How corporate, hawkish Democrats betrayed the party and elected Trump

The neoliberals [ We elected them, remember? ] and neocons created an unholy matrimony. We let the globalized corporate camel’s nose under the tent and now folks are worried about Trump’s business being a conflict of interest.

As I use “we” here, I am reflecting and including myself as part of a people that acted as a bystander rather than an upstander over the years of my life. My own activism has been off and on. I realize that I cannot do it all, even now. I also realize that we need to create a friendly space for people to join in activism at the level of commitment they have to offer. We need to accept activists at their current zone of proximal development. There is more than enough work to do for everyone and all talents are needed in this work.

And now we suddenly worry about more because of Trump. Suddenly many are worried about white nationalism. It has been part of this country since our inception. Yet white nationalism has never stopped. And there are many of us who ignored the constructs of racism gripping our country. Racism continues to allow the murder of innocent Native Americans, blacks, and Latinos.

We’ve allowed deregulation and privatization to take root. We allowed Citizens United. We bailed out the banks and Wall Street. Some of us fought these things in the streets. Some of us showed apathy.

We allowed ourselves to be seduced by the propaganda of consumerism. Think about #BlackFriday.

We allow our current neoliberal president to protect bankers and big oil while he militarized the police who use violence against peaceful water protectors.

We allowed jobs to be outsourced and unions to be disempowered. Our current neoliberal president and most of the country stood by while his former Chief of Staff closed 50 public schools in poor black and brown neighborhoods to privatize them, while he fired 1,000s of educators to replace them with 5 week trained corporate TFA players.

Our current neoiberal president stood by while the former secretary of education, Arne Duncan claimed that “Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to New Orleans”. Most of the country stood by while people suffered, died, and virtually all public schools in New Orleans were privatized virtually overnight.

We stood by while Gov Snyder poisoned the water of Flint, Michigan and allowed Betsy DeVos, Nestle, the water companies, and the water profiteers to take the money of the victims.

Most of us stood by while all three branches of our government were sold out to corporate power. Most of us stood by while black and brown votes were disenfranchised by redistricting and voter suppression.

We allow our current neoliberal president to engage in permanent war while privatizing agencies like Blackwater to be our mercenaries.

We stood by and allowed Disaster Capitalism to flourish.

By voting for the lesser of 2 evils in a 2 party system for years now, we paved the way to authoritarian white nationalism / NeoNazism and nepotism.

Kudos to those who have been awake and actively organizing this entire time. We may be weary, but we have to create space in our lives to build bridges with all other activists – the civil rights movement – climate justice movement – immigration rights movement – #BlackLivesMatter – #NoDAPL – #IdleNoMore – public ed activists – unionists – Fight for $15 – Anti-war movement – all of us need to work together – organize as allies.

It will take a general strike to end corporate power. Or a very ugly revolt. Or both. The French succeeded in overthrowing their government in 2+ weeks in 1968. De Gaulle fled the country. Workers could’ve done better with their negotiations, but in the end they won much. Trump and the GOP aren’t going to be champions for the middle class. Kudos to some of the conservative GOP who are already disagreeing with some of Trump’s decisions. But will you join us to fight? Wall Street and white nationalists are still in charge. Will you organize against racism?

Are you awake yet? Or will the apathy continue? How will we organize? When? Where? Will you make time in your life to take a stand and organize yet? I am ready.