REMEMBERING THE SHORT OPENING OF SPACE FOR INTELLECTUAL EXCHANGE WITH CUBA

 

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

BLOCKADE ON CUBA STIFLES INTELLECTUAL EXCHANGE

(The Obama administration has begun to make modest changes in United States policy toward Cuba , such as easing travel to the island by Cuban Americans and transferring money to relatives, but the economic, cultural, and educational blockade of the island remains. The mainstream press continues to publish decontextualized accounts of "dictatorship," "bureaurcracy," and"economic chaos" on the island.

For example, The New York Times published a story recently pridefully announcing that with US Homeland Security support "6,000" Cuban doctors and other health professionals have fled the island or their humanitarian assignments in other countries to come to the United States since 2002. The article, by Mirta Ouito, "Doctors in Cuba Start Over in the U.S."August 4, 2009, does mention that Cuba has sent 185,000 health professionals to 103 countries over the last 50 years. But she writes: "Yet for many Cuban doctors, who earn the equivalent of $25 a month, the lure of a life of freedom and opportunities in the United States is too strong to resist." She sites an American Medical Association official who estimates that one of four doctors in the United States was trained overseas. While the author describes the difficulties Cuban medical defectors face in pursuing their profession, she seemed undisturbed by the irony of a US government program designed to attract trained health professionals from doing important work in countries of the Global South at the same time that the most developed country in the world has to increasingly rely on international doctors to meet the needs of the American people.

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Below is reprinted a 2004 article that described one example of literally hundreds of academic exchanges that flourished before former President George Bush tightened the blockade of Cuba. The 50-year blockade must end and egalitarian exchanges between the people of North America and Cuba must be reestablished for the benefit of all).

Harry Targ
June 17, 2004

Fourteen students and two professors returned to Purdue University on June 9 from an 18 day study abroad trip to Cuba. The students, from the Schools of Agriculture and Liberal Arts, completed an interdisciplinary course called “Experiencing Cuba.”The course included four days of formal instruction at the Agrarian University of Havana, an institution much like Purdue. In addition site visits were made to a tobacco farm and factory, an urban garden where the new Cuban commitment to sustainable agriculture was illustrated, an ecological preserve, and a botanical garden specializing in exhibiting and studying tropical plants. Students also toured a special facility for Cubans with mental and physical disabilities. As to politics, culture, and history, students visited museums specializing in Cuban history, religion, and the arts. The Purdue group had occasion to interact with Cubans in many places including the university, in neighborhoods, and in other urban and rural settings. The trip was capped by a six-day 700 mile ride across the island from Havana city to Santiago de Cuba on the Caribbean.

The course was organized by faculty in the School of Agriculture and Liberal Arts as part of a project to link Purdue University to appropriate academic institutions on the island. The project would link Purdue and Cuban faculty with interests in collaborative research, graduate students who wish to pursue research projects involving Cuba, and undergraduate students who wish to study in Cuba. It is hoped that at some time Cuban faculty and students will be able to study at Purdue University when United States policy toward Cuba changes.

The organizers of the Purdue/Cuba project launched the program because Cuba has had special historic ties, positive and negative,with the United States that warrant study. Also, Cuba for the last 45 years has been a social laboratory for the development of diverse social, economic, and cultural policies that interest peoples around the world as well as the United States. For example, Cuba’s health and educational programs have long been of interest. In the 1990s Cuba’s adoption of policies to promote sustainable agriculture have been seen by some as a possible model for other developing countries.

The Purdue study abroad course in Cuba was not among the first. In fact, over the last decade the Treasury Department has issued education licenses to over 750 colleges, universities, and high schools to develop such courses. During the Purdue visit to the island, for example, there were faculty/student groups from the University of Georgia, the University of Charleston, Duke, and William and Mary. A University of Michigan group was to arrive in June.

Treasury Department licensing of university programs is required because the United States has had a 40-year economic embargo and travel ban on free and open exchange with the island nation. Established by President’s Eisenhower and Kennedy, the embargo and travel ban were designed to cause economic and political chaos in Cuba that would lead to the collapse of its revolutionary government. Since the policy never led to the desired outcome, the U.S. in the 1990s began to modify the policy to let selective groups of people travel to Cuba, and in 2001 to allow so-called humanitarian sales of food products to the island on a pay-as-you go basis. U.S. academic institutions and other organized trips to the island would be authorized by Treasury if the programs had a clear educational purpose. Just during the first quarter of 2004, 1,300 Americans participated in 60 educational programs in Cuba. Despite the broad-based support by liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans to abolish the economic embargo and the travel ban, the Bush administration piece-by-piece has been eliminating the minimal educational and economic connections with the island.

In early May, 2004, the administration announced that it would accept a series of draconian recommendations from an appointed task force on Cuban policy to stimulate “regime change” in Cuba. Universities which in the past had been issued two-year licenses for educational travel would now have to apply for a new license each year. Educational programs shorter than a full semester would require special permission and would have to adopt the goal of U.S. policy toward Cuba, that is “regime change.” Faculty who engage in research on Cuba or who travel to the island to arrange for educational programs will be further limited in their right to travel.

Along with the efforts to eliminate the academic exchanges with Cuba, the new Bush policies cut dramatically the rights of Cuban Americans to travel to visit relatives on the island. Heretofore, they could travel once a year and such travel could be to visit extended family members. Now Cuban Americans can travel to the island only once every three years and to only visit parents or children. The amount of money Cuban Americans can send to their relatives on the island was radically cut as well.

In 2003, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which is charged with enforcing sanctions against several countries and terrorist networks and drug traffickers, as well as overseeing travel to Cuba, spent $3.3 million of its $21.2 million budget on Cuba. Similarly, the Department of Homeland Security has used extensive personnel and resources to interview travelers to and from the island. Enforcing the archaic ban on Cuba has used disproportionately large amounts of resources compared with the struggle against terrorism and drugs in the world.

Almost all the Purdue students who traveled and studied in Cuba reported that the experience was intellectually stimulating. While student evaluations of the strengths and weaknesses of the Cuban experiment varied, most shared the belief that free and open exchange of experiences between peoples is truly educational. It is time to end the U.S. blockade and travel ban on Cuba so that two peoples, so close and yet so far from each other, can learn from each other’s experiences.

THE 60 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE GULF OF TONKIN: FOREIGN POLICY LIES LEAD TO WAR

 Harry Targ

    

                                                    Wikipedia photo

Former Arkansas Senator, J. William Fulbright in describing how he was tricked by his old friend President Lyndon Baines Johnson to support a resolution authorizing escalating war in Vietnam said: “A lie is a lie. There is no other way to put it.”

On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese armed motor boats attacked two U.S. naval vessels off the coast of North Vietnam. The administration of Lyndon Johnson defined the attacks as an unprovoked act of North Vietnamese aggression. Two days later it was announced that another attack on U.S. ships in international waters had occurred and the U.S. responded with air attacks on North Vietnamese targets. President Johnson then took a resolution he had already prepared to the Congress of the United States. The so-called Gulf of Tonkin resolution declared that the Congress authorizes the president to do what he deemed necessary to defend U.S. national security in Southeast Asia. Only two Senators voted “no.” Over the next three years the U.S. sent over 500,000 troops to Vietnam to carry out a massive air and ground war in both the South and North of the country.

Within a year of the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incidents, evidence began to appear indicating that the August 2 attack was provoked. The two U.S. naval vessels were in North Vietnamese coastal waters orchestrating acts of sabotage in the Northern part of Vietnam. More serious, evidence pointed to the inescapable conclusion that the second attack on August 4 never occurred.

President Johnson’s lies to the American people about the Gulf of Tonkin contributed to the devastating decisions to escalate a U.S. war in Vietnam that cost 57,000 U.S. troop deaths and upwards of three million Vietnamese deaths.

Forty years later, George W. Bush and his key aides put together a package of lies about Iraq imports of uranium from Niger, purchases of aluminum rods which supposedly could be used for constructing nuclear weapons, development of biological and chemical weapons, and connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.

As the Vietnamese and Iraqi cases show, foreign policies built on lies can lead to imperial wars, huge expenditures on the military, economic crises at home, and military casualties abroad.

REVISITING THE FIVE PRINCIPLES OF PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE: A TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY PEACE CHARTER

Harry Targ

(a repost for peace)

The Need for a New Peace and Solidarity Vision

Peace activists have influenced the debates about foreign policies of states for centuries. Despite the fact that World War 1 which led to 20 million deaths was not averted, peace activists opposed to that war such as Jane Addams and Eugene V. Debs became models for peace advocacy for the remainder of the twentieth century.

After the next World War which added another forty million deaths to the century’s devastation, peace activists restrained the worst features of state violence and educated younger generations about war, colonialism, imperialism, and the links between the drive for oil and violence. Peace activists formed organizations such as The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, The War Resisters League, The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and Peace Action. Massive mobilizations and civil disobedience in opposition to the Vietnam War, the United States wars in Central America in the 1980s, and bombings of Serbia in the 1990s characterized protest during the last forty years of the twentieth century. During the early part of the twenty-first century movements sprung up to oppose the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, the spread of nuclear weapons, and the links between militarism and climate change. In addition, progressive trade unionists, feminists, communities of faith, Communists, Socialists, and some Democratic, Republican and third party activists have opposed war and the preparation for war over the years.

Given the new, more complicated international and domestic environment that has emerged since the last century, it is time to revisit the theory and practice of the peace movement. Effective approaches to peace must be adapted to new circumstances. This Peace Charter proposes three peace principles--peaceful coexistence, economic conversion, and international solidarity--which might serve as a guide to peace movement practice. 

The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence

In 1954, the governments of China and India signed a treaty based on what became known as the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. At the first meeting in 1955 of what would later become the Non-Aligned Nations, China articulated the Five Principles as a guide to their foreign policy. Although the sixty year old treaty between China and India based on the Five Principles was established in a different time and place, they still can serve as a standard by which the peace movement can evaluate the foreign policies of their country and others as well.

The Five Principles, as first articulated by the treaty signed on April 29, 1954, are:

1. Mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.
2. Mutual non-aggression.
3. Mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.
4. Equality and cooperation for mutual benefit.
5. Peaceful co-existence.

The first principle suggests that a just foreign policy requires that nations respect the territory and sovereignty of each and every country. The history of empires indicates that dominant powers failed to give minimal respect to the institutions, cultures, and economic life of citizens of other countries. The United States has been shaped in its worldview and policies by claims of “exceptionalism,” or its being “the last remaining super power” with particular obligations to oversee the conduct of other countries. Many influential foreign policy elites today still articulate the view that the United States is “the indispensable nation.”  

The second principle makes clear that a just nation does not engage in aggression against others; not in wars, subversion, covert military assaults, or in economic blockades that are designed to disrupt, destroy, and create havoc. To the contrary, the United States since the end of World War II, for example, has engaged in at least 75 military operations that have led to the deaths of at least ten million people and the displacement of millions more. The peace movement should demand that the United States and all the other countries abstain from aggression.

The third principle, paralleling the second, makes it clear that nations cannot interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. Interference takes many forms. Some are as suggested above. Others include the use of economic techniques, the internet, penetration and manipulation under the guise of religion, education, and various forms of non-governmental activities in targeted countries.

The fourth principle, assumes a very different lens or vision concerning the relationships between states and people. The old vision, derived from certain Western philosophical traditions, emphasizes the struggle of each against all. The world is a Social Darwinian world, this view suggests, in which only the strongest shall survive. An alternative vision, as suggested by this principle is that mutuality of cooperative relationships can create mutuality of benefits. Experience suggests that cooperation is the essence of human development. And, despite claims to the contrary, the vast majority of human interactions are cooperative, not competitive. Particularly the peace movement must challenge the assumption broadly marketed by militarists that war is perpetual.

Finally, and in conjunction with all of the principles articulated above, the goal of any nation’s foreign policy ought to be peaceful coexistence. To the extent that the United States violates this principle, the peace movement should demand a new agenda.

Economic Conversion

“From Forrestal’s day to the present, semi-warriors have viewed democratic politics as problematic. Debate means delay. To engage in give-and-take or compromise is to forfeit clarity and suggests a lack of conviction. The effective management of national security requires specialized knowledge, a capacity for clear-eyed analysis and above all an unflinching willingness to make decisions, whatever the cost.

With the advent of the semi-war, therefore, national security policy became the preserve of experts, few in number, almost always unelected, habitually operating in secret, persuading themselves that to exclude the public from such matters was to serve the public interest. After all, the people had no demonstrable ‘need to know.’ In a time of perpetual crisis, the anointed role of the citizen was to be pliant, deferential and afraid.” (Andrew Bacevich, reviewing a biography of James Forrestal, the first Secretary of Defense, in The Nation, April 23, 2007).

Andrew Bacevich reminds us that a permanent war economy has been part of the political and economic landscape of the United States at least since the end of World War II.

The War Resisters League pie chart of total government spending for fiscal year 2015 indicates that 47 percent of all government spending deals with current preparation for war and past wars.

In addition, “war support” contractors, such as KBR, have made billions of dollars in the twenty-first century from military spending. Virtually every big corporation is to some degree on the Department of Defense payroll.

Because of the economic crisis which began in 2007, debate about military spending increased. In 2010 Congressmen Barney Frank and Ron Paul initiated a study addressing needed cuts. The report prepared for them in 2010, “Debt, Deficits, and Defense,” called for across the board reductions in spending--procurement, research and development, personnel, operations and maintenance, and infrastructure---of $960 billion over the next decade. The report noted that over the last decade 65 percent of federal discretionary spending went to the military.

President Obama in January, 2010, proposed spending cuts of $480 billion over the next decade (reductions in projected increases, not existing funding). He coupled recommendations about future spending with a firm statement that the world must realize that the United States remains committed to maintaining its military superiority.

The President indicated that spending reductions in the future will be tied to greater use of “special operations,” drones, and shifting existent forces from Europe to Asia.

The magnitude of military spending represents what Bacevich referred to as the permanent war economy articulated and defended by the “semi-warriors” dominating U.S. foreign policy in each administration since World War II.

These semi-warriors gained influence after the Truman Administration accepted recommendations in National Security Document Number 68 (1950) that defense spending should always have priority over all other government programs. NSC 5412, approved by President Eisenhower, gave legitimacy to covert operations around the world allowing any president to “plausibly deny” any connections with such operations.

Subsequently virtually each president proclaimed a doctrine justifying more and more military spending--Eisenhower for the Middle East, Carter for the Persian Gulf, Reagan to rollback “the evil empire,” Clinton for “humanitarian interventions” and Bush for “pre-emptive attacks.”

The Obama administration, through speeches and actions, has constructed what might be called “the Obama Doctrine.”

First, as the last remaining superpower and the beacon of hope for the world, the United States once again reserves the right and responsibility to intervene militarily to enhance human rights anywhere.

Second, U.S. humanitarian military interventions will be carried out from time to time preferably with the support of our friends.

Third, new technologies such as drones will allow these interventions to occur without “boots on the ground.” They will be cheaper in financial and human cost (primarily for American troops).

Finally, assassinations and covert killings have made it clear that the Obama Doctrine overrides recognized judicial proceedings and the sanctity of human life.

Since the establishment of the permanent war economy in the 1940s millions of proclaimed “enemies” have been killed and seriously injured, mostly in the Global South. Permanent physical and psychological damage has been done to U.S soldiers, predominantly poor and minorities as they too are victims of war.

In addition, military spending has distorted national priorities and invested U.S. financial resources in expenditures that do not create as many jobs as investments in construction, education, or healthcare. And the permanent war economy has created a culture that celebrates violence, objectifies killing, dehumanizes enemies, and exalts super-patriotism through television, music, video games, and educational institutions.

These issues need to be more vigorously related to those raised by the grassroots campaigns that have sprung up to defend the rights of workers, women, people of color and those experiencing discrimination for various reasons; to oppose growing income and wealth inequality; and to defend working people’s homes from foreclosures.

In 1967 in reference to the massive U.S. war in Southeast Asia and desperate needs of workers at home, Dr. Martin Luther King described the fundamental connections that peace activists and all progressives must pursue: “I speak of the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam.”

As Michael Eisenscher, National Coordinator, U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW) articulated in a powerful data-based essay on economic conversion:

We see this as just the beginning of a conversation.  This effort takes the struggle for new priorities to a new level -- to a struggle for a demilitarized economy and foreign policy --a struggle for a new, more just, equitable and democratic economy and society.  In the process, we will help to redefine the meaning of “national security” -- as determined not only by the security of our borders, the size of our military or the power of its arsenal, but also by whether people have real economic and social security--food security, health security, housing security, employment security and security in their old age – and a decent standard of living for all, not just the privileged few. (“Economic Conversion: From Military Addiction to Economic Sustainability: Charting the Course to a New Economy for All”).

 

International Solidarity

A centerpiece of the peace movement is solidarity. Solidarity refers to giving moral, intellectual, and material support to struggles for peace and justice everywhere. During the Spanish Civil War, American progressives raised money for the defenders of democracy, pressured the Roosevelt administration to give war material to the Loyalists, and even sent men and women to fight on the side of Spanish democracy. During World War II, Americans raised money for and publicly demonstrated support for the Red Army while the Soviet Union confronted 90 percent of the German army. From the 1940s until the end of the Cold War, peace and justice activists mobilized to support the Guatemalan, Cuban, Vietnamese, Salvadoran, South African and Nicaraguan people and to oppose United States policies toward these countries. 

Today, there is a major international campaign to support the Palestinian people. Initiated by many Palestinian groups, a global campaign to support boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel have spread all across the globe.  Vibrant BDS campaigns have a visible presence in the United States. Campaigns seek to isolate Israel because of its perpetual violence against Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories, expanding land grabs of Palestinian land in violation of international treaties and law, and discrimination against Palestinians who reside in the state of Israel.

In the end, international solidarity is based upon the assumption that violence and war somewhere is inextricably connected to violence and war elsewhere. Particularly peace activists in the United States are animated by the proposition that their own country is connected to regimes that violate human rights and participate in the economic exploitation of subject peoples. Historically peace activists have educated publics about international affairs and have advocated for changes in United States foreign policy. International solidarity advocates for and gives material support to people struggling for peace and justice wherever they are and helps build a consciousness of the unity of people across nations and cultures. As Paul Robeson suggested metaphorically, all cultures have folk music traditions using common chord structures. He was suggesting that commonalities of human experience mirror commonalities of folk traditions. Peace activists believe that the recognition of the commonalities among people can be the basis for the construction of a more peaceful world.

Conclusion

The Peace Charter is designed to revitalize the tradition of peace and solidarity movements of the past coupled with the context of the twenty-first century. The Peace Charter is not motivated by the desire to create a new dogma but to stimulate a conversation about the theory and practice of the peace movement in the years ahead.

The Peace Charter suggests that the peace movement might identify three core guides to action. The first, the five principles of peaceful coexistence, articulates a set of rules that should guide the conduct of nations and peoples as they relate to each other. The second, economic conversion, emphasizes a central issue of peace and justice in world affairs and in the United States as well. Military spending is wasteful, generates more wealth for the few, leads to its perpetuation, and redistributes vital societal resources from most citizens to the military/industrial complex.   The third, international solidarity, underscores the necessity of cross-national work to achieve peace and justice everywhere. The old IWW slogan proclaimed in defense of the working class is also relevant to those who work for peace and justice everywhere: “An Injury to One is an Injury to All.”  

This essay includes excerpts from prior essays published in The Rag Blog and the Diary of a Heartland Radical. In addition ideas incorporated in this version were inspired by discussion during a meeting of the Peace and Solidarity Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). The conceptualization of the three peace principles was suggested by Carl Davidson.

FROM THE TEA PARTY TO MAGA 2010 to 2024: LABOR IS THE KEY

 THE WORKING CLASS BUILT THIS COUNTRY AND IN 2024 WE MUST MOBILIZE TO TRANSFORM IT

Harry Targ (Originally posted on Tuesday, September 7, 2010: With an update enough remains the same to justify a repost.)

From the Democratic Convention to Election Day

I want to add my voice to the thousands of essayists and bloggers who have been contemplating the 2024 elections, the media “framing” of MAGA influence, the role of progressives in the elections, and mobilizing for the last 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 federal 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, 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, social security and medicare, 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 the mental health of candidates, the conflicts within the Democratic Party, the spectacle of Trump (and now J D Vance), and how the Biden administration has not fixed the economy and world affairs (even though he served after the disaster of the Trump years and the perpetual problems under capitalism).

Third the “liberal” media, while more sophisticated and entertaining in its coverage of election year stories over-emphasize “making fun” of Trump and his followers. The corporate media (not just Fox) has made Trump the media meal ticket for now nearly a decade.

In response, Trump and his allies have decided to do two things: forget about trying to put together logical, coherent plans for an alternative set of policies and when challenged by enterprising reporters just walk away. Since the media they tell us is the enemy incoherence and evasiveness resonate well with a disillusioned public.

Fourth, part of the context for the unstable politics of the fall, 2024, is the continued economic crisis that grips working people. Declining real wages, indebtedness, rising health care costs, and crumbling public services remain all too real for the majority of Americans. In addition the advocacy of humane and realistic immigration reform and climate change legislation, and an end to the blockade of Cuba remain elusive. Meanwhile huge increases in military spending, supporting wars in the Ukraine and Israel, and launching a New Cold War against China have become centerpieces of US foreign policy.

Having said all this, the administration has forestalled return to depression with a modest economic recovery program, brought the country out of the COVID epidemic, created some public sector jobs. and has worked to cap some prescription drug prices.

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. More recently, 2024, Pew researchers found a similar long-term downward trajectory in “trust in government.”

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 and 1920s and 1930s and dominated the political life in many states in these eras.

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. (Now these onerous Congressional investigatory committees have been revived to attack educators, the secret service, and other politically motivated targets).

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. There is no question that organized labor, although weakened and embattled, represents the most powerful force in today’s society resisting the privatization of social security, deregulation of the economy and environment, and the total marginalization of working people everywhere. The number of union organizing drives, strikes, and victories have increased enormously over the last few years, spearheaded by young and diverse and non-traditional workers.

A Progressive Campaign Program

So what to do now? History and context suggests that given the importance of elections, the enormous distrust of government, the existence of media and corporate capital support for the historic undercurrents of anti-government and anti-worker political traditions, often coupled with racism and fear of foreigners, progressives have only one choice for the next three months: work to elect political candidates from the city council to the Congress of the United States who support a “working people’s agenda.”

American political history tells us that movements like the Tea Party and MAGA 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 fears of strange times and economic crises with no seeming resolution, its leaders offer no program, no vision, and no coherent agenda. If Trump spokespersons and candidates are queried about their goals, they evade or refuse to respond.

No, progressives cannot argue with the MAGA movement. But, what we must do is to campaign, not just for individual candidates or just for a party but for a “working people’s agenda.” That constitutes the only future for the vast majority of Americans. This agenda must include a fight for full employment, the extension of unemployment benefits; rebuilding America’s schools, roads, and energy systems; the expansion and  support for the maintenance of state and local public services; putting all people who want to work on jobs that need to be done; and regulating banks more effectively so that they are required to support local projects that create businesses which will create jobs. And homelessness must end. In addition, we must act before it is too late to save the environment.

Most importantly, 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.

 

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Addendum: Progressives must add a peace agenda to their work in 2024

 

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia and continued United States support of Israel gives fuel to the emerging anti-China Cold War rhetoric for politicians of both parties and the corporate media who suggest that Taiwan will be next, presumably after a Chinese invasion.  Of course, these wars have led to thousands of deaths, increased starvation, and mass migrations.

 

At the same time,. the Ukraine and Israel/Gaza wars are enormous pluses for the military/industrial complex in the US.  The Ukraine story has transformed the global narrative from the critical discussion of exploitation by the Global North of the Global South to the Biden narrative of “authoritarians” vs. “democracies.”

 

The impacts of the debate on progressive forces in the US and elsewhere are potentially devastating. In the US, our discourse is shifting from a progressive agenda including President Biden’s Build Back Better program for example to stories about the relationships between Putin and former President Trump and so-called “national security.” Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address reflected his “shift to the center.” Now we have a cause all Americans can get behind: opposing the Russians. (I am reminded how the Soviet menace in the 1940s was used to defang CIO militancy, the drive for free health care, Henry Wallace’s call for US/Soviet dialogue and, of course, civil rights for all).  War and portraits of American exceptionalism are profitable commodities for the increasingly concentrated corporate media.  

 

As we approach the election season we must remember that foreign policy is inextricably connected to domestic policy. It is time to campaign around war, military spending, the spread of nuclear weapons, grotesque economic sanctions against poor countries, and a media program of systematic distortions about the world , so-called “cognitive war.”