What's needed at this political moment? 5 well-known
leftists, 5 strong opinions

by Betsy Leondar-Wright
June 12th, 2012 
http://www.classism.org/whats-needed-political-moment-5-strong-opinions-5-wellknown-progressives

At the Working-Class Studies conference last weekend, I
heard an amazing dialogue about class, race and
movement-building by five progressive journalists and
activist scholars: Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now!,
Frances Fox Piven, Bill Fletcher Jr. of
Blackcommentator.com, and former New York Times columnist
Bob Herbert of Demos, with conference organizer Michael
Zweig, author of The Working Class Majority moderating.

I was struck by how openly they disagreed with each other
in front of us 200 listeners, by how passionate all five
of them are about creating a more just society, and by
what vast depth of experience they brought to the panel.
Here are some highlights:

Juan Gonzalez: We have to start saying "working class"
again. When politicians say "the middle class," their
purpose is to exclude poor and immigrant labor from the
American people. The key responsibility of progressives is
to reject this concept of the middle class.

Frances Fox Piven: The Citizens United Supreme Court
decision (allowing corporate personhood and unlimited
secret spending on elections) raises the problem of
propaganda in the US. We've always had corporate and elite
propaganda, but now the problem is much worse. The
complexity of the financial crisis makes populist
organizing difficult. The Citizens United decision is
responsible for the defeat of the Wisconsin recall vote
(to remove anti-union Governor Scott Walker); we are
watching the downfall of representative democracy. A
disruptive movement is needed.

Bill Fletcher: Just as in the movie When Worlds Collide,
in which only a few people can escape a collision of
planets, the capitalist class senses an impending disaster
- and the disaster is all of us! They learned from Obama's
election and the Wisconsin recall (47% is a lot of people)
that they can no longer rule through electoral politics,
and they are debating among themselves what other means
they should turn to. That's the implication of the
Citizens United ruling. The chickens are coming home to
roost on unions' failure to educate their own members.
Bob Herbert: The US is in much worse shape than the media
reveal. My next book is called The Wounded Colossus. 100
million people are poor or near poor, one-third of the US
population. Even the solidly middle class are in deep
trouble, heading towards poverty, with the cost of
college,homes under water, debt, health care costs and no
job security. We already were not a functioning democracy
before Citizens United. President Obama won't even say the
word "poor," only "the middle class." There's no way to
replace 14 million lost jobs.

Frances Fox Piven: To revive working-class movements,
don't start with existing unions.

Juan Gonzalez: Latin America has broken free of the US and
gone in a different direction; so have parts of the Arab
world, charting their own course. US capitalists are
desperate and are turning to re-conquering Europe by
taking away its social progress. Immigrants are the most
progressive portion of the US working class. Think about
the Republic Windows and Doors occupation!

Bill Fletcher: Economically precarious white people must
come to see that Mitt Romney is not their champion. How
can that happen? The difficulty in building working-class
solidarity is race. Saying "middle class" symbolizes
escape from the bottom, from poverty. It's not about
tactics; first we have to re-shape the concept of unions
by re-defining class.

Bob Herbert: There's no coherent message, no definition of
"working-class." The one unifying issue is employment. If
you don't address race you're lost from the jump. If
people aren't educated about divide and conquer tactics,
about how their interests coincide, about the common
interests of all who work, we won't be able to fight back
against divide-and-conquer.

Michael Zweig - If we buy into the idea that "most
Americans are middle-class, except for the poor and the
rich," we're buying into a racialized concept, because
"middle-class" is presumed white and "poor" is presumed
black. It's wrong: two-thirds of the poor are white, and
three-quarters of African Americans are not poor. In New
Orleans, John Edwards stood in the Ninth Ward [a mostly
black neighborhood] to announce his "Two Americas"
campaign, but there are more poor whites than blacks in
Louisiana. When you allow that to stand, then poor whites
say, "What about me?"

Bob Herbert:  That's an intellectual argument that won't
persuade white racists. Some whites don't want to be
associated with poor blacks. Just talk about jobs for all.
Frances Fox Piven: Bob says the two unifying issues are
jobs and avoiding divide-and-conquer - but jobs have long
been the Right's issue; stressing them will lead to
President Romney. We over-rely on jobs, but we do care
about what kind of jobs, paying how much, producing what,
how ecologically. Pay more attention to race. When the Tea
Party members yell "Take it back!," they mean take it back
from people of color. We have to have a dialogue on race
to get solidarity across race.

Bob Herbert: It's not going to happen. Racism is too
entrenched. The evil-doers are too well-funded. Blacks
will get more by fighting for themselves, like in the
1950s and '60s. We have a black president who won't even
say the word "black"! Cross-race solidarity won't happen.

Bill Fletcher: A militant African American movement is not
inconsistent with working-class solidarity. When blacks
are passive, racism and division increases. When blacks
are active, they chip away at racism. A majoritarian block
won't include all whites, but will include some. To
deconstruct the racial myth held by so many whites, we
need a strong left, not wishful thinking about a "kumbaya
moment," but really dealing with the class divide.

Bob Herbert: They are still two separate issues: a
militant black-initiated movement for racial justice and a
working-class movement. If you focus on race, whites will
bolt; they won't enter.

Audience member: There were several historical moments
when many whites stood up for black rights, in the 1930s,
the 1960s.

Bob Herbert: I vehemently disagree. Most whites voted
against Barack Obama. Look at the voting rights attacks
now, and the police doing stop-and-frisk in New York City.

Juan Gonzalez: The persistence of racism is amazing. It
used to be that the US was segregated in two homogeneous
worlds, white and black. Today's young people are
different, even young whites; they live mixed-race lives.
But the ruling circles need those divisions. We fail to
understand the critical role of the mass media, the
absence of working-class perspectives in the media. What
newspaper is waging a campaign against inequality? We need
independent media. Democracy Now! is a phenomenal success,
but it's just one show.

The discussion after the  panel was heated, with lots of
arguing about racism, unions and movement-building
strategy.

I noticed that the most pessimistic panelist, Bob Herbert,
was also the one with the least activist experience; the
most hopeful panelists were those who have been social
change practitioners as well as political observers.

For myself, my reaction was to agree with Bill Fletcher
and Frances Fox Piven that the solutions won't be found
just in electoral politics and existing unions; change
will come primarily from movement-building and strategic
campaigns of (nonviolent) disruptive direct action.

It would be great if this dialogue could continue here in
the Classism Exposed comment section. What are your
reactions to what these 5 diverse renowned progressives
said?

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