There
is usually a silent peace vigil on Fridays, from 5 to 6 PM, sponsored by
Homewood Friends and Stony Run Meetings, outside the Homewood Friends
Meetinghouse, 3107 N. Charles St. The next scheduled vigil is on Mar. 4.
Black Lives Matter. Since this is a First Friday, there will be a potluck
dinner afterwards, followed by a DVD showing.
The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee, Baltimore Quaker
Peace and Justice Committee of Homewood and Stony Run Meetings and Chesapeake
Physicians for Social Responsibility are continuing the FILM & SOCIAL
CONSCIOUSNESS DVD SERIES. The DVDs will be shown at Homewood Friends
Meetinghouse, 3107 N. Charles St., Baltimore 21218, usually on the First
Friday. At 7:15 PM, from January through June, a DVD will be shown with a
discussion to follow. There is no charge, and refreshments will be
available. The series theme is CHANGE IS INEVITABLE.
On Fri., Mar. 4 see BABE [Australia & USA, 1995] One
of the best films about nonviolence, this comedy-drama family film was co-written and directed by Chris Noonan. It is an adaptation of Dick King-Smith's 1983 novel “The Sheep-Pig,” also known as “Babe: The Gallant Pig” in the
USA, which tells the story of a pig who wants to be a sheepdog. The main animal characters are played by a combination of
real and animatronic pigs
and Border Collies.
After seven years of development, BABE was filmed
in Robertson, New South Wales, Australia. The
talking-animal visual effects were done by Rhythm & Hues Studios and Jim Henson's Creature Shop. The film was a box office success and grossed $36,776,544
at the box office in Australia. It has received considerable acclaim from critics:
it was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, winning Best Visual Effects. It also won the Golden Globe Award
for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and
the Saturn Award for Best Fantasy Film. Call 410-323-1607 or email mobuszewski [at]
verizon.net.
Published on Portside (https://portside.org)
After Super Tuesday: Building a Sanders `Rainbow' Campaign
Joseph M. Schwartz
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
teleSUR
The Super Tuesday Democratic
presidential primaries powerfully shows the strengths and weaknesses of Senator
Bernie Sanders's quest for the presidency.
Sanders lost by large margins in
all Southern states, as he garnered somewhat under 20 percent of the Black vote
and, at best, a third of the Latino electorate. His ability to beat
Clinton among white voters of all class backgrounds, as well as his pockets of
support among voters of color, enabled him to win the Minnesota and Colorado
caucuses and the Vermont and Oklahoma primaries, as well as only lose by 1.5
points in Massachusetts. Much of Sanders' difficulty among voters of color
derives from his being previously unknown on the national scene, his
representing a lily-white state, and the Clintons long-lasting (fundraising)
ties to Black and Latino elected officials. In addition, Clinton benefits from
having served as a loyal Secretary of State to a president whose back most in
the African-American community still have against racist right-wing
attacks.
The surprising strength of the
Sanders campaign has made redressing rampant economic inequality the signature
issue of the 2016 presidential campaign and has made the term "democratic
socialism" a legitimate part of mainstream U.S. political discourse. On
Tuesday March 1, 2.3 million voters pulled the lever for an avowed
"democratic socialist," one running on a robust New Deal liberal or
social democratic program calling for progressive taxation to fund a wide array
of public goods. If Sanders can maintain his strong support among the white
working class and middle class progressives and improve his performance among a
more heavily unionized Black and Latino electorate in the Northeast, Midwest
and West Coast then he could come into the Democratic convention with close to
40 percent of the regular delegates. To win the nomination he must
significantly increase his support among voters of color; this is a difficult,
though not impossible task.
While we do not have detailed
polling data from the caucus and primary states that Bernie won, in these
non-Southern states his overall margins probably mean he won at least 35
percent of the non-white vote, overall (though in caucus states voters of all
races tend to be more left than primary voters). But given Clinton's huge
margin of victory in the large Southern states of Virginia, Georgia, and Texas,
Sanders now has a large regular delegate deficit to make-up: Clinton leads with
575 regular delegates to 386 for Sanders. (Obama emerged from Super Tuesday
with a 100 delegate advantage and the proportional representation by which
regular delegates are distributed enabled him to basically run out the clock on
Clinton over the next three months of primaries.)
Sanders Challenge: Building a
Multi-Racial Base
To improve his performance among
voters of color - 35 percent of the overall Democratic primary electorate -
Sanders will have to speak even more forthrightly about racial and gender
inequality. He should deliver featured speeches on specific racial justice
issues in symbolic venues, sharing the platform with activists of color who can
vouch for him in their communities. At those events he will have to resist his
temptation to pivot quickly to his comfort zone - the ways in which economic
inequality disproportionately affect women and people of color. That is well
and true, but the shared experiences of gender and racial violence and
discrimination unite oppressed communities across class lines - which is why
socialists recognize that racism and sexism cannot be reduced solely to
economic oppression. While Sanders probably would agree with this analysis, he
came of age in the early days of the New Left, before second wave feminism and
movements for empowerment of people of color shifted the way leftists discuss
racial, gender, sexual and national oppression. In that sense, Bernie is old
school and needs to retool his rhetoric (within the limits of who he is, of
course).
The campaign also faces obstacles
in reaching out to voters of color that are somewhat beyond its control. The
Sanders campaign underestimated the broad loyalty of the Black community to
President Barack Obama, loyalty inspired by the right's blatantly racist
attacks. Sanders claims he wants to build upon Obama's accomplishments,
but Secretary Clinton served in his administration - and Sanders correctly
criticized the administration's neoliberal policies that bailed out the bankers
and not the foreclosed.
Moreover, older Southern Black
Democratic voters are more moderate than their Northern counterparts. They have
deep historical memories of the violence of Jim Crow past and are more
pragmatic in their political desires. They want to defeat the Republicans and
they believe that the Democrats are better on racial justice issues than are the
Republicans (see Supreme Court appointments, voting rights, and affirmative
action). And given Sanders relatively new face, many believe (rightly or
wrongly) that Clinton, due to her experience in two administrations, has a
better chance of defeating the Republicans and of governing effectively.
Democratic voters who live in the 26 states in which Republicans rule all
three branches of government (including all the states of the former
Confederacy) know that they have a lot to lose from Republican victory: state
refusal to take Federal Medicaid money for low-income working families,
restrictive voter ID laws and gerrymandering, resistance to raising the minimum
wage, and inadequate funding of public education.
Sanders' Revolutionary Gain:
Inspiring Millennials Behind a Social Democratic Program
Yet, even the most ardent Sanders
supporters at the campaign's opening last May could not have envisioned how far
the campaign has come, particularly its overwhelming support among millennials,
including a fair proportion of millennials of color. The campaign has forced
Clinton to claim she will regulate the banking industry more tightly than will
Sanders and that she is a more passionate advocate of racial, gender, and
sexual equality. Her support of her husband's punitive welfare reform violates
those claims, except that the mainstream media and Democratic political elites
still laud such policies as a "success." Clinton claims to favor
realistic and incremental reform. But even her moderate reforms could not pass
a Republican Congress. Sanders is more the realist because he acknowledges that
his program, no more radical that FDR's 1944 Economic Bill of Rights, would
never be enacted unless mass social protest and progressive electoral victories
overtook the stranglehold that corporate power has on the elites of both
parties. Clinton is the utopian, anti-realist when she claims that electing a
moderate Democrat can overturn 40 years of bipartisan, upwardly redistributive
neoliberal policies that she and her husband helped institute.
Much of the energy of the Sanders
campaign derives from the millennial generation's disappointment that the
"hope and change" president did little to alleviate student debt or
transform an insecure job market that provides even college graduates
contingent forms of work devoid of adequate wages and benefits and without a
clear upward career trajectory. The Occupy movement in a metaphorical
sense began the political revolt of the college educated barista class. The
Sanders campaign appeals to them because he has made clear that there is no
individual, "private" solution to these systemic social problems and
that absent progressive taxation financing a strong "social wage"
(e.g., Medicare for All and publicly-financed childcare), the "free
market" will yield radically unequal life opportunities.
Commitments formed in one's political youth stick with individuals over their lifetimes. Hence the baby boom generation is, overall, more liberal than those who came of age during Eisenhower. From 1985 until 2005, seniors voted to the left of the general population because they came of political age during the New Deal. Today, the white seniors of the Eisenhower generation anchor conservative politics. The more immigrant and multi-racial composition of millennials leads them to be more accepting of a future majority non-European United States than are many anxious older whites. The latter often say they are "losing our country," a nation where white skin privilege had real economic purchase for even the white working class before deindustrialization and deunionization took off in the late 1970s. If movements for low-wage justice, Black Lives Matter, immigration reform, equitable public education, and affordable higher education can move "from protest to politics," than the millennial generation may reshape U.S. politics in a manner similar to the activists of the 1930s and 1960s. On the other extreme, Donald Trump's campaign may appeal to older Reagan Democrats who often prioritize their racial or cultural identity over their class concerns. The Democratic establishment's impulse (as evidenced by recent comments by former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell) will appeal to moderate suburban Republicans belief in "tolerance" if Trump is the nominee. But if the likely Democratic standard bearer refuses to run on a robust economic justice program, she will not garner the turnout from Sanders supporters, swing white working class voters, and millennials that she needs to win.
Building a New "Rainbow
Coalition" that Lasts Beyond the Sanders' Campaign
Many activists in and around the
Sanders campaign have long urged the campaign to focus on outreach [1] to
communities of color and to explicitly state the campaign aimed to rebuild a
"Rainbow Coalition" for social justice. We had more faith than
Sanders' original white Vermont inner circle that he would do well in New
Hampshire and Iowa and then have to address a more diverse electorate. Sanders
loyalists - often young whites new to politics - argue that the campaign has
done a fine job on highlighting racial injustice and point to his strong racial
justice program and solid positions on immigration reform. But political
coalitions are built by bonds of trust forged (often uneasily) through common
struggle. Apart from the labor movement, progressive social movements are
almost as segregated as the the rest of American society - a reality that too
many white leftists fail to grapple with. To build a more multi-racial left,
progressive whites must prioritize work as loyal allies in struggles for racial
justice led by activists of color.
In contrast to Sanders fairly tepid
ventures into communities of color, Jessie Jackson's in his 1984 and 1988
campaigns boldly ventured into lily-white states, speaking at farm foreclosures
and picket lines from Maine to Iowa. Jackson made clear that whites struggling
for social justice would be an integral part of his "Rainbow
Coalition." Sanders has campaigned at historically black colleges and
universities (HBCUs), but the campaign has to hold more events in Black and
Latino venues of symbolic political import and speak to how police violence,
job and housing discrimination, inadequate public education and mass
incarceration affect people of color across lines of class, while
disproportionately harming working class and poor people of color. In addition,
the campaign must continually highlight its commitment to an expedited path to
citizenship for undocumented peoples. Sanders can and should proudly proclaim
that he is the one candidate in favor of class, racial, gender, and sexual
equality. He should confront Hillary's claim that he is a single issue
candidate and that she is the tribune for racial and gender equality. Her
support of neoliberal criminal justice and welfare reform policies destroyed
the lives of the poor people and children of all races. And one cannot be a
champion of social justice if one promises to govern in a "realistic and
effective"manner.
In the final analysis, the
influence of the Sanders campaign on the future of American politics will be
determined by what comes after the campaign. This is the question Sanders
activists have to answer as the primary season winds down. Will the independent
local Sanders groups, Labor for Bernie, People for Bernie, Democratic
Socialists of America, the Working Families Party and the progressive unions
that have endorsed Sanders (including the Communication Workers of America and
the National Nurses Union) create a post-electoral coalition that fights for
Sanders' platform (and "Sanders Democrats" and independents) at the
federal, state and local level? Will local Bernie groups embed themselves in
social movement and electoral politics and engage in a dialogue with activists
of color as to how predominantly white progressive groups can become firm
allies in struggles against racism. Too often, even the most progressive of
electoral activity subsides when the charismatic candidate leaves the electoral
scene (see the failure of activists in the 1988 Jessie Jackson campaign to
build a permanent "Rainbow Coalition").
Ultimately, Sanders'
"political revolution" won't be built by Bernie, but by us. And that
us must be as diverse as those who constitute the 99 percent.
Joseph M. Schwartz is a Professor
of Political Science at Temple University and a National Vice-Chair of
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). He was active in the 1984 and 1988
Jackson campaign, as well as in the movement behind Bernie Sanders' 2012
presidential effort.
This content was originally published
by teleSUR at the following address: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/After-Super-Tuesday-Building-a-Sanders-Rainbow-Campaign-20160302-0034.html [2]
Links:
[1] https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/07/bernie-sanders-race-netroots-black-lives-matter-clinton/
[2] http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/After-Super-Tuesday-Building-a-Sanders-Rainbow-Campaign-20160302-0034.html
[2] http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/After-Super-Tuesday-Building-a-Sanders-Rainbow-Campaign-20160302-0034.html
- See more at: https://portside.org/print/node/11007#sthash.TQvlboJD.dpuf
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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