Kshama Sawant, the socialist and former Seattle City Council member who won the battle for a $15 minimum wage, introduced the Amazon tax and championed unprecedented renter’s rights joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the 2024 election.
Sawant is a rare example of a public servant who stayed true to her principles and the needs of her constituents, rather than selling out both to serve her career. We spoke together on a segment with Briahna Joy Gray a few years ago and I was impressed by her thinking.
Sawant is also a consistent voice speaking on behalf of labor, even more consistent than labor leaders themselves, who are widely co-opted. She sets the kind of bold example that the labor movement could use more widely. It could offer a crucial counterpoint to the bipartisan consensus enabling the escalating genocide in Gaza. I wrote last year about the role that organized labor within the US could play in enforcing international human rights. https://open.substack.com/pub/shahidbuttar/p/we-the-people-can-unplug-the-war?r=97w99&utm_medium=ios
The two-party system is horrible, but how about we begin to change by electing third party candidates to lower level offices? City council, aldermen, congress, water boards, etc.
On my ballot, even the down ballot candidates are pro genocide lying shits who opposed our attempt to pass a ceasefire resolution from October through February. If it wasn’t for Stein/Ware I would have had to turn in a blank ballot. We need a new anti war anti genocide anti prison party of outspoken candidates to prevent the economy of developing and erasing concentration camps.
That’s pretty good, it identified the lying genocidal shits on state and city council. Vote Peace didn’t cover school board. I’ll contact them, one of the choices I don’t agree with.
That's a good idea. Don't forget state legislatures and school boards. Which is how the ultra right wing has managed to have such outsized and detrimental effects.
I'm of Arab descent so this is special to me. There is no excuse for what our administration is doing in Palestine. I call it the "Palestinian Holocaust" and Biden and his enablers should be brought up on genocide charges.
I remember what happened to Bush and Cheney with that phony war in Iraq and Afghanistan that killed millions...nothing.
If you don’t live in a swing state, please vote for Stein. I did in MA. If she gets 5% of the vote, she’ll get Federal matching funds to grow the Green Party’s reach for 2028.
I live in a swing state and I’m voting Stein because I vote for the candidate that most closely aligns with my principles (at least that’s what I thought this whole thing is about). As long as we keep voting out of fear the establishment will continue to win.
Especially the fear either a Harris or Trump win would allow for the continuation of a genocide. Harris I have no doubt will be no more then a puppet on a string and there will more and more wars.
I was listening to this on youtube a minute ago and didn't want to comment there. Kshama Sawant is wrong about the Tea Party being a movement that started because Obama broke his promises. Yes, he broke promises and gave his full support to the banks but the Tea Party was not in favor of anything resembling Medicare For All. If anything, they were against any more government involvement in the "healthcare" system. They were probably mad that he was just another capitalist, but they also called him a socialist. They were against the man and his supposedly "socialism" first. Wasn't the whole thing an astroturf thing, financed by the Koch brothers at the time?
She is right about who Obama was, wrong about the Tea Party being a a grassroots and pro-worker movement.
The congressman in the district I lived at the time was a tea pariter and only addressed Obama as "the socialist".
The Tea Party did start out as a grassroots movement. Of the working class majority angry because for decades we've been ignored by the neolib Dems and their corporate sponsored party. Of course they brushed off the declasse' yet again.
So the ultra right wing seized the opportunity. They poured money into it, taking over what had been a chaotic, disorganized movement, and converting it to astroturf. Despite the occasional language of worker rage, it became just another vehicle for 1%er domination. The rank and file did notice--that's why it faded away.
Thanks for clarifying that. Still, Sawant is incorrect in saying that the Tea Party was angry because Obama walked back his promise of a Public Option. The grassroots part of the Tea Party was adamant against "socialism" and wanted the "government out of their Medicare" or something like that. And at least part of the grassroots were there because a black president should not be trusted because of said blackness
Don't forget you're hearing characterizations of the white working class as filtered by the MSM that caters to the professional and administrative elite. The less than 20% of the population the D party actually represents. The ones who nodded approvingly at H. Clinton's "a basket of deplorables." Whereas we working class types knew that was aimed at all of us. It's a very common experience to have been talked down to or otherwise mistreated because of class prejudice. (BTW, I'm also BIPOC and LGBTQ.)
While what I say can be dismissed as anecdotal, read Les Leopold's 2024 book //Wall Street's War on Workers (How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do about It)//or check out his Substack blog. Years of research and solid statistics--including on the rapidly fading prejudice of white working class men. Layoffs fund stock buy-backs that enrich CEOs while producing nothing. The Dem elite has ignored this winning issue; most probably because they're sponsored by the same corporations as the Rs.
I and many others will never forget or forgive the Ds behavior. The Ds did FOR the suffering, unemployed Rust Belt workers what they did TO the greedy Wall St. vultures who caused the '08 crash--NOTHING. That latter "did nothing" was during the Obama admin. We invisible inferiors are of little, if any, concern to the D party oligarchy.
I am white working class. I am just relating what I saw in the city I lived at the time. Not TV stuff. Not dems propaganda. I was never a democrat or a republican. My criticism of Sawant is that she said the Tea Party was mad because there wouldn't be a public option. That's not factually true. They were mad at many things, some of them things that everyone should be mad at. The lack of a public option wasn't one of them.
If you reread Sawant's comments on the Tea Party (which could have been stated clearer), she wasn't saying they were upset by Obama's many broken promises, like his promise that codifying Roe v Wade would be a "priority." The broken promises demoralized a lot of the Democrats' rank and file and diminished the great expectations raised by Obama's soaring ( and largely phony) "Hope and Change" rhetoric in 2008. The Tea Party stepped into the political vacuum created by Obama's betrayals of those who had put faith in him and seized the political momentum, leading to the loss of Congress to the Republicans in 2010. Needless, to say, the SAME thing has happened during the 4 years of Biden's term, which has helped lead to the Trump resurgence. How long are people going to keep falling for this?
I agree with her message, I was picking on one part of her statement about the Tea Party being upset about the broken promise of the Public Option (not Medicare for All, because that concept wasn't even in his mind). The Tea Party - even the grassroots beginnings of it - wanted the "government out of healthcare" and perceived Obama as a socialist, so they were not complaining about the lack of a public option, they were protesting the possibility of one. Here is the partial quote: " the Tea Party movement, the right-wing Tea Party movement, that really gained ascendancy in the wake of Barack Obama, another celebrated Democratic president, having broken his promises on many fronts, including on Medicare for All and the public option...:
But you are right that people was mad at his broken promises as we all should be. When the Kock brothers took over the movement, it all became about the man, more than about his policies, which were a failure although they still continued to call him a socialist
Right, I agree with that, though the public option was part of Obama's campaign materials and platform in 2008, which helped him to gain liberal/progressive support. Then, he lied and said he never campaigned on it, after he was elected. So, he kind of did break a promise. to his own supporters. This and other broken promises. like codifying Roe and passing card check for union elections, demoralized many rank and file Democrats and opened a path for the political momentum to shift the right. And remember Obama had a supermajority in Congress in 2009, so there was nothing, except resistance from people in his own party. As Sawant notes, all of this and more helped lead to the rise of Trump but also Bernie Sanders.
This is a tough one for me. Sawant is a great individual whose achievements are impressive, and there's no more honest or braver journalist around than Chris Hedges, but at this point in time I see a possible second presidency of Donald Trump as such a threat--an existential threat, really--that if we don't stop it, all other issues just might become irrelevant. “If genocide is not a red line, then there is no red line,” sounds nice and wonderfully idealistic, but if it means voting for a candidate with no chance of winning the presidency this election, it's essentially just a gesture. Understand, I think Jill Stein is great, and I think it's great if citizens can form coalitions strong enough to take on the interests that have led us all into this neoliberal hellhole, and maybe that will happen, but it won't happen soon enough to keep Donald Trump out of the White House, let alone even begin to dismantle the institutions that are causing us so much damage. Noam Chomsky has noted that political structures always grow up around economic ones, and that's not something that's going to change any time soon. Voters face a grim choice this coming Tuesday, but I say we vote damage control.
I am voting for Jill Stein because I really don't trust Trump on ending this genocide. Even as a child I hated the whole idea of wars. As the decades go by, especially in this century, we seem to becoming more and more crazy. I'm hoping if she gets a lot of votes it will send a message to the crazies in the White House.
"I see a possible second presidency of Donald Trump as such a threat--an existential threat, really--that if we don't stop it, all other issues just might become irrelevant." I didn't vote for Trump in 2016, but did in 2020. I would never vote for Hilary Clinton for many reasons. I agreed with Assange who said in an interview with John Pilger that she was a very sick woman especially in her need for power, and I absolutely agree. No doubt you voted for Biden in 2020, and if you did are you pleased with your choice? Or are you disturbed that you voted for a man who in my book is basically responsible for some 600 thousand Ukrainian dead, and a man who is now assisting a genocide, killing children, women and men. Some say more then 100 thousand dead. He's a man who pushed all our Middle Eastern wars, our neocon driven middle eastern wars. I could go on and on. Do you really think Harris will be more then a puppet of the neocons who are strongly on the side of democrats, Blinken is one of those. Did it bother you that the democrats pushed the lie of Russia-gate, and continue to insist on the lie that a riot on Jan 6, was an insurrection, or Clinton calling his supporters deplorables or Biden referencing them just recently, as garbage? No question he did some bad things, but to hear some talk, like yourself, he is the devil himself. What new wars did he start in the 21st century of wars and more wars, death and more death?
You make this prediction, "I see a possible second presidency of Donald Trump as such a threat--an existential threat, really--that if we don't stop it, all other issues just might become irrelevant." Your predicting the end times should he win and sound like a crazed religious zealot and you call me a moral paragon. What a joke.
Just a final comment before I sign off of this tiresome thread: If you really want me to take a hike, why do you respond to what I say on this thread? For that matter, why did you respond to my first post? Just something for the wildly self-righteous and naive to think about . . .
It's probably an anathema to even suggest checking out an MSNBC commentator but as I've said before at 91 I've lost all shame. On Velshi, Bernie Sanders, Jamie Raskin and two historians whose names I forget (that happens a lot) gave excellent arguments as to why not voting and voting for a third party undermines any chance of turning things around. It feels good to take the moral high ground but it winds up cutting your nose off to spite your face. Remember Ralph Nader, who I happen to admire, in 2000 and Jill Stein in 2016. If we had a parliamentary government that might work but we don't! If you haven't voted yet please vote for Harris even if you have to hold your nose to do so.
Agree. Harris vs. Trump isn’t a totally Hobson’s choice. It’s a choice between a standard neoliberal and a lunatic, and we can’t risk a lunatic, however unpalatable the only realistic alternative may happen to be.
I find myself agreeing with you quite a bit. I respect Fran and Jenny's right to their opinion, though I think they're mistaken. I don't respect, in my perspective, their somewhat superior attitude and snarkiness. I make it a point to talk to Trumpers at voting sites. Asking no matter who wins can we work together. I find we agree on many things and can have a civil conversation. Maybe we'll outnumber the extremes. Or maybe I'll have to act on my threat to commit either suicide or murder.......yes, yes I'm joking.......
I was going to write a snarky response, but thought better of it. If humans did embrace all creation in their tribe, the tribe would quickly splinter. Some factions would be griping that they didn't get their due share of the goodies, others would gripe that we haven't reached Nirvana yet and *our* faction could do a much better job of getting us there.
By the same token, if I wanted to implode Team D, the surest way to do so would be to take away Team R, or reduce it to irrelevance. Without a common enemy, the PMC yuppies and various grievance groups that make up Team D would quickly discover that they have little in common, and in fact, do not even like each other all that much.
I used the word ‘tribe’ out of respect for Native Americans because I think of them as respectful of all life on Earth, flora and fauna. They may have had fights among themselves over resources, but not for power and riches. Now that our planet has shrunk so much because of technology, many of us feel squeezed. This creates pathologies and with our current mindsets, they may get worse. If we’re to survive and thrive, now’s the time for an evolutionary leap. May compassion, cooperation and love become our new values world wide. The resources already exist to care for all our needs. Or we can keep repeating history and flame out. Number one: end the stupidity of further wars.
Using the word "tribe" as a put-down is a current Euro and Euro-American intellectual fad. It conveniently side-steps several nasty issues.
Like how the word was applied to sub-Saharan Africans, the Native peoples of the Americas, and to indigenous Australians. Whereas Euro groups are "ethnic;" you know, civilized.
Study the actual behavior of so-called tribal people. Very, very few come close to the viciousness and violence of the western world, particularly its Anglophones.
Carl Jung met with a Comanche elder and shaman who told him: "The difference between the Red man and the White man is that we see everything as alive whereas you think everything is dead. Including other people." A concise characterization of neoliberalism and neoconservativism, the reigning rationalisms of the Atlanticists. Well described by the title of the book by Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul: //Voltaire's Bastards (The Dictatorship of Reason in the West).//
Euros and Euro descendants should own their behavior and find an appropriate term for it. Rather than continuing to project onto indigenes their own uncivilized actions.
Yes its a description. Just like in the way people in the U.S call ourselves American as if Venezuela, Mexico & Canada weren’t every bit as AMERICAN. Its a corruption of the term
So then you get to decide what is or isn't p.c. Or silly. or games. Nice rationalization. I had expected you, as someone whose opinions as you know I usually agree with, to be open to what this feels like to a Native person. Besides, I meant it to be in general, not a specific criticism of you personally.
The term has had very real consequences and I gave examples as to how. It's NOT "just a descriptor." Like the N word is for bigots. It's amusing that you claim I'm side-stepping when that was among my objections. Which to me resembles my point about projecting.
Then you drag in a red herring, the logical fallacy of diversion, in the last sentence. As if everything I said were invalidated by evoking the horror of the Palestinians. Well, as non-Euro, they would be considered "tribal." And of course then subject to the genocide we other tribals know all too well as behavior of Euro and Euro-Americans.
Plus the nasty dig about misgendering. As if that cause, too, were an automatic disqualification. It's a fine example of the viciousness I mentioned above. And an ad hominem since I have often outed myself on this site as not only an old blue collar activist, but BIPOC and LGBTQ as well. It's also amusing because most often leftist claims about such being a distraction from class are made by white male armchair theoreticians who've never had to struggle for recognition. Nor, for that matter, ever held a tool in their lives. In a post-Einstein quantum reality, it's no longer the Aristotelian either/or, but multiplicities.
Thanks for the self-revelation. Be assured I'll leave you alone from now on.
Although living in the Bay area at the time, I'm a 5th gen. Seattleite (not counting Native ancestry) and so followed Sawant's City Council campaigns. Seattle has a long, proud radical history. My ancestors were there for the 1919 General Strike. My grandfather the logger was a Wobbly (I.W.W.) As a blue collar activist, I fought the neolib takeover of the Dem party. In Nov. 1999, I participated in the anti-WTO demonstrations I'm proud to say became known as The Battle of Seattle. And in 2003, I was part of a group of explicitly religious people arrested in protest of the invasion of Iraq.
My activist credentials are well established. But there is another aspect to human experience, one that gives meaning to life. One either ignored or outright opposed by left brain hemisphere dominant intellectuals and strident doctrinaire leftists who don't understand. That's the side of spiritual encounters and direct mystical experiences. While religion has its obvious detriments, as does the ideal of democracy, its structures can serve to connect people to this other aspect. As well as with ethnic traditions. Like the way the identities of indigenous peoples are connected to spiritual understandings.
That's why this time I voted for Cornel West. However, I voted for Jill Stein in 2016 and applaud anyone supporting her. To hell with the vile dual aspect uniparty with their lust for unipolar empire and the endless wars that requires.
If Trump does get back in, he has secretly promised Netanyahu the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb. The MOAB is also called “The Mother of all Bombs” by scientists and the community alike. He will temporarily withdraw from GAZA and saturate the area with this ordinance until there is no one left. Then GAZA will be fully annexed by Israel, and he will launch unfathomable campaign in the West Bank. Harris will not give these weapons to Netanyahu and will eventually force a peace. Now is not the time to vote or not vote emotionally, but strategically.
In live in NY and did the same. Much easier choice if you live in a state that is guaranteed to go for Harris anyway. Hell, Republican votes effectively don't count at all in our states, like Democratic votes in TX or FL, will do nothing at all to help Harris. So much talk of "defending democracy" but this is not democracy.
Sawant's efforts are commendable, honorable, as she is a model of good character. To carry on the struggle for a decent society with a decent government will abruptly end if Trump and his minions get control of the levers of power. Genocide is abominable but for the last 40 years, 25,000 children have died every day of the week in the world for lack of clean drinking water, disease, or starvation with the USA basically not turning a hair about this atrocity; that's a total of 383,250,000 deaths. Where's the outrage? Where's the "Red Line"? Recently, a leader in the Arab community in Michigan passionately stated regarding the 2024 presidential election: “Don’t vote your conscience, vote strategically.” Perhaps, as opposed to dying on this hill and taking the entire human race with you, it would be better to find the cracks in the "system" and being part of the solution. WE ALL HAVE BLOOD ON OUR HANDS! Nader wasn't successful, nor Perot, nor Bernie from within the "system", nor RFK, nor West, nor Stein; all TRUTH TELLERS!. As bad a chance as humanity has of surviving the next 50 years, trying to burn everything down to make a point is a losing strategy. I'll be voting for another imperfect leader, just like the last 45 leaders that served as president of the USA; GET OVER IT and get to work and find the answer to getting the truth heard. JLW
Well said. A little perspective is definitely called for. Realpolitik is damned bloody stuff, sometimes, but voting strategically makes a hell of a lot more sense than striking a pose as some moral paragon and letting Donald Trump inch closer to the White House.
One difference between Harris and Trump is that one of the candidates will seem so dangerous that it will encourage a realization that real change requires the overthrow of the current political structure. A structure that is proving to be so obnoxious, parasitical, and generally dysfunctional that it must be overthrown. In this context the best candidate is the one that is the worst candidate.
This is my take. I voted for Stein instead of Clinton-Trump became president, and because of his leadership and administration, millions of people died from COVID who did not have to-the administration turned the virus into a political tool.
People believed his lies, didn’t wear masks, didn’t get the vaccine, and they died. I had to try and save Covid patients as a respiratory therapist.
Is this administration doing all it can for Gaza? No, not even close. I don’t approve of Biden giving ANYTHING to the IDF….the people of Gaza need our assistance.
Voting for Stein is giving a vote to Trump, who will actually help Israel much more than this current administration is doing, and he will destroy our country as well.
I cannot vote third party this election. I already feel terrible for voting 3rd party against Clinton.
I really understand your argument, I do- but trump will make it worse-much worse. I live in PA. If I lived in a state where it doesn’t matter, perhaps I’d vote 3rd party in protest?
The question is would have Clinton been a better president than Trump? Tough contest, and that is why I continue voting for the Green party. And I feel great because I'm protesting the imposition of such bad choices by the ruling class.
NO! These arguments fail if Trump is re-elected. That's why I'm voting for Harris, the only candidate who can beat Trump. Trump has expressed admiration for Russia, China, North Korea, and other dictatorships. What these have in common is that there is no effective political opposition. Reforming the Democratic party will be meaningless when the Democratic party is gone. This might happen during a second Trump presidency, based on what he has said he wants to do.
Sawant is a rare example of a public servant who stayed true to her principles and the needs of her constituents, rather than selling out both to serve her career. We spoke together on a segment with Briahna Joy Gray a few years ago and I was impressed by her thinking.
Sawant is also a consistent voice speaking on behalf of labor, even more consistent than labor leaders themselves, who are widely co-opted. She sets the kind of bold example that the labor movement could use more widely. It could offer a crucial counterpoint to the bipartisan consensus enabling the escalating genocide in Gaza. I wrote last year about the role that organized labor within the US could play in enforcing international human rights. https://open.substack.com/pub/shahidbuttar/p/we-the-people-can-unplug-the-war?r=97w99&utm_medium=ios
The two-party system is horrible, but how about we begin to change by electing third party candidates to lower level offices? City council, aldermen, congress, water boards, etc.
On my ballot, even the down ballot candidates are pro genocide lying shits who opposed our attempt to pass a ceasefire resolution from October through February. If it wasn’t for Stein/Ware I would have had to turn in a blank ballot. We need a new anti war anti genocide anti prison party of outspoken candidates to prevent the economy of developing and erasing concentration camps.
It's a sad state of affairs. I think of George Carlin.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RXPokkBnZ_U?app=desktop
"It's a sad state of affairs!" DUH
voteforpeace.info is helpful , it identifies pro-peace candidates across the ballot regardless of party affiliation.
Take that back, they even cover school board. This is a keeper.
That’s pretty good, it identified the lying genocidal shits on state and city council. Vote Peace didn’t cover school board. I’ll contact them, one of the choices I don’t agree with.
That's a good idea. Don't forget state legislatures and school boards. Which is how the ultra right wing has managed to have such outsized and detrimental effects.
NO.
You have to stop supporting the Duopoly first and foremost.
Look at your kids in the USA....would you expect the world to come to your aid if this was happening to you?
I'm of Arab descent so this is special to me. There is no excuse for what our administration is doing in Palestine. I call it the "Palestinian Holocaust" and Biden and his enablers should be brought up on genocide charges.
I remember what happened to Bush and Cheney with that phony war in Iraq and Afghanistan that killed millions...nothing.
If you don’t live in a swing state, please vote for Stein. I did in MA. If she gets 5% of the vote, she’ll get Federal matching funds to grow the Green Party’s reach for 2028.
I live in a swing state and I’m voting Stein because I vote for the candidate that most closely aligns with my principles (at least that’s what I thought this whole thing is about). As long as we keep voting out of fear the establishment will continue to win.
Especially the fear either a Harris or Trump win would allow for the continuation of a genocide. Harris I have no doubt will be no more then a puppet on a string and there will more and more wars.
Especially *IF* you live in a swing state, vote for Stein.
Leverage is worthless if you will never use it.
vote for her everywhere. we cannot vote for genocide period. genocide must be a red line.
All three of my daughters and myself voted for Stein. My spouse no, I am ashamed to say. Blue, Red, both detestable.
As Margaret Kimberley framed it in Black Agenda Report: "Nothing reveals the corrupt nature of US politics like a presidential election".
I was listening to this on youtube a minute ago and didn't want to comment there. Kshama Sawant is wrong about the Tea Party being a movement that started because Obama broke his promises. Yes, he broke promises and gave his full support to the banks but the Tea Party was not in favor of anything resembling Medicare For All. If anything, they were against any more government involvement in the "healthcare" system. They were probably mad that he was just another capitalist, but they also called him a socialist. They were against the man and his supposedly "socialism" first. Wasn't the whole thing an astroturf thing, financed by the Koch brothers at the time?
She is right about who Obama was, wrong about the Tea Party being a a grassroots and pro-worker movement.
The congressman in the district I lived at the time was a tea pariter and only addressed Obama as "the socialist".
Not sure why Chris didn't push back on that
The Tea Party did start out as a grassroots movement. Of the working class majority angry because for decades we've been ignored by the neolib Dems and their corporate sponsored party. Of course they brushed off the declasse' yet again.
So the ultra right wing seized the opportunity. They poured money into it, taking over what had been a chaotic, disorganized movement, and converting it to astroturf. Despite the occasional language of worker rage, it became just another vehicle for 1%er domination. The rank and file did notice--that's why it faded away.
Thanks for clarifying that. Still, Sawant is incorrect in saying that the Tea Party was angry because Obama walked back his promise of a Public Option. The grassroots part of the Tea Party was adamant against "socialism" and wanted the "government out of their Medicare" or something like that. And at least part of the grassroots were there because a black president should not be trusted because of said blackness
Don't forget you're hearing characterizations of the white working class as filtered by the MSM that caters to the professional and administrative elite. The less than 20% of the population the D party actually represents. The ones who nodded approvingly at H. Clinton's "a basket of deplorables." Whereas we working class types knew that was aimed at all of us. It's a very common experience to have been talked down to or otherwise mistreated because of class prejudice. (BTW, I'm also BIPOC and LGBTQ.)
While what I say can be dismissed as anecdotal, read Les Leopold's 2024 book //Wall Street's War on Workers (How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do about It)//or check out his Substack blog. Years of research and solid statistics--including on the rapidly fading prejudice of white working class men. Layoffs fund stock buy-backs that enrich CEOs while producing nothing. The Dem elite has ignored this winning issue; most probably because they're sponsored by the same corporations as the Rs.
I and many others will never forget or forgive the Ds behavior. The Ds did FOR the suffering, unemployed Rust Belt workers what they did TO the greedy Wall St. vultures who caused the '08 crash--NOTHING. That latter "did nothing" was during the Obama admin. We invisible inferiors are of little, if any, concern to the D party oligarchy.
I am white working class. I am just relating what I saw in the city I lived at the time. Not TV stuff. Not dems propaganda. I was never a democrat or a republican. My criticism of Sawant is that she said the Tea Party was mad because there wouldn't be a public option. That's not factually true. They were mad at many things, some of them things that everyone should be mad at. The lack of a public option wasn't one of them.
If you reread Sawant's comments on the Tea Party (which could have been stated clearer), she wasn't saying they were upset by Obama's many broken promises, like his promise that codifying Roe v Wade would be a "priority." The broken promises demoralized a lot of the Democrats' rank and file and diminished the great expectations raised by Obama's soaring ( and largely phony) "Hope and Change" rhetoric in 2008. The Tea Party stepped into the political vacuum created by Obama's betrayals of those who had put faith in him and seized the political momentum, leading to the loss of Congress to the Republicans in 2010. Needless, to say, the SAME thing has happened during the 4 years of Biden's term, which has helped lead to the Trump resurgence. How long are people going to keep falling for this?
I agree with her message, I was picking on one part of her statement about the Tea Party being upset about the broken promise of the Public Option (not Medicare for All, because that concept wasn't even in his mind). The Tea Party - even the grassroots beginnings of it - wanted the "government out of healthcare" and perceived Obama as a socialist, so they were not complaining about the lack of a public option, they were protesting the possibility of one. Here is the partial quote: " the Tea Party movement, the right-wing Tea Party movement, that really gained ascendancy in the wake of Barack Obama, another celebrated Democratic president, having broken his promises on many fronts, including on Medicare for All and the public option...:
But you are right that people was mad at his broken promises as we all should be. When the Kock brothers took over the movement, it all became about the man, more than about his policies, which were a failure although they still continued to call him a socialist
Right, I agree with that, though the public option was part of Obama's campaign materials and platform in 2008, which helped him to gain liberal/progressive support. Then, he lied and said he never campaigned on it, after he was elected. So, he kind of did break a promise. to his own supporters. This and other broken promises. like codifying Roe and passing card check for union elections, demoralized many rank and file Democrats and opened a path for the political momentum to shift the right. And remember Obama had a supermajority in Congress in 2009, so there was nothing, except resistance from people in his own party. As Sawant notes, all of this and more helped lead to the rise of Trump but also Bernie Sanders.
This is a tough one for me. Sawant is a great individual whose achievements are impressive, and there's no more honest or braver journalist around than Chris Hedges, but at this point in time I see a possible second presidency of Donald Trump as such a threat--an existential threat, really--that if we don't stop it, all other issues just might become irrelevant. “If genocide is not a red line, then there is no red line,” sounds nice and wonderfully idealistic, but if it means voting for a candidate with no chance of winning the presidency this election, it's essentially just a gesture. Understand, I think Jill Stein is great, and I think it's great if citizens can form coalitions strong enough to take on the interests that have led us all into this neoliberal hellhole, and maybe that will happen, but it won't happen soon enough to keep Donald Trump out of the White House, let alone even begin to dismantle the institutions that are causing us so much damage. Noam Chomsky has noted that political structures always grow up around economic ones, and that's not something that's going to change any time soon. Voters face a grim choice this coming Tuesday, but I say we vote damage control.
Oh. Go away. IF this 'genocide' was happening in the USA who would you vote for?
It's obvious to me that these people like you have absolutely NO idea what is coming for you the USA.
Who is going to help you when it comes?
NOT me.
Vote Jill Stein.
I am voting for Jill Stein because I really don't trust Trump on ending this genocide. Even as a child I hated the whole idea of wars. As the decades go by, especially in this century, we seem to becoming more and more crazy. I'm hoping if she gets a lot of votes it will send a message to the crazies in the White House.
Fran...IF I was in the USA there is absolutely NO doubt in my mind I would vote for Stein.
I feel that the coming election will see the US as a 'malignant tumour' on this earth/no different from the British Imperealists.
Where are the British now? Hanging onto the 'coat-tails' of a dying Empire.
I will NOT come to the aid of any Imperealist country.
Propaganda/disgusting education/greed are NOT my hero's.
MY only hope is that BRICS will make a difference.
I understand!
Fran. I lived in the US for 23yrs.
I have many friends.
We ALL mostly want peace and revenge is never sweet.
"I see a possible second presidency of Donald Trump as such a threat--an existential threat, really--that if we don't stop it, all other issues just might become irrelevant." I didn't vote for Trump in 2016, but did in 2020. I would never vote for Hilary Clinton for many reasons. I agreed with Assange who said in an interview with John Pilger that she was a very sick woman especially in her need for power, and I absolutely agree. No doubt you voted for Biden in 2020, and if you did are you pleased with your choice? Or are you disturbed that you voted for a man who in my book is basically responsible for some 600 thousand Ukrainian dead, and a man who is now assisting a genocide, killing children, women and men. Some say more then 100 thousand dead. He's a man who pushed all our Middle Eastern wars, our neocon driven middle eastern wars. I could go on and on. Do you really think Harris will be more then a puppet of the neocons who are strongly on the side of democrats, Blinken is one of those. Did it bother you that the democrats pushed the lie of Russia-gate, and continue to insist on the lie that a riot on Jan 6, was an insurrection, or Clinton calling his supporters deplorables or Biden referencing them just recently, as garbage? No question he did some bad things, but to hear some talk, like yourself, he is the devil himself. What new wars did he start in the 21st century of wars and more wars, death and more death?
Fran: Good comment.
I do believe the US needs Donald Trump. My reasons are.
DT is the catalyst (nothing more)
USA needs to experience what other countries have suffered in the 'name of Democracy.'
American people by and large are ill-educated and sheep.
Oh, how could I ever reply to a moral paragon like you? Anything you say, Fran. 🤪
You make this prediction, "I see a possible second presidency of Donald Trump as such a threat--an existential threat, really--that if we don't stop it, all other issues just might become irrelevant." Your predicting the end times should he win and sound like a crazed religious zealot and you call me a moral paragon. What a joke.
Take your meds and try to relax.
God, you are full of cliches and bullshit. Take a hike.
Just a final comment before I sign off of this tiresome thread: If you really want me to take a hike, why do you respond to what I say on this thread? For that matter, why did you respond to my first post? Just something for the wildly self-righteous and naive to think about . . .
Oooh! How do you think up those withering witticisms so fast?
It's probably an anathema to even suggest checking out an MSNBC commentator but as I've said before at 91 I've lost all shame. On Velshi, Bernie Sanders, Jamie Raskin and two historians whose names I forget (that happens a lot) gave excellent arguments as to why not voting and voting for a third party undermines any chance of turning things around. It feels good to take the moral high ground but it winds up cutting your nose off to spite your face. Remember Ralph Nader, who I happen to admire, in 2000 and Jill Stein in 2016. If we had a parliamentary government that might work but we don't! If you haven't voted yet please vote for Harris even if you have to hold your nose to do so.
Agree. Harris vs. Trump isn’t a totally Hobson’s choice. It’s a choice between a standard neoliberal and a lunatic, and we can’t risk a lunatic, however unpalatable the only realistic alternative may happen to be.
I find myself agreeing with you quite a bit. I respect Fran and Jenny's right to their opinion, though I think they're mistaken. I don't respect, in my perspective, their somewhat superior attitude and snarkiness. I make it a point to talk to Trumpers at voting sites. Asking no matter who wins can we work together. I find we agree on many things and can have a civil conversation. Maybe we'll outnumber the extremes. Or maybe I'll have to act on my threat to commit either suicide or murder.......yes, yes I'm joking.......
I have always admired and respected Chris Hedges, and Kshama Sawant and no matter how this election goes, my esteem for these two will not change.
Humans are masters at rationalizing support for their tribe.
Supporting one’s tribe isn’t necessarily bad. We just need to include all humanity and the animal kingdom in our powwows.
I was going to write a snarky response, but thought better of it. If humans did embrace all creation in their tribe, the tribe would quickly splinter. Some factions would be griping that they didn't get their due share of the goodies, others would gripe that we haven't reached Nirvana yet and *our* faction could do a much better job of getting us there.
By the same token, if I wanted to implode Team D, the surest way to do so would be to take away Team R, or reduce it to irrelevance. Without a common enemy, the PMC yuppies and various grievance groups that make up Team D would quickly discover that they have little in common, and in fact, do not even like each other all that much.
I used the word ‘tribe’ out of respect for Native Americans because I think of them as respectful of all life on Earth, flora and fauna. They may have had fights among themselves over resources, but not for power and riches. Now that our planet has shrunk so much because of technology, many of us feel squeezed. This creates pathologies and with our current mindsets, they may get worse. If we’re to survive and thrive, now’s the time for an evolutionary leap. May compassion, cooperation and love become our new values world wide. The resources already exist to care for all our needs. Or we can keep repeating history and flame out. Number one: end the stupidity of further wars.
Romanticism is silly.
To give the first example to come to mind:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow_Creek_massacre
Probably all the ism’s are stabs in the dark. But they sure keep us entertained.
For further info, check out bonobos.
Using the word "tribe" as a put-down is a current Euro and Euro-American intellectual fad. It conveniently side-steps several nasty issues.
Like how the word was applied to sub-Saharan Africans, the Native peoples of the Americas, and to indigenous Australians. Whereas Euro groups are "ethnic;" you know, civilized.
Study the actual behavior of so-called tribal people. Very, very few come close to the viciousness and violence of the western world, particularly its Anglophones.
Carl Jung met with a Comanche elder and shaman who told him: "The difference between the Red man and the White man is that we see everything as alive whereas you think everything is dead. Including other people." A concise characterization of neoliberalism and neoconservativism, the reigning rationalisms of the Atlanticists. Well described by the title of the book by Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul: //Voltaire's Bastards (The Dictatorship of Reason in the West).//
Euros and Euro descendants should own their behavior and find an appropriate term for it. Rather than continuing to project onto indigenes their own uncivilized actions.
It's a descriptor, not a putdown, and by playing silly p.c. language games, you intentionally sidestep the point.
Genociding Palestinians is forgivable. As long as we don't misgender them.
Yes its a description. Just like in the way people in the U.S call ourselves American as if Venezuela, Mexico & Canada weren’t every bit as AMERICAN. Its a corruption of the term
So then you get to decide what is or isn't p.c. Or silly. or games. Nice rationalization. I had expected you, as someone whose opinions as you know I usually agree with, to be open to what this feels like to a Native person. Besides, I meant it to be in general, not a specific criticism of you personally.
The term has had very real consequences and I gave examples as to how. It's NOT "just a descriptor." Like the N word is for bigots. It's amusing that you claim I'm side-stepping when that was among my objections. Which to me resembles my point about projecting.
Then you drag in a red herring, the logical fallacy of diversion, in the last sentence. As if everything I said were invalidated by evoking the horror of the Palestinians. Well, as non-Euro, they would be considered "tribal." And of course then subject to the genocide we other tribals know all too well as behavior of Euro and Euro-Americans.
Plus the nasty dig about misgendering. As if that cause, too, were an automatic disqualification. It's a fine example of the viciousness I mentioned above. And an ad hominem since I have often outed myself on this site as not only an old blue collar activist, but BIPOC and LGBTQ as well. It's also amusing because most often leftist claims about such being a distraction from class are made by white male armchair theoreticians who've never had to struggle for recognition. Nor, for that matter, ever held a tool in their lives. In a post-Einstein quantum reality, it's no longer the Aristotelian either/or, but multiplicities.
Thanks for the self-revelation. Be assured I'll leave you alone from now on.
As if you get to decide what is and isn't consequential.
Apparently your playing Self Righteous Language Cop isn't a nasty dig, but my pointing out that your priorities are outta whack is.
Although living in the Bay area at the time, I'm a 5th gen. Seattleite (not counting Native ancestry) and so followed Sawant's City Council campaigns. Seattle has a long, proud radical history. My ancestors were there for the 1919 General Strike. My grandfather the logger was a Wobbly (I.W.W.) As a blue collar activist, I fought the neolib takeover of the Dem party. In Nov. 1999, I participated in the anti-WTO demonstrations I'm proud to say became known as The Battle of Seattle. And in 2003, I was part of a group of explicitly religious people arrested in protest of the invasion of Iraq.
My activist credentials are well established. But there is another aspect to human experience, one that gives meaning to life. One either ignored or outright opposed by left brain hemisphere dominant intellectuals and strident doctrinaire leftists who don't understand. That's the side of spiritual encounters and direct mystical experiences. While religion has its obvious detriments, as does the ideal of democracy, its structures can serve to connect people to this other aspect. As well as with ethnic traditions. Like the way the identities of indigenous peoples are connected to spiritual understandings.
That's why this time I voted for Cornel West. However, I voted for Jill Stein in 2016 and applaud anyone supporting her. To hell with the vile dual aspect uniparty with their lust for unipolar empire and the endless wars that requires.
If Trump does get back in, he has secretly promised Netanyahu the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb. The MOAB is also called “The Mother of all Bombs” by scientists and the community alike. He will temporarily withdraw from GAZA and saturate the area with this ordinance until there is no one left. Then GAZA will be fully annexed by Israel, and he will launch unfathomable campaign in the West Bank. Harris will not give these weapons to Netanyahu and will eventually force a peace. Now is not the time to vote or not vote emotionally, but strategically.
I would vote for Harris if I lived in a swing state.
I would prefer to be in opposition to her rather than in opposition to Trump.
I'm in California so I can send a message by voting for Stein.
In live in NY and did the same. Much easier choice if you live in a state that is guaranteed to go for Harris anyway. Hell, Republican votes effectively don't count at all in our states, like Democratic votes in TX or FL, will do nothing at all to help Harris. So much talk of "defending democracy" but this is not democracy.
Sawant's efforts are commendable, honorable, as she is a model of good character. To carry on the struggle for a decent society with a decent government will abruptly end if Trump and his minions get control of the levers of power. Genocide is abominable but for the last 40 years, 25,000 children have died every day of the week in the world for lack of clean drinking water, disease, or starvation with the USA basically not turning a hair about this atrocity; that's a total of 383,250,000 deaths. Where's the outrage? Where's the "Red Line"? Recently, a leader in the Arab community in Michigan passionately stated regarding the 2024 presidential election: “Don’t vote your conscience, vote strategically.” Perhaps, as opposed to dying on this hill and taking the entire human race with you, it would be better to find the cracks in the "system" and being part of the solution. WE ALL HAVE BLOOD ON OUR HANDS! Nader wasn't successful, nor Perot, nor Bernie from within the "system", nor RFK, nor West, nor Stein; all TRUTH TELLERS!. As bad a chance as humanity has of surviving the next 50 years, trying to burn everything down to make a point is a losing strategy. I'll be voting for another imperfect leader, just like the last 45 leaders that served as president of the USA; GET OVER IT and get to work and find the answer to getting the truth heard. JLW
Well said. A little perspective is definitely called for. Realpolitik is damned bloody stuff, sometimes, but voting strategically makes a hell of a lot more sense than striking a pose as some moral paragon and letting Donald Trump inch closer to the White House.
I couldn't agree more. JLW
One difference between Harris and Trump is that one of the candidates will seem so dangerous that it will encourage a realization that real change requires the overthrow of the current political structure. A structure that is proving to be so obnoxious, parasitical, and generally dysfunctional that it must be overthrown. In this context the best candidate is the one that is the worst candidate.
This is my take. I voted for Stein instead of Clinton-Trump became president, and because of his leadership and administration, millions of people died from COVID who did not have to-the administration turned the virus into a political tool.
People believed his lies, didn’t wear masks, didn’t get the vaccine, and they died. I had to try and save Covid patients as a respiratory therapist.
Is this administration doing all it can for Gaza? No, not even close. I don’t approve of Biden giving ANYTHING to the IDF….the people of Gaza need our assistance.
Voting for Stein is giving a vote to Trump, who will actually help Israel much more than this current administration is doing, and he will destroy our country as well.
I cannot vote third party this election. I already feel terrible for voting 3rd party against Clinton.
I really understand your argument, I do- but trump will make it worse-much worse. I live in PA. If I lived in a state where it doesn’t matter, perhaps I’d vote 3rd party in protest?
The question is would have Clinton been a better president than Trump? Tough contest, and that is why I continue voting for the Green party. And I feel great because I'm protesting the imposition of such bad choices by the ruling class.
NO! These arguments fail if Trump is re-elected. That's why I'm voting for Harris, the only candidate who can beat Trump. Trump has expressed admiration for Russia, China, North Korea, and other dictatorships. What these have in common is that there is no effective political opposition. Reforming the Democratic party will be meaningless when the Democratic party is gone. This might happen during a second Trump presidency, based on what he has said he wants to do.
Our two parties became one party a long time ago and I reject them.