This weekend, activist list-serves and web-sites were crackling with furious debate over whether or not progressives should be voting for President Obama this time around or helping to build a third party organization. For those in the latter camp, the list of the President’s failures (and not just failures, but dreadful acts of commission) rendered support for him a perfidious moral choice. That indictment extended as well to the Congressional Democrats, who had a majority in 2009 and blew the chance to make constructive changes.
The take-away from the past four years, it was argued, is that the two mainstream parties are so completely dominated by corporate America that they are incapable of acting in the public interest. This perception is not simply confined to the third-party advocates. I suspect there are few readers on this web-site, who have not been stunned at times, and disappointed at how the 2008 mandate for “change” has been squandered.
The question remains: what should we be doing on the day after the election, no matter how it turns out?
And from that standpoint, another aspect of this weekend seems relevant: the response to Hurricane Sandy. Here in Brooklyn, where most neighborhoods were unscathed and others severely damaged, volunteers and supplies have been pouring into makeshift centers run by Occupy Sandy and other grass-roots organizations. From our local PTAs, religious centers, and hastily formed groups of neighbors, people are anxious to help and are generous with their time. This is most reminiscent of the situation here after 9-11, when the dominant mood was one of helping fellow New Yorkers.
Such community mobilizations in the face of a local crisis are familiar. But it is useful to reflect on why this is the case. Unlike the situation in Afghanistan, the plight of people stranded in their Brooklyn apartments has been made real by the mass media and it is easy enough to identify with their plight. Furthermore, there is an obvious connection between the action taken and a positive result. I was struck with this yesterday when deciding how much peanut butter to purchase. With reasonable confidence that the food would be helpful to some particular families, it was sensible to buy more.
Significant social and political change will never be as simple as buying peanut butter. But as we ponder the lessons of the past four years, we can vent our fury at the mainstream parties and at fellow Americans who support them, or we can look for better ways of communicating and mobilizing new people. Corporate pressures notwithstanding, Republican and Democratic officials are responsive to popular opinion, when it is linked to visible resistance and activism. After November 6 this remains the challenge for the existing peace and social justice movements—building on the idealism and generosity that exists in our country, finding ways to make our concerns real even if the victims do not appear on television and devising forms of action, which offer a prospect of achievable results.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy