After listening to your video question answering the other day I heard two messages to young people—- run for office and change takes a long time. These are not valid assessments of what either young people are facing or how change happens. An enormous amount of youthful energy went into the Bernie electoral campaign and the outcome was …
After listening to your video question answering the other day I heard two messages to young people—- run for office and change takes a long time. These are not valid assessments of what either young people are facing or how change happens. An enormous amount of youthful energy went into the Bernie electoral campaign and the outcome was nothing. The disenchantment of the people who volunteered, had high expectations and watched them crash was quite evident post campaign. These young people will feel quite skeptical about further entreaties to participate in electoral politics and wait a long time. The failure here is one of strategy and program and frankly leadership.
Several posts ago you outlined a program for protecting voter rights. It was what the leadership of such a political movement could embrace but your follow up was vague and disappointing. Somehow young people will run for office and it will all happen in some far off future date.
As I pointed out, that isn’t the way change happens. In our form of government the basic way change happens democratically is that intellectuals develop a strategy to address a social problem. The model here is the Civil Rights Movement. The leadership armed with a program goes forward to organize a mass movement. This movement then pressures our elected representatives and eventually produces its own candidates for office. You jumped the stage of organizing a mass movement. This was also what Bernie did. If for example on MLK day there were 100,000 demonstrators in Washington demanding their electoral rights in an organized campaign then you would find Manchin and Sinema isolated.
Your advocacy for gradualism is a contradiction with what actually happens in union organizing. The workers get fed up with their situation. They want to do something. Without a plan and an organization they fail. The company wins. DEmocratic change only happens with an organized movement. To put it simply, with activists having politically conscious people covering their back in such numbers that the system must give way to their demands.
But let’s talk about gradualism. The right has successfully used every vanguard party tactic backed by money to undermine and destroy our rights. This wasn’t done gradually it was done systematically and effectively. Sitting around and waiting for gradual change to happen when the right is destroying democracy before our eyes doesn’t seem like much of a strategy.
I am not suggesting we emulate their minority tactics. We are the majority. We have to take a page from MLK and from the mass mobilizations against the Vietnam war to show Washington we are the majority and they better listen.
As a long veteran of political movements what I say to young people is understand what is happening, get politically educated, learn from the past. In a crisis the mass of people will demand change. If you are not there with a plan they will listen to some demagogue like Trump. If you are not organized you will fail. The model of organization is the Civil Rights Movement. We need mass mobilizations.
Professor Reich certainly outlined a program for voter rights that every faction of the Democratic Party could embrace but he did not point his students in a direction to accomplish that program. It it isn’t running for office, it is organizing a mass movement.
I’m old but I get out there. I wear two n95 masks not those cloth things. If I participate in an outdoor event I keep my distance. I also have a respirator for really large crowd events.
Mass movements will be organized by young people both because they are socially more active and more exposed intellectually to creative solutions and can learn faster.
Biggest danger is letting the violence prone types into a position to sabotage the effectiveness of a mass movement. The Weathermen destroyed the prospects of the student anti war movement achieving structural change.
There is nothing scary about the coronavirus if you are vaccinated, properly masked, stay home when you suspect you are infected, and observe social distancing.
After listening to your video question answering the other day I heard two messages to young people—- run for office and change takes a long time. These are not valid assessments of what either young people are facing or how change happens. An enormous amount of youthful energy went into the Bernie electoral campaign and the outcome was nothing. The disenchantment of the people who volunteered, had high expectations and watched them crash was quite evident post campaign. These young people will feel quite skeptical about further entreaties to participate in electoral politics and wait a long time. The failure here is one of strategy and program and frankly leadership.
Several posts ago you outlined a program for protecting voter rights. It was what the leadership of such a political movement could embrace but your follow up was vague and disappointing. Somehow young people will run for office and it will all happen in some far off future date.
As I pointed out, that isn’t the way change happens. In our form of government the basic way change happens democratically is that intellectuals develop a strategy to address a social problem. The model here is the Civil Rights Movement. The leadership armed with a program goes forward to organize a mass movement. This movement then pressures our elected representatives and eventually produces its own candidates for office. You jumped the stage of organizing a mass movement. This was also what Bernie did. If for example on MLK day there were 100,000 demonstrators in Washington demanding their electoral rights in an organized campaign then you would find Manchin and Sinema isolated.
Your advocacy for gradualism is a contradiction with what actually happens in union organizing. The workers get fed up with their situation. They want to do something. Without a plan and an organization they fail. The company wins. DEmocratic change only happens with an organized movement. To put it simply, with activists having politically conscious people covering their back in such numbers that the system must give way to their demands.
But let’s talk about gradualism. The right has successfully used every vanguard party tactic backed by money to undermine and destroy our rights. This wasn’t done gradually it was done systematically and effectively. Sitting around and waiting for gradual change to happen when the right is destroying democracy before our eyes doesn’t seem like much of a strategy.
I am not suggesting we emulate their minority tactics. We are the majority. We have to take a page from MLK and from the mass mobilizations against the Vietnam war to show Washington we are the majority and they better listen.
As a long veteran of political movements what I say to young people is understand what is happening, get politically educated, learn from the past. In a crisis the mass of people will demand change. If you are not there with a plan they will listen to some demagogue like Trump. If you are not organized you will fail. The model of organization is the Civil Rights Movement. We need mass mobilizations.
Professor Reich certainly outlined a program for voter rights that every faction of the Democratic Party could embrace but he did not point his students in a direction to accomplish that program. It it isn’t running for office, it is organizing a mass movement.
I suspect there would be a lot more of this if not for the pandemic. It’s dangerous getting out there.
I’m old but I get out there. I wear two n95 masks not those cloth things. If I participate in an outdoor event I keep my distance. I also have a respirator for really large crowd events.
Mass movements will be organized by young people both because they are socially more active and more exposed intellectually to creative solutions and can learn faster.
Biggest danger is letting the violence prone types into a position to sabotage the effectiveness of a mass movement. The Weathermen destroyed the prospects of the student anti war movement achieving structural change.
There is nothing scary about the coronavirus if you are vaccinated, properly masked, stay home when you suspect you are infected, and observe social distancing.