EARTH & US: Starting anew
With Trump’s reign of terror and threat of a coup finally over, many are breathing a huge sigh of relief. Biden’s first acts are inspiring hope: reinstating DACA, canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline, stopping drilling in the Arctic, rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accords, addressing COVID, and placing a moratorium on evictions.
Nonetheless, we must listen to astute political observers such as Reverend William Barber, Noam Chomsky, and Cornel West, who all warn that this is not the time for activists to relax our vigilance over our government.
Reverend Barber echoed Martin Luther King in his Moral Monday address, asserting that the evils of racism, militarism and poverty are intertwined. He is calling for a “Third Reconstruction.” Nearly $2 trillion in tax cuts have gone to the wealthy, even as the COVID pandemic affects the poor and people of color disproportionately. Since long before Trump, the “Southern Strategy” of the wealthy elite in government has been to promote the lie that Black people getting ahead hurts poor whites. Trump fostered and empowered the white supremacist movement.
The moral revival Barber calls for is not neoliberalism, which claims that by lifting up the rich and the middle class, everyone will be better off. 30% of the electorate is poor or low wealth; many of these don’t vote, because their needs are not addressed by any candidate. But this time, many of them voted for change. What’s needed, Barber asserts, is change that lifts up those at the bottom. Give a wealthy man $1000 and it goes into investments, doing little or nothing for the economy. Give a poor man $1000 and it goes into purchasing for basic needs, helping the economy to thrive.
What’s the cost of inequality? $6 trillion a year is spent on unending war, he says. The cost of the pandemic has been $16 trillion, while 84 million people in our country can’t afford health care. To meet basic needs, Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign call for guaranteed health care, $15 minimum wage, equitable distribution of Covid vaccines, a rent freeze, a freeze in utility shutoffs, immigration reform, deep cuts in the military budget, and job creation.
Noam Chomsky reported that under neoliberal leaders, from Reagan through Obama, $47 trillion has gone from the lower 90% of the population to the wealthiest fraction of 1%, who put the money into tax havens and shell companies. $35 trillion has gone into tax havens in the last 40 years, he said. Although many, including youth and the Left, believed in Obama initially, people were disillusioned by his betrayal of the working class and the poor; under his administration, huge numbers of poor people and people of color were incarcerated and the rich got richer.
The neoliberals set out to destroy labor unions, Chomsky believes. Global trade deals such as NAFTA, CAFTA, and WTO crushed organized labor. Under Clinton and NAFTA, the threat to move companies to Mexico dealt a huge blow to labor. In 2008, Obama bailed out the big banks, but never the workers. Thus, labor went over to the Republicans. Trump said he cared about labor, but in reality gave billionaires huge breaks instead.
Some believe that Sanders’ program of universal health care and free higher education is “too radical.” Chomsky asserts that every advanced country has some version of these, and it’s an insult to the public to pretend otherwise. Taxes would increase, but the average person would save twice as much because of not having to pay health insurance premiums. He believes a revived labor movement, in alliance with the Left, is possible.
To address climate change, we have 20 years or less. “You can’t overthrow capitalism in twenty years, but you can get rid of neoliberalism,” Chomsky declared. He called for worker ownership, or at least worker representation on corporate boards. Biden, like Obama, espouses neoliberalism; but he knows that his victory was only possible due to the votes of people of color and low wealth. Perhaps he can be pushed.
Cornel West looks at the neoliberal Obama-Biden administration’s policies of mass incarceration and drone strikes, and wonders how different a Biden presidency will be. Bill Clinton was responsible for many of the policies that led to mass detention of immigrants. Clearly, both the Democratic and Republican parties are tied to militarism and corporate greed. Trump, whom West called the “neofascist pied piper,” lured people fed up with previous neoliberal Democrats. West declared that the Poor People’s Campaign lays out an agenda that must be promoted, including: massive military cuts, investment in schools, decent housing for all, jobs with a living wage, defense of rights and liberties, universal health care, taxation of the wealthy, and a debt jubilee.
The People’s Inauguration
Valarie Kaur, an activist, lawyer, filmmaker and author of See No Stranger, offers a vision that goes beyond Democrat and Republican, left and right. She, and her organization the Revolutionary Love Project, have created a 10-day “People’s Inauguration,” which began the day after Biden’s inauguration. She’s calling for all of us to step up to the task of self-governance and healing across our divisions, the “heart-to-heart work to create the Beloved Community.” Her vision is the birthing of a new, multiracial democratic nation. We are in a long labor, we are in transition — a 25-year transition, perhaps, at the end of which people of color will be the majority in this country. If you’d like to be inspired by this visionary project, please go to www.thepeoplesinauguration.org and sign up!