Democrats bet on appeals to neoconservatives — including war criminals like Dick Cheney — and touted harsh border policies, bolstering rather than challenging Republican anti-immigrant frameworks.

Kamala Harris may have relied on women to vote for abortion rights, but she promised little more than a potential return to the flawed and insufficient norm of Roe v. Wade, at best. Like President Joe Biden, she supported a genocide and failed to distinguish herself from extremist Zionists like Trump.

For Democrats, appealing to the right has been a disaster of realpolitik, especially in an electoral system that structurally favors Republicans anyway. But what’s worse, Democratic strategies have failed and harmed the most vulnerable communities both in the U.S. and those who suffer under the yoke of U.S.-backed wars.

There is an urgent need for social justice movement organizing, growing unions and union power, antagonism rather than acquiescence to existing power structures, and expansive networks of care and support. The most powerful social movements of the last decades did not primarily build on support from Democratic leadership under Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, or Joe Biden. Nor did they collapse during Trump’s first tenure.

  • Xaphanos@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    My GG grandfather was killed when soldiers fired into an unarmed crowd that was protesting for basic human rights. This was in Marineo, Sicily, on 3 January 1894. His widow had to flee to the NYC tenements with their 6 children to start fresh - as progressive sympathizers were not safe.

    She was poor in Sicily, she was destitute when she arrived in the US. Like many others, she did garment piece work to get by. Other Sicilian immigrants arrived in a wave and they made a new community.

    When the Triangle Fire happened, real labor reform began to happen through the work of the ILGWU and others. They did not stop protesting until they got results.

    Yes. Hard times ahead. Hard times behind may show us the way forward. Ad astra per áspera.