Common Dreams | Progressives Are Adapting to the Activist Surge Common Dreams Progressive movement leaders described this period following Trump's election as an extreme mobilization and a moment when civil disobedience went mainstream. Donations and memberships surged among left organizations, which are now grappling ... |
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Progressives Are Adapting to the Activist Surge - Common Dreams
After the election, there was a lot of talk about liberal bubbles, this idea that those of us on the coasts of America were living lives far removed fromalt-right loyalists in the countrys South and Midwest. But if theres anything we should keep in mind in the wake of the hatred in Charlottesville on Saturday, its that there are bubbles within the bubbles.
Many white people reacted to the Unite the Right rally with shock and confusion, with hashtags like #ThisIsNotUs.For people of color, what happened this weekend was disheartening but by no means surprising.
For many of us, it doesnt take an overt performance of white supremacy to know that white supremacy is woven deeply into the tapestry of this country. A gathering of angry white men carrying tiki torches is a violent act no different, indeed very much the same, as the angry white man who hurled racist insults and then killed two men on a train in Portland in May.
Right now, there are Confederate flags that are proudly and freely displayed on lawns and t-shirts and on the bumpers of cars by people who live in towns just hours away from Manhattan. Indeed, there are over 700 Confederate monuments across the United States, including in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Iowa.
Right now, black and white children in cities like New York, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles are living de facto segregated lives, going to segregated schoolswith strikingly different resources, support, and expectations for their futures.
Right now,there are 917 hate groups currently operating in the U.S., including active white supremacy groups in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and California.
The hatred that fueled the rally fuels all of these different realities of racism in America.
The trap we (white people especially) must not fall into is one of our own design: the sense of complacency that says this problem of racism is only a symptom of the South, only a symptom of a certain kind of person. Its convenient when you can think of racism as something close enough to look on with disgust, horror and smug moral superiority, but far enough to not feel responsible for it.
Its harder when you must acknowledge that white supremacy is not on some far off distant planet called the South, that it indeed is all around you, and that while you may not be a white supremacist, you benefit from white supremacy.
This is not a personal attack. It's reality.
You benefit from white supremacy in a historical, political and social context. You benefit by generally escaping the stereotyping and generalizations that people of color do, especially in interactions with the law, in the workplace, and in the media. You benefit from access to educational and economic resources that people of color rarely do. You benefit from rarely having to think about race, because "white" has long been positioned as the default in society.
As Teen Vogue writer Lauren Duca explained on Monday, "Getting a job because your name is Geoff is not the same thing as joining the KKK, but that privilege is precisely the thing white supremacists were working to reassert in Charlottesville."
These are things that you must reckon with, and that no person of color should have to walk you through at this point. For some people, in order to avoid grappling with the complexity of their complicity, they lash out -- they grab torches and march against being "replaced."
But its in acknowledging this inconvenience that things may actually begin to change.White people who consider themselves allies must reckon with is the fact that what happened at UVA is just one, ugly side to the multi-faceted racism in this country.
See the rest here:
The Myth About Racism White Progressives Shouldn't Fall For - HuffPost
Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth WarrenWarren asks where bank CEOs stand on customers' ability to join class action suits Labor Department seeks delay of Obama investment adviser rule Obama donors not committing to Biden MORE (D-Mass.)on Saturday pushed her party toward the left.
The potential2020 presidential candidatedeclared in a speech that progressive liberals not only can restore the Democratic Party from its disorderlystate, but that they currently control its direction, The New York Times reported.
If were going to be the people who lead the Democratic Party back from the wilderness and lead our country out of this dark time, then we cant waste energy arguing about whose issue matters more or who in our alliance should be voted off the island, Warren told the crowd at the annualNetroots Nation meeting, which was reportedly received with applause.
We are not a wing of todays Democratic Party. We are the heart and soul of todays Democratic Party, she added.
TheDemocratic Partyisnt going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill, Warren said. It is not going to happen.
While Warrendid not explicitly name former President Bill ClintonBill ClintonPenalties assessed by EPA decline under Trump, study finds Bill and Hillary Clinton to take questions at joint Dallas appearance Monica Lewinsky responds to Scaramucci calling New Yorker reporter 'the Linda Tripp of 2017' MORE, she went after the measures passed in his administration that the left wing of the party largely despises, reassuring the crowd not to fear a shift back toward the middle, as Clinton had done in the 1990s.
Warren supported and stumped for Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonJudge orders new search for Hillary Clinton's Benghazi emails Chance the Rapper: 'I have a bigger voice than Donald Trump' Bill and Hillary Clinton to take questions at joint Dallas appearance MORE as the Democratic nominee in the 2016 presidential campaign. However, she was one of the last Senate Democrats to announce their endorsement during the bruising primary process she waited until June.
Warren's speech at the conference, which is viewed as a testing ground for prospective presidential candidates, further fuelsbuzz that Warren plans to run for president in 2020.
The Times reported that the Massachusetts lawmaker madelittle attempt to dismiss the bid speculation.
Her speech comes amid divides within the Democratic Party. Warren alsourged the liberal crowd not to push others out of the party's movement.
She made similar comments during a recent interparty dispute over whether Democrats can disagree on their stance onabortion.
"I am strongly pro-choice. I am strongly pro-choice, and I will fight," Warren told The Huffington Post. "But that's not how everyone in the party feels."
Go here to see the original:
Warren: Liberals will 'lead the Democratic Party back from the wilderness' - The Hill
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From one perspective, Elon Musk is liberals' dream entrepreneur. He's a science nerd and a romantic visionary in the progressive firmament of California. He's the man who not only brought electric cars back from the dead, but made them cool. Tesla, the car company Musk founded, is gearing up for mass-production of a $35,000 model, which hopes to bring his vision for a climate-change-fighting car to the masses.
But some of Musk's employees tell a different story.
Recent reports in The Daily Beast and The Guardian tell of workers enduring tough conditions, long hours, and frequent injuries in Tesla's famous plant in Fremont, California. Since 2014, ambulances reportedly rushed there over 100 times to deal with "fainting spells, dizziness, seizures, abnormal breathing, and chest pains, according to incident reports obtained by The Guardian. Hundreds more were called for injuries and other medical issues." Unsurprisingly, some of these same workers are pushing to unionize Tesla's workforce, with the support of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) union.
Musk and Tesla's management have staunchly resisted and criticized that idea.
The law forbids employers from directly threatening or retaliating against employees for supporting a union drive. But owners and management are still perfectly free to express their opinions to workers. Given the resources they wield and their control over the workplace floor as a social space where workers talk to each other this anti-union messaging can still have pretty overwhelming force. "Every time we go out there and try to hand out flyers, security comes and talks to us for 20 to 30 minutes, takes our badges, makes sure we're employees of the factory," Alan Ochoa, a pro-union Tesla worker, told The Daily Beast. "Sometimes people from HR come, and they don't hold back on their opinions on the matter."
The dispute has also spilled over into whether Tesla broke the law. The UAW has filed four complaints against Tesla, claiming it violated the National Labor Relations Act by "intimidating [and] creating the appearance of surveillance and conducting surveillance on [employees] and others for their union activities and/or union sentiments," and for instruct[ing] employees that they were not allowed to pass out any literature unless it was pre-approved by the employer." The company has denied the charges as "entirely without merit."
This murky he-said-she-said quality is pretty common in disputes between labor and management/ownership, and in Tesla's own internal battle.
Back in February, a pro-union worker named Jose Moran wrote a blog post detailing how long work hours, frequent injuries, and mandatory overtime are still a big problem at Tesla. The post apparently stung Musk enough that he personally issued a point-by-point rebuttal in a long company email.
For instance, The American Prospect reported that wages at the factory run from $17 to $21 an hour quite a bit less than the national average of $29.04 for auto-manufacturing. That Tesla employees often have to deal with California's sky-high costs-of-living only exacerbates the problem. The company counters that it shares stock with employees, and that total compensation is actually better than the industry average when the stock is factored in. "A Tesla team member earned between $70,000 and $100,000 more in total compensation than the employees at other U.S. auto companies!" Musk wrote in his response to Moran. The workers counter that the stock doesn't fully vest until they've put in at least four years of work a problem when your bills arrive on a monthly basis.
Then there's the matter of long hours and workplace injuries. One thing Musk and everyone else seems to agree on is that the problems were definitely bad several years ago. Employees used to put in 14-hour days, but policy changes and the hiring of a third shift eventually cut that down to eight hours. (Musk even mentioned that he slept on the factory floor in a sleeping bag in 2016 as a show of solidarity.)
A study commissioned by pro-union workers, drawing on Bureau of Labor Statistic data, found that Tesla had an injury rate 31 percent higher than the industry's average in 2015 the last year for which comprehensive data is available. Its serious injury rate was 103 percent higher. A Tesla spokesperson responded that "we may have had some challenges in the past," but safety improvements cut injuries by 30 percent in 2016. The spokesperson also said that as of the first quarter of 2017, the company's total injury rate was 32 percent better than the industry average.
Pro-union critics are skeptical, saying the data for 2016 and 2017 is too preliminary to be fully trustworthy.
Tesla workers are also reportedly sometimes put on light duty to accommodate their injuries and ongoing pain. But this comes with lower pay: an effective even if arguably unintentional punishment for bringing up the injury in the first place.
Finally, there's the looming production grind needed to meet the massive order list for Tesla's newest model, which could drive the company's injury rate and hours back up again: "There's no realistic way than going up through 12 hours," said Tesla employee Michael Sanchez.
The point here is not to try and reach some objective determination as to who's right and who's wrong. Both sides have relatable stories. Indeed, they're flip sides of the same coin: They show how the strengths of the tech visionary can also be their great weakness. The pro-union workers see themselves as being driven into work hours and conditions beyond the bounds of decency by Musk's vision for the future. Musk views himself as a scrappy entrepreneur, balancing on razor-thin finances, trying to break into a sclerotic industry dominated by massive players, all in the name of saving the planet.
But perhaps the irresolvable Rashomon-esque nature of the dispute is itself arguably the best case for unionization. We're all human, none of us are perfect, and we all tell the story of our experiences through inevitably biased lenses. If Musk and his workers can tell such different tales about the evolution of the same company, is that not evidence they should all have a say in setting the terms by which that company operates?
There was a time, decades ago, when the American left and the labor movement aimed to make the workplace such a democratic space. Today, that dream is mostly dead: That ownership and management give orders, and employees obey, is basically taken as the natural order of things.
In some ways, this can be a boon for liberalism. As Google recently demonstrated, unquestioned authority can be an effective tool for enforcing progressive social norms. Or in Musk's case, an effective tool for driving forward the progressive dream of a green economy reliant on zero-carbon-emitting electric cars. These are both entirely worthy goals. But should liberals wield the power of the boss in pursuing them?
As discontent mounts against inequality and stagnation, and against the immense power that employers hold over their workers the old dream will almost certainly have to be resurrected. In that way, Elon Musk sits at ground zero for a coming reckoning within American liberalism.
Read more here:
Should liberals support an electric car company that's anti-union? - The Week Magazine
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Posted: Aug 14, 2017 12:01 AM
I wish I could say that its a shock that someone died in Charlottesville, but Ive been predicting just this sort of thing in radio appearances for months. The liberal media is dying to blame it all on Donald Trump, but it should look in the mirror.
To begin with, the liberal media is almost entirely responsible for growing the Alt-Right merger of hate groups and internet trolls. Most people are well aware of the stifling political correctness that reached an apex under Barack Obama. People are sick and tired of being attacked and scolded by the humorless left-wing thought police every time they stray from the latest liberal doctrine. That created a large group of people who enjoyed tweaking social justice warriors and some of them realized the easiest way to do that was with racial slurs. Every time some doofus leaves a noose on a college campus or says the N-word, its treated like a national crisis. If youre an anonymous troll who enjoys getting people to react to everything you say, thats a FEATURE, not a bug. All you have to do is say something racially offensive and all these people who studiously try to ignore you will go out of their minds.
That racial element gave the Nazis, white supremacists and KKK mouth-breathers a way to connect with the more socially adept trolls making the Pepe the Frog memes. Of course, the media liberals fueled them as well with their hypocrisy. They painted EVERY white supporter of Donald Trump or the Republican Party as a racist even as they ignored and defended the vicious anti-white rhetoric that has become commonplace on the Left. Just to give you a quick example of that, there was a hashtag that trended on Twitter after the attack called #ThisIsNotUS. It started out as a way for white liberals to virtue signal, but it quickly turned into an all too typical attack on white people, America and Trump voters. Here are some of the most popular comments from the hashtag
#ThisIsNotUs Then who is it? 63% of white men & 53% of white women voted for KKK-endorsed Trump. The majority of EVERY OTHER ETHNICITY didnt
If you are white and you are trying to say #ThisIsNotUs you are part of the problem.
If you're earnestly tweeting #ThisIsNotUS, know that the you might as well have been one of the white supremacists walking w/ tiki torches.
Every white person that tweets #ThisIsNotUs is being complicit in not addressing the rampant racism and bigotry that in their community
#ThisIsNotUS? Easy to say so. Unfortunately you can't have the Black, Brown, Asian, Jewish, Muslim or LGTBQ "experience" to know #THISISYOU
Gaga, prime example of a white woman using tag #ThisIsNotUs like this country wasnt built on slavery & racism. THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN AmeriKa
#ThisIsNotUs is how white people try to absolve themselves from their complicity in white supremacy; it v much is you, your inaction fuels it
The biggest talking point white supremacists have are comments like these. Would that be true if the mainstream media actually treated these comments with the same sort of contempt it has for the Alt-Right?
Nope.
Yet these sort of comments are MAINSTREAM on the Left. Let me repeat that. They are MAINSTREAM on the Left.
On the other hand, white supremacists are nothing on the Right. David Duke is a joke. Richard Spencer? Let me tell you a little story about Richard Spencer. I was walking around CPAC and noticed an enormous gaggle of media surrounding someone I didnt recognize, who didnt seem to be drawing a crowd of regular attendees. As it turns out, the massive group of media people werent following a big name. They were following Richard Spencer, who was later kicked out of the conference, presumably because the organizers never wanted him there in the first place.
Yet Richard Spencer, like David Duke before him, is treated like some kind of rock star by the media liberals even though hes a nobody in the conservative movement. Why? Because they dont care about conservative opinion. They dont care about conservative views. They care about creating propaganda that paints the Right as a bunch of hood-wearing, Nazi-saluting scumbags. So, they treat Richard Spencer like a rock star.
This creates a sort of Kim Kardashian effect. Ninety five percent of any influence Spencer has comes from the fact that anything he does is a big deal to the media. Why were Spencer and Duke able to gather even 500 Tiki torch-waving idiots in Charlottesville? Because the media would cover everything they did with bated breath. It gave them a chance to feel important, to feel like they were making an impact. In fact, white supremacists have started to believe their own BS because they keep hearing it from the media. After fighting with Richard Spencer on Twitter, I still remember one of his fans claiming that white supremacists were an essential part of Trump getting elected. My response was.
Yeah, you guys made a bunch of Holocaust memes & called people cucksand then you're all....I'm helping.
The hardcore racists out there are pariahs everywhere except in the mainstream media, where theyre treated as incredibly important.
On the other hand, the same mainstream media that has elevated the Alt-Right has been silent as violence has increasingly become a mainstay at liberal protests, including the counter-protest of this event. A few shops getting looted or people getting hurt doesnt stop the media from describing a liberal event as a peaceful protest. Even the counter-protests in Charlottesville were widely described as peaceful. Yet, protesters chanted From the Midwest to the South, punch a Nazi in the mouth, a female reporter was punched by one of those counter-protesters, the organizer of the rally was hit, and other people were attacked. Thats not peaceful. Thats something LIBERAL POLITICIANS should be asked to condemn.
In other words, Nazi and KKK members are HORRIBLE. The violent liberal counter-protesters are ALSO horrible. James Alex Fields, Jr? Who appears to have marched at the rally before plowing into a crowd? I condemn what he did. I also condemn the Bernie supporter who shot up a congressional Republican softball game. Additionally, I will condemn the next person on the Left or the Right who kills someone over politics, which seems inevitable when you have opposing sides carrying shields and weapons to political rallies. Those condemnations dont make a damn bit of difference as long as the liberal media keeps elevating white supremacists and excusing the violence of the Alt-Left. Im genuinely sorry people are dying at political rallies, but it would be surprising if the death at Charlottesville were the last one. Their blood will be on the hands of the liberal media.
Link:
How the Liberal Media Created Charlottesville - Townhall