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Opinion
On Indigenous Peoples Day, a Name Change Isn't Enough
I encourage everyone to look for ways to respect Indigenous Peoples and embrace the wayfinding guiding wisdom of our ancestors as we tackle the global challenges we're facing today.
Oct 14, 2024
This summer, with the stunning landscape of the Mongolian steppe as a backdrop, Indigenous Peoples from all corners of the world gathered together around a fire as instrumental music played and animals grazed freely in the fields. At a time of immense social, economic, and environmental upheaval globally, the gathering celebrated Indigenous unity, spirituality, and shared respect for the Earth.
The experience in Mongolia marked a momentary pause from the relentless mistreatment and oppression that Indigenous Peoples' cultures have endured for centuries and that we continue to endure to this day.
Despite the fact that Indigenous Peoples sustain approximately 40% of Earth's remaining intact ecosystems, agribusiness, mining, and extractive companies are driving deforestation across our land, while climate change sets our homes on fire. At the same time, Indigenous Peoples' languages, which represent a deep tie to our cultures and values, are fading out. Every two weeks, an Indigenous language dies. These realities are frightening, but we cannot ignore them. Instead, we must address them head-on and remain resilient.
It's time for the world to recognize that in preserving our way of life, we are also contributing significantly to preserving life on Earth.
The ceremony in Mongolia marked the start of the second in-person gathering of the Wayfinders Circle, a global network of Indigenous Peoples who have successfully kept alive our ways of life, along with our land, languages, traditions, and cultures. The Wayfinders Circle is composed of 15 member groups from across the seven sociocultural regions of the world, protecting 47 million hectares of land and 72 million hectares of oceans. The alliance gathers experts in the care and management of Indigenous territories, marked by guardianship, self-governance, and ancestral knowledge rooted in spirituality and passed down through generations.
Members of the Wayfinders Circle are seeking to address the challenges, threats, and difficulties Indigenous Peoples face and re-empower our communities as a collective by coming together, learning, and exchanging experiences related to ways of life, belief systems, and traditional practices. Together, we are using new mediums and methods to preserve the world in which we live.
I was fortunate to witness the initial formation of the alliance, and last month, I had the honor of sharing welcoming words during the premiere of the new film series, The Wayfinders, which brings attention to our work preserving our cultures and protecting our planet. The series, which premiered at the American Museum of Natural History during Climate Week NYC, allows Indigenous Peoples to tell our story from our perspective. It highlights Indigenous Peoples' deep connection to the environment and our role in protecting our sacred land, from the lush forests of Borneo, to the ancient territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy and the biodiverse Northern Territory of Australia. In each corner of the world, we are connected and fighting together to protect who we are.
Even though Indigenous Peoples have distinct perspectives and experiences, speak different languages, and represent diverse cultures and beliefs, what brings us together now is our profound connection to our homelands, a relationship built across millennia. Through the creation of The Wayfinders, what became abundantly clear is that we are all dedicated to the preservation of Indigenous cultures, from territorial management to the protection of sacred sites and languages.
Language in particular is a core aspect of who we are. It is more than just a means of communication—it is a living and sacred link between our past, present, and future. Language connects Indigenous Peoples' communities to our ancestors, carrying forward our history, beliefs, and traditions. It plays a vital role in preserving culture and ensuring its continuity for future generations.
I am Saami from Norway. As Sámi people, we are considered the only Indigenous Peoples in Europe, including Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia. We feel proud that, despite the challenges, we maintain our language. Our rich vocabulary is essential for our traditional livelihoods, such as reindeer herding, as it allows us to describe conditions crucial for navigation and survival in the Arctic landscape. It's estimated that the Sámi languages have more than 300 words specifically for snow and ice. These words capture subtle variations in snow's texture, quality, form, and changes over time, reflecting our people's deep connection to and understanding of our environment.
As Indigenous Peoples around the world continue to face growing threats to our cultures, land, languages, and spirituality, we are thinking expansively and creatively to fight back. Through children's books, modern songs, cultural camps, digital platforms, and more, Indigenous Peoples are preserving our way of life. The success of these efforts is not only a testament to the resilience of Indigenous Peoples but also a profound statement about the importance of our cultural and spiritual identity. It's time for the world to recognize that in preserving our way of life, we are also contributing significantly to preserving life on Earth.
As a lot of places in the U.S. have made the switch from "Columbus Day" to "Indigenous Peoples Day," honoring and recognizing the rich history, cultures, and contributions of Indigenous Peoples, as well as acknowledging the effects of colonialism and the injustices they've faced, I invite you to take a step further. Just changing the name isn't enough. I encourage everyone to look for ways to respect Indigenous Peoples and embrace the wayfinding guiding wisdom of our ancestors as we tackle the global challenges we're facing today.
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Time for a United Front Against Trump and Realism About Harris
The policy that Harris has defended for the war on Gaza is despicable, yet she is the only candidate who can spare us from another Trump presidency, which—from all indications—would be far worse than the first one.
Oct 14, 2024
With Election Day just three weeks off and voting already underway in some states, the race for president is down to the wire. Progressives could make the difference.
While no one in their left mind plans to vote for the fascistic and unhinged former U.S. President Donald Trump, some say they won’t vote for Vice President Kamala Harris because of her loyalty to President Joe Biden’s support for the Israeli war on Gaza. That might enable Trump to win with enough electoral votes from swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Those seven states are where progressives may well hold the future in their voting hands.
If it becomes a reality, the Trump-Vance administration will force progressives back on their heels, necessarily preoccupied with trying to mitigate the onslaught of massive damage being inflicted by right-wing zealots with vast government power.
The policy that Harris has defended for the war on Gaza is despicable. At the same time, she is the only candidate who can spare us from another Trump presidency, which—from all indications—would be far worse than the first one.
The need is urgent for dialectics—“a method of examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to find the truth”—in this case, the truth of what’s most needed at this electoral crossroads of fateful history.
“The harms of the other options” mean that the best course of action is to vote for Harris, 25 Islamic clerics said in a letter released last week. They focused on an overarching truth: “Particularly in swing states, a vote for a third party could enable Trump to win that state and therefore the election.” The U.S. clerics called such a vote “both a moral and a strategic failure.”
Personally, as a resident of solid-blue California, I have no intention of voting for Harris. But if I lived in one of the seven swing states, I wouldn’t hesitate to join in voting for her as the only way to defeat Trump.
Some speak of the need to exercise conscience rather than voting for Harris. Yet in swing states, what kind of “conscience” is so self-focused that it risks doing harm to others as a result of a Trump presidency?
If it becomes a reality, the Trump-Vance administration will force progressives back on their heels, necessarily preoccupied with trying to mitigate the onslaught of massive damage being inflicted by right-wing zealots with vast government power.
On domestic policies—involving racism, reproductive rights, civil liberties, the environment, climate, labor rights, the social safety net, civil rights, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, freedom of speech and the right to organize, the judicial system, and so much more—the differences between the Trump and Harris forces are huge. To claim that those differences are insignificant is a nonsensical version of elitism, no matter how garbed in leftist rhetoric.
On foreign policy, Harris is the vice president in an administration fully on board with bipartisan militarism that keeps boosting the Pentagon budget, bypassing diplomacy for ending the Ukraine war while stoking the cold war, and—with vast arms shipments to Israel—literally making possible the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
At the same time, anyone who thinks that Trump (“finish the job”) wouldn’t be even worse for Palestinian people—hard as that is to imagine—doesn’t grasp why Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is so eager for Trump to win.
The leadership of the Uncommitted Movement has sorted out the political options. The terrain was well described by Uncommitted leader Abbas Alawieh, who said last month: “At this time, our movement opposes a Donald Trump presidency whose agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of anti-war organizing. And our movement is not recommending a third-party vote in the presidential election, especially as third-party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency, given our country’s broken Electoral College system.”
As his frequent collaborator C.J. Polychroniou noted last month, Noam Chomsky “has repeatedly made the argument that voting for a third-party or independent candidate in a swing state would accomplish nothing but increase the possibility of the most extreme and positively nuts candidate winning the election.”
In an interview with Jacobin a few weeks ago, Alawieh had this to say:
As someone who has family who lives in South Lebanon right now—who are living under the terror of U.S. weapons raining down on them from the Israeli military—I do not have the luxury of giving up on the only one of the two major parties where there is room for this debate. To be clear, there’s room for this debate not because the Democratic Party is friendly to Palestinian human rights. There’s room for this debate because A) the Republican Party is not the party where we can have this conversation; not a single federal elected official on the Republican side even supports a cease-fire as this genocide has raged on, and B) the Democratic Party speaks of being the party of justice and inclusion, and there are more and more of us within the party who are insisting that the party change its immoral and illegal support of sending weapons to harm and kill civilians.
Similarly, another prominent Uncommitted Movement leader, Palestinian American Layla Elabed, said: “We urge Uncommitted voters to register anti-Trump votes and vote up and down the ballot. Our focus remains on building this anti-war coalition, both inside and outside the Democratic Party.”
This is certainly not the presidential election that we want, but it’s the one we have. The immediate task is to prevent a Trump victory. His defeat is essential to keep doors open for progressive change that a new Trump presidency would slam shut with extreme right-wing power.
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There Is Still a Way to Prevent a Regional Middle East War: a Cease-Fire in Gaza
Without a cease-fire agreement in Gaza, there will be no deescalation of violence from groups across the region. The Biden administration’s focus on Lebanon alone ignores this fundamental reality.
Oct 14, 2024
As violence spreads across Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and beyond, the Middle East stands on the brink of a direct regional war between Israel and Iran. Following Israel's assassinations of Hassan Nasrallah and Ismail Haniyeh then Iran's retaliatory missile strikes, tensions are nearing a dangerous tipping point.
Armed groups throughout the region, including Hezbollah, have long declared that their military actions are directly tied to the ongoing genocide of Gaza. Despite U.S. efforts to frame Lebanon as an isolated front, Hezbollah has made clear there will be no deescalation without a cease-fire in Gaza. Only an end to the assault on Gaza can prevent further escalation.
Last week, a U.S. State Department spokesperson claimed that Hezbollah had " delinked" its call for a cease-fire in Lebanon from the original calls for a cease-fire in Gaza. This assertion, however, is not grounded in reality. In the 33-minute speech referenced by the State Department, Hezbollah's deputy leader actually reaffirmed the importance of maintaining solidarity with Palestine. He explicitly tied Hezbollah's military operations to the situation in Gaza. Moreover, Hezbollah issues daily statements—announcing its military activities in the ongoing conformation with Israel, and all of these statements start with the same template: "In support of the steadfast Palestinian people in Gaza and in defense of Lebanon, the Islamic Resistance carried out..." These statements continuous to underscore Hezbollah's ongoing alignment with Palestine and their unwillingness to cease operations in Lebanon without a simultaneous cease-fire in Gaza.
By halting military aid to Israel and enforcing U.S. law, [Biden] can help bring about a regional cease-fire that saves lives—not just in Gaza, but across the Middle East.
In a major statement issued on October 11, Hezbollah reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining alignment with Gaza. As the message read: "The settlements of northern occupied Palestine will remain empty of settlers until the war on Gaza and Lebanon stops." This declaration makes it clear that there can be no cease-fire in Lebanon without a simultaneous cease-fire in Gaza, directly contradicting the U.S. narrative of decoupling the two fronts.
Since last October, Hezbollah, as well as armed groups in Iraq and Yemen, have made it clear that their involvement in the armed conflict is directly tied to the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. They have explicitly linked their attacks on Israel to the violence in Gaza, stating that they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinian people living under a decades-long occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Without a cease-fire agreement in Gaza, there will be no deescalation of violence from these groups across the region. The Biden administration's focus on Lebanon alone ignores this fundamental reality.
Compounding this flawed approach is the Biden administration's contradictory and dangerous military aid policy. At the same time as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to openly defy U.S. calls for a cease-fire in both Lebanon and Gaza, the Biden administration approved a staggering $8.7 billion in military aid to Israel just last month, bringing the total for the past year closer to $20 billion of U.S. tax dollars sent to Israel—arms that have been used by the Israeli military to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied Palestinian territories and elsewhere in the region.
This approach is not only morally indefensible but also violates U.S. law. Under Sections 620i and 620m of the Foreign Assistance Act, the U.S. is prohibited from providing military assistance to foreign security forces involved in gross violations of human rights or to entities obstructing humanitarian aid. Israel's ongoing blockade of Gaza and its military operations, which have resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and widespread destruction, clearly fall within these prohibitions. By continuing to send weapons to Israel, the Biden administration is disregarding its legal obligations and deepening its complicity in the violence.
The Biden administration's failed policies have led to a crisis not only in Gaza but across the region. Hezbollah's rocket fire, Iraqi militia activity, and Yemeni missile strikes are all part of a broader response to the situation in Gaza. Armed groups throughout the Middle East have made it clear: Until the assault on Gaza ends, they will continue to retaliate. The U.S. cannot hope to achieve a cease-fire in Lebanon while ignoring the root of the violence in Gaza.
As U.S. President Joe Biden approaches the final months of his presidency, he has an opportunity to course correct. By halting military aid to Israel and enforcing U.S. law, he can help bring about a regional cease-fire that saves lives—not just in Gaza, but across the Middle East. Achieving peace in the Middle East is a long process, but it begins with ending U.S. complicity in the brutal and ongoing genocide and pushing for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.
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Capitalism, Crisis, and the 2024 Election
Three next-system thinkers discuss what the U.S. presidential election says about our current system and the possibility for change.
Oct 14, 2024
This is the second-ever presidential election as conscious adults for many young folks. I remember during my first, in 2020, I was freshly 18 and brimming with an almost egoistic confidence in my decision to abstain from voting. I did not have faith in either the Democratic Party or their nominee, Joe Biden, to represent me.
Four years later, my view of the Democratic Party has only worsened, especially as Palestinian blood continues to spill by their hands. And yet, at the same time, the threat of fascism from the Republican Party is becoming ever more real. The far-right has intensified its attacks on the bodily autonomy of women, the LGTBQ community, and on the rotting carcass that is American Democracy. Now that I am 22, and in stark contrast to my past self, this election leaves me writhing in a pool of self-doubt. The same question repeats over and over in my head: Can I really sit this one out?
It is within this tension that I found myself sitting down with three next-system thinkers about the upcoming election. These activists and scholars have dedicated their lives to challenging systemic poverty and economic injustice through decades of combined experience in grassroots organizing in the United States. Our discussion touched not only on the significance of the 2024 election but the increasingly acute political crisis in the United States and the current prospects for system change.
We're living globally in a period of a profound economic crisis and environmental catastrophe.
What I learned, in some ways, reflected my own ambivalence. They too were divided on the question that Bill Fletcher described in our interview as "the politics of moral outrage versus the politics of power." As Cheri Honkala shared with me, it is important that Americans vote their conscience in the face of a genocide carried out in Palestine by the Democratic Party. However, Stephanie Luce offered an opposing perspective, urging the left to "get realistic about our power" in the context of an increasingly emboldened, fascistic right wing. Ultimately, what these contrasting tendencies represent is an ongoing historical debate between two different philosophies for the American left.
These interviews have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: There seems to be a general sense that, regardless of who wins the 2024 presidential election, the system as a whole—the social, ecological, economic, and political system of which we are all a part—has some very serious issues. What systemic problems do you see today and how serious are they?
Cheri Honkola: Our capitalist system has created a situation where people just can't live… People have absolutely no rights to land, no rights to free speech, and no rights to live anywhere. And there's a serious increasing criminalization just of being poor and just of being homeless in this country. People just can't live right now, so people are being forced to set up co-ops and a cooperative economy and all of those kinds of things. And the approach, I think, for folks that are on the absolute bottom, it's a little different. There's a growing equality of misery; we're very clear that there's going to be no utopia under capitalism.
Bill Fletcher Jr.: We're living globally in a period of a profound economic crisis and environmental catastrophe, and this convergence runs us into the equivalent of two tectonic plates that are crashing against one another. And in that situation, you have mountains that are built, and you have earthquakes, and we're seeing both, and so this is creating great instability and anxiety.
In the United States, in part as a reflection of that, we're living through a cold Civil War. And this cold Civil War really became very evident with Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America, there were clear signs of counterattack against the victories that had been won in the 20th century. Now since then, key elements in the Republican establishment have made use of mass movements on the right that have been developing since the late 60s and have thought that they could manipulate them, but instead, what they've done is follow the course of Dr. Frankenstein in creating a monster that they can't control, and that's why the MAGA movement smacked out of the way the opponents to former U.S. President Donald Trump both in 2016 and this year. So, it's a very dangerous situation, and the danger's compounded by an armed wing of the right-wing authoritarian movement, plus the recklessness of very wealthy men, so it creates a very unstable situation.
If we go down a path of authoritarian rule, I don't see any hope for addressing a more functioning economy or a more sustainable climate situation that's going to protect the most impacted.
Stephanie Luce: Well, I think it's multidimensional. The crises are from a number of angles. Some of the most pressing issues are certainly related to climate. There is really no way of turning back, so our choices are to slow down the worst of it and mitigate the worst impacts. But in any case, it seems, we're already in it, and a lot of people are already experiencing a climate crisis, and then certainly, there are growing threats to democracy around the world, of people even electing authoritarian leaders and losing faith in democracy. And I would say the U.S. certainly has never had a real democracy even to begin with. So, it's not like I'm romanticizing what came before, but it is possible that even that can go backwards, instead of forwards, in terms of creating a real multiracial democracy. And then how we think about the economy, there are a lot of measures that would suggest things are relatively stable right now, but underneath it is certainly not a sustainable system, it's an economy that's producing for profit instead of human need and producing for growth instead of sustainability. So, I would say those are the underlying crises that will be there no matter what the outcome of the election is.
Q: Given what you just shared, what kinds of changes to the system do you see as absolutely necessary? And what changes do you think are opening up that you are really excited about?
Cheri: One of the things I see is that this growing equality of misery is a different form of unity that is developing. The ruling class has really figured out how to keep us divided in regard to gender, race, and all of these other kinds of things. And I think that the positive side of the negative is that it's forcing us to figure out how to work together to create something very different in order to stay alive.
One of the closest people I work with is an African American male who was formerly homeless and incarcerated, served some time in the military, has seven kids, and is married. There's no way we would have been working together for 30 years just because he's a nice guy. We have nothing in common. But we've had to figure out ways to work together. People need each other desperately in order to stay alive.
For us, it's really about organizing. To literally take back land, organize to take back food, working together to demand the other half of the operation for a kid's mouth, and that's why we've just recently written this book Takeover. It's a little bit of our history, but it's also a manual on teaching homeless people across this country how to house themselves in abandoned government homes that are vacant because there are more abandoned properties than there are homeless people. And I think that the other positive thing is that there's so much surplus right now that it really is a question of redistribution and getting organized to take back our human rights.
We have to create a block that's capable of winning and introducing substantive, structural changes.
Bill: Well, the system itself is a rock, so I start there. Capitalism is antithetical to the future of humanity. Now, on top of that, the U.S. sociopolitical system that's based on or built upon, capitalism is itself rigged against people of color, women, against working-class people. And one of the things about the way it's rigged, particularly when it comes to people of color, is that when we try to play by the rules, the rules get changed. We see this in elections by different things that the Republicans have been doing in terms of voter suppression. You see this in the economy and business. The demand needs to be for consistent democracy, an expansion of democracy into all spheres, not a retraction or a retrenchment, and so we need to make it easier for people to vote, not more difficult. We need to make it easier for workers to form unions, not more difficult. We need to make it easier for women to control their own bodies, not more difficult. We need to make it easier for LGBTQ folks to live their lives in harmony and not more difficult. We need to be addressing the fact that the planet is burning rather than ignoring it. Those are the kinds of things that we need to be doing, and those are the changes that need to be introduced and that we need to demand of our political leaders.
Stephanie: Well for me, in a sense, the building of a multiracial democracy is an outcome and a way to address the other two. I don't see how if we go down a path of authoritarian rule, I don't see any hope for addressing a more functioning economy or a more sustainable climate situation that's going to protect the most impacted. So I guess for me, some of my effort has been focusing on deepening and expanding and making democracy real, because I feel like that's one of our only hopes for addressing those other serious crises.
I think it's a strange moment of kind of real highs and lows. So, I have been involved myself in a number of efforts to engage more people in this fight around democracy, acknowledging, again, like I said, the ways in which it has failed many of us up until now. It's not about just saying, let's revive the status quo or what's done been before, but can we deepen it and make it more real, whether it's in the workplace, through having a voice at work and even thinking about worker control, whether it's in our communities, and thinking about what it would look like if we had people who are most impacted making real decisions about things like housing and transportation.
Some of the training and discussion about what democracy could look like, the ways in which it's failed us, and the historic role that working people have played in fighting off authoritarian governments, I think that's interesting. There are people definitely worried about that and engaged in that. My other arena is particularly around worker organizing, just tons of interest. I've never seen this level of interest in the entire time I've worked on this, particularly among young people, about how it's not just about fighting for things, like a union that's important, but like, really questioning, why do we even work at all? What is it for? What's the purpose of work, and who makes the decisions about how the economy runs?
Q: Staying on the theme of new possibilities: What kinds of new combinations do you see as possible—unusual allies, new ways of coming together, new sets of approaches—in the 2020s that may have been more difficult to achieve in the past?
Cheri: Well, there really is this thing that we call a growing, developing new class. And so that's like a nurse friend of mine that just figured she was going to be a nurse the rest of her life and everything would be great. And now she's an older woman, and she couldn't figure out the technology, and so she was replaced by a bunch of younger people that are going into nursing that were born and raised with computers. Or it's the person that has worked someplace, and they've totally eliminated that industry that used to pay enough so you could have a two-car garage or thought that they were going to be great for the rest of their life because they worked at a union and paid union dues their whole life, and then they close down that shop. These are the new people that are coming to the bottom and that we're working together with, and that's a huge fall. And these are people who really believe that they have an entitlement.
You know capitalism has really done a job on poor people period, to have them believe that they don't really deserve any of these things, and they don't have rights, and they've been individual failures, and it's not a part of a larger system. And I think that that's harder to buy when you're part of this growing new class of people that are becoming expendable.
Bill: We have been witnessing the rise of new and renovated social movements. We have not yet built a conscious majoritarian block that can win power. That's what we need to do. We need to first block or stop MAGA, but stopping MAGA is not enough. We have to create a block that's capable of winning and introducing substantive, structural changes.
I think that the two corporate political parties in this country are going to fight like hell to remain relevant.
So, I'm not sure that there are any new combinations as such. It's more about making the combinations more conscious and standing up against ethno-nationalism and identity-exclusive politics.
Stephanie: On the one hand, there are a lot of young people, and not just only young people, but a lot of energy from young people looking to rebuild an internationalist movement particularly focused on Gaza, but that brings people to renew their interest in learning about other parts of the world, and we do have more tools to communicate across borders and talk to and learn from activists across the globe. So that's a positive place for me. I also think there are a number of issues that are really contentious, but actually kind of divide our political parties or divide our coalitions. I think immigration is one, for example, it tends to be portrayed as if there's a Republican position and a Democratic position. I don't actually think that's true.
I think there's actually a lot of division within the Democratic Party and also division within the Republican Party, because a lot of people who are truly Christian or religious have a belief in rights. Employers, for example, have historically been wanting to embrace immigrants and bring more immigrants to the country. So, there's these issues that divide the coalitions as they stand and could make space for reconfiguration of new alliances, certainly also around things like healthcare, that crosses party lines. And it's more about 1% versus 99%—and climate as well, I think climate is another area of possibly renewed alliances, and some of that's generational, but it's also about some people's values that that they hold and it's like, Okay, actually, the parties aren't speaking for these values.
Q: It looks like system change is coming whether we like it or not. There are endless possibilities for what the next system might look like, good and bad. What do you see as the organizing and movement building challenges that absolutely must be overcome in order to build a better world?
Cheri: I think we're in an in-between stage right now, and those who are already facing fascism are terrified and having to confront that. That's immigrants in this country, and people that are already living behind bars. And neighborhoods like Kensington are already dealing with a system where the government and the police there and the politicians are all working together, and where they have mobile jails, and there is no due process, and there is no media covering our day-to-day reality. Like in Kensington and other areas of the country, they want absolute control, there already has been a genocide of different sections of the population with the fentanyl crisis, and more people have died now from fentanyl than died during the Vietnam War. And that is crippling people and killing people, and nothing is being done about it.
I think that the two corporate political parties in this country are going to fight like hell to remain relevant. They will buy or offer cabinet positions or large amounts of resources for their organizations to divert the population from system change and keep them in some kind of reform. Have the people's leaders take them in the direction of reform. So, what you see happening now in this country is the immense threat of anybody that's talking about the creation of a different kind of system, versus getting on the bandwagon for Kamala Harris. I have so many Democrat bots on my social media. It's like a full-time job for them. I'm old enough to remember back in the day when there was a real anti-war movement in this country, and you would never think of any civil rights organizations not being involved. There are so many people who are in the financial pockets right now of the Democratic Party for their places of faith. While, literally, children are being slaughtered and the genocide is going on in Gaza; it's just devastating.
Internally, I think we need to really up our internal training about long-term strategy and be realistic about our power.
Bill: One of the big dangers is purism. We see it in the electoral realm all the time, and it's the idea that if a politician does not have exactly my platform, they are a sellout and not worthy of support. It's also reflective of the politics of moral outrage versus the politics of power. So, the politics of moral outrage are represented by "we are furious about this, that, or whatever, and therefore we're not going to vote for this candidate, or we're not going to vote at all." And that view is objectively apocalyptic. Basically, it means that no change can come about until there's a total collapse. And some people believe that you have this kind of pure streak that is waiting. I often analogize it to a surfer who paddles out into the ocean waiting for the ideal wave, believing that once they get it, they can ride it straight into shore. And that's not politics. That's something else. Sectarianism is related. It's sort of the notion that it's my way or the highway.
Mountain Stronghold Mentality is something that Bill Gallegos and I have written about, and it's a notion that comes from an era in the Chinese Revolution when there were guerrilla bands that were literally on mountaintops that would be their base area. They'd come down and attack the enemy and then go back to the base areas. The revolution shifted, and they needed mobile units to engage the enemy in a different way. Many of the guerrilla commanders didn't want to come down from mountaintops, because they were comfortable. They were secure. They didn't believe that they could be captured or destroyed by the enemy, and so they basically, despite the change in conditions, sought comfort. We see this with organizations that are afraid to take risks and to unite with others because they're comfortable where they are.
Another problem is the lack of strategy and strategic thinking. We progressives are very used to fighting defensive battles when we have difficulty thinking offensively. So, I'll give you an example. I often use this example. A number of years ago, maybe 10 years ago, I was in Texas on a speaking engagement, and it was before [Greg] Abbott was elected governor. And so, I was giving a talk about something, and during the Q and A, people were telling me how bad the situation was in Texas. So, I listened. They wanted to know what I thought needed to be done. And I said, How do we take over Texas? They took a deep breath, sat back, couldn't figure out what I was thinking, whether I had lost my mind, and I said to them, look, you've told me how bad the situation is. I get it. We have two alternatives. One, we can give up, go off, and get high, right? The other is that we develop a strategy to win. And the strategy to win needs to look at everything, from which are the key cities in Texas, which are the key counties, which are the counties that we can afford to ignore? What are the social movements that are in operation? Who are the key opinion makers? Where can resources be obtained? All of these things. And then read a little bit of Sun Tzu, you know The Art of War, and think strategically about how we win.
Stephanie: Oh, there's so many. Yeah. I mean, this is a long list, but for me, I sometimes think about it as, what do we need to do internally, within our organizations and movements? I think we need to think about that. And then there's the set of external challenges. And so internally, I think we need to really up our internal training about long-term strategy and be realistic about our power. A lot of us don't have power, and instead, we tend to look for a moral stance like, what's the right thing to do? That's important, but if it doesn't come with building power, then it's not a strategy. I worked on this book called Practical Radicals because people have tended to be either radicals with big dreams and visions but with no plan to win, or very pragmatic and with a small, winnable goal, but it's too small to really change much. So, I think as organizations and movements, we have to really get better trained on how to do long-term strategy, and that includes also getting better about how to work in alliance with one another across our organizations and sectors where we don't agree on everything. People in the climate movement might not share the same goals and visions as some people in labor unions, for example, but we have to find those common-ground ways in which we're all better off. We're stronger together than we are apart.
And then I think the external challenges are massive. Because the U.S. state is well armed and powerful. The police state is massive. People will be deported, shot at, arrested. So, we have to be realistic about the powers that we are up against, not just in the United States, but globally. And really also get strategic about how to divide that ruling coalition. They don't all benefit from it, or they benefit unequally, and that means that we need to think about peeling off certain segments of that. That means working with people we really don't like and whom we disagree with on a lot of things, but we might share common end goals, such as climate sustainability or defending democracy as a system. So those external threats are real, and we just don't have the power on our own to really make those kinds of changes.
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