"If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny" ::: Examining "The Handmaid’s Tale". . .the fictional story that explores the real potential of the U.S. as a failed state.
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG Let @JoeBiden @POTUS & @KamalaHarris know what you want. #DemocracyMatters Join Thursdays, 8 pm ET, from 1/13/22, “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny.”
Participating in the imperfect democracy we have now is one way to protect our freedom. The President needs to hear your concerns about creeping fascism. Drop Joe Biden a line…
Just because…our voting rights matter.
Just because…January 6th insurrectionists need to be held accountable at the highest levels.
Just because…children and guns are a dangerous combination.
Just because…we can’t support dictators around the world and preserve democracy at home.
Just because…investigative journalists need to be celebrated, not persecuted.
Whatever is on your mind concerning our collective life, the POTUS needs to hear…
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG Listen to @gaslitnation w/ @sarahkendzior & @andreachalupa for ideas on how to #FightFascismNow. Join Thursdays, 8 pm ET, from 1/13/22, “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny.”
Fighting fascism begins with recognizing and acknowledging the signs of growing tyranny. Though events may appear as sudden changes, there are actually certain signs or “red flags” we can learn to see along the way. Recognizing these signs allows us to prevent or prepare for major changes to our way of life.
One good way to recognize the signs of a coming tyranny, is to follow the work of Gaslit Nation, a weekly podcast documenting threats to American democracy and offering thoughts on how we might #FightFascismNow. — LMO
“Gaslit Nation, hosted by writers Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa, experts on authoritarian states who warned America about election hacking before the 2016 election. Here, they take a deep dive on the news, skipping outrage to deliver analysis, history, context, and sharp insight on global affairs.” — Gaslit Nation
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG @HandmaidsOnHulu #DemocracyDefenders @jysexton #CynthiaAnnBaron @cassady2euca @Frank_Schaeffer @DrJamesCMcInto1 @ruthbenghiat @Ritzenhoffk @KarmaWaltonen @djenebajalan @Roots2Transform @MattMitrovich @ellenhbrown @Nkechi_Taifa join Thurs., 8 pm ET, from 1/13/22, “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny.”
TruthWorks Network is pleased to announce the list of #DemocracyDefenders who will join “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny,” Thursdays, 8 pm ET, Jan. 13 to April 7, 2022. Guests include:
Thursday, January 13, 2022—Democracy/Autocracy
Prof. Jared Yates Sexton, Associate Professor, Writing and Linguistics, Georgia Southern University-Statesboro
Thursday, January 20, 2022—Cults, Cultures and Religions
Dr. Cynthia Ann Baron, Associate Professor, Theatre and Film, Bowling Green State University
Rev. Dr. Susan K. Williams Smith, Founder and Executive Director, Crazy Faith Ministries
Thursday, January 27, 2022—Gender
Mr. Frank Schaeffer, Author, Fall in Love, Have Children, Stay Put, Save the Planet, Be Happy
Thursday, February 3, 2022—Mental Health
Dr. James C. McIntosh, Retired Psychiatrist, CEMOTAP (Committee to End Media Offensive to African People)
Thursday, February 10, 2022—Race & Ethnicity
Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Professor of Italian and History, New York University | Arts & Sciences
Dr. Karen A. Ritzenhoff, Professor, Department of Communication, Central Connecticut State University
Thursday, February 24, 2022—Sexuality
Dr. Karma Waltonen, Editor, Margaret Atwood Studies Journal, Margaret Atwood Society & Continuing Lecturer, University Writing Program, University of California, Davis
Thursday, March 3, 2022—White Supremacy / American Rage / Hate Groups
TBD
Thursday, March 10, 2022—Class
Dr. Cynthia Ann Baron, Associate Professor, Theatre and Film, Bowling Green State University
Thursday, March 24, 2022—War
Dr. Djene R. Bajalan, Professor, Department of History, Missouri State University-Springfield
Ms. Carmen del Rosario, Founder, Roots of Transformation
Thursday, March 31, 2022—Oh Canada: Escape
Atty. Matt Mitrovich, Host, The Alternate Historian YouTube Channel
Thursday, April 7, 2022—Strategies and Tactics to Fight Fascism
Atty. Ellen Brown, Fellow, Democracy Collaborative
Atty. Nkechi Taifa, President and CEO, The Taifa Group, LLC
You are cordially invited to join in this very special journey of using a fictional tale to begin to make sense of the rapidly changing political landscape in the United States.
Where are we headed?
Is it too late to change course?
What survival skills are needed for this new world?
Join “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny,” Thursdays, 8 pm ET, Jan. 13 to April 7, 2022, on the TruthWorks Network YouTube Channel.
MARK YOUR CALENDAR | SERIES INVITATION | Thursdays, 8 pm ET, Jan. 13 to April 7, 2022 | If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny | TruthWorks Network YouTube Channel
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG Forcing women into narrow social roles is never a good fit. @jamilahking & @MotherJones explore issues related to women in media & how it impacts the news we consume. Join Thursdays, 8 pm ET, from 1/13/22, “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny.”
The attack on women we see in the U.S. today, and in The Handmaid’s Tale, is related to how our culture nurtures our perceptions of who women are, what women want, and what these projections of women mean for men. Getting it right is important if we want to have a culture where all people can thrive. Getting it wrong is like being forced to wear a tight pair of shoes. It hurts!
In The Handmaid’s Tale, women are forced into a narrow set of roles based on beliefs of the patriarchal theocrats about women’s roles and capacities in society. Where do these ideas come from?
In the podcast below, Jamilah King interviews Jessica Yellin. They discuss the importance of women telling women’s stories; conforming to ideas of perfection of women at work; keys to improving media coverage of under-covered stories; the different ways men and women cover the news; and Yellin’s News Not Noise Instagram podcast @jesssicayellin that breaks down the big stories of the day in a no drama way related to our lives.
King continues with clips of an event she hosted for Mother Jones where she explores how the media influences the way we think about women and power. She begins by asking the women to identify their superpowers which included organization, relentlessness, amplification and foresight. — LMO
“The key to covering the 2020 election? More women. From the #MeToo movement to the fight for workplace equality to the dystopian abortion bills popping up around the country, male supremacy is plainly on the agenda in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. How should the media, particularly women in media, cover such a fraught moment? To help guide us toward an answer, MoJo’s Jamilah King recently hosted two live events in New York City that brought together five women journalists of various ages and backgrounds. First, Jamilah spoke with Jessica Yellin, CNN’s former White House chief correspondent, at The Wing DUMBO, a women-only space in New York City, to discuss Yellin’s new novel, Savage News; the 2020 presidential election; the not-so-secret bro culture of cable news; and life after TV news. This week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast also contains highlights from another live event Jamilah hosted at Manhattan’s New School. The conversation features some of today’s leading women in media discussing the challenges and the hope of achieving equality in the industry: Imara Jones, a black transgender woman and host of The Last Sip on Free Speech TV; Antonia Hylton, correspondent and producer for Vice News Tonight on HBO; Kat Aaron, an organizer and producer at Pineapple Media; and Allie Maloney, senior politics editor at Teen Vogue.” — The Mother Jones Podcast
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature of the Library of Congress @JasonReynolds83 has wide-ranging chat w/@kristatippett @OnBeing. Join Thursdays, 8 pm ET, from 1/13/22, “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny.”
How do we help children cope with the racism, hatred and a rapidly changing environment in which we live? Jason Reynolds has some ideas on this and more in this gently piercing exchange with Krista Tippett. — LMO
Here’s a snippet:
“…So you take something like freedom. What could be a synonym for freedom? And I made up the word breathlaughter, because there’s something about the idea, for me, that — when I think of breath, I think of life, but I also think of, it doesn’t stop. So if you exhale, what comes out of your mouth spreads and spreads and spreads. It goes and goes and goes and goes. And that’s something to think about. It’s something to think about, what happens when we breathe out or breathe in. It’s also interesting to think about that we’re breathing in, and then breathing out, which means it’s a constant recycling of energy. What an amazing thing to think about, just constant recycling of energy.
“And so what if laughter could also be recycled in that way? What if it could just go? That is freedom, to me, if it could just go and go and go and go and go — if it could be the ripple in the water. To me, that feels free. Now, physically free, that’s a different conversation. But that feels like freedom to me, so yeah.”
— Jason Reynolds
“Jason Reynolds is the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature of the Library of Congress — and a magnificent source of wisdom for human society as a whole. He’s driven by compassion and the clear-eyed honesty that the young both possess and demand of the rest of us. Ibram X. Kendi chose him to write the YA companion to Stamped from the Beginning. In his person, Jason Reynolds both embodies and inspires innate human powers of fortitude and imagination. Hear him on ‘breathlaughter’; the libraries in all of our heads; and a stunning working definition of anti-racism: ‘simply the muscle that says humans are human… I love you, because you remind me more of myself than not.’
“Jason Reynolds was appointed National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress in January, 2020. His body of writing about what it is to be a Black young person growing up in the U.S. has been received as a godsend by teachers and librarians — including the award-winning Ghost, Long Way Down, and Look Both Ways. His most recent work of nonfiction, together with Ibram X. Kendi, is Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You.
“This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode ‘Jason Reynolds — Imagination and Fortitude’ Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org. This show originally aired on June 25, 2020. — On Being with Krista Tippett
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG @HandmaidsOnHulu Patterns of betrayal and injustice develop over many generations & require as much to disrupt. In this link @probert06 of @blkagendareport reflects on the abuse pattern between Blacks & the Democratic Party. Join Thursdays, 8 pm ET, from 1/13/22, “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny.”
The long game. More than anything, my belief is that Black people need to get better at playing the long game. In other words, where do we want to see ourselves in 50, 100, 500 or 1,000 years – and more importantly, what are the things we believe we need to do to get there?
Through humiliation, degradation, torture and abuse, the character June Osborne, in The Handmaid’s Tale, plays the long game. She keeps her eye on her goal of securing the return of her first child, Hannah – no matter what is happening to her, no matter the unlikelihood of success, no matter the costs she has to pay, no matter how long it might take to achieve her dream. Arguably, this single-minded focus is the key to her own survival.
More than anything, my belief is that Black people need to get better at playing the long game.
Pascal Robert points to the “50-plus-year counter-revolution” with great consistency, as he does in the commentary linked here. As you reflect on the pattern of betrayal in the Democratic Party Robert is describing, I ask that you also consider the ways in which we might pursue a new agenda. The long game. — LMO
“…In the U.S., Black people are the crash test dummies for the Democratic Party and the liberal establishment. The Democrats showcase the misery of Black people – through a discourse of ‘racial grievances’ – to maintain their legitimacy while deploying the Black political class to neutralize the ‘progressive’ elements in the party…
“During Obama’s tenure over 35% of Black wealth evaporated, and there was no recourse for…Black America. Furthermore, 95% of Obama’s presidential job growth was low wage temp jobs. Blacks were the crash test dummies whose noble history of struggle was pimped out so Banks could be protected as America saw one of the greatest wealth transfer s upward since the gilded age.
“After the 2016 election, the racial grievances of Blacks rendered them as crash test dummies again. This time the corporate faction of the Democratic party deployed the Black political class and its media acolytes to neutralize the rising cry for social democracy and anti-capitalist politics. Black thought leaders in the chattering class deemed the Bernie Sanders candidacy as ‘tone deaf on race,’ while pushing to coral Black politics around neoliberalism and Hillary Clinton. Furthermore, the Black political class has been repeatedly dispatched to destroy candidates for office that have carried the Sanders message. This subterfuge became obvious with both the 2021 Nina Turner campaign in Ohio, as well as the India Walton campaign in Buffalo, New York…
“…In the U.S., Black people are the crash test dummies for the Democratic Party and the liberal establishment. The Democrats showcase the misery of Black people – through a discourse of ‘racial grievances’ – to maintain their legitimacy while deploying the Black political class to neutralize the ‘progressive’ elements in the party…
— Pascal Robert
“Under the current Biden presidency Democrats are worried that the strategy of using Blacks as crash test dummies by dispatching ‘woke’ racial grievance discourse to stain Trump’s Republican party is backfiring. As working-class voters flee the Democratic party, the belief is that the age of ‘wokeness,’ has cost Democrats so much that they might have to start appealing to working class white voters using whatever messaging is possible. The recent controversy over political data expert David Shor and his calls for the Democratic party to embrace his messaging strategy called ‘popularism,’ has the vapid Black chattering class worried that the Democratic party is going to throw Black people under the bus to appeal to working class Whites…
“The last time Democrats used major polling analysis to change their messaging we got the Democratic Leadership Council, Clinton Crime Bill, the New Democrats, NAFTA GATT and worse neoliberalism that was highly racialized against Blacks. And in 1984 the same argumentation was used, ‘Democrats need to find a way to appeal to working class Whites.’ As vapid as the Black liberal chattering class has always been, I don’t think we can totally fault them for their paranoia about the Democratic party’s alleged embrace of ‘Shorism’ or ‘Popularism.’
“…the only class of Negroes benefitting from this race reductionist nonsense are pedigreed Blacks who have always leveraged the misery of Black toilers for policy considerations that largely only benefit those Black elites. Negro elites and certain Blacks in academia have made a fortune off George Floyd’s corps for doing nothing but protecting the status quo. So don’t blame Progressives. Blame the liberals, Black, White, and otherwise who have been using Black people as crash test dummies while showing sheer disregard for most of Black America during almost all the last 50 plus year counter-revolution.” — Pascal Robert
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG The #KyleRittenhouse acquittal reminds us of the dangers posed by both the Proud Boys and the American justice system. See reflection by @richardsudan of @AlterNet. Join Thursdays, 8 pm ET, from 1/13/22, “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny.”
Putting a stop to domestic terrorism perpetrated by white supremacists is not the goal of the American justice system.
Putting a stop to domestic terrorism perpetrated by white supremacists is not the goal of the American justice system. If it were, Kyle Rittenhouse would now be contemplating a future behind bars, instead of all the people he is free to kill as the latest poster boy of white supremacy. At least, that’s the message I see in the not guilty verdict – and I suspect others do as well.
Today, as we process the exoneration of domestic terrorist Kyle Rittenhouse, the reflection by Richard Sudan linked below, is a reminder of the way in which seemingly unrelated events may share certain connections.
Breathe. — LMO
“Far-right extremism, or white supremacy, is the fastest growing ideology in the United States. The impact of white supremacists terrorizing Black communities has led to calls for serious action, even an anti-lynching bill. This alone reflects how dangerous they are…
“A mountain of evidence suggests that…the United States should follow suit and list the Proud Boys (and others) as domestic terror groups, as part of its initiative to tackle white supremacy…
“Just days ago, a judge ruled that prosecutors in the murder trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the Kenosha shooter who shot three people at a protest against police brutality in 2020, will not be able to play for jurors a video of Rittenhouse allegedly stating his desire to shoot people — while agreeing with the Proud Boys’ tactics….
“They can terrorize the Capitol, greenlighted by the former president, and, others would argue, in the streets, allowed to do so by a police chief in Portland. Apparently the Proud Boys were allowed to post banners around the city before the violence took place…
“One thing is clear by now. Law enforcement have more than enough evidence and knowledge, and means, as do the FBI, to halt the Proud Boys in their tracks before they carry out further serious crimes.”
Richard Sudan
“One thing is clear by now. Law enforcement have more than enough evidence and knowledge, and means, as do the FBI, to halt the Proud Boys in their tracks before they carry out further serious crimes.
“Trump was a dream come true for the Proud Boys. God only knows what messaging he might have continued giving to white supremacist groups had he secured another term. Biden needs to now break up the dangerous groundwork that was laid for groups like them. And ordinary Americans need to push him. The safety of tax-paying Americans, and American democracy itself, is depending on it.” — Richard Sudan
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG @JaceyHeldrich The struggle to keep and recover one’s sanity is seen in Gilead and beyond. Here @YoloAkili speaks w/@gabehoward29 of @PsychCentral on mental health challenges in the Black community. Join Thursdays, 8 pm ET, from 1/13/22, “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny.”
“BEAM realized that we could not, in good confidence, teach black folks about mental health without addressing the legacy of harm inflicted on black bodies historically through psychiatry and psychology. We also could not teach mental health without helping our communities expand and create models of care beyond traditional mental health systems.”
— Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective
Just imagine June Osborne trying to access mental health services in the midst of her experience inside Gilead. Even before the new regime had fully manifested, talking to professionals (like doctors, abortion counselors and teachers) was a sure way to get labeled as problematic in some way. On the other hand, once inside the safe space of Canada, U.S. refugees are immediately treated to a host of medical and counseling services designed to help them recover and heal from the damage to their physical and mental health inflicted by Gilead. Moira, a refugee herself, actually runs a support group for women like herself.
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to heal in the midst of ongoing trauma. This is the challenge Black people face when focused on recovering our mental health. The hits – they just keep coming. Time and safe spaces are luxuries many of us cannot afford. Still, we try.
In the podcast and transcript linked here, host Gabe Howard interviews Yolo Akili Robinson, executive director of the Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective, on the systemic issues around mental health and what “healing justice” looks like in the Black community. — LMO
“…to talk about approaching the concept of mental health in black communities, particularly from the perspective that BEAM takes, we use a framework we call healing justice. Healing justice, essentially believes that in order for our communities to heal, we have to consider the historical, ancestral, spiritual, emotional context and political context of how our traumas happened, but also how healing can happen. So with that being said, I think it’s important when we talk about black mental health to begin to understand the roots of what we now know as mental health, or western mental health. We have to take a little bit of a time warp and go back and look at the roots of how our current kind of understanding of mental health, which is used to be called mental hygiene, is really informed by this kind of really deep seated pathology, often rooted in the pathology that was more about helping people produce and that people who were not efficient producers were the folks who were labeled as mentally ill and how that particular legacy is also deeply connected to racism and sexism, particularly for black folks in this country who were subject to a variety of different harms under the context of the medical industrial complex. But often the course and the history of psychology and Western mental health, we’re considered not capable of having mental illness because mental illness is considered to be something that was a consequence of a higher consciousness or cognitive function, right? So Africans, people of African descent, our brains were thought to be smaller. I share those pieces because it’s really important to hold racism and ableism in the history of mental health because it gives us the context as to why our communities now are so hesitant and reticent around the framework….
“Healing justice is a framework that was really created by Cara Page and the Kindred Healing Justice Collective. So this framework comes out of the work of mostly black, Latino, Asian, disabled, queer and trans folks who are really trying to move beyond the Western model that often suggested pick one person of their community and you take them to therapy. And somehow that alone is going to be enough for the transformation of their mental health. In order for our communities to be well, we have to transform the systems that we have to interrogate the legacy of untreated trauma for our folks. We have to change systems of incarceration, the prison industrial complex, systems of low wages, lack of access to care. We have to look at the entire model and really of the country and see that life change. And that is a mental health intervention. That there has to be community and systemic level healing for a new world to be possible. Right? It really turns, or challenges, a lot of concepts that are kind of inherent in some of the Western medicine kind of approaches. They really tend to like divorce or minimize racism, misogyny or transphobia as a really powerful and omnipotent structural and psychological forces they are…
“I think for black people, we trace our first cultivation of what we call peer support to really the time we landed here during our enslavement. And why I do that is because I think we have yet to interrogate the dimension of psychological and emotional support that had to be necessary for the black folks, African folks who landed here to discern what was going on to support themselves and the people they were with to survive this desolate and destructive and violent landscape that they entered into under American enslavement. What does it mean for crying and support and not speaking the language? What did it mean for emotional support? And so I trace our legacy of peer support really starts there because we had to build up communities of care and villages of care to get through that.” — Yolo Akili Robinson
More of this thoughtful dialogue is found at the link below.
Episode Notes:
“According to Prentis Hemphill, ‘Healing justice is active intervention in which we transform the lived experience of Blackness in our world.’ But it’s important to understand what those words mean.
“Today’s guest, Yolo Akili Robinson, the executive director of BEAM (Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective), explains how his organization utilizes healing justice to engage with marginalized communities. Yolo explains why he advocates for discussions surrounding mental health and mental illness in the Black community to include how racism, sexism, and other biases are deeply intertwined with psychology and psychiatry…
“Yolo Akili Robinson is an award-winning writer, healing justice worker, yogi, and the founder and executive director of BEAM (Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective). Yolo has worked primarily in three areas: Batterers intervention/family counseling with Black men and boys, HIV/AIDS, and healing justice/wellness. In 2018, Yolo was awarded the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ‘Health Equity Award’ for his work. He was also featured at the 2020 BET Awards as an ‘Empowerful Spotlight,’ highlighting his work facilitating the vision of BEAM. His writings and work have appeared on Shondaland, GQ, Women’s Health, USA Today, Vice, BET, Huffington Post, Cassius, Ebony, Everyday Feminisms, and more. He’s the author of the social justice themed affirmation book, Dear Universe: Letters of Affirmation & Empowerment for All of Us and a contributor to Tarana Burke and Dr. Brené Brown’s anthology on Black vulnerability and shame resilience, You are Your Best Thing. You can find Yolo on Twitter @YoloAkili…
“Inside Mental Health Podcast Host…Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author…To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.” — The Psych Central Podcast
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG @Dorothy410berry As @TheDemocrats fight among themselves, @ezraklein a @nytopinion writer, picks apart a debate sparked by @davidshor, and democracy hangs in the balance. Join Thursdays, 8 pm ET, from 1/13/22, “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny.”
Arguments advanced by David Shor, a data analyst sparking debate around the way forward for the Democratic Party, are picked apart in the attached article by Ezra Klein.
“Shor has built an increasingly influential theory of what the Democrats must do to avoid congressional calamity. The chain of logic is this: Democrats are on the edge of an electoral abyss. To avoid it, they need to win states that lean Republican. To do that, they need to internalize that they are not like and do not understand the voters they need to win over. Swing voters in these states are not liberals, are not woke and do not see the world in the way that the people who staff and donate to Democratic campaigns do.”
Klein’s conclusion:
“In a way, this is where Shor and his critics converge: They are both deeply pessimistic about the near-term chances for Democrats and thus for democracy.”
As Democrats fight among themselves (think infrastructure), our march to Gilead continues with deliberate speed and clarity. The simplicity of the fascist message – just kill everybody we don’t like – gives them a distinct political advantage. It’s easy, if horrifying, to follow.
The diversity of the Democratic Party, indeed, of America itself, may prove too complex for us mere humans to handle. Rather than being “too big to fail,” the U.S. may be too diverse to succeed. That thought fills me with sadness, but it is one I believe we should consider – for on the cutting room floor is America’s democracy. Will we leave it behind in an effort to simplify and craft a winning political message? — LMO
@ASoulAFire @JaniceOCG Abandoning Black voters is happening before our very eyes reports @ElieNYC of @thenation as @davidshor encourages Democrats to embrace non-college-educated Americans as a way of holding power. Join Thursdays, 8 pm ET, from 1/13/22, “If America Fails?: The Coming Tyranny.”
What if Black people and our allies took the energy we spend on electing Democrats and invested it in building a party deeply committed to a multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy? Just wondering. It’s not a new idea…just one that seems to never fully pan out.
I was also wondering recently what Black Republicans must feel about the open racism in the Republican Party. I suppose it’s not much different from what Black Democrats must feel about the open racism in the Democratic Party. Or is it.
Whether your racism comes fast or slow, hard or soft, open or closed – what real difference does it make to Black voters?
American democracy is in crisis, and clearly, the Democratic Party is back-burnering the needs and interests of Black people…as Elie Mystal notes…again.
How do you feel about that? What do you think about that? What should be done about that? Talk to me. — LMO
A few excerpts from the article highly recommended by Our Common Ground host, Janice Graham, follow:
“We have come to a familiar crossroads of American politics. Democrats, who cannot win national office without the overwhelming support of Black people, are facing rejection from perpetually aggrieved, poorly educated whites…a chorus of powerful Democrats has risen up inside the Beltway to tell Democrats that abandoning Black people—the very people who put them in power in the first place—and making performative efforts to win the support of racists, is the only way to stay in power…
“And Democrats are, predictably, listening. Black people, our concerns, and our agenda, are always the first ones to be thrown overboard, even when we’re rowing the damn boat.
“…an interesting profile of David Shor, a data analyst who became famous by warning Democrats that taking Black people seriously after George Floyd’s murder would lead to whites’ leaving the Democratic Party…There have been Democrats making Shor’s argument every election cycle since World War II. Black people are always told that progress toward a fair and just country must be deferred for fear of losing white voters. Shor’s twist on the classic tale is to include non-college-educated Blacks and Latinos as among those potentially willing to bolt the Democratic Party should it actually produce policies that help Black and Latino voters. But even that data point is hardly new or revelatory.
“…it turns out that open misogyny and hostility to LGBTQ rights and social acceptance has purchase in communities held together by their church and not their Starbucks.
“Predicting how a majority of white people would react to a demand for social justice was easy. Warning that a vocal minority of people of color would go along for the ride was obvious to anyone who can appreciate the diversity of viewpoints within communities of color. Figuring out what to do with that entirely obvious data is where there should be debate…I disagree with Shor not on the problems but on his proposed solutions…figure out what the racists want and give it to them…
“It’s not as easy to isolate and denigrate Black leaders for white applause as it used to be…Perhaps more troubling for the Shor wing of the Democratic Party is the fact that Black people can see what white Democrats are trying to get away with and are not impressed. While the Times was having its grand debate about the wisdom of white pollsters, there was a five-alarm-fire report in The Washington Post highlighting Black organizers, on the ground in Georgia, who are having difficulty justifying the Democrats’ total inaction on issues of racial and social justice…
“…there’s an even more obvious problem with these type of white appeasement strategies: Democrats will never out-racist the modern Republicans in the eyes of racists…The swing voter Shor speaks of will always gravitate toward Republicans offering white pride over the Democrat offering racism as a guilty pleasure.
“…so—it’s possible to draw a completely different electoral conclusion. The only way out is up:
Democrats have to turn out every Black or brown voter they can find; they have to turn out every white college educated voter who rejects bigotry; and they have to ensure that those voters will have frictionless access to the ballot and that their votes will actually be counted…Overpowering Republicans with enthusiasm and turnout is the only way to beat them, because trying to appease them is both morally intolerable and strategically foolish.
“Shor’s not wrong about white America. He’s not wrong about non-college-educated America. He just doesn’t have any useful ideas about what to do about it.” — Elie Mystal, The Nation
If America Fails? 