This isn’t a local issue, nor domestic, or national, it’s global. There’s no time to yell and scream at ordinary people to get into the streets and it won’t work anyway. There’s no time for that and people won’t just kinda, “hey, yeah, that’s it, extinction’s just round the corner, I reckon I’ll hit the streets”. This thing is bigger than that. The only thing that will get any momentum is if the Left, the whole landscape, all its inhabitants, the already existing orgs projects, groups and media, ALL OF THEM, start to prioritise survival over revolution or radical change. And the necessary change will only come through the use of existing institutions and structures because we have no time to replace them with revolutionary ones…mainly because the bloody left loves to fight with itself most of the time and it can’t truly agree on what those are anyway…even at the experienced end of the left spectrum where those members of “demonstrated wisdom” reside.
If you want ordinary people in the street, then ALL ALREADY WELL FOUNDED ESTABLISHED ORGS have to show they can unite and put real pressure on existing institutions…GOVERNMENTS and anyone fucking else they need to. And I mean ALL. I’m tired of people yelling at individuals or ordinary people to hit the streets because it’s a meaningless call. I’m tired of people yelling at ordinary folk expecting them to somehow spontaneously unite and actually know what to do in some coherent way. Half the time, no in fact more than half, if you ask a leftist what do they want, they have not the foggiest idea except maybe a bunch of vague notions they haven’t thought through. Or the answers are so radically diverse as to being almost useless as a vision. Or they’re crazy over the top anarcho -primmies with good hearts but shitty solutions. And most lefties don’t even have a good clear idea of socialism…let alone coherent economic models that would foster it.
What’s needed right now, for survival, not revolution, is a Global Green New Deal up and running by at the latest 2025, otherwise we won’t need revolution! So that means all specific single issue concerns, revolutionary concerns etc., of existing Left orgs, must be set aside in favour of this. ALL the disconnected, disparate groups, orgs, projects, be they, Marxist, anarchist, Pareconista, sort of anarchist, simpler way folk, extreme simpler way folk, feminist groups, revolutionaries of sorts , radicals of sorts, liberals of sorts, progressives of sorts, BLM, TLM, green groups, Progressive International (actually see the list of member orgs there to get an idea), DiEM25, DSA, Next System Project, Commons Transition, what’s left of the Wobblies, Unions, Sunrise, Extinction Rebellion, and whoever else and whatever other orgs are in and active on all other continents, must unite around this issue. They do not have to forget their specific concerns and focus totally, but just set them to the side to show the rest of the population there is a united front…a forceful huge left movement on this specific issue. And if needed, they can raise their specific concerns, their expertise on certain focuses for change, but not if those concerns are going to disrupt or stop altogether getting a Global Green New Deal up by 2025. Because the bloody Left, in all it bullshit sectarian glory so often shoots itself in the foot…see Trump getting elected and other scary leader folk elsewhere…and sabotages it’s own efforts.
Only then, if the Left can unite over this, maybe, and it’s a maybe, ordinary folk will see it, notice, think and hopefully take heed. And it must be done visibly and with easy to obtain information for ordinary folk, pertaining to what a Global Green New Deal actually is and what it means.
Just telling people to get into the streets or that we need x, y or z, or to vote this way or to ring your local member is way way off what’s needed.
If the Left landscape, a quite disparate, disconnected bunch of concerned citizens with DIVERSE opinions and ideas about what change is, even among green groups (and believe me I want the whole friggin market capitalist economy infuckingverted and replaced with something approaching Parecon, which is as radical as it get), who normally struggle to talk to each other or develop coherent strategies and program connected to clear vision for change, cannot come together under a visible banner or logo screaming GLOBAL GREEN NEW DEAL NOW, then do not expect the rest of the worlds population, the “bewildered herd”, the “rascal multitude”, the “great unwashed” to do so. The left has been around for at least 220 years (longer even) since Owen, Proudhon, Marx, Bakunin, Kropotkin and on and on and has never ever built a mass movement around clear visions for major major shifts in production, consumption and allocation (Spanish Rev, maybe but it got crushed, Paris Commune? Crushed. Zapatistas maybe, Rojava, maybe)…why because most of the Left has never ever spelled out clearly and coherently what it wants so most “ordinary folk” have no idea themselves, and when asked, most Lefty oriented people reply, “we’ll figure it out as we go”, which is just blindly meaningless and useless except maybe on a small community, local level. And a few people yelling or writing that the people must hit the streets is useless and the odd essay tucked in between a stack of other essays on some marginal left media site doesn’t cut it. Who’s reading this shit anyway? Very very few people.
No, it must come from a completely new strategy of already existing Left orgs, and there are many already out there well established, showing the way to ordinary folk by actually uniting themselves VERY VISIBLY. Because if they can’t unite seriously around the issue of survival, then we can kiss our fight for gender equality and our fight against racism, and our fight against authoritarianism and against capitalism…which MUST include the abolition of markets…goodbye because there won’t be any point to any of it. There won’t be a planet able to support any organised human life.
So get out and yell at any and every left media site, org or group to pull their fingers out 24/7 and unite under this banner. In fact, they could all put on their site’s front pages a clearly visible banner reading GLOBAL GREEN NEW DEAL NOW, with a link to some site with info regarding what that actually entails. Even something as ridiculously simple as that may create some kind of feeling, or illusion the Left is united, even if superficially. “Hey look man, all these orgs have got this same banner on their website. Cool”. Create a meme. Probably the most important meme ever.
You need something other than just saying get out there, we need a mass movement, or do x, y and z…it doesn't mean anything to people. The Left has been saying that for centuries and look where WE ARE NOW. We got 3 and a half yrs to get this GGND up according to Robert Pollin. And this date has been around as a kind of point of no return for ages now. It can be found in The Climate Movement’s Victory Plan and so many other predictions and projections for needed change. Naomi Klein too. So we is runnin’ out of time people, and just saying the same shit the Left has been saying’ for years is useless.
And just outlining changes that may be part of a GLOBAL GREEN NEW DEAL doesn't do anything either. The whole package has to be made clear and easily available to ordinary punters so they can understand what’s really going on, what it truly entails, because it’s a hugely complex and major shift on so many fronts and it has to be worker friendly. In fact it has to be friendly on many levels, and to many peoples, as well as it being seriously daunting. That’s why the WHOLE LEFT LANDSCAPE has to unite together to push forcefully and visibly the idea of a GLOBAL GREEN NEW DEAL NOW into the heads of the rascal multitude so as to get Government to NOW…SERIOUSLY…NOT HALF ASSED.
The already existing, experienced Left has to band together NOW, in a way it has never done before. So it first needs to yell at itself, not out at ordinary folk.
See Climate Crisis And The Global Green New Deal by Robert Pollin and Noam Chomsky.
Progressive International was put together through the efforts of The Sanders Institute and DiEM25…something like that to form a United front of sorts. Many orgs have joined. When was it put together? 2018!
It’s now 2021 and a half. Who’s even heard of Progressive International? And even it doesn’t have on its front page a clear visible alert reading Global Green New Deal Now with an easy direct link to information pertaining directly to what that shit is.
And I only heard of it a while ago by chance and that’s my point. Many of these efforts go unrewarded or do not even come close to achieving what they truly wish to because these orgs are not visible enough…to ordinary folk. Yes, within the Left landscape many may know of these efforts, but beyond that…hardly anyone. It’s like Mondragon…a coop of coops that’s been around since the 1950’s. Nearly 100,000 strong and who’s heard of Mondragon, as some kind of relatively progressive model for change? Not many people. Not many even within the Left. Much like what’s happening in Rojava is not well known.
The Left talks about itself, as I am doing now, all the time, as if it’s some kind of real community out there. Like a team, sporting or community club of sorts. It is not. It critiques itself, but when it does so it’s as if whispering wisdom into the wind hoping it will land in a well-mannered way, on the whole Left landscape’s supposedly open ears. But it usually just gets blown all over the friggin’ joint randomly and dissipates into the ether, only to repeated again and again every generation or even sooner.
Just read any of Guy Standing’s books on the Precariat or even this single article, Debt and Disillusionment by Rebecca Gordon, and one will get an idea as to the shitty world young people are growing into today, in 2021 and a half. One essay among millions coming out daily illustrating how fucked things are. Whoopee! The Left landscape and its many concerned inhabitants, while winning the odd important gain here and there, making an important shift in consciousness here and there, through its own inability to generate unity among the more organised end on the activist spectrum, where most of those of demonstrated wisdom live, has still managed to allow the world to get to where we are now. A world that offers little to the future of the young even in the developed 1st world core countries, let alone to those in the undeveloped, periphery and 5th world, where things are really tough. And on top of that, it’s a world that could easily, and likely, close to organised human life in the next 25 yrs.
Yet, I hear the same old same old and see the same old same old going on. A new org folks, over here, look. Join this one. Join that one. Join the DSA and try to wrap your head around the extreme variations and diverse views of what some may call vision and strategy to get there. Anything from falling in behind Sanders’ tepid form of social democracy that in many ways is less than what the Viking countries have had going for years, to possibly a bunch of stern market socialists (David Schwieckart, Yanis Varoufakis, Gar Alperovitz, etc.,) to maybe, if you’re lucky, the odd Pareconista. The DSA doesn’t even have a real strong assertive definition of socialism it’s that friggin’ scared of pushing too hard radically!!
(Diversity is great but not when it fucking slows everything to a friggin’ halt. Sometimes diversity and the tension and arguments it brings, is like watching a spaceship from a distance approach the horizon of a black hole. Eventually, from the outside observer, it looks as if it’s just stopped and not moving, when in fact it’s already long ago been sucked into the lightless vortex and been ripped to shreds.)
So, all this organising, calls for mass movements even in recently published books by experienced activists like Angela Davis and others, and yelling at ordinary folks to get into the streets, and yet here we are.
My children growing into this screwed up world that allows abandoned children in Mongolia to live in sewers.
There’s nuclear war of course, but that can at least be stopped. It’s not like it will get to a point (well, maybe it will be tough) where it’s beyond our control and irreversible like global warming is. There’s religion and “Eastern Mystic” traditions…done nothing for 2,500 yrs but cause a lot of grief. There’s the power of music! Done nothing since the year dot and even recently the great B Dylan just sold his whole catalogue to Universal for 300,000,000 buckeroos! Go Bob.
There are already plenty of Left orgs utilising the experience and demonstrated wisdom of many, out there in the world. Enough to make a severe impact if they just put aside temporarily there individual focuses, not out of mind, and pulled their sectarian bullshit heads in, to focus on survival.
As Noam Chomsky replied to my concerns in an email,
“Couldn’t agree more. As we try to make clear in our book, simply because of time scales and urgency we must implement GGND measures within the framework of existing institutions. And without delay. Failure to do so renders all other issues irrelevant.
As you say, that does not mean that we should stop working for institutional change along any lines we see fit, but we should recognize that it will be a waste of effort unless the environmental crisis is dealt with quickly and effectively.”
This is just one of many comments and emails I am sending to orgs to show real visible unity at the top end of the Left landscape in order to drag the rascal multitude onto the survival cart. Without that sort of force, we, the rascal multitude are at the mercy of the Left’s business as usual strategy. And business as usual just won’t cut it anymore. Maybe you folks have a better idea or ideas than the simple, maybe even dumb idea, of every left site ramming a visibly public banner on their front page stating GLOBAL GEEEN NEW DEAL NOW with a link to relevant info. The meme of all memes. Maybe just inundate left orgs with the demand to refocus now. Give them the shits. Make them change.
Because I’ll tell ya, the young are not engaged because we have failed them and they basically, or many, are almost just throwing their hands in the air and yelling, great, this is what you fuckers have left me. They are sick of being yelled at to organise or stop staring at screens. Particularly by people who were enamoured of the incoherent ramblings of a “folk” singer as ambivalent and purposely, for cool image reasons, confusing as Bob Dylan…Jesus. Frank Zappa said it better than he when he just said, in the seventies, succinctly,
“A lot of what we do is designed to annoy people to the point where they might, just for a second, question enough of their environment to do something about it. As long as they don’t feel there environment and they don’t worry about it they’re not going to do anything to change it. And something’s gotta be down before America scarfs up the world and shits on it!” Frank Zappa
It's frightening, yes, and people don't know how to deal with it face on. We avoid. But we need groceries, for sure, and some are privileged to have healthy, local nearby. Folks in transit oriented development communities don't have yards, so let's incentivize more community gardens. Some of us are doing all in our humble power to take action. Please let's join together! (Also, I must kindly object to your use of "schizoid"; it's a real thing https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/schizoid-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20354414
and you're using it incorrectly, and some might say, in a derogatory manner in reference to a known medical condition.) But I get your point anyway.
I am in total agreement with Mary Paterson; one thing we can do NOW, to avoid irreversible damage, is to demand massive and rapid expansion of our existing rail/transit systems, make it attractive, faster, more frequent, reliable, for people to leave their cars at home and take public transportation - an automatic 2/3 reduction in emissions - zero when it's all electrified.
For a dirt cheap low price, you can purchase either an E-book or print copy of a fabulous informative text just released by Thomas White, at www.vtd.net titled THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY: TRAINS - AN EFFECTIVE RESPONSE.
Yes, call your US Senators and Reps and demand more money in the Reconciliation bill for these essential items:
1. Clean Electricity Payment Program (CEPP) would reduce electricity sector greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2030. (Biden’s plan calls for 100 percent by 2035, but a reconciliation bill can only extend 10 years out.) It’s not actually going to be a Clean Energy Standard per se, because you can’t pass regulatory standards through reconciliation. Instead, it’s going to be a system of fines and payments that will incentivize utilities to increase their proportion of renewable energy to meet the targets.
A CEPP actually has some advantages over the traditional Clean Energy Standards and renewable portfolio standard (RPSs) commonly seen in states. For one thing, it’s more progressive: the money to drive the transition comes from federal coffers (via taxes on corporations and the wealthy) rather than from electricity rates, which are regressive.
2. Boosted and expanded clean energy tax credits. The investment tax credit (ITC) and production tax credit (PTC), for wind and solar respectively, would be renewed, but various forms of tax credits would also be extended to energy storage, hydrogen, carbon capture, and other key clean energy technologies. (The details are in flux; for a blueprint, see the Senate Finance Committee’s Clean Energy for America Act or the House Ways and Means’ GREEN Act.) Tax credits will provide the supply push; the CEPP will provide the demand pull. The result will be an enormous surge of clean energy projects and jobs.
3. Funding for RAIL INFRASTRUCTURE AS CLIMATE INFRASTRUCTURE. We need massive and rapid expansion of rail across the nation. $66 billion in the infrastructure bill is NOT ENOUGH. It's barely enough for NE corridor and "state of good repair" projects.
I support everything you've recommended and take your kindly objection to heart. However I do believe our world and how it affects us do resonate with the definition of schizophrenia "long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation." (OXFORD)
Absolutely. I have always understood schizophrenia to be the inability to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant stimuli. But it's more complex than that, and definitions can morph over time. No doubt it's becoming difficult to discern reality from unreality when one can hardly believe the magnitude of what we're facing.
I know personal lifestyle choices are not enough and that we need massive government action. Still, I’m on my way to the grocery store by bus because I’m fortunate enough to live near a bus line. I’m also a rail advocate for climate and equity reasons and I know you are too, so I wonder why you don’t envision rail cars and engines rolling off production lines alongside busses and bikes. I don’t need to remind you you co-wrote the book on Solutionary Rail. Thanks, Patrick
There is an additional option - one i would argue is just as necessary as taking to the streets - vote 3rd party - we have had them on the ballot, one at least who would have championed and used the power of the state to do what you suggest needs to be done, for several cycles now - but we don't vote for 'em - I can't help wondering how we can get even 3.5% to revolt in the streets when we can't even get them to revolt at the polls ...
A lot of people who don’t believe in the electoral system will get out in the streets. Third parties won’t work unless we have ranked choice voting. Otherwise you’ll get the spoiler effect, or at least people will not vote third party because they fear they will throw the election to the worst candidate. I never bought that Nader was responsible for Bush - it was a Supreme Court coup. But that will be thrown in your face. Laws have also been tightened up to make ballot access more difficult. Third party is a tough row to hoe.
"A lot of people ..." hmmm, a "lot of people" have gotten in to the streets, over war, over police brutality, etc. did that stop anything ? But your 3.5%? And for how long do they stay in the streets? RCV would, indeed, dampen that charge of "spoiler" which is precisely why the majority of State leg, run by D/Rs won't pass it - they want to throw that "spoiler" label at anyone who dares to challenge their duopoly.
Did you notice when the "spoiler" label first became widespread - when Nader got about 3% in the '00 election, and it was spread by the Ds - have you noticed any Rs spreading it? The Ds are more afraid of a challenge from the Left than they are of the Rs with whom, for all intents and purposes, they get along pretty well - so when Nader came along they knew they had to nip that in the bud, lickety split, what if a third party got even more next time and the time after that? So voila - "spoiler" and "3rd parties can't win" became "popular" rejoinders - the second one is manifest BS - any candidate on a ballot can win if enough folks vote for 'em - and the D/Rs know that, which is why, not only do we see a continuation of these memes but, in case they begin to wear thin, in the proposed new wonderful "For the People" voting act are some "poison pills" that make it even harder for 3rd parties to get ballot access and access to public funding. Of course they, through the D/R run CPD, have already made it virtually impossible for 3rd parties to get into the debates - enabled after Perot was let in and wound up with 19% of the vote in '92. In '16 there were 4 candidates who each were on enough state ballots to get enough of the popular and EC votes to win if enough folks had voted for 'em - but only 2 were allowed in the debates - the D/Rs, because the others hadn't met that arbitrarily chosen 15% in 5 polls.
To indicate how powerful that "can't win" mantra is - in '16, when the D establishment started using it on Sanders - "old Jewish Socialist can't win", his supporters found it necessary to put out a piece debunking it, the same folks who had been throwing that meme at the 3rd party candidate I supported - "can't win" is very powerful psychologically ... Those memes did their job - Nader got fewer votes the next time - even though the issues he ran on were more cogent than ever ... if we had not chickened out and he got more the next time, maybe even 4%! (>3.5 :) ) and more the time after, we'd have had a much better, IMO, gov't by now - because the Ds would have realized they'd have to change their act or keep losing. More than money - they need votes to win an election ....
My point is that the D/Rs know 3rd parties could win - which is why they are restricting their access to debates, and now even their ability to get on ballots - not to mention they throw in that "Putin puppet" label and haul a candidate before a Senate sub-committee. We, the people apparently are the only ones that don't know they can win ... Good thing folks didn't "know" 3rd parties couldn't win in 1860 ...
The old LOTE voting that we have been participating in for decades now - because of that "spoiler" meme - has simply gotten us more "evil", as the "lesser evil" has gotten moreso - when a party knows it can hang on to its base by doing nothing more than convincing it the other side is "more evil", we are in deep doo-doo indeed. As someone has pointed out, we are practicing the "politics of fear" and as long as we do so, we the people will continue to lose even if our " lesser evil" candidate wins ....
So yeah, a lot of stuff would be thrown in our face - so what? If we can't stand up to a bunch of bullies, and call out the lies for that is what this nonsense is, what hope is there that we can ever get anywhere near to what we need - and time is running out, in a lot of ways -
No doubt it is huge and getting "huger" - but I think. and have for years, that the first thing we have to do is give the lie to all the memes that stand in the way of all the folks who say in poll after poll that we need a 3rd party from actually investing the time, energy and money it takes to build and sustain one - and when one is there - to vote for it!
I have voted 3rd party since '96 - and keep hoping others will join me - at least lets get to that magic 3.5% :) and see what happens - what have we got to lose, nothing except our corp duopoly ... and all the wars, and greed that goes along with it ...
As my Dad would say - "call me anything you want, just don't call me late for dinner" - and it's getting late ....
And most don't know what 'poison pills' are contained in the otherwise essential For The People Act, making it yet harder for 3rd parties. https://www.gp.org/hr_1
This isn’t a local issue, nor domestic, or national, it’s global. There’s no time to yell and scream at ordinary people to get into the streets and it won’t work anyway. There’s no time for that and people won’t just kinda, “hey, yeah, that’s it, extinction’s just round the corner, I reckon I’ll hit the streets”. This thing is bigger than that. The only thing that will get any momentum is if the Left, the whole landscape, all its inhabitants, the already existing orgs projects, groups and media, ALL OF THEM, start to prioritise survival over revolution or radical change. And the necessary change will only come through the use of existing institutions and structures because we have no time to replace them with revolutionary ones…mainly because the bloody left loves to fight with itself most of the time and it can’t truly agree on what those are anyway…even at the experienced end of the left spectrum where those members of “demonstrated wisdom” reside.
If you want ordinary people in the street, then ALL ALREADY WELL FOUNDED ESTABLISHED ORGS have to show they can unite and put real pressure on existing institutions…GOVERNMENTS and anyone fucking else they need to. And I mean ALL. I’m tired of people yelling at individuals or ordinary people to hit the streets because it’s a meaningless call. I’m tired of people yelling at ordinary folk expecting them to somehow spontaneously unite and actually know what to do in some coherent way. Half the time, no in fact more than half, if you ask a leftist what do they want, they have not the foggiest idea except maybe a bunch of vague notions they haven’t thought through. Or the answers are so radically diverse as to being almost useless as a vision. Or they’re crazy over the top anarcho -primmies with good hearts but shitty solutions. And most lefties don’t even have a good clear idea of socialism…let alone coherent economic models that would foster it.
What’s needed right now, for survival, not revolution, is a Global Green New Deal up and running by at the latest 2025, otherwise we won’t need revolution! So that means all specific single issue concerns, revolutionary concerns etc., of existing Left orgs, must be set aside in favour of this. ALL the disconnected, disparate groups, orgs, projects, be they, Marxist, anarchist, Pareconista, sort of anarchist, simpler way folk, extreme simpler way folk, feminist groups, revolutionaries of sorts , radicals of sorts, liberals of sorts, progressives of sorts, BLM, TLM, green groups, Progressive International (actually see the list of member orgs there to get an idea), DiEM25, DSA, Next System Project, Commons Transition, what’s left of the Wobblies, Unions, Sunrise, Extinction Rebellion, and whoever else and whatever other orgs are in and active on all other continents, must unite around this issue. They do not have to forget their specific concerns and focus totally, but just set them to the side to show the rest of the population there is a united front…a forceful huge left movement on this specific issue. And if needed, they can raise their specific concerns, their expertise on certain focuses for change, but not if those concerns are going to disrupt or stop altogether getting a Global Green New Deal up by 2025. Because the bloody Left, in all it bullshit sectarian glory so often shoots itself in the foot…see Trump getting elected and other scary leader folk elsewhere…and sabotages it’s own efforts.
Only then, if the Left can unite over this, maybe, and it’s a maybe, ordinary folk will see it, notice, think and hopefully take heed. And it must be done visibly and with easy to obtain information for ordinary folk, pertaining to what a Global Green New Deal actually is and what it means.
Just telling people to get into the streets or that we need x, y or z, or to vote this way or to ring your local member is way way off what’s needed.
If the Left landscape, a quite disparate, disconnected bunch of concerned citizens with DIVERSE opinions and ideas about what change is, even among green groups (and believe me I want the whole friggin market capitalist economy infuckingverted and replaced with something approaching Parecon, which is as radical as it get), who normally struggle to talk to each other or develop coherent strategies and program connected to clear vision for change, cannot come together under a visible banner or logo screaming GLOBAL GREEN NEW DEAL NOW, then do not expect the rest of the worlds population, the “bewildered herd”, the “rascal multitude”, the “great unwashed” to do so. The left has been around for at least 220 years (longer even) since Owen, Proudhon, Marx, Bakunin, Kropotkin and on and on and has never ever built a mass movement around clear visions for major major shifts in production, consumption and allocation (Spanish Rev, maybe but it got crushed, Paris Commune? Crushed. Zapatistas maybe, Rojava, maybe)…why because most of the Left has never ever spelled out clearly and coherently what it wants so most “ordinary folk” have no idea themselves, and when asked, most Lefty oriented people reply, “we’ll figure it out as we go”, which is just blindly meaningless and useless except maybe on a small community, local level. And a few people yelling or writing that the people must hit the streets is useless and the odd essay tucked in between a stack of other essays on some marginal left media site doesn’t cut it. Who’s reading this shit anyway? Very very few people.
No, it must come from a completely new strategy of already existing Left orgs, and there are many already out there well established, showing the way to ordinary folk by actually uniting themselves VERY VISIBLY. Because if they can’t unite seriously around the issue of survival, then we can kiss our fight for gender equality and our fight against racism, and our fight against authoritarianism and against capitalism…which MUST include the abolition of markets…goodbye because there won’t be any point to any of it. There won’t be a planet able to support any organised human life.
So get out and yell at any and every left media site, org or group to pull their fingers out 24/7 and unite under this banner. In fact, they could all put on their site’s front pages a clearly visible banner reading GLOBAL GREEN NEW DEAL NOW, with a link to some site with info regarding what that actually entails. Even something as ridiculously simple as that may create some kind of feeling, or illusion the Left is united, even if superficially. “Hey look man, all these orgs have got this same banner on their website. Cool”. Create a meme. Probably the most important meme ever.
You need something other than just saying get out there, we need a mass movement, or do x, y and z…it doesn't mean anything to people. The Left has been saying that for centuries and look where WE ARE NOW. We got 3 and a half yrs to get this GGND up according to Robert Pollin. And this date has been around as a kind of point of no return for ages now. It can be found in The Climate Movement’s Victory Plan and so many other predictions and projections for needed change. Naomi Klein too. So we is runnin’ out of time people, and just saying the same shit the Left has been saying’ for years is useless.
And just outlining changes that may be part of a GLOBAL GREEN NEW DEAL doesn't do anything either. The whole package has to be made clear and easily available to ordinary punters so they can understand what’s really going on, what it truly entails, because it’s a hugely complex and major shift on so many fronts and it has to be worker friendly. In fact it has to be friendly on many levels, and to many peoples, as well as it being seriously daunting. That’s why the WHOLE LEFT LANDSCAPE has to unite together to push forcefully and visibly the idea of a GLOBAL GREEN NEW DEAL NOW into the heads of the rascal multitude so as to get Government to NOW…SERIOUSLY…NOT HALF ASSED.
The already existing, experienced Left has to band together NOW, in a way it has never done before. So it first needs to yell at itself, not out at ordinary folk.
See Climate Crisis And The Global Green New Deal by Robert Pollin and Noam Chomsky.
More….
Progressive International was put together through the efforts of The Sanders Institute and DiEM25…something like that to form a United front of sorts. Many orgs have joined. When was it put together? 2018!
It’s now 2021 and a half. Who’s even heard of Progressive International? And even it doesn’t have on its front page a clear visible alert reading Global Green New Deal Now with an easy direct link to information pertaining directly to what that shit is.
And I only heard of it a while ago by chance and that’s my point. Many of these efforts go unrewarded or do not even come close to achieving what they truly wish to because these orgs are not visible enough…to ordinary folk. Yes, within the Left landscape many may know of these efforts, but beyond that…hardly anyone. It’s like Mondragon…a coop of coops that’s been around since the 1950’s. Nearly 100,000 strong and who’s heard of Mondragon, as some kind of relatively progressive model for change? Not many people. Not many even within the Left. Much like what’s happening in Rojava is not well known.
The Left talks about itself, as I am doing now, all the time, as if it’s some kind of real community out there. Like a team, sporting or community club of sorts. It is not. It critiques itself, but when it does so it’s as if whispering wisdom into the wind hoping it will land in a well-mannered way, on the whole Left landscape’s supposedly open ears. But it usually just gets blown all over the friggin’ joint randomly and dissipates into the ether, only to repeated again and again every generation or even sooner.
Just read any of Guy Standing’s books on the Precariat or even this single article, Debt and Disillusionment by Rebecca Gordon, and one will get an idea as to the shitty world young people are growing into today, in 2021 and a half. One essay among millions coming out daily illustrating how fucked things are. Whoopee! The Left landscape and its many concerned inhabitants, while winning the odd important gain here and there, making an important shift in consciousness here and there, through its own inability to generate unity among the more organised end on the activist spectrum, where most of those of demonstrated wisdom live, has still managed to allow the world to get to where we are now. A world that offers little to the future of the young even in the developed 1st world core countries, let alone to those in the undeveloped, periphery and 5th world, where things are really tough. And on top of that, it’s a world that could easily, and likely, close to organised human life in the next 25 yrs.
Yet, I hear the same old same old and see the same old same old going on. A new org folks, over here, look. Join this one. Join that one. Join the DSA and try to wrap your head around the extreme variations and diverse views of what some may call vision and strategy to get there. Anything from falling in behind Sanders’ tepid form of social democracy that in many ways is less than what the Viking countries have had going for years, to possibly a bunch of stern market socialists (David Schwieckart, Yanis Varoufakis, Gar Alperovitz, etc.,) to maybe, if you’re lucky, the odd Pareconista. The DSA doesn’t even have a real strong assertive definition of socialism it’s that friggin’ scared of pushing too hard radically!!
(Diversity is great but not when it fucking slows everything to a friggin’ halt. Sometimes diversity and the tension and arguments it brings, is like watching a spaceship from a distance approach the horizon of a black hole. Eventually, from the outside observer, it looks as if it’s just stopped and not moving, when in fact it’s already long ago been sucked into the lightless vortex and been ripped to shreds.)
So, all this organising, calls for mass movements even in recently published books by experienced activists like Angela Davis and others, and yelling at ordinary folks to get into the streets, and yet here we are.
My children growing into this screwed up world that allows abandoned children in Mongolia to live in sewers.
There’s nuclear war of course, but that can at least be stopped. It’s not like it will get to a point (well, maybe it will be tough) where it’s beyond our control and irreversible like global warming is. There’s religion and “Eastern Mystic” traditions…done nothing for 2,500 yrs but cause a lot of grief. There’s the power of music! Done nothing since the year dot and even recently the great B Dylan just sold his whole catalogue to Universal for 300,000,000 buckeroos! Go Bob.
There are already plenty of Left orgs utilising the experience and demonstrated wisdom of many, out there in the world. Enough to make a severe impact if they just put aside temporarily there individual focuses, not out of mind, and pulled their sectarian bullshit heads in, to focus on survival.
As Noam Chomsky replied to my concerns in an email,
“Couldn’t agree more. As we try to make clear in our book, simply because of time scales and urgency we must implement GGND measures within the framework of existing institutions. And without delay. Failure to do so renders all other issues irrelevant.
As you say, that does not mean that we should stop working for institutional change along any lines we see fit, but we should recognize that it will be a waste of effort unless the environmental crisis is dealt with quickly and effectively.”
This is just one of many comments and emails I am sending to orgs to show real visible unity at the top end of the Left landscape in order to drag the rascal multitude onto the survival cart. Without that sort of force, we, the rascal multitude are at the mercy of the Left’s business as usual strategy. And business as usual just won’t cut it anymore. Maybe you folks have a better idea or ideas than the simple, maybe even dumb idea, of every left site ramming a visibly public banner on their front page stating GLOBAL GEEEN NEW DEAL NOW with a link to relevant info. The meme of all memes. Maybe just inundate left orgs with the demand to refocus now. Give them the shits. Make them change.
Because I’ll tell ya, the young are not engaged because we have failed them and they basically, or many, are almost just throwing their hands in the air and yelling, great, this is what you fuckers have left me. They are sick of being yelled at to organise or stop staring at screens. Particularly by people who were enamoured of the incoherent ramblings of a “folk” singer as ambivalent and purposely, for cool image reasons, confusing as Bob Dylan…Jesus. Frank Zappa said it better than he when he just said, in the seventies, succinctly,
“A lot of what we do is designed to annoy people to the point where they might, just for a second, question enough of their environment to do something about it. As long as they don’t feel there environment and they don’t worry about it they’re not going to do anything to change it. And something’s gotta be down before America scarfs up the world and shits on it!” Frank Zappa
https://youtu.be/K6T1Xzda6cM
Either there is a REAL Left movement or there isn’t.
Agreed!!
It's frightening, yes, and people don't know how to deal with it face on. We avoid. But we need groceries, for sure, and some are privileged to have healthy, local nearby. Folks in transit oriented development communities don't have yards, so let's incentivize more community gardens. Some of us are doing all in our humble power to take action. Please let's join together! (Also, I must kindly object to your use of "schizoid"; it's a real thing https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/schizoid-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20354414
and you're using it incorrectly, and some might say, in a derogatory manner in reference to a known medical condition.) But I get your point anyway.
I am in total agreement with Mary Paterson; one thing we can do NOW, to avoid irreversible damage, is to demand massive and rapid expansion of our existing rail/transit systems, make it attractive, faster, more frequent, reliable, for people to leave their cars at home and take public transportation - an automatic 2/3 reduction in emissions - zero when it's all electrified.
For a dirt cheap low price, you can purchase either an E-book or print copy of a fabulous informative text just released by Thomas White, at www.vtd.net titled THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY: TRAINS - AN EFFECTIVE RESPONSE.
Yes, call your US Senators and Reps and demand more money in the Reconciliation bill for these essential items:
1. Clean Electricity Payment Program (CEPP) would reduce electricity sector greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2030. (Biden’s plan calls for 100 percent by 2035, but a reconciliation bill can only extend 10 years out.) It’s not actually going to be a Clean Energy Standard per se, because you can’t pass regulatory standards through reconciliation. Instead, it’s going to be a system of fines and payments that will incentivize utilities to increase their proportion of renewable energy to meet the targets.
A CEPP actually has some advantages over the traditional Clean Energy Standards and renewable portfolio standard (RPSs) commonly seen in states. For one thing, it’s more progressive: the money to drive the transition comes from federal coffers (via taxes on corporations and the wealthy) rather than from electricity rates, which are regressive.
2. Boosted and expanded clean energy tax credits. The investment tax credit (ITC) and production tax credit (PTC), for wind and solar respectively, would be renewed, but various forms of tax credits would also be extended to energy storage, hydrogen, carbon capture, and other key clean energy technologies. (The details are in flux; for a blueprint, see the Senate Finance Committee’s Clean Energy for America Act or the House Ways and Means’ GREEN Act.) Tax credits will provide the supply push; the CEPP will provide the demand pull. The result will be an enormous surge of clean energy projects and jobs.
https://www.volts.wtf/p/crunch-time-this-is-americas-last...
And, don't forget...............
3. Funding for RAIL INFRASTRUCTURE AS CLIMATE INFRASTRUCTURE. We need massive and rapid expansion of rail across the nation. $66 billion in the infrastructure bill is NOT ENOUGH. It's barely enough for NE corridor and "state of good repair" projects.
For Washington State people, click this: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/amtrak-cascades-service-development-plan
For people in other areas, click this: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/amtrak-cascades-service-development-plan
I support everything you've recommended and take your kindly objection to heart. However I do believe our world and how it affects us do resonate with the definition of schizophrenia "long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation." (OXFORD)
Forgive a bit of poetic license.
Absolutely. I have always understood schizophrenia to be the inability to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant stimuli. But it's more complex than that, and definitions can morph over time. No doubt it's becoming difficult to discern reality from unreality when one can hardly believe the magnitude of what we're facing.
I know personal lifestyle choices are not enough and that we need massive government action. Still, I’m on my way to the grocery store by bus because I’m fortunate enough to live near a bus line. I’m also a rail advocate for climate and equity reasons and I know you are too, so I wonder why you don’t envision rail cars and engines rolling off production lines alongside busses and bikes. I don’t need to remind you you co-wrote the book on Solutionary Rail. Thanks, Patrick
Of course! So many things I could mention. Trying to keep word count in check.
There is an additional option - one i would argue is just as necessary as taking to the streets - vote 3rd party - we have had them on the ballot, one at least who would have championed and used the power of the state to do what you suggest needs to be done, for several cycles now - but we don't vote for 'em - I can't help wondering how we can get even 3.5% to revolt in the streets when we can't even get them to revolt at the polls ...
A lot of people who don’t believe in the electoral system will get out in the streets. Third parties won’t work unless we have ranked choice voting. Otherwise you’ll get the spoiler effect, or at least people will not vote third party because they fear they will throw the election to the worst candidate. I never bought that Nader was responsible for Bush - it was a Supreme Court coup. But that will be thrown in your face. Laws have also been tightened up to make ballot access more difficult. Third party is a tough row to hoe.
"A lot of people ..." hmmm, a "lot of people" have gotten in to the streets, over war, over police brutality, etc. did that stop anything ? But your 3.5%? And for how long do they stay in the streets? RCV would, indeed, dampen that charge of "spoiler" which is precisely why the majority of State leg, run by D/Rs won't pass it - they want to throw that "spoiler" label at anyone who dares to challenge their duopoly.
Did you notice when the "spoiler" label first became widespread - when Nader got about 3% in the '00 election, and it was spread by the Ds - have you noticed any Rs spreading it? The Ds are more afraid of a challenge from the Left than they are of the Rs with whom, for all intents and purposes, they get along pretty well - so when Nader came along they knew they had to nip that in the bud, lickety split, what if a third party got even more next time and the time after that? So voila - "spoiler" and "3rd parties can't win" became "popular" rejoinders - the second one is manifest BS - any candidate on a ballot can win if enough folks vote for 'em - and the D/Rs know that, which is why, not only do we see a continuation of these memes but, in case they begin to wear thin, in the proposed new wonderful "For the People" voting act are some "poison pills" that make it even harder for 3rd parties to get ballot access and access to public funding. Of course they, through the D/R run CPD, have already made it virtually impossible for 3rd parties to get into the debates - enabled after Perot was let in and wound up with 19% of the vote in '92. In '16 there were 4 candidates who each were on enough state ballots to get enough of the popular and EC votes to win if enough folks had voted for 'em - but only 2 were allowed in the debates - the D/Rs, because the others hadn't met that arbitrarily chosen 15% in 5 polls.
To indicate how powerful that "can't win" mantra is - in '16, when the D establishment started using it on Sanders - "old Jewish Socialist can't win", his supporters found it necessary to put out a piece debunking it, the same folks who had been throwing that meme at the 3rd party candidate I supported - "can't win" is very powerful psychologically ... Those memes did their job - Nader got fewer votes the next time - even though the issues he ran on were more cogent than ever ... if we had not chickened out and he got more the next time, maybe even 4%! (>3.5 :) ) and more the time after, we'd have had a much better, IMO, gov't by now - because the Ds would have realized they'd have to change their act or keep losing. More than money - they need votes to win an election ....
My point is that the D/Rs know 3rd parties could win - which is why they are restricting their access to debates, and now even their ability to get on ballots - not to mention they throw in that "Putin puppet" label and haul a candidate before a Senate sub-committee. We, the people apparently are the only ones that don't know they can win ... Good thing folks didn't "know" 3rd parties couldn't win in 1860 ...
The old LOTE voting that we have been participating in for decades now - because of that "spoiler" meme - has simply gotten us more "evil", as the "lesser evil" has gotten moreso - when a party knows it can hang on to its base by doing nothing more than convincing it the other side is "more evil", we are in deep doo-doo indeed. As someone has pointed out, we are practicing the "politics of fear" and as long as we do so, we the people will continue to lose even if our " lesser evil" candidate wins ....
So yeah, a lot of stuff would be thrown in our face - so what? If we can't stand up to a bunch of bullies, and call out the lies for that is what this nonsense is, what hope is there that we can ever get anywhere near to what we need - and time is running out, in a lot of ways -
I have every sympathy for third party organizing. I just am pointing out the huge uphill climb.
No doubt it is huge and getting "huger" - but I think. and have for years, that the first thing we have to do is give the lie to all the memes that stand in the way of all the folks who say in poll after poll that we need a 3rd party from actually investing the time, energy and money it takes to build and sustain one - and when one is there - to vote for it!
I have voted 3rd party since '96 - and keep hoping others will join me - at least lets get to that magic 3.5% :) and see what happens - what have we got to lose, nothing except our corp duopoly ... and all the wars, and greed that goes along with it ...
As my Dad would say - "call me anything you want, just don't call me late for dinner" - and it's getting late ....
And most don't know what 'poison pills' are contained in the otherwise essential For The People Act, making it yet harder for 3rd parties. https://www.gp.org/hr_1
Thanx!
I mentioned them in my first post - nobody is covering them - gee, wonder why ....