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Bernie Sanders and AOC to headline five resistance rallies in three days (www.headsupnews.org)

submitted 1 day ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/politics@beehaw.org

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Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be the avatars of the anti-Trump resistance over the next few days as they cohost major rallies in Nevada, Arizona and Colorado.

Capping a number of solo appearances by each of them around the country, these two prominent voices in the fight back against the Trump regime will appear together in Las Vegas on Thursday afternoon, in Tempe, Ariz., on Thursday evening; in Greeley, Colo., early Friday afternoon; in Denver late Friday afternoon; and in Tucson on Saturday morning.

“Why are we doing that?” Sanders asked in a video announcing the tour. He answered:

We’re doing that because I believe that all over this country people are profoundly disgusted with what is going on here in Washington, D.C. They see our great nation moving toward an oligarchy, where Elon Musk and other billionaires are running the government. They’re seeing the Trump administration moving us toward an authoritarian form of society, usurping the constitutional responsibilities of the Congress, challenging the courts. They’re seeing Republicans in Congress proposing to give massive, massive tax breaks to billionaires, cut back on the needs of our veterans, cut back on Social Security, cut back on Medicaid, cut back on education, so that the rich can become even richer.

Sanders and AOC represent the fighting alternative to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who last week helped pass a GOP-led stopgap funding bill -- embodying the Democratic failure to stop Trump’s ravaging of the government and constitutional restraints.

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[–] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

is an indicator you're just some sort of radical liberal.

Not quite, but maybe close. I'm a leftist Islamist (I don't think rightwing Islamism even exists as a coherent ideology but just in case). See why I didn't elaborate? I have coherent arguments for why it's a good ideology even in a purely secular sense, but no Lemming would ever listen to you stan for a 1400 year old book.

what would you like me as an individual to do besides what i am already doing. help organize a general strike?

Aside from the obvious stuff like promoting mutual aid, grassroots agitation efforts are probably your best bet. Organize in workplaces and other places where people meet, get them angry and suggest effective courses of action. For example there are many one-day protests and sit ins, which is fine and all but why is nobody striking? The goal is a mass movement that can then turn out in mass protests or a semi-spontaneous general strike. But setting aside the specific tactics I think will work, my pitch is: The top of the political pyramid is either incapable or unwilling to help you, but the bottom isn't, so put your focus there.

and if not these, what else? organize boycotts? people already do those. organize public marches? people already do those, to the point where it's impossible to keep up with all of the ones being organized. organize sit-ins and other nonviolent protest? people already do those.

Boycotts with a time limit lose most of their effectiveness. If you'll boycott boycott permanently or until you see change, so I guess that's another thing to focus on. You can take a page from BDS's playbook there. Also you're not supposed to be able to keep up with public marches and sit ins; you want people turning out in the millions all over the country.

i don't know what you expect here that isn't already happening.

All that, but more of it and longer and also strikes.

if fighting for what's right means potentially being arrested and tortured then, yes, as unpleasant as such a commitment sounds you should be willing to be arrested and tortured!

Okay? Being out for the count before anything actually happens (and it will because of the regime's authoritarian incompetence) doesn't seem to be good strategy, but there's no point talking about this.

[–] alyaza@beehaw.org 1 points 7 hours ago

Aside from the obvious stuff like promoting mutual aid, grassroots agitation efforts are probably your best bet. Organize in workplaces and other places where people meet, get them angry and suggest effective courses of action.

respectfully: this is just not a serious proposal. and the fact that you think nobody is doing these things—rather than what is actually the case, which is that people do them but they are simply not effective or easy-to-scale acts of political praxis in an American context—is indicative that you should stop making confidently bad tactical prescriptions.

and i'm not even going to address your fantastical idea of how to build a spontaneous general strike out of "mass protests" when it is evident you have bad tactical prescriptions. you're not even treading new ground here, really. Peter Camejo's speech "Liberalism, ultraleftism, or mass action" is the definitive dunk on your flavor of politically delusional theorycrafting, and that speech turns 55 this year:

This is the key thing to understand about the ultraleftists. The actions they propose are not aimed at the American people; they’re aimed at those who have already radicalized. They know beforehand that masses of people won’t respond to the tactics they propose.

They have not only given up on the masses but really have contempt for them. Because on top of all this do you know what else the ultralefts propose? They call for a general strike! They get up and say, “General Strike.” Only they don’t have the slightest hope whatsoever that it will come off.

Every last one of them who raises his hand to vote for a general strike knows it’s not going to happen. So what the hell do they raise their hands for? Because it’s part of the game. They play games, they play revolution, because they have no hope. Just during the month of May the New Mobe called not one but two general strikes. One for GIs and one for workers.

Being out for the count before anything actually happens doesn’t seem to be good strategy

you're right, people have never martyred themselves (and, in a sense "been out for the count before anything happens") for successful political change before. do you realize how ridiculous this sounds? you are the classic person who--even if they are legitimately radical, which i don't think you are--upholds the status quo by, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr, "lives by a mythical concept of time" and always wants to wait for a more convenient season to do something. but plainly, the more convenient season will never come if nobody does anything because they might be "out for the count".