The Chris Hedges Report Video 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 with bonus content.
The Chris Hedges Report Video 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 with bonus content.
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.
Reaching for the highest fruit on the tree shouldn't seem like reaching for the stars. But given how much degeneration has occurred among Democrats and "Progressive" legislators in the past few decades, it takes a Kshama Sawant {and many others} to fight for a future that cares for all of us ; not just mega-corporations, oligarchs, and those in Washington who receive their legal bribes. To be endowed with the capacity to imagine a better future is the first step toward realizing one. But such a future requires all of us.
Hi Chris, this is off topic, but I have just come to your work via Russell Brand and I feel as though I have woken from a trance.
I've been distracted by trying to show everyone that there is no evidence that disease is transmitted via contagions, though if we all understood this lie the WHO's Pandemic preparedness treaty set for 2024, which would take away all our rights as free citizens, would just be laughed at.
However the right to speak up about anything will be taken away if we allow Julian Assange to be extradited from my country (where you rightly point out he's being slowly murdered for publishing the truth) to your's where they'll finish him off. This is the fight of our age, the human spirit against the global industrialists (and the CIA).
Brilliant and inspirational! As a retiree deeply and personally concerned about Medicare, Social Security, and housing rights, I really appreciated the closing remarks. A worker is never really a "retiree." Thanks, Chris and Kshama.
This insistence on the totality of the Left's agenda being pursued is what must keep millions of Americans like me from ever affiliating with it. I'm an orthodox Protestant, pro - life, pro - traditional marriage. I am stunned by the madness of multigenderism, twice as stunned by the sheep ( most of the American people, it appears ) who can accede with an unsnickering, uneyeballrolling countenance to the lunacy of "preferred pronouns" and "their" in the place of "his" or "her."
The oldest among us in my generation would have voted for Robert Kennedy or Eugene McCarthy, slightly younger ones, like me, cast our first votes for George McGovern. And we are in all generations, though the tragic dwindling of percentages of us is obvious. Successful politics used to be in large measure the building of coalitions, and you wouldn't have had a chance to succeed twenty years ago. Now? You may. The nation has become that degenerate. We see everywhere in American life intellectual dullardliness, and the mad vulgarity which must accompany decadence.
Are we, the American nation, under the judgment of God? I can't claim to know. I do know we're not remotely the kind of people we were a half century ago, and 90% of the change has been for the worse. As things are, the millions of us who would have been delighted to join with you in the fight for economic equality will give you what you want, are already giving you what you want, our withdrawal from this lost and forlorn country, into thousands of little towns within cities and states within states. Churches are making little neighborhoods of our own, buying three or four falling - downers in old, inner city neighborhoods. My fellowship has been restoring four houses in one of them since 2018.
Many of our young people, most of whom are intellectually adept in ways which are rare in contemporary young people ( homeschooling/churchschooling ), are bypassing college, becoming skilled tradesmen or starting small businesses. We're tending community gardens. We are certainly networking. We're living the kinds of lives Christians should always have been living, in community. As I mull the trashing of America in the last half century, and the great things which are happening in the Church because of it, the whole thing begins to look like God's gift, if a painful one, to the Church.
God may allow you to prosper, but it's difficult for me to grasp how you can survive His sending even more leanness unto your already deracinated souls.
In school they taught us that women do 2/3rds of the world's work and receive 1/10th of the pay. If most of the world's work isn't monetized, reparations are owed to those doing the work. Money's political. I am not saying the current situation should continue. Hard work probably isn't rewarded.
These ideals are what Cuba has been striving for. Like communism, I would love to live in a world without greed. However like communism, these are aspirations that may motivate change. Detractors better offer viable solutions or capitalism will reach the end of its Monopoly Game.
Minimum wage laws cannot repeal reality. Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of business should be aware that each new employee hired must increase firm revenue by at least their compensation plus cost of goods sold, or the business will lose money. Raising minimum wage to $25 per hour will completely ban teenagers and first-time job seekers from the labor market, while simultaneously putting many small businesses out of business and their employees out on the street.
Thank you. Elon Musk is a miracle that happens once in a century.
He single-handedly unmasked the murderous and deeply corrupt US War party – with Twitter Files (J6 choreographed hoax, Russia-gate immense 5-year hoax, has broken total media censorship of terrorist US attack on NATO member Germany and of Covid conspiracy with Pfizer crime organization, of massive crimes by Nazi-dominated Ukraine government which is a mere puppet of US bipartisan War part, etc.).
Elon Musk immense courage and humanity is fully displayed by his one single three-word tweet:
Intelligent, always completely peaceful, childlike US veteran, Jacob Chansley (with documented 15-year innocent mental issues) has been transformed by bloodthirsty and amoral US War party criminals, primarily Democrat leadership and FBI executives, into a symbol of (unarmed) J6 “insurrection” by grotesque lies and evidence hiding.
Peaceful and playful Jacob was tortured by years-long solitary isolation (Tocqueville defined prolonged solitary confinement as instrument of torture) and sentenced to long prison term – despite being now provably innocent of all charges.
Wow. The way she uses gestures compared to AOC speaks to integrity. AOC just flails award like a broadway actress. Kshama acknowledges implicitly and explicitly the primacy of class in the United States. She even dares to use the word class. And more than once. I saw Ralph Nader speak in Chicago during his 2008 campaign run. He oozed integrity and it seemed to me the powers that be would never allow him to get within sniffing distance of the presidency. Kshama seems to possess that same integrity on video. Class? Whodathought?
Public servant moving out of government, hmmmm! With govt at an all-time high corruption standard (which seems irreparable at the moment) this may be our next way of moving forward. Independent players taking on the leadership. Thanks, Chris, for your reporting.
Sawant the best thing that’s ever happened to Seattle.
Reaching for the highest fruit on the tree shouldn't seem like reaching for the stars. But given how much degeneration has occurred among Democrats and "Progressive" legislators in the past few decades, it takes a Kshama Sawant {and many others} to fight for a future that cares for all of us ; not just mega-corporations, oligarchs, and those in Washington who receive their legal bribes. To be endowed with the capacity to imagine a better future is the first step toward realizing one. But such a future requires all of us.
What a great name...."Workers will Strike Back"
Hi Chris, this is off topic, but I have just come to your work via Russell Brand and I feel as though I have woken from a trance.
I've been distracted by trying to show everyone that there is no evidence that disease is transmitted via contagions, though if we all understood this lie the WHO's Pandemic preparedness treaty set for 2024, which would take away all our rights as free citizens, would just be laughed at.
However the right to speak up about anything will be taken away if we allow Julian Assange to be extradited from my country (where you rightly point out he's being slowly murdered for publishing the truth) to your's where they'll finish him off. This is the fight of our age, the human spirit against the global industrialists (and the CIA).
https://georgiedonny.substack.com/p/this-is-the-fight-of-our-age
We're in an Orwellian age where a boot is stamping, without mercy, on a human face. Right now that face belongs to Julian Assange.
Jo
Brilliant and inspirational! As a retiree deeply and personally concerned about Medicare, Social Security, and housing rights, I really appreciated the closing remarks. A worker is never really a "retiree." Thanks, Chris and Kshama.
This insistence on the totality of the Left's agenda being pursued is what must keep millions of Americans like me from ever affiliating with it. I'm an orthodox Protestant, pro - life, pro - traditional marriage. I am stunned by the madness of multigenderism, twice as stunned by the sheep ( most of the American people, it appears ) who can accede with an unsnickering, uneyeballrolling countenance to the lunacy of "preferred pronouns" and "their" in the place of "his" or "her."
The oldest among us in my generation would have voted for Robert Kennedy or Eugene McCarthy, slightly younger ones, like me, cast our first votes for George McGovern. And we are in all generations, though the tragic dwindling of percentages of us is obvious. Successful politics used to be in large measure the building of coalitions, and you wouldn't have had a chance to succeed twenty years ago. Now? You may. The nation has become that degenerate. We see everywhere in American life intellectual dullardliness, and the mad vulgarity which must accompany decadence.
Are we, the American nation, under the judgment of God? I can't claim to know. I do know we're not remotely the kind of people we were a half century ago, and 90% of the change has been for the worse. As things are, the millions of us who would have been delighted to join with you in the fight for economic equality will give you what you want, are already giving you what you want, our withdrawal from this lost and forlorn country, into thousands of little towns within cities and states within states. Churches are making little neighborhoods of our own, buying three or four falling - downers in old, inner city neighborhoods. My fellowship has been restoring four houses in one of them since 2018.
Many of our young people, most of whom are intellectually adept in ways which are rare in contemporary young people ( homeschooling/churchschooling ), are bypassing college, becoming skilled tradesmen or starting small businesses. We're tending community gardens. We are certainly networking. We're living the kinds of lives Christians should always have been living, in community. As I mull the trashing of America in the last half century, and the great things which are happening in the Church because of it, the whole thing begins to look like God's gift, if a painful one, to the Church.
God may allow you to prosper, but it's difficult for me to grasp how you can survive His sending even more leanness unto your already deracinated souls.
Does anyone know how we can send Chris questions directly? I have my subscription for that purpose, but haven't seen the opportunity yet.
In school they taught us that women do 2/3rds of the world's work and receive 1/10th of the pay. If most of the world's work isn't monetized, reparations are owed to those doing the work. Money's political. I am not saying the current situation should continue. Hard work probably isn't rewarded.
These ideals are what Cuba has been striving for. Like communism, I would love to live in a world without greed. However like communism, these are aspirations that may motivate change. Detractors better offer viable solutions or capitalism will reach the end of its Monopoly Game.
Minimum wage laws cannot repeal reality. Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of business should be aware that each new employee hired must increase firm revenue by at least their compensation plus cost of goods sold, or the business will lose money. Raising minimum wage to $25 per hour will completely ban teenagers and first-time job seekers from the labor market, while simultaneously putting many small businesses out of business and their employees out on the street.
The Poor People’s Campaign is also trying to push for these changes.
Thank you. Elon Musk is a miracle that happens once in a century.
He single-handedly unmasked the murderous and deeply corrupt US War party – with Twitter Files (J6 choreographed hoax, Russia-gate immense 5-year hoax, has broken total media censorship of terrorist US attack on NATO member Germany and of Covid conspiracy with Pfizer crime organization, of massive crimes by Nazi-dominated Ukraine government which is a mere puppet of US bipartisan War part, etc.).
Elon Musk immense courage and humanity is fully displayed by his one single three-word tweet:
Free Jacob Chansley https://t.co/8BbeXF2Fye
Intelligent, always completely peaceful, childlike US veteran, Jacob Chansley (with documented 15-year innocent mental issues) has been transformed by bloodthirsty and amoral US War party criminals, primarily Democrat leadership and FBI executives, into a symbol of (unarmed) J6 “insurrection” by grotesque lies and evidence hiding.
Peaceful and playful Jacob was tortured by years-long solitary isolation (Tocqueville defined prolonged solitary confinement as instrument of torture) and sentenced to long prison term – despite being now provably innocent of all charges.
https://substack.com/inbox/post/107896276 -- OUTSTANDING
Bloodshed & Bullshit, Part One -- This has to come to an end. Mar. 11, 2023
Wow. The way she uses gestures compared to AOC speaks to integrity. AOC just flails award like a broadway actress. Kshama acknowledges implicitly and explicitly the primacy of class in the United States. She even dares to use the word class. And more than once. I saw Ralph Nader speak in Chicago during his 2008 campaign run. He oozed integrity and it seemed to me the powers that be would never allow him to get within sniffing distance of the presidency. Kshama seems to possess that same integrity on video. Class? Whodathought?
Public servant moving out of government, hmmmm! With govt at an all-time high corruption standard (which seems irreparable at the moment) this may be our next way of moving forward. Independent players taking on the leadership. Thanks, Chris, for your reporting.