 Republican senators represent 41 million fewer people than the 50 Democratic senators.
A federal system that gives considerable power to state governments likewise favors the GOP. Gerrymandering gives the GOP extra power in a society where Democratic and progressive voters are concentrated in compact urban areas while rural and exurban areas are largely Republican. This increases GOP representation in the House and tilts state legislatures in their direction. The result is today’s epidemic of state level attacks on voting rights and moves to criminalize protest movements of all types.
STILL NOT ENOUGH FOR GOP TO WIN
But even in a system rigged in their favor, the MAGA core falls short of what it takes to ensure dominance through electoral means. With only 35-40% of the electorate, they need to win additional constituencies to vote their way. The GOP leadership has all but given up on gaining a popular majority nationwide. But they do aim to win enough support from wavering sectors that – combined with suppressing the votes of others – can assure them control of every branch of the federal government.
Key GOP operatives use sophisticated means and messaging to accomplish this goal.
Latino voters have long been a particular target. Libre, an arm of the Koch brothers’ “Americans for Prosperity” effort, has been working for a decade to bring Latino voters into the Republican column. Well-funded, with an extensive field operation and systematic cultivation of small business owners and churchgoers, Libre claims credit for Trump’s better-than-(some)-expected showing among Latinos in 2020, especially in Texas and Florida.
Methodical work in specific geographic areas – impoverished rural communities, “rust-belt” cities – is also a GOP staple. Where once-strong trade unions or Democratic Party organizations have atrophied or disappeared, the GOP has moved in. For many residents, mainly but not only whites, mega-churches linked via their ministers to right-wing politics are the only civic organizations available. Voting for the GOP is not an on-ramp requirement, but after being in the fold for some time it can simply become another feature of belonging to that community.
MAGA strategists and media stars have mastered the art of spreading disinformation and fanning people’s fears. Niche efforts are aimed at Black men saying that immigrants are taking their jobs. Campaigns are focused on specific Asian or Latino nationalities casting the GOP as their defenders against a repeat of what were, for some, traumatic many feel were oppressive experiences under left-led governments.
The latter build on decades of messaging from both major parties that equates socialism and communism with dictatorship. The current campaign to demonize China is only the latest iteration of this longstanding pattern. Bernie Sanders’ two campaigns dented the power of that prejudice somewhat. But there remain millions of Americans of all races and nationalities who support specific programs advocated by the left but still regard socialists as dangerous and power-hungry.
GOP leaders also excel at coordinating their tactics in Congress with their long-range drive for political power: Obstruct every step that might benefit working and poor people; starve and undermine government programs and services that do anything for the public good; and then use the failures of those under-resourced programs to promote privatization and demonize Democrats or progressives who support social programs. It is also the GOP’s lockstep commitment to obstructing everything that gives undue leverage to the most backward Democratic congresspeople (such as Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema), yielding the GOP both policy and political gains.
CHINKS IN THE GOP ARMOR
For every MAGA move to expand their base, though, there is a corresponding vulnerability.
There is a tension between supplying enough racist red meat to keep the diehard MAGA core happy and keeping needed sectors of peoples of color in the GOP tent.
It is risky to rely on demonizing the Biden administration to win votes when a significant proportion of the GOP base supports its legislative initiatives. (About 40% of Republicans supported the American Rescue Plan.)
A party that places its biggest electoral bet on a shrinking demographic sector (older white people) while giving less attention to growing sectors of the population and to youth tends to be on unstable footing for the medium and long run.
Obstructing every step that might give even a small measure of economic benefit to working and poor people while fighting for tax cuts for rich people is not easily squared with Republicans’ current attempt to rebrand themselves as the party of working-class America. U.S. history includes moments when the combination of hardship and contact with organizers who work for the liberation of all has spurred many whites to question pre-existing prejudices and turn in the direction of cross-racial solidarity. The number of people today grappling with how to repeat them with even greater strength and durability is larger than at any time since the 1960s.
KNOW OURSELVES
Developing a battle plan to neutralize the MAGA movement’s strengths and take advantage of their weaknesses – and then successfully implementing it – is a big challenge. It is further complicated by the fact that among those opposed to Trumpism, the progressive and left forces are only one contingent, and not (yet) the strongest one at that. To formulate the outline of a winning strategy, therefore, requires an assessment of the balance of forces among those who are fighting authoritarianism as well as between the “party-for-dictatorship” and all those against it.
So the next installment of this column will take a look at ourselves.
The post Key to Strategy #1: Know Your Enemy appeared first on Organizing Upgrade.
Mutual aid builds the collective people power we need to take on the state
But it’s not a substitute for organizing