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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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If progressives can come up with messaging that wins elections, great. So far the messaging appeals to a fraction of the voting public, and has zero working strategy for how to effectively deal with the right coopting, twisting and ridiculing the progressive agenda. Inequality is growing faster than ever for people of all skin colors, and yet progressives have essentially stopped giving a fuck about labor and switched over to race. I'm not saying that racism isn't a problem in this country, I'm saying that the research shows that you get a SHIT TON more support if you don't tie the messaging of a social policy to a particular race. I'm worried that in the (perhaps distant) future, progressives challenging racism, examining race as a social construct, etc. will have the perverse effect of reifying and reinforcing race and othering.
I sure did hear a lot of neo-lib politicians in my area saying that same thing when there was a push for Medicare For All. "It's confusing and nobody knows what it means" is what some centrist dem congress people kept saying where I'm from. A few years on, now that the steam has been tapped and those same politicians are putting "healthcare for all" in their literature. The co-option against progressive policy is coming from inside the party and old railway Joe (not a progressive) outlawed a strike for... the railway workers.
Also, not seeing this abandoning of labor to focus on race you speak of. People flooding the streets over police murdering POC isn't a political maneuver. Could you lay out where your seeing this focus on race and not labor from progressives?
I'm not talking about Biden, I'm talking about progressives. I am not talking about people protesting racist corrupt murderous pigs. Literally every progressive I know is using race as the primary critical lens they use for seeing the world. Folks give lip-service to instersectionality, but for the life of me, the discourse is being defined by the right. The right acts racist and persecutes LGBTQI+ folks, so those issues end up taking up all of the air in the room to the expense of everything else. A couple of years ago, I was at a social justice exchange in a poor white area, and the subject was food deserts in the area. I got shut down because I was steadfast in asserting that the reason that there were food deserts in the area had next to nothing to do with race, and everything to do with economic inequality and rural underinvestment.
Oh, I guess I'm just not hearing those same things where I'm at. Are these progressives POC?
I'm in the mid-South. The two leaders were, most everyone else was white. But honestly, it wouldn't have made a difference. When you've got white supremacist groups arguing for socialism (for white people), and progressives arguing for preferential treatment for POC to the extreme that it comes off as punitive to a majority of non-POC folks, sure seems like a centrist position is social protections and support for poor people, regardless of race.
TLDR; if we don't work toward solutions to racial justice before socioeconomic justice, the power and capital likely won't exist to follow through with the former
So, I can't say for sure but what I think you've ran into is something that I heard best explained by a podcast once (I think it was one of Robert Evans). My guess is that what you encountered was organizers trying to take account for the systematic imbalance of power that is inherent within the US. Often times it goes unseen by many of us that can't see it because it doesn't effect us in the same way. We can see those problems of poverty and lack of support but then what about the added struggle of race, gender, disability? Those things added on top create deeper and different issues that we can't account for, because we can't know them. It's the argument that to rid society of these myriad issues we must take the privilege we have and can't see and use it to back POC to fight the problems that they see.
I think I know where you're coming from now, and though I've been in spaces where that happened, I've never seen issue in it because I believe in the premise. I've known multiple persons who did run into situations and feel like their views or voice were being marginalized from it though. I wasn't there for their experience but I mostly think it was a misunderstanding on their part though and they couldn't move past their ideas being of less importance/priority. I think this can play out in ways that can be counterproductive from time to time, but also that set backs that come from it are eventually learned from and worthwhile.
It's hard knowing how you want to organize and feeling like the roadmap is right in front if we could just come together and focus a part of the problem. There's a risk that we still leave others behind though if we don't address their issues before our own. People and movements lose interest once their needs and goals are met and if we want to pull off the big move forward we have to do it all together.
Am I closer to talking about what you were now?
The mental convolutions required to turn a rural food desert issue into a racial justice issue are extreme—it is this kind of thing that absolutely alienates good people who aren’t willing to say there are five lights when there are clearly only four. Its fucking purity politics and it’s vastly more harmful than helpful.
well regardless, sorry that happened to you
Everything you just said is bullshit. The reason progressives don’t do well is corporate media does not want them to.
Stop watching msnbc fox cnn npr and many others and it becomes completely obvious.
I watch precisely zero of my news. I read. More importantly, I am in the orbit of grassroots organizers and social justice folks, and at least in my location, they are great at talking to each other but not so great at connecting their messaging with average people.