SILOS AND THINKING ABOUT RESISTANCE

Harry Targ

Among the political difficulties in times like these is thinking coherently about theory and practice. What is happening? Why is it happening? What can we do about it? Random thoughts and experiences follow:

First, while an Indiana resident, I spent the last four months in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Much of my occupation (I teach political science) and my passion (progressive politics) lead me to participate in social movements. Also I have been in a socialist organization for years.

While in Milwaukee I attended meetings of the Milwaukee Coalition for Normalizing Relations With Cuba and the End the Wars Committee, an affiliate of Peace Action. I viewed a broadcast of a Milwaukee speech by Rev. William Barber during his recently created new Poor People’s Campaign. He called for organizing against the three evils articulated by Dr. King: militarism, racism, and poverty. One week later I attended the annual “Fighting Bob” celebration of the life and work of progressive Governor and Senator Robert La Follette. Speakers underscored La Follette’s struggles to democratize political institutions and to oppose the consolidation of corporate wealth.

Attendance at the Barber event, which occurred at St. Gabriel’s Church of God, was interracial and mostly middle aged. Short speeches were made by activists from Black Lives Matter, Fight for Fifteen, and Veterans for Peace. The Fighting Bob event featured Nation magazine contributor, John Nichols, Our Revolution spokesperson Nina Turner, and state legislator, David Bowen among others. About 200 people, mostly white but varied in terms of age, attended and about 20 tables circled the crowd with political literature on a variety of topics including local politics, peace, the environment, Cuba, and support for constitutional amendments.

Also, Wisconsin Peace Action’s End the Wars Committee, co-sponsored with the Milwaukee Coalition Against Trump (MCAT) and other organizations a panel discussion at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, on “Rebuilding the Peace and Justice Movements.” The panel was diverse including Lisa Jones, a leader of UBLAC, RidRacism and other justice organizations; Harry Targ, member of the End the Wars Committee and the Wisconsin Coalition to Normalize Relations with Cuba; Maricela Aguilar Monroy, Young People’s Resistance Committee; and Samir Moukaddam, a progressive advocate for Palestinian rights. About 40 mostly older white activists attended the event.

Over the summer the Milwaukee League of Progressive Seniors held two events: one luncheon seminar on Trump Care as a device to shift wealth to the super rich and another on the recent enormous tax breaks the state of Wisconsin contracted with Fox Conn, a Taiwanese electronics corporation. Speakers linked the Fox Conn giveaway to major cuts in resources for government supported projects such as Milwaukee senior centers. Most LPS members are retirees from social services, trade unions, and civic organizations, and continue to be activists.

In addition to these events, Milwaukee progressives marched, protested, and organized around a panoply of critical issues such as prison reform, police violence, the environment, single-payer health care, opposition to the above-mentioned Wisconsin state government tax giveaway to global corporation Fox Conn, and other issues. Progressive values pervaded music, film, drama, and street events during the summer.

The Greater Lafayette community, which includes Purdue University, is about one-quarter the size of Milwaukee. However, over the years it has seen episodes of activism not unlike other communities big and small around the country. Particularly, there has been a significant increase in grassroots political activity in the community since the November, 2016 election. These have included work around electoral, feminist, immigrant solidarity, redistricting, anti-racist and anti-fascist issues, paralleling political activism in Milwaukee. In both venues, groups that identify themselves with the political Left (communist, socialist, anarchist) are miniscule. Some more self-defined or externally perceived radical groups, such as Black Lives Matter, feminist, and immigrant rights groups are visible but small.

My guess is that the political maps of Milwaukee and Lafayette, Indiana are not too different from many other communities in the United States. It may be that the traditional centers of more radical politics (New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles) are the outliers in American progressive politics, not the norm.

My reflections are not to demean or criticize the political work being done in the two venues in which I have had some experience. To the contrary, I have been excited and inspired by the level of activity and the theoretical and practical sophistication of activists. But my long-standing frustration with progressive/radical politics in Indiana was reinforced by what I experienced in Milwaukee.

Lisa Jones, activist in the Milwaukee African American community and panelist at the UWM event, introduced a useful concept to articulate my frustration: “siloing.” In other words, radical/progressive politics in these locations is characterized by the existence of a multiplicity of very active groups which have limited connection with other groups working on different issues. And the “tragedy” of the silo problem is that the many groups engaged in their own issues would probably agree with the positions that others take. And while sometimes individuals in one group work in others, theorizing, strategizing, and action is divided up among ten or twenty or more groups. And within each silo there exists a dominate demographic as to age, race, gender, and personal background.

It may be that the task ahead, if the drift toward a heartless and environmentally devastated world is to be avoided, is to figure out a way to break down the silos, find some common theoretical narrative to explain the current period, identify core issues that interconnect the silos, and all hit the streets and the electoral arenas together. In addition, networks of activists should begin to work toward building new community institutions.

It is important to remember that such radical cooperation has occurred before. It can be done again.

IMPERIALISM, WAR, AND/OR DIPLOMACY:WHERE SHOULD THE PEACE MOVEMENT STAND?

Originally posted August 2, 2015

Harry Targ

Not every conflict was averted, but the world avoided nuclear catastrophe, and we created the time and the space to win the Cold War without firing a shot at the Soviets.

….

Now, when I ran for president eight years ago as a candidate who had opposed the decision to go to war in Iraq, I said that America didn’t just have to end that war. We had to end the mindset that got us there in the first place. It was a mindset characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy, a mindset that put a premium on unilateral U.S. action over the painstaking work of building international consensus, a mindset that exaggerated threats beyond what the intelligence supported. (Barack Obama, “Full text: Obama gives a speech about the Iran nuclear deal,” The Washington Post, August 5, 2015).

The peace movement has often been faced with a dilemma. Should it channel its energies in opposition to imperialism, including economic expansion and covert operations, or should it mobilize against war, or both. The problem was reflected in President Obama’s August 5, 2015 speech defending the anti-nuclear proliferation agreement with Iran.  On the one hand he defended diplomacy as the first tool of a nation’s foreign policy and on the other hand his defense included the argument that through diplomacy the United States “won” the Cold War, and thereby defeated a bloc of states that opposed capitalist expansion. The implication of his argument was that pursuing imperialism remained basic to United States foreign policy but achieving it through peace was better than through war.

The speech was presented at American University 52 years after President Kennedy called for peaceful competition with the former Soviet Union. In June, 1963, nine months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, which nearly led to nuclear war, and weeks after Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s call for “peaceful coexistence,” President Kennedy responded by urging the use of diplomacy rather than war in the ongoing conflict with the Soviet Union. 

A small but growing number of scholars and activists at that time had begun to articulate the view that the threat of nuclear war, growing U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, and repeated covert interventions in Guatemala, Iran, Cuba, and the Congo, had to do with U.S. imperialism. The dilemma for the peace movement in 1963 then as it is in 2015 is how to respond to United States imperialism at the same time as supporting the use of diplomacy to forestall wars.

In the context of political discourse in 2015, dominated by “neoconservative” and “humanitarian interventionist” factions of the foreign policy elite, the danger of war always exists. Therefore, any foreign policy initiative that reduces the possibility of war and arguments about its necessity must be supported. The agreement with Iran supported by virtually every country except Israel constitutes an effort to satisfy the interests of Iran and the international community and without the shedding of blood and creating the danger of escalation to global war. 

Neoconservatives, celebrants of war, have had a long and growing presence in the machinery of United States foreign policy. James Forrestal, the first Secretary of Defense in the Truman Administration, was a leading advocate for developing a militaristic response to the Soviet Union in the years after World War II. As historian Andrew Bacevich pointed out, Forrestal was one of the Truman administrators who sought to create a “permanent war economy.” He was, in Bacevich’s terms, a founding member of the post-World War II “semi-warriors.”

Subsequent to the initiation of the imperial response to the “Soviet threat”--the Marshall Plan, NATO, wars in Korea and Vietnam, the arms race--other semi-warriors continued the crusade. These included the Dulles brothers (John and Alan), Air Force General Curtis LeMay, and prominent Kennedy advisors including McGeorge Bundy and Walter Rostow, architect of the “noncommunist path to development,” in Vietnam.

Key semi-warriors of our own day, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Elliott Abrams, Robert Kagan, and others who formed the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in the 1990s, gained their first experience in the administrations of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The PNAC view of how the United States should participate in world affairs is to use military superiority to achieve foreign policy goals. The key failure of Clinton foreign policy, they claimed, was his refusal to use force to transform the world. For starters, he should have overthrown Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

The neoconservative policy recommendations prevailed during the eight years of the George Walker Bush administration. International organizations were belittled, allies were ignored, arms control agreements with Russia were rescinded and discourse on the future prioritized planning for the next war. And concretely the United States launched long, bloody, immoral wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Humanitarian interventionists, more liberals than conservatives, argued that the United States should use force, but more selectively, to achieve various goals. These goals included interventions that allegedly defended the quest for human rights. Advocates of humanitarian interventionism argued that the United States must use all means available, military and diplomatic, to maximize interests and values. And force need not be the first or only instrument of policy. 

But in the end the humanitarian interventionists encouraged bombing Serbia, intervening in a civil war in Libya, funding rebels perpetuating war in Syria, expanding military training and a U.S. presence in Africa, and funding opposition elements against the government in Venezuela. In addition, with advice from humanitarian interventionists, the United States increased the use of drones to target enemies of U.S. interests in East Asia, the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East.

Neoconservatives and humanitarian interventionists (and in earlier times anti-communists) have led the charge for war-making in the United States since World War II. Between the end of the war and the 1990s, 10 million people died in wars in which the United States had a presence. Hundreds of thousands of young men and women serving in the armed forces of the United States have died or been permanently scarred by U.S. wars. And the physical landscape of Southeast Asia, the Persian Gulf, Central America, and the Middle East has been devastated by war. And in the United States, foreign policy elites, politicians, and think tank experts still advocate violence to address international problems. 

Therefore, in the context of a huge arms industry and global economic and political interests, any presidential initiative that uses diplomacy rather than force, declares its opposition to unilateral action, and challenges the war mindset deserves the support of the peace movement. Given the long and painful United States war system, the battle to secure the agreement between the P5 plus 1 nuclear agreement with Iran is worthy of support.

 

REBUILDING PEACE AND JUSTICE MOVEMENTS: a panel discussion

https://www.facebook.com/711457259022366/videos/843032832531474/

The Grass is Greener: A Radio Interview

A big thanks to Harry Targ for doing our show, the Grass is Greener on Riverwest Radio.

Here is the link: The Grass is Greener-2017-09-16 Harry Targ Returns by wxrw

The Grass is Greener-2017-09-16 Harry Targ Returns by wxrw The Grass is Greener-2017-09-16 Harry Targ Returns Purdue University professor and heartland radical Harry Targ...

Give a listen and feel free to share it around as much as you wish.

We did run out of time to announce the upcoming program this week. 

My apologies. Gary sends his too, but he just wanted to get his last two 

questions in. Well, enjoy. 

Babette

BENEFITS OF INNOVATION NOT TRICKLING DOWN TO HOOSIER WORKERS

The Journal Gazette
Fort Wayne, Indiana
Tuesday, September 12, 2017 1:00 am

Harry Targ

Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University in West Lafayette.

Hurricane Harvey touched down on the coast of Texas on Aug. 25.

On Aug. 31, Indiana leaders – government, the corporate sector and higher education – issued a statement announcing establishment of the Applied Research Institute: “ARI will facilitate and manage collaborative research teams to pursue major federal grants and contracts and perform corporate-sponsored research that will generate technology transfer and commercialization in military defense and other sectors of Indiana's economy.”

ARI will have access to research facilities and personnel valued at $1 billion: laboratories and personnel from corporations, the military and the two major public universities, Indiana and Purdue.

The board of directors of ARI include the governor, the presidents of Indiana and Purdue, the president of Defense Aerospace at Rolls-Royce and the technical director of the Naval Surface Warfare Center. The project was launched in 2015, according to the article, with the help of a Lilly Endowment Grant of $16 million.The Lilly Endowment chairman said he was pleased ARI “...has assembled a board of directors of this caliber and distinction.”

The ARI announcement emphasized development of computer technology, products that would have commercial value and advances in military security. The news release listed initial projects including “trusted microelectronics technology and security; multi-spectral data fusion and security (cyber); high density power storage and management; and advanced material science.” ARI research will accelerate “technology commercialization that supports economic prosperity.”

In a related development, in a letter to the Purdue academic community, President Mitch Daniels celebrated the university's developing research collaboration with Microsoft, Eli Lilly, Rolls-Royce, the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division and Infosys. He also praised Purdue's acquisition of for-profit online Kaplan University and the creation of the new so-called “Purdue New U.”

Indiana workers

The Indiana Institute of Working Families issued its Labor Day report on Sept. 1. It found that there were parallel declines in union membership and Hoosier workers' income in the 21st century. Indiana workers' real income peaked in 1999 and has been in decline ever since. The Institute cited Advisor Perspectives, a market advisory firm, which called Indiana a “21st Century Loser.”

Compared to the other 49 states, Indiana has experienced the ninth-largest drop in mean income. Lowered incomes and wages have been exacerbated by declining union membership, passage of a right-to-work law in 2012, and the end to the common construction wage in 2015. The report said “Indiana's median household income grew so little compared to other states that our income ranking dropped from 34th to 36th in the nation. Indiana now has the lowest median wages of any of our neighbors, including Kentucky. If there are benefits to undercutting Indiana's labor standards, they aren't showing up in the average Hoosier's paycheck, or even in employers' ability to find a skilled workforce.”

Who benefits

These disparate reports were distributed while Texas was experiencing one of the worst hurricanes in U.S. history. Hurricane impacts were linked not only to climate change but also to unregulated growth in Houston. In addition, the announcement about ARI was made at a time that:

Gaps between rich and poor grow and smaller numbers of corporations and banks control more and more of the economy.

Major universities, such as Indiana and Purdue, have become extensions of big corporations and the military.

Racism and white supremacy have been fueled by opportunistic politicians and ignored by the rest. The tragic events in Charlottesville, Virginia are just one recent example.

Massive wealth and power have become ever more concentrated in economic and political elites.

And all of these changes in American society are going on below the radar screen while the media and mainstream politicians concentrate on the follies of politics in Washington. To borrow from Naomi Klein's idea of the shock doctrine, the Trump presidency is the shock, while new institutions like ARI, mostly invisible, are creating a new American reality that does not address the real needs for economic and social justice in Indiana and the nation at large.

In sum, Hoosiers might conclude that the beneficiaries of projects such as ARI, are big corporations, universities and the military – not Indiana workers.

A LABOR DAY REPOST ((again)

Friday, September 2, 2016

FROM LABOR DAY TO ELECTION DAY (updated)

By Harry Targ,

The original essay appeared in The Rag Blog / September 9, 2010

 (Since the issues and context of 2016 are uncomfortably similar to what was written about 2010, it seemed appropriate to repost this essay making revisions adapted to 2016. The essay substitutes the Trump campaign for the then, but not deceased, Tea Party movement. In addition, the call for a broad-based movement to elect progressive candidates at all levels of government in 2010 parallels the Sanders campaign and his initiation of a grassroots organization called Our Revolution).

The working class built this country: Now we must mobilize to transform it

I want to add my voice to the thousands of essayists and bloggers who have been contemplating the 2016 elections, the media “framing” of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy, the role of progressives in the elections, and mobilizing for the last two months before the elections.

First, I think elections still matter. Since most people see politics and elections as equivalent and some of them actively participate in the electoral process, progressives need to be there as well.

In addition, in states and communities decisions will be made about how government money for local school corporations is to be allocated, about workers compensation for victims of asbestos related workplace injuries, so-called Right to Work laws, rules governing bargaining and organizing, support for women’s health,  and how congressional and state legislative districts will be redesigned.

At the national level, policy decisions about such critical issues as jobs, climate change, education, military spending, and judicial appointments will be affected by election outcomes.

Second, most of these issues have not been the main narrative. The media have framed the fall elections around personalities, particularly the inarticulate, bizarre, racist, and personality attacks of the Trump candidacy.

Third the “liberal” media, while more sophisticated and entertaining in its coverage of election year stories, over-emphasizes “making fun” of the outlandish Trump candidacy and his spokespersons and supporters.

In response, Trump staffers have decided to do two things: forget about trying to put together logical, coherent plans for an alternative set of policies. When they are occasionally challenged by enterprising reporters, they just walk away or the potentially embarrassing reporters are ejected from rallies.  Since the media is the enemy, for most Trump supporters, incoherence and evasiveness resonate well with a disillusioned public.

Fourth, part of the context for the unstable politics of the fall, 2016, is the continued economic crisis that grips working people. Unemployment, declining real wages, indebtedness, crumbling public services remain all too real, an actuality or a fear for the majority of Americans.

In addition, the Obama administration has failed to propose an economic stimulus program that could bring millions of un- and underemployed workers back to work, making livable wages. A massive green jobs program to create a well-paid workforce that would rebuilt the American infrastructure while shifting away from an economy based on fossil fuels never materialized as many had hoped. Meanwhile, the political system at all levels has failed to address institutional racism: police brutality, grotesque inequality, and political marginalization.

Having said all this, the administration since 2009 has forestalled return to depression with a modest economic recovery program, “saved” the U.S. auto industry, and has secured the passage of an inadequate health care reform bill but one which may stimulate movement toward a single payer system in the future.

A little history

A high level of distrust of government, low regard for politicians, and periodic active anger at our public institutions is a characteristic feature of American history often reflected in voting against political incumbents and supporting candidates who are most vocal against government programs.

For example, the American National Election Studies (ANES) prepared an index of Trust in Government made up of several questions reflecting the points just raised. Looking over time the level of trust in government was at a score of 49 in 1958, 52 in 1964, 27 in 1980, 29 in 1992, 36 in 2000, and declined to 26 by 2008. Only twice in the Johnson years, did the Trust Index reach a score over 60 and six times since 1958 the index score was below 30.

In addition, a constant feature of political life has been active and extremist politics. For example, the American Party of the 1850s, or “Know Nothing Party,” got its name from members being instructed when asked about the party to say “I know nothing.” While short-lived they elected several national and state office holders before the civil war.

Throughout U.S. history so-called “nativist” groups formed and mobilized against waves of immigrants: Catholics, Germans, the Irish, Chinese, Jews, and Latinos. Armed Klan organizations terrorized the South and the Midwest in the 1880s, 1920s and 1930s and dominated the political life in many states in these eras. The Klan and white nationalist groups have been reenergized in recent years.

Of course, extremist movements, often organized and funded by corporations and wealthy individuals, scared the American people during the dark days of anti-Communism in the 1940s and 1950s. Red Channels, a small but well-funded political organization, published lists of suspected Communists in the entertainment industry and pressured the new television corporations and advertisers to purge actors and actresses, with views supportive of labor, racial integration, and peace, from the airwaves. Their activism paralleled and reinforced Congressional reactionaries who used investigative committees to hound individuals and groups.

Alternatively, for all of Labor’s flaws, the history of the American labor movement has been central to social progress in the United States: from the demands for an eight hour day, skilled trades controls of the pace of work, health and safety at the work place, a fair wage, programs of health and retirement benefits, and, after much internal conflict, support for the struggles against racism and sexism. The civil rights, women’s, gay rights, environmental, and peace movements also have contributed to improvements in the quality of life in the United States.

There is no question that workers mobilizing in struggles such as “The Fight for Fifteen,” and young people of color in mobilizations like Black Lives Matter, represent the most powerful forces in today’s society resisting neoliberalism, state violence at home and abroad, the privatization of public institutions, deregulation of the economy, and attacks on the  environment.

A progressive campaign program

So what to do now? We live in a time of enormous distrust of government and corporate support for campaigns to undermine progressive government and pro-worker policies (the Koch brothers for example). In addition, racism, Islamophobia, and fear of foreigners run deep in American political culture and is being fueled by reactionary political candidates. Therefore, progressives have only one choice for the next two months: work to elect political candidates from the city council to the Congress of the United States who support an anti-racist “working people’s agenda.”

American political history tells us that the Tea Party and grassroots support for a candidate such as Donald Trump are not new. While the concern and anger reflected among those grassroots activists who participate in rallies and marches is usually sincere and motivated by fear of strange times and economic crises with no seeming resolution, its leaders offer no program, no vision, and no coherent agenda.

Progressives cannot argue with the Trump supporters. But, they can campaign, not just for individual candidates or just for a party but for an anti-racist “working people’s agenda,” that includes rebuilding America’s schools, roads, and energy systems; expands support for the maintenance of state and local public services; puts all people who want to work in jobs that need to be done; and regulates banks more effectively so that they are required to support local projects that create businesses which will create jobs. Also institutions at the local and state level must be controlled by the communities of people that these institutions are supposed to support.

Most important, progressives must work in their communities and in solidarity with workers, people of color, and youth to elect progressive candidates to public office and to monitor their conduct once they are elected. It must be made clear to all that the progressive majority is not engaged in politics to support candidates or parties but to transform America.

REVEREND BARBER AND THE POOR PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN VISIT MILWAUKEE

Harry Targ

Reverend William Barber and his co-workers in the emerging Poor People’s Campaign visited Milwaukee, Wisconsin on August 28, at the Saint Gabriel’s Church of God. After inspirational singing, introductory remarks by Rev. Liz Theoharis, head of the Kairos Center in New York City, and testimonials representing Black Lives Matter in Minneapolis, and the Fight for Fifteen, and Veterans for Peace in Milwaukee, Reverend Barber gave an uplifting speech announcing the forthcoming Poor People’s Campaign.

Moral Mondays Campaigns

Reverend Barber was instrumental in working with North Carolinians for over a decade to build a multi-national, multi-generational, multi-issue movement to oppose racist, exploitative, and sexist policies that became law when reactionary forces gained control of the government of  North Carolina in 2012. He and his co-workers also helped launch Moral Mondays movements, modeled after the North Carolina struggle, in several other states in the South, the Midwest, and the Southwest. In Indiana, that state’s Moral Mondays movement adopted an agenda to advocate for policies endorsed in North Carolina. These included:
Securing pro-labor, anti-poverty policies that insure economic sustainability;

Providing well-funded, quality public education for all;

Standing up for the health of every Hoosier by promoting health care access and environmental justice across all the state's communities;

Addressing the continuing inequalities in the criminal justice system and ensuring equality under the law for every person, regardless of race, class, creed, documentation or sexual preference;

Protecting and expanding voting rights for people of color, women, immigrants, the elderly and students to safeguard fair democratic representation.

In his Saturday, September 20, 2014 speech to the 400 people rallying at the Indiana State House, Rev. Barber said he was told by his son, an environmental physicist, that if he ever got lost in mountainous territory he should walk to higher ground. This is necessary, Barber reported, because in the lowlands snakes congregate but if one climbs above the “snake line” snakes, being cold-blooded creatures, cannot live.

Referring to the snake line metaphor Barber declared:

There are some snakes out here. There are some low-down policies out here. There’s some poison out here. Going backwards on voting rights, that’s below the snake line. Going backwards on civil rights, that’s below the snake line. Hurting people just because they have a different sexuality, that’s below the snake line. Stomping on poor people just because you’ve got power, that’s below the snake line. Denying health care to the sick and keeping children from opportunity, that’s below the snake line.

Rev. Barber urged the newly formed Indiana Moral Mondays coalition to “go to higher ground,” where poverty is ended, everybody can vote, children can be educated, the sick can be healed, and everyone is respected.

Moral Mondays campaigns in various states, including Indiana, achieved some successes. They mobilized multiple constituencies: white and black, gay and straight, men and women, young and old, religious and non-believers to fight back against emerging reactionary Tea Party/Koch Brothers policies and politicians. In his home state of North Carolina, Moral Mondays campaigners were able to oust the reactionary governor in the 2016 election. And Reverend Barber, himself, has gone on to become a national spokesperson for progressive policies.

Theory and Practice of Moral Mondays

Barber has grounded the Moral Mondays movement in history and theory. As to the former, Barber has talked about three reconstructions in United States history. The first, after the US Civil War, was based upon a vision and practice of Black/white unity and the struggle for democracy and equality in the nation. It was crushed by the resurgence of the white supremacist planter class in the South, their political collaborators in the North, and the institutionalization of racial segregation. The second reconstruction began metaphorically with Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 and spanned the decade of successful struggle against segregation in the South in the 1960s. It too was sidetracked, this time by candidate and President Nixon’s so-called “southern strategy” to bring white supremacy back to the South and the nation. We are living through the third reconstruction, Reverend Barber suggested, signified by the two elections of Barack Obama president and the emergence of social movements to finally create racial and economic justice in America.

Today, 2017, he said, the struggle has reached a pivotal stage, with an ethical crisis so deep that a national moral campaign based on fusion politics is needed. Fusion politics, the theoretical underpinning of Moral Mondays, argues that all the issues and policies that have inspired action against the exploitation of workers, institutionalized racism (Black, Brown, Muslim, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant), patriarchy, homophobia, environmental devastation, and war are interconnected. The struggle against one is and has to include the struggle against all the others. Fusion is a conceptual tool that requires thinking about the interconnection of issues and a mobilizing tool that sees the interconnections of social movements.

The Twenty-First Century Poor People’s Campaign

The twenty-first century Poor People’s Campaign, around which Barber and his co-workers are organizing, takes the Moral Mondays campaign to another level. Moral Mondays was about state level issues. It concentrated on domestic policy. It awakened progressives to the critical idea that most of the anti-people policies of the last decade supported by reactionary billionaires like the Koch Brothers, were instituted at the state level. Therefore Moral Mondays began, appropriately, as a series of state campaigns. Now, Barber suggests, there is a need to take the struggle to the entire nation. Local, national, and international issues are connected. Anti-racist, antisexist, anti-worker policies at the state level are connected to similar developments at the national level. AND, all these issues have global dimensions as well.

This new necessity led naturally to reflections on the last project initiated by Dr. Martin Luther King in the spring of 1968, a Poor People’s Campaign. This was a national campaign organized by and for the poor in America, today representing about 40 percent of the population. The specific program was to organize a march/rally/occupation of Washington D.C. to demand an end to poverty in America. Dr. King, in his famous speech at Riverside Church one year earlier articulated the fundamental interconnections, the fusion, of three primary structural problems in America: poverty, racism, and militarism.

Sixty years later, Reverend Barber is calling on progressives to join in a common struggle, led by the poor and oppressed, to challenge these three evils. Rev. Barber, therefore, has been traveling across the United States beginning a conversation about and training for a 2018 Poor People’s Campaign. He is calling upon 1,000 people from each of 25 states and the District of Columbia to commit to train for and engage in civil disobedience to bring the triad of evils to the attention of the public. And he emphasizes repeatedly that the campaign is not just about changing attitudes but changing institutions and policies.

The optics of the rally at the Saint Gabriel’s Church of God reflected the movement Reverend Barber is building. Attendees were Black and white, young and old, women and men, and religious and secular. As to the latter point Barber cited scripture for the religious and the better parts of the US constitution for the secularists.

Finally, Reverend Barber's speech on August 28 emphasized that there cannot be freedom without equality. There cannot be human rights without access to health care and education. And there cannot be economic justice at home while there is militarism overseas.

The twenty-first century Poor People’s Campaign grounds today’s struggles in history; links democracy to economic change; connects social and economic justice; and connects a humane future in the United States to an end to war and the preparation for war. As Barber has written:

The fights for racial and economic equality are as inseparable today as they were half a century ago. Make no mistake about it: We face a crisis in America. The twin forces of white supremacy and unchecked corporate greed have gained newfound power and influence, both in statehouses across this nation and at the highest levels of our federal government. Sixty-four million Americans make less than a living wage, while millions of children and adults continue to live without access to healthcare, even as extremist Republicans in Congress threaten to strip access away from millions more. As our social fabric is stretched thin by widening income inequality, politicians criminalize the poor, fan the flames of racism and xenophobia to divide the poor, and steal from the poor to give tax breaks to our richest neighbors and budget increases to a bloated military

(William J. Barber II, “Rev. Barber: America Needs a New Poor People’s Campaign,” thinkprogress, May 15, 2017.

 

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