Organize! But for What?

Collective Action Is Corrective Action

November 7, 2024 10 am. -Excuses are for losers, and the conspiratorialist types across platforms are spewing shit.

Taking first place in this field of “common sense” rationalizing is the notion that millions of votes disappeared compared to the 2020 turnout. 

It’s true. They’re not counted. Yet. But diligent election officials everywhere are working on it. More than one half million of those votes are from San Diego County as of Thursday morning.

Many observers of the American political scene have shut themselves down, reeling from the shock of what was to be not happening. Other activist types are talking up the fairytale concept of a “resistance.” This is magical thinking in today’s technological, economic, and political climate. It’s ok to do things involving making MAGA tasks more difficult to achieve. But it’s not The Solution.

This, as I’ve said in earlier essays, is not the time to be pointing fingers or debating tactics. We have to forge a strategy based on a realistic assessment of the environment we’re operating in. All kinds of assumptions were made going into this election and they’ve not survived the ultimate test of the ballot. 

America’s finest billionaires served up a cranky Republican con man who was willing to conjure up takers; criminals, immigrants, women who weren’t subservient, and, of course, freed slaves still wanting reparations. Americans who felt that things were not getting better or left behind as they saw others get ahead saw Red.

The New York Times would have us believe the vote totals constituted a rejection of elites by the working class. Except… weren’t those Black women who stood behind Kamala Harris working class? 

Here’s Matt Stoller on the overall economic strategy at play:

• For the past three and a half years, we’ve had a political experiment. What happens if you take a few small antitrust and regulatory agencies with a cumulative budget of $1 billion, and run them on populist lines? The government’s discretionary budget is around $2 trillion, so we’re talking .05% of President Biden’s resources dedicated to addressing corporate power.

• The answer, as it turns out, is both a lot, and too little. For a time, we paused the consolidation fervor and sketched out a possible future in which our public institutions work for us. But it was just a sketch. Corporate profits are at an all-time high, and dissatisfaction with the economy is overwhelming. Wall Street still controls far too much of the Democratic Party, thwarting most policies, and when unable to thwart them, managing enough of the party apparatus so that the consultants and spokespeople refuse to talk about it.

• The voters responded in turn, rejecting Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party in a resounding fashion. And yet, at the same time, all over the country, voters elected Republican officials, while voting for ballot initiatives mandating paid sick leave and increasing the minimum wage. In Florida, a marijuana legalization initiative failed, and the messaging against it was all about how it would consolidate the industry into the hands of a few.

Make no mistake about it. This election constitutes a victory in a class war that’s been unfolding since people migrated from farms to the cities. The bad guys won. There won’t be a rematch played on this field.

People saw [insert stereotype] eating one cookie while distracted from seeing Rupert Murdoch and his ilk with a plate full of their own. I get it; one cookie isn’t enough. 

I also know the mere mention of “class war” conjures up images of Russian leader Nikita Kruschev pounding the dais with his shoe at the United Nations. 

We’re conditioned to believe rich people are just humans with maid service, not evil overlords and that class war means we’re going to end up in gulags. It’s a fact of life that people who have a surfeit of money, fame, or power (or think they do) end up believing they’re entitled to dominate others. 

Our current batch of billionaire bad guys and their humanoid remora-types have enriched themselves to the point where they believe divine providence (or genetics, or because they can) entitles them to rule over the rest of us. 

They’re surfing a wave of economic malfeasance, wars, and climate disasters driving millions from their homes and no room for happily-ever-after. The scariness of the Nazi replacement theory has replaced the warm fuzziness of the great melting pot as the roadmap for our futures.

Let me be clear about this: we’re never going to vote our way out of this corner we’re painted into. And we’re never going to shoot our way out, either. This doesn’t mean there won’t be elections. It just means they won’t matter. The process of ending democracy isn’t automatic, nor is it quick, but MAGA control of government institutions, and monopoly/oligopoly sources for campaign finance don’t make head-to-head political competition a good strategy. (tactical actions can be an exception.) 

The only thing that threatens economic titans is economic power wielded by something not of their choosing. But pure economic power untethered from a vision of a collaborative future is just (metaphorically) one asshole taking down another. 

The shift rightward in the electorate wasn’t completely ideological. There is a strong anti-incumbent sentiment manifesting itself worldwide as the economics of being an non-wealthy individual or family become more difficult. People voted to allow abortion when it was on the ballot. Schemes to destroy public education went down hard in two states. And then a significant number voted for Trump.

The historical currents of racism and patriarchy providing refuge for authoritarians have risen to the surface. The individualist culture fomented by late stage capitalism has made malevolence a seeming survival tool for many.

If privileged liberal white males (like myself) feel alone and afraid in a world headed toward MAGA madness, we should take a moment to appreciate what our fellow humans among the otherized classes feel every day. 

Lots of well-meaning thinkers have voiced thoughts about building networks and having experiences outside our bubbles that aren’t necessarily political activism. Many of those are useful ideas aiding in self-preservation. Having a project or a circle or a hobby are all good things, lest we become what we are opposing.

We need to replace old notions of individual achievement with the understanding that collective action is what is really needed to save us from ourselves and maybe even save the species. That happens when we set out to work on things by joining a group to do whatever those things are. 

There is an additional step those of us who are able need to take. Join a union.

Put aside any preconceptions you may have about organized labor and realize two things; that infrastructure is necessary to achieve results and any battles you might run into along the way (racism, sexism, etc.) can serve as practice for when the opportunity arises to move from theory to practice.

Hamilton Nolan’s essay After Election Day was written before the votes were counted. 

• Today, right now, is a good time to turn your gaze to the horizon beyond this presidential election. If The Bad Man comes in, what is to be done? We can say definitively that—after a small grace period—weeping and moping will not do much good. Channeling your anger into internet arguments, while certainly a response that I can understand, will not accomplish much either. Getting drunk, talking about violent retribution fantasies, yelling at the television, or deciding to tune it all out and move to Portugal are, likewise, things that will not help the situation. Even the donate-and-wave a sign in a big march reaction, though far more civically minded than any of the other things I named, does not constitute a meaningful plan to “resist” what might be coming down the road.

• Allow me to suggest to you one concrete thing that you can do, in the event of a political catastrophe, that will actually matter: Join a union. If you, like most people, work a job that is not unionized, you should make it your project to organize and unionize that workplace. This is something that I say so frequently that it risks fading into the background, just another mantra repeated by some person with their own pet idea. But I am saying it today, in this context, because it is, in fact, the precise sort of solution that millions of people will be grasping for if things go poorly. And it will not occur to most of those people, so they will do all the other things. Do not fall into that trap. Fix in your mind, right now, the fact that “resisting” the sort of changes that might come about during four more years of The Bad Man requires not just rage and donations and protests—it requires the construction of competing power centers that can stand up to a weaponized version of the government. Organized labor should be that power center. It is what The Resistance is looking for. You can help make it a reality.

***

PS. I’d like to thank the Democratic Woman’s Club of San Diego County for all the new subscribers coming my way

and 

Change Begins With Me for existing as a group dedicated to more than just electoral action.

and

If want to unionize your workplace? Contact the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council

and

If you’re working in a non-union place & need help with employment related issues, contact the Employee Rights Center