The Chris Hedges Report Podcast with Kshama Sawant on why the only hope we have left is the building of a militant labor movement that will use strikes to destroy the corporate state.
The Chris Hedges Report Podcast with Kshama Sawant on why the only hope we have left is the building of a militant labor movement that will use strikes to destroy the corporate state.
Appears in this episode
Kshama Sawant, a socialist who served for over a decade on the Seattle City Council, has announced she will not seek reelection. Instead, she will launch a national coalition called Workers Strike Back this March in cities around the country. This coalition will organize for a $ 25 an hour minimum wage, build grassroots labor unions in corporations such as Amazon and advocate for a shorter work week without a cut in benefits and pay. It will also employ strikes when its demands are not met. It will work to build a massive green jobs program that can employ millions of workers in clean energy and prevent climate catastrophe, along with public ownership of the big energy corporations. Only the bosses profit from divisions among the working class, she notes. Workers Strike Back will be a united, multi-racial, multi-gendered movement of working people. It will battle anti-trans legislation and against all right-wing attacks on LGBTQ+ people. It will organize to win legal, safe, free abortions for all who need them. It will campaign to end racist policing, putting police under the control of democratically elected community boards with full power over department policy, hiring and firing. Her new labor organization calls for rent control with no rent increases above inflation, as well as a massive expansion of publicly owned, high-quality affordable housing by taxing the rich. We’re dying from unaffordable healthcare, she notes, as the pharma bosses and for-profit health insurance industry make money off of our sickness. She and Workers Strike Back will call for free, state-of-the-art, Medicare for All—owned and democratically run by working people. The Democrats and Republicans both answer to the billionaires, that’s why working people keep getting screwed, she says. Even so-called progressives in Congress, she notes, have completely failed to fight against the establishment, and offer no solutions. The elected leadership of Workers Strike Back will accept only the average workers’ wage, as did Sawant when she was a member of the city council. Sawant in her decade as a member of the Seattle city council has an impressive track record. She helped win a $15 minimum wage for Seattle workers, pushed the council to tax Amazon, and championed renter protection as the Chair of the Renters’ and Sustainability Committee. She joined the Socialist Alternative party in 2006 and since then has helped organize demonstrations for marriage equality, participated in the movement to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Occupy Movement. She is an active member in the American Federation of Teachers Local 1789, fighting against budget cuts and tuition hikes. Joining me to discuss the launch of Workers Strike Back is Kshama Sawant.
The Chris Hedges Report Podcast with Kshama Sawant on why the only hope we have left is the building of a militant labor movement that will use strikes to destroy the corporate state.
From your summary: “Workers Strike Back will be a united, multi-racial, multi-gendered movement of working people. It will battle anti-trans legislation and against all right-wing attacks on LGBTQ+ people.”
That is why I and many working-class people will not support it. Although some “anti-trans legislation” comes from the Right, much of it comes from:
> Feminists and their allies, gays and lesbians who do not support “transing away the gay,” or being told that they are transphobic if they do not accept and sleep with trans-persons;
> women who oppose having their Title IX rights and opportunities being stripped away by male athletes;
> women who oppose having their domestic violence shelters, prisons, locker rooms and other sex-segregated placed invaded by men who “self-identify” as women, and women who have already been assaulted and harmed as a consequence;
>working-class parents who oppose seeing their children being swept up and harmed by the explosive growth of “rapid onset gender dysphoria”;
> health-care providers who oppose the harmful medicalization of youth who fall prey to this socially encouraged trend;
> the thousands of detransitioners who have been irreversibly harmed by it;
> the educators, other professionals and other speakers who have been fired, canceled, deplatformed, doxed, attacked and mobbed for critiquing this trend -- and many more.
You should be critiquing this divisive attack on the working class, which has been funded by its billionaire advocates, not cheerleading it. See, e.g., https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers
I realize that you have questioned some of these excesses before. So why are you going along with this agenda now?
Is there bad “anti-trans legislation” that goes too far and does not merit support? A small fraction, perhaps. Progressive-minded people should support trans-identified persons having the same civil rights as everyone else – but not at the expense of women, not at the expense of children, not at the expense of science, not at the expense of ethical medical practice, and not at the expense of the First Amendment. Most of what is labeled “anti-trans legislation” is actually aimed at protecting the latter interests, not attacking the rights of adults who identify as trans to live their lives as they see fit.
It is disappointing to see a person of your intelligence and social awareness fall for this. I suggest a bit of homework. Here are a few sources that I urge you to study carefully, none of which can be fairly characterized as "right wing":
https://caroldansereau.substack.com/p/the-anti-science-disaster-of-gender
https://caroldansereau.substack.com/p/hitchhikers-guide-to-the-transgender
https://segm.org/
https://www.genderhq.org/
https://ourduty.group/
https://www.partnersforethicalcare.com/
https://www.parentsofrogdkids.com/
https://pitt.substack.com/
https://www.realityslaststand.com/
https://www.the11thhourblog.com/
https://www.theparadoxinstitute.com/
Thank you for your consideration. I think you can do better than this. Like it or not, we cannot unite the Left, or the working-class, until this ruling-class-supported ideology is exposed as the fraud that it is and can no longer be used as a wedge to divide us.
Finally , a plan for re setting this totally broken system.
Thanks Chris for bringing this information to light.
I think we’ve all felt completely at a loss when it comes to what we can do about this corporate greed that effects all and enhances the power of funded political bias.
Its definitely time to insist on worker rights and those of all people who are not well represented for civil and human rights.