Liberals

Electing Progressive Prosecutors Isn’t Enough. Now, Activists Are Holding Them Accountable.

April 2, 2018 Adeshina Emanuel, Inthesetimes.com Resist! Electoral Politics, Liberals

In October 2015, Rev. Charles Straight, pastor of the Faith United Methodist Church in Dolton, Illinois, and other members of the People’s Lobby sat down with Kim Foxx to find out whether she was a worthy and willing partner in criminal justice reform. Straight remembers that Foxx, who was running for Cook County State’s Attorney, said she was committed to countering the failed war on drugs and stemming other drivers of mass incarceration. “She had a stake in seeing that the criminal justice system would work for all people, particularly people of color,” Straight says. “We found that she was a partner we could talk to about some of these things.” The People’s Lobby, a grassroots organizing group, and Reclaim Chicago, the political action committee it supports, are two of the progressive organizations that campaigned for Foxx.

The Two-Party System Is Facing Its Biggest Challenge In 70 Years

March 26, 2018 Theo Anderson, Occupy.com Educate! Electoral Politics, Liberals

We are in a moment of nervous, semi-panicked reflection about the health and prospects of the American political system. Take The Atlantic’s March essay, “America Is Not a Democracy.” It begins with the story of how a private water company in Oxford, Mass., apparently derailed a public buyout pushed by locals who were angry about high rates and poor service. The plan was voted down at a town hall meeting mysteriously packed with people who had shown little previous interest. “Even in this bastion of deliberation and direct democracy,” writes Yascha Mounk, “a nasty suspicion had taken hold: that the levers of power are not controlled by the people.” With good reason. Polling shows that Congress is profoundly out of tune with the will of the people on almost every issue, from gun control to single-payer healthcare to action on climate change.

Liberal Ire At Trump And Cambridge Analytica Is Misdirected From Billionaires Who Own Your Data

March 24, 2018 By Bruce A. Dixon, Blackagendareport.com Educate! Data, Liberals, Surveillance, Trump Administration

Liberals this week want to drum us into outrageous fury over the fact that Facebook, with almost 2 billion accounts worldwide, handed over user data of millions of people to Cambridge Analytica, a firm retained by the Trump campaign. Cambridge Analytica, or CA for short is part of the Robert Mercer empire, which funds an entire zoo of nonprofits from Citizens United to the Cato and Heritage Foundations, and which sponsored Steve Bannon’s career and Breitbart News after the death of its founder Andrew Breitbart. CA’s claim to fame was the supposed identification of 5,000 data points on millions of people by which they could supposedly distinguish firm supporters from wavering ones, identify potential contributors and much more. Of course the millions whose data is being sold to marketers have nothing to say in the matter.

Getting From Profits For A Few To Health Care For All

March 21, 2018 Scott Tucker, Truthdig.com Educate! Health Care, Left Politics, Liberals

Democracy is a more radical idea than socialism. That has been noted by a fair number of democratic socialists, including one of the steady campaigners on the left wing of the British Labor Party, Tony Benn, who died in 2014. By stressing democracy first and foremost, he plainly did not abandon the full range of his socialist commitments. On the contrary, the extension of democracy into the workplace and the advance of workers into public life has been the real ground of social democracy. Without democracy in basic goods and services such as health care, housing and education, the ability of people to participate in public life and politics is deeply undermined. We, the people, did not gain ground in civil and human rights simply through the Constitution.

National Consensus For Progressive Transformational Change Grows

March 8, 2018 Jim Naureckas, Fair.org Educate! Ideology, Liberals, Politics

The Pew Research Center (3/1/18) recently released a survey on political attitudes by generation. “America is politically sorted by generations in a way it never has before,” was the takeaway of New York‘s Jonathan Chait (3/1/18). Well, sort of. The generational divide is a striking feature of US politics, but it’s not exactly breaking news. While as recently as the 2000 election, young people were the least likely age group to vote for the Democrat, and old folks the most, since 2008the generations have voted the stereotype of left-leaning youth and conservative elders. That’s still happening, Pew finds. What’s more striking to me in Pew’s findings is how voters of all generations have shifted to the left—mostly by becoming more consistently progressive, mostly in the last six or seven years

Exposing The Whitewashed ‘Fable’ Of The Civil Rights Movement

February 27, 2018 Randall Kennedy, Truthdig.com Educate! Civil rights movement, History, Liberals

“A More Beautiful and Terrible History” is a critique of what its author derides as the ascendant fable of the civil rights movement—the black protests that challenged the racial status quo between the 1950s and the 1970s. Brooklyn College professor Jeanne Theoharis contends that influential shapers of public memory have attempted with considerable success to whitewash and truncate recollections of the movement. The culprits include academics, journalists and politicians. What they have done, she charges, is depict a movement devoid of unsettling militance, with narrow aims that were accomplished on account of an attentive citizenry that only needed to glimpse injustice in order to respond nobly. The fable, she argues, is complacently triumphalist, offering a distorted mirror that misleadingly celebrates observers.

Liberal Totalitarianism And The Trump Diversion

February 3, 2018 Ajamu Baraka, Dissidentvoice.org Educate! Liberals, Trump Administration

The ongoing political circus in the capital of the world’s most powerful empire opens almost daily with a new act each day showcasing an even more bizarre and more revealing display of the internal rot of a culture and a political system in decline. The day before Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address, the Russia-gate drama took an unexpected and dangerous turn with the vote by the House Intelligence Committee to release a now classified memo that alleges that senior members of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) may have misled the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA court) in order to secure a warrant to engage in what Republicans assert is a politically motivated effort that spied on the Trump campaign before he won the 2016 election and attempted to undermine his presidency.

Understanding Coates-West Conflict Clarifies Many Issues

December 28, 2017 Robin D. G. Kelley, Bostonreview.net Strategize! Black Capitalism, Black Nationalism, Ideology, Liberals

When the emails started coming in, I ignored them. By day’s end, my voicemail and email inboxes were filling up with links to the Guardian, followed by links to Facebook pages and blogposts devoted to Cornel West’s takedown of Ta-Nehisi Coates. I felt like I was being summoned to see a schoolyard brawl, and, now that I no longer use social media, I was already late. By the time I read West’s piece, “Ta-Nehisi Coates is the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle,” it had become the center of international controversy. Perhaps because West named me as an ally, the New York Times requested a comment, followed by Le Monde, and then a slew of publications all trying to get the scoop on the latest battle royale among the titans of the black intelligentsia.

Behind The Mask Of The ‘Moderates’

November 20, 2017 Chris Hedges, truthdig.com Educate! Canada, Electoral Politics, Liberals

By Chris Hedges for Truth Dig - TORONTO—Pity Canada. Its citizens watch the stages of U.S. decline and then, a few years later, inflict on themselves the same cruelties. It is as if the snuffing out of democracy across the globe and the rise of authoritarian regimes are a preordained Greek tragedy and all of us, in spite of our yearning for liberty, must ominously play an assigned part. Canada is currently in the Barack Obama phase of self-immolation. Its prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is—as Obama was—a fresh face with no real political past or established beliefs, a brand. Trudeau excels, like Obama, French President Emmanuel Macron, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in empty symbolism. These “moderates” spew progressive and inclusive rhetoric while facilitating social inequality, a loss of rights and the degradation of the environment by global corporations. They are actors in skillfully crafted corporate advertisements. “Liberal democracy is bifurcating, giving rise to two new regime forms: ‘illiberal democracy,’ or democracy without rights, and ‘undemocratic liberalism,’ or rights without democracy,” writes political theorist Yascha Mounk. The “moderate” politicians espouse “undemocratic liberalism.” Lifestyle choices and expressions of personal identity are respected, even championed, while we are politically disempowered. The focus on multiculturalism and identity politics is anti-politics.

How Faith In Civilized Debate Is Fueling White Supremacy

October 6, 2017 Matthew Pratt Guterl, www.qz.com Educate! Debates, Liberals, White Supremacy

By Matthew Pratt Guterl for Quartz - The fall semester has kicked off and the annual tide of speakers now washes over our communities. Not surprisingly, colleges and universities are revisiting last year’s unresolved arguments about whether white supremacist speech deserves equal space and protection. Already, in the aftermath of the bloody white supremacist actions in Charlottesville, Texas A & M has cancelled a “White Lives Matter” event scheduled for early September. A “Free Speech Week” was taking shape in Berkeley, but then it all fell apart, a victim of giant egos with little capacity for event planning. A steady drumbeat of op-eds maintains that college minds are closed, that liberalism is a cult presided over by the professoriate, and that civility is endangered. In so many ways, of course, the argument over whether racism is protected speech has already been won. Hate speech legislation is stalled. Newspapers feature deeply conservative voices on their opinion pages. There is a white supremacist in the White House. Universities may strive for balance and inclusion, and tens of thousands of talks sponsored by student groups of all shapes and sizes go off without a hitch every year, but the general mood is grim. There will be a lot of right-wing anguish about the supposedly closed minds of college campuses...

Not A Liberal: Can A Black Mayor Bring Change To Mississippi?

October 2, 2017 Jamiles Lartey, www.theguardian.com Create! Electoral Politics, Identity Politics, Liberals, Mississippi, Propaganda

By Jamiles Lartey for The Guardian - 34-year-old attorney Chokwe Lumumba sees his election win as proof that even in a red state in the age of Trump, many people are ready to be progressive. The day Chokwe Lumumba’s father died in 2014, he asked for a moment to be alone in the room with the man he’d long considered his best friend. He told his dad, Chokwe Sr, then the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, all the last things he had to tell him. He prayed and asked god to put his father’s spirit into him. Then, he said, his next move became immediately apparent. “I decided at that moment, though I shared it with nobody, that I was going to run for mayor,” Lumumba said. “There were a lot of people who were hopeful under his administration, and there was a lot of fear surrounding his loss, so I wanted to restore hope for people.” The 34-year-old attorney who had “never run for junior class president, let alone mayor” now holds the keys to the state’s most populous city. He brings with him a progressive agenda and much of the leftover to-do list of his father’s administration. He sees his victory – collecting 93% of the vote in Jackson’s 6 June election – as proof that even in a deep red Republican state, and even in the age of Trump, the city’s residents are ready to move in a new progressive direction. “The citizens of Jackson have demonstrated overwhelmingly a readiness to be a progressive city and not only to correct the ills as we see them, but to be a model for the nation of what progressive leadership and collective genius can accomplish.”

Liberalism, Ultraleftism Or Mass Action

September 1, 2017 Peter Camejo, www.marxists.org Strategize! Left Politics, Liberals, Mass Movement

By Peter Camejo for The Militant - The purpose of this meeting is to have a discussion about the present political conjuncture in this country following the May events, how we have to relate to what is happening, and what we have to do to build the antiwar movement and the revolutionary movement. The main questions I want to deal with are some of the arguments being raised within the radical movement against the orientation projected by the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialist Alliance. I want to try to deal with these arguments in a theoretical way. That is, deal with what is basically behind the differences that now exist in the radical movement and what they represent in terms of the problems before the left in the United States. I want to start by talking about Cambodia. If you read the newspapers of the last few days you will notice that there’s a very interesting thing happening in Cambodia. The papers say that the guerrillas are winning ground. Now, you have to be very careful whenever the American papers say that the communists are winning, because sometimes that is done simply to justify sending more troops or more arms. But when the papers start saying it every day, over and over again, and then they start telling you what areas the communists have conquered, after a while you begin to suspect that it’s true.

Fork In The National Road: A New Progressive Supermajority Party Is Forming

August 24, 2017 Gail McGowan Mellor, www.huffingtonpost.com Create! Electoral Politics, Liberals, Political Parties

By Gail McGowan Mellor for The Huffington Post - The time is ripe. The Democratic and Republican parties, private political clubs, are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution and do not represent the people who elect them, yet have a stranglehold on our electoral system. People are fed up. Hemorrhaging voters, the Dems and Reps are each down to around a fourth of the voters, already minority parties. Progressives — those who support minimum wage, social justice, strong environmental protection, 21st century infrastructure and universal healthcare and oppose corruption, invasive wars and corporate welfare — are meanwhile 66%, two-thirds of voters, the U.S. supermajority. We as a people therefore stand at a fork in the national road. The country’s Progressive supermajority could sweep every local, state and federal election if it united. Should we come together in the old Democratic Party or form a new one? The Democratic Party is in many states hollow below the federal level. Senator Bernie Sanders and a contingent of young Progressives have therefore been trying for a year to fill those levels with clean candidates, with some success but only to be repeatedly kneecapped by the party’s corrupt, deeply entrenched Neoliberal leadership.

Progressive Democrats: Resist And Submit, Retreat And Surrender

July 15, 2017 James Petras, www.informationclearinghouse.info Educate! Democrats, Liberals, Progressive

By James Petras for Information Clearing House - July 13, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - Over the past quarter century progressive writers, activists and academics have followed a trajectory from left to right – with each presidential campaign seeming to move them further to the right. Beginning in the 1990’s progressives mobilized millions in opposition to wars, voicing demands for the transformation of the US’s corporate for-profit medical system into a national ‘Medicare For All’ public program. They condemned the notorious Wall Street swindlers and denounced police state legislation and violence. But in the end, they always voted for Democratic Party Presidential candidates who pursued the exact opposite agenda. Over time this political contrast between program and practice led to the transformation of the Progressives. And what we see today are US progressives embracing and promoting the politics of the far right. To understand this transformation we will begin by identifying who and what the progressives are and describe their historical role. We will then proceed to identify their trajectory over the recent decades.

The Last Liberal

July 12, 2017 Zoltan Zigedy, www.zzs-blg.blogspot.com Educate! Ideology, Left Politics, Liberals

By Zoltan Zigedy for ZZ's Blog - The year 1989 marked the death of the independent journalist, Isidor Feinstein (I.F.) Stone, the last twentieth century US liberal. Liberalism in the last century combined the liberties of the original Bill of Rights with Roosevelt’s proposed Second Bill of Rights. By mid-century, US liberalism reached its greatest heights, supplementing the historic bourgeois rights that dismantled feudalism and enshrined the right to property with the promise of an entirely new set of economic rights-- rights to employment, housing, medical care, social security, education, among others. The economic rights sought to codify the social democratic gains made in the New Deal era. By the time of I.F. Stone’s death in 1989, liberalism had nearly shed all of its commitment to the Rooseveltian social justice rights. The bearer of the liberal legacy, the Democratic Party, swiftly retreated from New Deal values in the face of the Reagan attack on social welfare programs. Consequently, the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton, the “third way,” market-obsessed Democrats, eschewed the term “liberal” and appropriated the once-meaningful term “progressive” in its place. Stone would have been appalled.

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