ANDREW MOSS – One of the most pronounced areas of inequity of the pandemic involves frontline essential workers in such fields as public transport, food manufacturing, health care, postal work, retail, and grocery work. There are necessary and feasible ways of mitigating such inequalities in the short-term, but, as with any injustice, achieving short-term mitigations doesn’t come without struggle.
Category: December 2020
The Boss Who Put Everyone on $70K
STEPHANIE HEGARTY – In 2015, the boss of a card payments company in Seattle introduced a $70,000 minimum salary for all of his 120 staff – and personally took a pay cut of $1m. Five years later he’s still on the minimum salary, and says the gamble has paid off.
Demand That Progressives in Congress Force Pelosi’s Hand
FORCETHEVOTE – We demand that every progressive in Congress refuse to vote for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House until she publicly pledges to bring Medicare for all to the floor of the House for a vote in January. Force the Vote!
Peru ‘Coup’: Public Fury Forces Resignation of Interim President Leaving Dangerous Power Vacuum
ALONSO GURMENDI DUNKELBERT – The growing popularity of parliamentary coups in Latin America is frequently overlooked outside of the region, but it is nonetheless an extremely worrying practice. What has happened in Peru should be seen by the international community as a renewed opportunity to examine this new kind of antidemocratic procedure. In the meantime, without a clear consensus on how to move forward and restore stability, there will be difficult months ahead for Peru – and Latin American democracy in general.
Why Progressives Must Not Give Joe Biden a Political Honeymoon
NORMAN SOLOMON – Silence or grumbling acquiescence as the Biden presidency takes shape would amount to a political repetition disorder of the sort that ushered in disastrous political results under the Clinton and Obama administrations. Progressives must now take responsibility and take action. As Nina Turner says, “everything we love is on the line.â€
Choose Democracy’s Whirlwind Effort to Prevent a Coup is a Crash Course in Good Organizing
EILEEN FLANAGAN – Choose Democracy — the whirlwind start-up that trained 10,000 people to prevent an election-related power grab — started with just three folks. Two had full-time jobs and small children. The other was 82 years old. Over the summer of 2020, Daniel Hunter, Jenny Marienau and George Lakey observed alarming signs that Donald Trump might not go quietly if defeated at the polls. As experienced trainers and organizers, they knew that preparation helped people to act powerfully. So they decided to prepare people to resist a potential coup based on nonviolent strategies that have worked in other countries.
How Secular Power is Changing America
JAMES A. HAUGHT – Churchless Americans began soaring in the 1990s and climbed past one-fourth of the population. They tend to hold compassionate social views, making them the biggest faith group in the Democratic Party base.
Announcing “No Honeymoon” for Biden
ROOTSACTION.ORG – On December 16, the progressive activist group RootsAction.org announced the launch of “No Honeymoon†— a sustained campaign that will mobilize grassroots pressure on Joe Biden from across the country. The group’s NoHoneymoon.org website invites activists “to join with RootsAction to push back against the destructive forces of corporate power, racial injustice, extreme income inequality, environmental assault and the military-industrial complex.â€
How Portland Radicalized Me
SASKIA HOSTETLER LIPPY, MD – Today I find myself in an untenable position. I run an online encrypted mental health service to serve the Portland protest movement. This is the story of how I came to use a code name, an encrypted email and apps, and risk myself to help frontline activists.
Is It Time to Re-Envision Our Constitution?
GREG COLERIDGE and JESSICA MUNGER – The electoral crisis, the decline of trust in government, and gross income inequality in the United States may seem like separate issues. But they have a surprising, common origin: the US Constitution, or more accurately, its shortcomings. Indeed, the depth of multiple crises in our nation in 2020 — if not their existence entirely — are all rooted in our flawed Constitution and the judicial decisions that it has facilitated.
Meet the Volunteer Organizing Team Helping Non-Union Workers during the Pandemic
ERIC DIRNBACH – As early as March, there was a clear need to find ways to assist workers in confronting the new unsafe world at work. That’s when the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, or EWOC, was born. A joint project of the Democratic Socialists of America and the United Electrical workers union, EWOC recruited volunteer organizers to talk with workers who wanted to organize around COVID-19 concerns. It created a request form for workers to fill out, which it spread through social media. Inquiries from workers started coming in every day.
Earth to Portland: Dispatch from the Nation’s Problem Child
TOM H. HASTINGS and SASKIA HOSTETLER LIPPY MD – It’s time for us to show the world that Portland is a town of peace warriors. Let’s practice activism that everyone can participate in, including our children. This world is theirs to inherit–let’s make our streets safe for them again.
In India: Largest Organized Strike in Human History
PEOPLE’S DISPATCH – Despite police repression and the COVID-19 pandemic, workers and farmers and their allies across India participated in the pan-India strike action against the recent neoliberal reforms pushed through by the Narendra Modi government.
Yes, It’s Time to Come Home—Now
ANDREW BACEVICH – As Americans learned in Vietnam, the only way to end a war gone wrong is to leave the field of battle. If that describes Trump’s intentions in Afghanistan, then we may finally have some reason to be grateful for his service to our nation. With time, Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell might even come to see the wisdom of doing so.
Some Liberals and Arms-Control Experts Are Cheering for War Profiteers to Be in Biden’s Cabinet
NORMAN SOLOMON – Some foreign-policy specialists with progressive reputations now extol potential Cabinet picks who’ve combined pushing for continuous war and hugely expensive new weapons systems with getting rich as dealmakers for the military-industrial complex.