I want to take this opportunity to respond to two recent blog posts which reflect upon the usefulness of electoral politics in the wake of the Wisconsin recall election: one by Jeffrey Goldfarb (“On Wisconsin,” June 6, 2012) and the other by Doug Henwood (“Walker’s Victory, Un-Sugar-Coated”). I am in basic agreement with Jeff Goldfarb’s main points, though I have a few of my own to add. With Doug Henwood, I am in strong disagreement.
Elections matter, as Jeff Goldfarb argues, and not just presidential elections. Elections are what enabled Republicans to gain power in state legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010. Their electoral success in Wisconsin is what empowered them to legislate a radical assault on labor and public services there. Unless they are dislodged from power through elections, they will continue to use their power in familiar ways. But ironically, even as the right demonstrates the effectiveness of electoral politics, some radicals are now arguing that the left should abandon elections.
Following Walker’s victory on Tuesday, a longtime friend of mine wrote that Wisconsin’s unions should have organized a general strike instead of fighting Walkerism by means of elections. This is almost surely an erroneous conclusion. Exit polls showed that 38 percent of voters from union households voted for Walker in the recall election, suggesting that solidarity was neither broad nor deep enough to pull off a general strike. Moreover, rather than forcing a repeal of Walker’s anti-union legislation, a strike in Wisconsin would more likely have ended like the 1981 PATCO strike, another iconic instance of government union-busting that reportedly inspired Walker. I do not oppose strikes and other forms of disruptive protest under all circumstances; I only insist that anyone who cares about the consequences of their actions must use these methods intelligently. Their effectiveness depends on the ability of protesters to surmount a host of practical obstacles, well documented in sociological studies of social movements, including the likelihood of severe reprisals. Without some serious thinking about how protesters might withstand reprisals and overcome other obstacles, calls for a general strike—both those made in Wisconsin in 2011 and those made retrospectively now—are nothing but foolish bravado. Lastly, to insist on either disruptive protests or electoral politics is a false choice. As Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward showed in their classic study Poor People’s Movements, protest movements have historically been most successful when disruptive protests worked in tandem with—not as an alternative to—electoral volatility.
Doug Henwood, a contributing editor to The Nation and the publisher of Left Business Observer, echoed my friend’s rejection of elections in his blog: “channeling a popular uprising into electoral politics,” he commented, was a “horrible mistake.” In his view, unions would have been better off supporting a “popular campaign—media, door knocking, phone calling—to agitate, educate, and organize on the importance of the labor movement.” This suggestion dovetails with Jeff Goldfarb’s argument that progressives must work to shape “how the broad public understands the problems of our times” or, put differently, “to win hearts and minds.” But as Jeff understands, this kind of education is entirely compatible with and indeed a necessary part of electoral politics, and it is in fact precisely what Wisconsin union members were doing when they made a million phone calls and knocked on two million doors in the weeks before the recall election.
Just as “giving up on electoral politics, or blaming Obama, … is extraordinarily foolish,” in Jeff Goldfarb’s words, it is equally foolish to give up on or blame organized labor for the outcome of Wisconsin’s recall election. This is precisely what Henwood does in his blog post. Labor unions aren’t popular, he argues, because the anti-labor right is correct about them: rather than fight for the public interest or the needs of the working class as a whole, he insists, they are a special interest who care only about the wages and benefits of their “privileged” members. The right has always depicted labor unions this way, but it is astonishing to see an avowedly progressive intellectual embrace the most anti-labor elements of the right-wing vision about America. It suggests that progressives need to start within our own ranks if we want to shape how the public understands the problems of our times.
Contrary to Henwood’s sweeping condemnation, organized labor has used its political clout since the New Deal to promote full employment and decent wages and to improve health care, education, and housing—for all Americans, not just union members. Furthermore, Henwood ignores the efforts within the labor movement since the 1990s, documented by sociologists Kim Voss, Dan Clawson, and others, to reach out to groups that were previously alienated from unions (students, immigrants, and so forth), organize the unorganized with innovative grassroots strategies (e.g., the Justice for Janitors campaign), and build a new “social movement unionism.” Lastly, Henwood’s characterization of unions is contravened by their role in Wisconsin, where they spearheaded a broad-based recall movement that was motivated by far more than the loss of collective bargaining rights.
Rather than dismiss the entire labor movement, progressives should support this kind of unionism—indeed, they should join unions whenever and wherever possible. While recent events in Wisconsin and elsewhere have undeniably weakened organized labor, they have also shown the extraordinary commitment, energy, and public-spiritedness of union members. Progressives still need unions to help realize their political agenda.
While it is a mistake to give up on electoral politics or unions, we need to do more than participate in elections. We need to fight to ensure that the electoral process is fair and inclusive. One of the chief reasons that Wisconsin is so politically polarized at present is that what we have seen there is not ordinary partisan politics within stable and consensual rules. Rather, the radical right is using its monopoly on political power in Wisconsin to alter the electoral process itself. After the 2010 election Wisconsin was effectively a one-party state with virtually no checks or balances: Republicans controlled the governor’s office and both houses of the state legislature, and they held a majority on the state’s supreme court. Moreover, the agenda of Scott Walker and Republican legislative leaders was closer to the radicalism of the Tea Party than the moderate conservatism of previous Republican administrations. They sought not merely to enact their agenda but to ensure that it could not be undone. By crippling public-sector unions and thereby eliminating an important source of funding for the political opposition, gerrymandering legislative districts, and passing a highly restrictive voter ID law that will skew the electorate in its favor, Walker’s party has worked ruthlessly to give itself a permanent advantage and to cement its grip on power for the foreseeable future. (Although the June 2012 recall election appears to have given Democrats a razor-thin majority in the state senate, they are likely to lose it in November when the new legislative districts will be in effect.) This strategy has implications at the national as well as the state level.
Wisconsin State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, speaking on Fox News in March 2011, boasted that if their efforts succeeded, Obama would have a “much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin [in 2012].” Add to this state-level corruption of the electoral process the untrammeled flow of corporate money into American politics as a result of the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision and the electoral dice begin to look frighteningly loaded. Effective resistance to this power grab will require both symbolic work and material resources. Progressives must work to win over hearts and minds but also to safeguard democratic institutions.
Although a progressive-labor coalition failed to unseat Scott Walker in the Wisconsin recall election, and this failure will undoubtedly embolden those who wish to imitate him outside of Wisconsin, the struggle will continue in Wisconsin and elsewhere, at the state level and the national level. We must fight a war of position and not a war of maneuver. I can attest that for many of us Wisconsinites, the failure was heartbreaking and bitter, but we can perhaps take courage in the words that Max Weber famously uttered in 1918:
Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth—that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today. Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say ‘In spite of all!’ has the calling for politics.
I think this is an extremely important post. It points to a principled and responsible strategy for the democrats, supporters of Obama, OWS, trade unionists, along with many others. It is crucial that OWS and the “new new left” stands on the shoulders of the unions and fully take advantage of the electoral system. This post extends my last one in significant ways. Great the way it builds on sociological research and theory. An excellent example of public sociology.
This discussion is really getting to some good ideas, helping to move beyond the knee-jerk facile reactions to the recall. I think there’s value in both positions, though Henwood is more radical (which I have sympathy with) and perhaps as a result more reductive (which I don’t like so much). Chad Goldberg brings important firsthand experience into the discussion. I do think there’s another aspect to Fox Piven and Cloward’s book that he overlooks. It’s true that the legislative process was crucial to the success of poor people’s movement in the end, but the central thesis of the book is that the substantial gains are made *before* legislation not in tandem. The legislative process, Fox Piven and Cloward, assert is the way in which the grassroots movements were mainstreamed and thus brought under control. So in this regard, I side with Henwood to a certain extent. However, even as a strategy of containment by the so-called powers that be, the fact the legislative process embedded progressive ideals into the mainstream is important. Examples include: the creation of the Food and Drug Administration, fair labor laws, the Civil Rights Voting Act, and in fact the provisions of labor into what Daniel Bell termed “the Treaty of Detroit.” I’d like to suggest a framework within which both perspectives might be brought, specifically Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato’s work in Civil Society and Democratic Theory. I modify their points to get some alliteration in there as follows: The four “I’s” of social movements. The first “I” is identity, individuals “coming out” whether in terms of sexual orientation or in this case class identity. The second is inclusion, or as OWS has put, “We are the 99%.” The third is influence, and in this case there’s no doubt that the broad trend of which Wisconsin has been a crucial part changed the discourse within the public sphere. The final one is institutionalization, which is essentially the codification of the progress, as documented by Fox Piven and Cloward, into formal norms that we call laws. It’s this crucial area, which is the realm of legislation but also regulation and case law, that is the most difficult to achieve. The labor movement has played a major role, though not always, in pretty much all of the progressive achievements of the last century. The failings are what Henwood is focuing on, perhaps too much. But I do think they are worth taking into account, especially his characterization of what amounts to the spoils system in American labor unions. Naomi’s graphic that illustrates this post is something we all should study. It suggests the work that needs to be done. And all of us need to participate.
Vince, without disputing what you said about P&C, I think it’s necessary to distinguish the electoral process from the legislative process. My point was not that legislation renders movements more effective but that electoral volatility does because the latter makes politicians more likely to make concessions than to repress protest. Perhaps this wasn’t clear in the original post.
I agree with you almost completely, Vince. Summing up do let 1000 flowers bloom. In our differences we must confront the dangers the right poses, using many different means. My only disagreement is in your characterization of Henwood as a radical. By turning away from unions and not actually appreciating their importance in contributing to a progressive agenda in the last century in the name of leftist purity doesn’t seem to me to be radical.
Yes, that clarification helps. Perhaps I was misreading. The phrase “electoral volatility” is really good. There is as well a broader aspect to the discussion, which I think Henwood, quite suprisingly, leaves out. Specifically, where we are in what can only be termed class war. As Robert Brenner has documented in detail, the last 40 years or so have been about clawing back the concessions made to labor over the first three-quarters of the 20th century. As Henry Ford noted way back in the day, it was much cheaper to throw the worker a few bucks than it would cost to shut down the line. He was able to double worker pay and yet still wind up one of the richest guys on the planet.
Just watched Gwen Iffel on PBS and her “left” commentator (from Slate) argued that what Walker was about was making some adjustments in pensions and health benefits that “outraged the unions” — not one person on the show ever breathed the word collective bargaining rights. This is why I think we lost – I did not see anything at all on any democratic add that talked about what ending collective bargaining meant, or what noaycheck deductibility was, or any of the other ways that Walker tried to make sure that unions would be enfeebled politically and organizationally.
Also important is that very few in the MSM connect the dots of the actions over the past four decades of which Walker is only the most recent and arguably most blatant example in terms of the attack on labor, much less go into detail that it hasn’t led to a greater common prosperity only an enormous transfer of wealth. But of course the commentators want to keep their jobs as much as the next guy.
Interesting. I would like to add by stating that I believe that the governor commented fairly early on that he would never be recalled. How did he know this? There is no clear answer to that question. I would like to move on to my next point. 100,000 Wisconsin people showed up in the snow, cold and ice to march around the state capitol to protest. An event never witnessed before in Wisconsin history. That inside the dome of the capitol was full of progressive minded working individuals and that a small city is born inside the rotunda. Again unheard of in Wisconsin. This was the MADISON PROTEST and as these brave people were making their views known the rest of Wisconsin did not heard them.
There were great speeches given outside and inside the Madison capitol by people from all walks of life. Well known people of the left to the unknown homeless individuals that reside near the capitol. Freedom of thoughts and emotions given by the people of Wisconsin. All well worded comments, stories and deeds of the masses.
These activities occurred for months. Reporters arrived early on and much of it is known via video, articles etc. The masses of people continued to protest at various levels with events planned by various groups from the left, unions and so on. The great speeches continued and the people from Madison listened each and every weekend. Yet the power of that grass roots movement was leaderless. There was an energy there unknown to most Wisconsin folks. No where else in the state did that level of protesting occur. A new movement was born in Madison and died there as well. Leaders of various political stations in life visited and provided encouragement. And my major point is that out of all those events, activities or happenings no leader from the left or union leadership could harness the energy of a movement that was going on at the capitol. This was a very local event or was a fairly private affair by the community of Madison. Madison made it’s views known time and time again. The rest of the state did not heard them at all and what could of been a statewide affair did not occurred and it never took seed beyond Dane county. Someday the rest of the state of Wisconsin, Midwest region and nation as whole might be ready for that kind of political happening. But for now America moves to the right of the political side of things.
This article raises a very important issue as to whether protest or electoral politics is a more effective route in achieving a given goal, and the author convincingly demonstrated that this is actually a false choice. Indeed “all of the above” may be the best option. With limited resources however it might suffice to say that “we need to do more than participate in elections.” The converse is also true “we need to do more than participate in protest.”
However, there’s another issue that has been glossed over here. I was struck by the fact that “38 percent of voters from union households voted for Walker in the recall election.” By not going after police or firefighter unions, Republicans in Wisconsin seemed to have effectively split the opposition, making solidarity difficult. I wonder how many members of private sector unions may have even voted for Walker. There’s a tendency here to say “unions are unions” and that’s that. Could there perhaps be a divergence of interests between private and public sector unions? These kinds of conditions make solidarity very difficult, and its solidarity in the first instance that needs to be attended to.
It may be true that some people are arguing for entirely abandoning elections as a vehicle for advancing a progressive social and economic agenda, but this extreme position should not serve to obscure more nuanced critiques of elections in general or of the Wisconsin recall in particular. At least three points are in order:
1. There is a long history of progressive social and economic change in the US and in Wisconsin, but it has rarely been initiated or driven by the electoral process. Instead, it has been the product of the organized efforts of mass social movements that have been able to disrupt (or threaten to disrupt) business as usual in advancing their demands, whether via strikes, boycotts, occupations, or the like. This isn’t to say that elections do not matter (quite the contrary), but rather that they matter only to the degree that they reflect the balance of social power in society and to the degree that they are democratically constituted.
2.As currently constituted, elections in the US are not democratic. To the contrary, the electoral arena is a very infertile terrain on which to fight for social and economic justice. Instead, it is a very uneven playing field that systematically favors the most privileged among us, a product of the overwhelming role of money, electoral laws that are designed to cement a two party system, and the resulting absence of a party willing and able to champion an agenda of socio-economic justice. It is thus no accident that most people do not vote in US elections, and that they are disproportionately poor, working class, and people of color.
3. The recall was an election of choice. In other words, we picked a fight, and on a terrain that heavily favored our adversaries. This was a mistake. The Wisconsin uprising was an unprecedented event that offered a rare once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build the kind of social movement that has produced significant social change in the past. As soon as it was transformed into an electoral campaign aimed at “throwing the bum out,” it began to lose its capacity to effect change.
No one could dispute that the recall was built on an impressive grassroots effort; the question is whether it was the best place to channel that grassroots energy. It was a high risk/low reward decision that turned into a disaster. But it was done. And now the task is to try to learn from it and figure out the best way forward. Perhaps the main lesson is to refrain from being so easily enticed into the electoral arena, and instead to focus our efforts on building powerful social movements that do not place a priority on getting candidates elected. Paradoxically, it is only when social movements are able and willing to pursue their demands for social justice, regardless of the effect on the outcomes of elections, that their influence on the electoral arena is greatest. And to the degree that we do engage it directly, we should do so with the goal of democratizing it, so that it’s not such a minefield for social movements and the vast majority of the population. Anything short of that goal will set us up for yet more failure.
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Patrick Barrett
Madison, Wisconsin
Why is there a [sic] after ‘channeling’? That is the correct US spelling.
Why are we limited into thinking a general strike was the only option available to advance the movement in feb/mar 2011? Once walker closed down the capitol, the people’s capitol could have been established by taking over bascom hall on the campus right down state street. After all at that time there were schisms developing among the various police forces (capitol police, county sheriffs, city of madison police, state troopers etc.). Nuanced work slowdowns, wildcats, student walk-outs/strikes, attempts to reach out to recipients of state services in solidarity, and on and on were ripe for the taking! There were real opportunities to ‘f” up the continuity of governance to where a demand for walker’s removal/resignation could have developed. Instead we were demobilized with the hero worship of the fab 14 and the onset of the whole recall/election mantra!
In Doug Henwood’s original post there was an extra l (“channelling”). The spelling was apparently corrected when my post was published on Deliberately Considered but without removing the “sic.”
Patrick, this is a thoughtful comment, and I agree with some of what you’ve said. However, I’m not entirely sure where you come down in the end. At the beginning of the comment, you distance yourself from what you rightly describe as the extreme position of abandoning elections. But at the end, you conclude that “the main lesson is to refrain from being so easily enticed into the electoral arena, and instead to focus our efforts on building powerful social movements that do not place a priority on getting candidates elected.” That sounds to me like an abandonment of electoral politics. Perhaps you merely mean to suggest that progressives shouldn’t focus *exclusively* on electoral politics. In that case, we’re agreed; I think elections vs. protest is a false choice.
I don’t doubt that the electoral arena is an infertile terrain on which to fight for social and economic justice. Thanks to Republican initiatives, it’s becoming more so. But the other terrain doesn’t look so fertile either. It’s not just the electoral arena that favors the privileged. That’s why disruptive protest is so rare and why it so often fails when it does happen. That doesn’t mean people should abandon protest or movement building. But neither should they give up on electoral politics. Again, I think it’s a false choice. Rather than cede the electoral arena as hopeless terrain, we must struggle to reshape it and, through institutional changes, make it more rather than less even.
Let me add that your comment usefully highlights the crucial question of how movements gain leverage and succeed in accomplishing at least some of their goals. That, it seems to me, is the crux of a lot of the recent debate. Piven and Cloward had a theory, and it was a theory in which electoral politics did play a role. (Indeed, if they thought electoral politics was unimportant or hopeless, they wouldn’t have been involved in promoting the 1993 Motor Voter Act.) Now they might be wrong, or their theory might need revision, but I worry that some of the people who are advocating protest *instead* of elections lack any theory at all about how protest will get them what they want. Of course, a person who is committed to an ethic of ultimate ends doesn’t need a theory; she need only say, “Here I stand; I can do no other.” Like Luther, she does what she thinks is right and leaves the results with the Lord. But then protest is no longer a means; it has only exemplary value.
Myra, I agree with you, of course, about the importance of interpretation and framing (“symbolic work,” as I called it in my post). Equally important, your comment highlights the importance of the media in providing individuals with definitions of situations on the basis of which they mobilize. Jeff Goldfarb’s post, to which I was partly responding, and his work in general also highlight the importance of these aspects. This is an important front for any struggle for democracy and social justice; it’s beyond the scope of my blog post and deserves one of its own.
Chad, I don’t think it’s an either-or proposition either. From my perspective, it’s fundamentally a matter of how elections fit into a broader conceptualization of the structural and institutional context in which we’re operating. I think it’s important to recognize that social movements, political parties, and states operate according to three very different logics and on three very different strategic terrains, that the three are therefore in constant tension, and that the first is the most important. This means that if social movements do not have sufficient strength and autonomy to relentlessly push their own agenda and thereby counterbalance the power of wealth and privilege, the population as a whole will easily become hostage to the logic of elections and thus have less influence on and through them. It’s paradoxically when social movements are less concerned about the fate of candidates and incumbents that the latter are more likely to deliver, regardless of their political stripe. (This is why Nixon was a far more progressive president than Obama, despite the fact that he was a far more despicable human being.) Obviously, elections, parties, and the institutional design of states matter enormously – since the more democratic they are, the more vulnerable they are to pressure from below; while the less democratic they are, the more susceptible they are to pressure from concentrated wealth and privilege. Moreover, the degree to which elections and states are democratic (or not) is no accident; it is a direct product of the balance of power in society.
In the US today, we are at a huge disadvantage on all three fronts. We have weak social movements and both our electoral system and our state institutions are highly undemocratic, and thus systematically favor our adversaries. In my opinion, this means that we have three strategic imperatives: (1) we need to build social power; (2) we need to democratize our electoral system; and (3) we need to democratize our state institutions. (Since the focus here is on elections, I won’t comment on 3). As everyone has said a million times, we need to get money out of elections. But we’ve also got to redesign the electoral system in order to lay the foundation for a genuine multi-party system, because nothing short of that will give voters the leverage they need to hold candidates and incumbents accountable. That leverage derives from the credible threat to cast one’s ballot for an alternative to the two dominant parties, other than simply not voting at all (the currently dominant choice in virtually every election). Making it easier to vote via reforms such as the Motor Voter act, and beating back voter ID laws, is important, but even if everyone were registered, most people would continue to abstain because elections give them such limited leverage over candidates and incumbents.
Neither of those reforms will be possible, however, if we don’t first build social movements that are willing and able to exercise power in such a way that social and political elites (of every stripe) conclude that they’d better reform the electoral system if they don’t want to experience more social and political instability. This is how democratization has always occurred. Operating primarily within the institutional constraints of the electoral system only serves to reinforce those constraints. We can’t abandon the electoral arena, but we’re not going to democratize it or have influence over it if we don’t remain truly independent – and operate primarily outside – of it. So to the degree that we engage elections, we have to do so from a position of autonomy and strength and pick our battles wisely, and as much as possible, on our terms; which means we can’t make them a priority over social movement building.
This brings me back to the very special circumstances of the Wisconsin recall. Not only was it an unnecessary election of choice on a terrain where we were at a huge disadvantage (analogous to challenging someone to a duel and then showing up unarmed), but it also diverted the focus of a very tenuous potential movement that had not yet gained its feet or consolidated a sense of its own autonomous power. For me, the most inspiring and promising aspect of the Uprising was that it turned the typical relationship between “leaders” and “followers” on its head, which I think explains much of the euphoria people experienced. But before that was really consolidated and channeled into a revitalization of the labor movement or the building of grassroots power at the community level, it was instead channeled into a traditional electoral process that looked up to, and handed the responsibility off to, someone else – a candidate. That candidate, moreover, embodied all the problems with the electoral and party systems, someone who had already lost to Walker 19 months earlier, who offered no alternative vision, and who in fact had used Walker’s legislation to squeeze public sector workers in Milwaukee. The recall was simply another exercise in “throwing the bum out,” a negative kind of motivational tactic that is hardly inspiring, and which had the added burdens of a lackluster candidate and the fact that a majority of voters regarded it as an illegitimate way of responding to Walker’s policies.
The recall was clearly a spontaneous, grassroots initiative that created a level of momentum that was hard to ignore or resist among opponents of the Walker agenda. But I think that speaks to a couple of things. One is that most people have no experience of movement politics and it’s therefore not part of their worldview, much less at the forefront of their minds when thinking “what next?” They are, however, familiar with elections, and it’s almost a knee-jerk inclination to resort to them as the only method of doing politics and the only expression of democracy. Elections present a very tangible and short-term goal, and are therefore more attractive to most people than the pain-staking, drawn-out and less well defined work of building social power. But part of this deeply ingrained habit is also the willingness to be led, rather than lead – the idea that we can solve most of our problems simply by getting rid of the “bad guy” and replacing him with a “good guy.” This is why, even when we “win,” we typically sit back and watch and only get mobilized again, if at all, until the next election rolls around.
My hope is that we learn from this defeat by coming to a better understanding of the proper place of elections, which will continue to be an arena of defeat if we don’t make building social power our first priority. If we learn that lesson, I think we will have made huge strides, and the recall will turn out to have been an enormous opportunity. My fear is that most people, if they haven’t joined the ranks of the disillusioned, will instead focus on the next election as the answer to “what next?”.
Thanks for a good discussion here, folks. A historical question off to the side. I believe that Karl Liebknecht’s last pamphlet was called “Trotzalledem” or “In spite of everything.” Could the moderate conservative Weber have been, in his always surprising way, have been eulogizing…even just a bit?
The article was good on discussion about the unions but did not say why so many Wisconsinites voted Republican.
This is an issue that should be addressed, especially why so many union households voted for Walker. I tried to bring this up earlier. but the issue doesn’t seem to be resonating. This is unfortunate, because even though democracy is not in principle a spectator sport, social movements must also contend with the fact that there is an audience out there, sometimes largely unsympathetic; and if such a sympathy gap is not addressed, for also the talk of strategy and tactics, so-called “people power” will not translate into legislative or electoral change.
Thank you for your reply. I agree that this is not getting much traction in discussions anywhere! I think it is like having an infection that is being ignored and that if the underlying reasons are not discovered and dealt with, it could kill the host, but no one is watching or treating with antibiotics. I’ve always thought the fight in Wisconsin was seminal and would provide the model for the rest of the states where the workers have found themselves shoveled under by the Republican contingents who have pumped so much money into destroying them that it boggles the mind. So you and I are two, how can we increase that exponentially like to 10 million? Daunting isn’t it?