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democratic socialism
What Is (the) Left to Do? 400 Days and Counting
As the midterms approach, two paths to making history should be taken simultaneously and with the urgency that our predicament compels.
Sep 24, 2025
Driven by the contradictory demands of his situation, and being at the same time, like a juggler, under the necessity of keeping the public gaze on himself… by springing constant surprises—that is to say, under the necessity of arranging a coup d‘état in miniature every day—[he] throws the whole… economy into confusion, violates everything that seemed inviolable, makes some tolerant of revolution and makes others lust for it, and produces anarchy in the name of order, while at the same time stripping the entire state machinery of its halo, profaning it and making it at once loathsome and ridiculous—Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1851
So ends Marx’s keen-eyed chronicle of the events in France from 1848-1851 that resulted in the brutal crushing of the French proletariat, along with rise of Napoleon III, first as president (very temporarily) and eventually as emperor. In the midst of our consternation and concern to understand our own present slide into these dark times, we might look to Marx’s analysis for some much-needed guidance.
As Marx himself characterized his goal (in an 1869 preface to a second edition) for the series of articles that became the pamphlet, he was not interested in glorifying Bonaparte or telling a “great man of history” kind of tale, but rather he wanted to “demonstrate how the class struggle in France created the circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part.” Sound like anyone or anything we know?
How about this then? Marx, in this passage, was trying to understand how the French peasantry came to play their unlikely, but essential role in Bonaparte’s rise. It reads as an eerily prescient characterization of the MAGA movement as the seemingly unshakable center of support for the present regime, along with their dangerous susceptibility to its incessant demagoguery:
Insofar as millions of families live under conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests, and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. Insofar as there is merely a local interconnection among these [people], and the identity of their interests forms no community, no national bond, and no political organization among them, they do not constitute a class. They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interest in their own name, whether through a parliament or a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, an unlimited governmental power which protects them from the other classes [for which we might, of course, read dangerous and unworthy "others," about which, more in a moment] and sends them rain and sunshine from above. The political influence of the [MAGAlites], therefore, finds its final expression in the executive power which subordinates society to itself.
And what about the putative institutional checks and balances on executive power? Here, too, we can find startlingly apt observations that precisely forecast our day-to-day headlines:
By repulsing the army… and so surrendering the army [military] irrevocably to the President, the party of Order [i.e., the Congressional branch along with its war powers] declares that the bourgeoisie has forfeited its vocation to rule. A parliamentary ministry no longer existed. Having now indeed lost its grip on the army and the National Guard, what forcible means remained to it [the Congress] with which simultaneously to maintain the usurped authority of parliament over the people and its constitutional authority against the President? None. Only the appeal to impotent principles remained to it now [or sternly worded letters of concern], to principles that it had itself always interpreted merely as general rules, which one prescribes for others in order to be able to move all the more freely oneself.
So what does all this (and so much more that could be quoted) add up to in terms of insights for coming to grips with the myriad dilemmas we face currently? If we are to follow Marx’s advice, our inquiry should not focus on the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of our own “grotesque mediocrity,” but rather on the circumstances and relationships that have allowed him to “play a hero’s part.”
For that, I think it is instructive to return to a particular element of the 2016 presidential primaries and campaigns. It became clear to many observers as these wore on that the vast majority of the electorate, no matter their position on the political spectrum, were avid for change from the then-prevailing status quo. For better or worse, quite literally, the two candidates that eventually emerged as the most likely embodiments of such change were Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. The most unlikely were the virtual clones on the Republican stage, and Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side. Although Sanders was shunted aside by the party establishment, I think it is still worth comparing his narrative (then and now) with Trump’s (then and now as well) in order to understand the constellation of factors (including, as Marx observed, unlikely alliances), that have produced the present moment.
I begin with what Marx began with in his assessment (both in this pamphlet and almost all of his other works): peoples’ material conditions on the ground. This is also where both Sanders and Trump located their campaigns, and both recognized that their potential supporters had quite legitimate grievances about essential elements of their lives. Beyond this fundamental agreement, however, the stories diverge immediately and wildly.
For Sanders (and, of course, this is a central part of the ongoing anti-oligarchy campaign), the very real problems that people encounter stem from a system that pits the 1% against the rest. And while this diagnosis might resonate with people with quite divergent ideological positions (as Sanders continues to demonstrate in both red and blue precincts), the remedies either are, or more realistically are made to appear as, nearly impossible: i.e., fundamental, systemic change. And on top of that, Sanders had and has to contend with the knee-jerk reactions (either existential dread or trivialized utopianism) to his self-declared, though hardly radical, democratic socialism. Returning briefly to the 18th Brumaire, this burden also has a lengthy history:
Whatever amount of passion and declamation might be employed… speech remained… monosyllabic… As monosyllabic on the platform as in the press. Flat as a riddle whose answer is known in advance. Whether it was a question of the right of petition or the tax on wine, freedom of the press or free trade, the clubs or the municipal charter, protection of personal liberty or regulation of the state budget, the watchword constantly recurs, the theme remains always the same, the verdict is ever ready and invariably reads: “Socialism!” Even bourgeois liberalism is declared socialistic, bourgeois enlightenment socialistic, bourgeois financial reform socialistic. It was socialistic to build a railway where a canal already existed, and it was socialistic to defend oneself with a cane when one was attacked with a rapier.
And so what was and is Trump’s tale? As with Sanders, he begins with the presumption and continual public assertion (whether he believes it or not) that the grievances are genuine. The causes, however, do not stem from a system rigged by the rich and powerful, but rather are the result of unworthy “others” illegally and illegitimately impeding the prospects of those deemed deserving by the regime in power. And if that regime is willing to push aside the minimal protections afforded to these identified “others,” it is easy to see why the tangible and visible actionability of this approach is preferable to its supporters, to the vague hand-waving and -wringing of the Sanders’ prescriptions. The flip side of the so-called meritocratic “American Dream” mythology (work hard, play by the rules, you’ll make it) is that if you fail, it’s your own fault. In light of this, it is doubly appealing to be told, “No, it is not your fault; it’s ‘theirs,’" and then to see “them” humiliated, dehumanized, and disappeared one way or another.
It is also possible, in light of Marx’s assessment, to use this Trumpian narrative to help us understand what appears as an unlikely coalition (the circumstances and relationships) between big capital (finance and big tech in particular) and diverse elements of the working class (e.g., some segments of organized labor). It also serves to explain some of the apparently contradictory demographic shifts that we have seen recently occurring among various populations of color and in age-related cohorts. Referring to the Marx-MAGA quote above, many people are susceptible to demagogic claims of relief and salvation, and this is particularly the case in these fraught moments. When people are undeniably living in precarious circumstances it becomes much more appealing to hear that there is an “easy” remedy (eliminate “those people”) than to hear that fundamental systemic change is required before things improve.
As we move further toward governance through coercion (applied if one dares to dissent from current directions), we must be prepared to withdraw our consent to be governed by this regime.
So, what to do? I return once more, and finally, to the 18th Brumaire, and its most famous quote (amended for the present sensibilities): “[People] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” There are now just over 400 days until the 2026 midterm elections, if indeed, they take place. And this is a very big if, given that the regime is now trying every possible way (war with Venezuela, war with the cities, war on “the left," etc., etc.) to foment an actual or false “emergency” in order to declare martial law and cancel, rather than risk losing, the elections.
But if we have them, in these next 400 days, two paths to making history should be taken simultaneously and with the urgency that our predicament compels. The first is the electoral route and operates under the still valid (for now) presumption that the elections will take place. During this period, and as the effects of the current policies (especially the tariffs and the Big Ugly Bill) take hold and produce material effects in peoples’ everyday lives, every Democratic candidate or office holder should make it their top priority to follow Sanders’ lead and share with voters of all political persuasions: 1) precisely where their genuine pain is coming from; and 2) how, specifically, a Democratic controlled Congress would work programmatically to alleviate those burdens. Is this realistic? What is the alternative?
The other path that should be taken up is to challenge, in every way possible, the legitimacy of the current administration. As we move further toward governance through coercion (applied if one dares to dissent from current directions), we must be prepared to withdraw our consent to be governed by this regime. If we actually had the “organized left” feverishly conjured and imagined by the broletariat, we could be creatively producing withholdings of labor and consumption, developing 5-10 minute general strikes, and prevailing upon our allied elected officials to “put their bodies on the gears and wheels and levers of the odious machine and make it stop” or at least slow it to a crawl till we can take charge. In the absence of that coherent left (one of those circumstances transmitted from the past), we must take advantage of those cognate organizations that do exist or that can be created rapidly to implement such a strategy at every appropriate level. Is this realistic? What is the alternative?
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After Hochul’s Mamdani Endorsement, Trump Threatens New York Federal Funding
"Donald Trump is threatening to withhold money from NYC if they elect Zohran Mamdani, who [is] standing up to his billionaire donor buddies, instead of his friend Andrew Cuomo who will roll over for them," said one organizer.
Sep 15, 2025
"Threatening voters and cities over their elections is what authoritarians do," said one progressive organizer Monday after US President Donald Trump did just that—suggesting he would rip federal funding away from New York City, and possibly the state, if democratic socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the November election.
The president's threat came after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, announced her endorsement of Mamdani in an op-ed in The New York Times, after months of pressure from progressives.
Trump said Hochul had "Endorsed the 'Liddle Communist'" and called the governor's support "a rather shocking development."
"How can such a thing happen?" Trump asked of Hochul's endorsement of her own party's popular and charismatic nominee. "Washington will be watching this situation very closely. No reason to be sending good money after bad!"
The comments appeared to be a threat to state or city funding, said critics including Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health.
"Donald Trump is threatening to withhold money from NYC if they elect Zohran Mamdani, who [is] standing up to his billionaire donor buddies, instead of his friend [former Gov.] Andrew Cuomo who will roll over for them," said D'Arrigo, referring to reports that Trump has considered helping Cuomo, who lost the primary to Mamdani in June but is running as an independent in the general election, and to Cuomo's own comments about the positive relationship he would have with the president if elected mayor.
Another observer accused Trump of "using taxpayer money as a gun to voters' heads."
Mamdani, a Democratic member of the state Assembly, won the primary in June, decisively beating Cuomo—who had rapidly plummeted in the polls leading up to the primary vote as Mamdani promoted a policy agenda laser-focused on making the city more affordable and engaged directly with New Yorkers across the five boroughs.
Despite Mamdani's victory, Hochul has been among a number of powerful Democratic politicians who refused to endorse the party's nominee to lead the nation's largest city following the primary, leading to condemnation from progressive organizers and lawmakers including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).
New York Democrats House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have all declined to endorse Mamdani thus far, with Jeffries falsely claiming Mamdani has not won over voters in the House leader's district and Gillibrand suggesting as recently as last week that Mamdani has fueled antisemitism by not condemning phrases associated with Palestinian resistance.
Hochul relented on Sunday, writing that she has had "disagreements" with Mamdani in conversations they've had in recent weeks, but that in their talks she has "heard a leader who shares my commitment to a New York where children can grow up safe in their neighborhoods and where opportunity is within reach for every family."
"I heard a leader who is focused on making New York City affordable—a goal I enthusiastically support," she added.
Trump also ran his reelection campaign last year on promises of lowering the cost of living for Americans—but while Mamdani has backed up his pledge of improving affordability with policy proposals like fare-free buses, a network of city-owned grocery stores, and no-cost universal childcare, the president has pushed a spending bill that's expected to increase the number of uninsured people by 14.2 million and has restarted student debt collection, ending a Biden-era program to make payments more affordable and threatening to garnish the wages of struggling borrowers.
The president previously threatened New York City's funding in June and said in July that his administration could take over the city's government if Mamdani wins the November election and enacts policies Trump doesn't support.
"If he does get in, I’m gonna be president and he’s gonna have to do the right thing or they’re not getting any money. He’s gotta do the right thing,” Trump said on Fox News. “If a communist gets elected to run New York, it can never be the same... We have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to."
At The New Republic last week, Alex Shephard wrote that by refusing to throw their considerable influence behind Mamdani, Schumer, Jeffries, and Gillibrand are "suggesting that they will throw him—and the city he represents—to the wolves come 2026."
"Trump has made it clear that he hopes to target New York City just as he's done to Los Angeles and Washington, DC—with deployed National Guard troops and ICE agents running rampant," wrote Shephard.
Democrats including Schumer and Jeffries, he added, "are shooting their party in the foot... Predominantly renters, Mamdani’s voters were also disproportionately young, Asian, and Hispanic—all groups that moved toward Trump in last year’s election, and that Democrats will need if they want to take back Congress and the White House."
"Democrats say they are determined to be a big-tent party," Shephard continued. "But somehow there’s no room in it for the politicians who can actually help fill it?"
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The Not-So-Impossible Quest to Evict War Profiteer L3Harris From Northampton, Mass.
The sudden emergence of candidates for every single local office, who are eager to remove L3Harris from the city, reframes our weekly protests and actions at L3Harris from a futile gesture to a burgeoning movement.
Aug 31, 2025
On Wednesday, August, 20, I go to protest—as I do every Wednesday at 6:30 am Eastern Time—at local arms profiteer, L3Harris. I know something might be up, because one of my companions at last week's L3 demonstration warned me that people plan to block the company driveway. The police will make arrests. Protest leaps deftly over a small barrier to become civil disobedience.
I have attended countless demonstrations across my accumulating decades, but had never distinguished myself sufficiently to be chosen for arrest. As a lifelong resident of a country known across the globe for crimes against humanity, how is it possible for me to have tiptoed so gently that no cop anywhere, ever, tackled or cuffed me for a ride downtown? My spotless record indicates that I have paused at the threshold of moral opportunity and timidly shrunken myself into something tiny, almost invisible—a green aphid on a tomato leaf, a wisp of smoke from an extinguished match head, a name forgotten in the presence of a long ago face. Our weekly demonstrations at L3Harris have been too small to elicit even a single police cruiser, and even now, none have yet arrived. We live in the new US era of arbitrary arrests. Pristine criminal records have become a luxury of bygone days.
Last week we had seven protesters, and now we shatter that record-breaking turnout with an array of colorful people who number at least four times that many (maybe more)—some wear grim reaper getups, and others are masked, hooded, cloaked, or simply covered over with rain gear and warm coats on a rare, cold, rainy day momentarily punctuating a month of drought and oppressive heat. But these people (organized by Demilitarize Western Mass with a number of individual participants from Jewish Voice for Peace)—however many we have—now block the entrance with their bodies. They have stretched a yellow ribbon labeled, "crime scene" across the road. The crime itself, represented explicitly with a line of faux bloodstained body bags, each the size of an infant, might ordinarily be lost—crimes against humanity depend on the oblivious indifference of participants who work within the lower layers of homicidal supply chains. We stir the faint embers of conscience, the hypothetical internal torment of L3 workers, but we perform primarily to arouse the sleeping giant of Northampton, a city whose moral resolve has been largely illusory.
The L3Harris website might easily be seen as a parody of so-called "woke" culture. One page solicits job applications with a picture of a Black man with a child on his back. Workers at L3Harris have access to "employee resource groups" organized around diverse ethnic, religious, and racial identities. The human imagination would seemingly explode with flabbergasted disbelief at how far absurdity can be stretched—corporations have created cultures with such limitless credulity that George Orwell himself would now scream into the void. At L3Harris you can join "MENA"—a company association for people with Middle Eastern or North African descent who build sensors to guide bombs to the chosen Gazan addresses (schools, hospitals and apartments). I don't see any employees who appear to be Middle Eastern or North African at our Northampton outpost of the death industry. L3 also has an employee resource group called "PRIDE" for its LGBTQ workers. I suspect that we witness a time lag between the old jargon that characterized former US President Joe Biden's style, and the new language of current President Donald Trump's white supremacy. Both Biden and Trump align around L3Harris and massive bombing of civilians. Even the worst crimes against humanity require the balm of cultural trends. Who but god itself could conceivably imagine the roiling thoughts of L3 workers whose cars have been stymied by the accusing souls of dead babies suddenly lined up on the pavement of their employee parking lot entrance.
Ralph Nader sets the Gazan death toll at 400,000 currently—we futilely attempt to replicate the scope of suffering with theatrical props. A stretch of white cloth streaked with more red paint lies across the entire L3Harris driveway entrance, and beside that, puddles of somewhat pinkish liquid glisten in the light mist that falls.
One woman with a bullhorn leads chants: "Hey, ho! L3Harris has got to go! From Palestine to Mexico, L3Harris has got to go!" I team up with a woman in a black raincoat holding my end of a sign that reads, "L3 your boss Chris Kubacik makes $19.8 million a year supplying weapons to Israel." Another companion placard has a photograph of CEO Kubacik blandly smiling to reveal a couple of vampire teeth with a drop of blood oozing at each point. This is all wonderful—any spark of life, whimsy, or celebration these days has an aura of abrupt surprise, as if a spaceship has descended from the void of interstellar darkness and unloaded a cargo of atrophied torsos and oversized heads.
Is L3Harris, the epicenter of Northampton, the only part of Northampton that truly matters, the dusky shadow of ourselves that we paper over with slogans? Our civil disobedience acts out a theatrical production with a skeleton cast. Only the protesters, the police, a reporter for the local progressive newspaper (The Shoestring), the L3 employees, and a few passing cars are here to play their parts. The two most important roles—the 30,000 Northampton residents and the Northampton elected city officials—are not here. The guidance systems that align bombs with anatomies take shape behind the ordinary walls of a local workplace in a town that thinks of itself as a beacon of universal tolerance. An ocean of blood resolves into a moral trickle. From time to time, activists have assembled at the entrance of L3Harris, but not yet with sustained resolve. We have barely imagined an endgame for resistance, but clearly, we need to release Northampton from the bondage of neoliberal somnolence.
History will possibly link Northampton and L3Harris in the manner that we link Los Alamos, New Mexico and the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People live quietly in Los Alamos too—people who drink coffee and catch their breath, people who look at basketball scores, work as grocery baggers or nuclear physicists, but we forget the normal things that go on at Los Alamos as we may one day forget about Smith College, The Iron Horse Music Hall, or The David Ruggles Center that commemorates the role that Northampton played as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
My comparison between Northampton and Los Alamos might raise eyebrows, as I hope it will. Los Alamos, as a township, had no historical existence at all and rather coalesced around the top secret Manhattan Project begun in 1943. The township officially emerged only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were blown to smithereens—the fruits of Los Alamos. Northampton, on the other hand, has a rich history as one of the birthplaces of the US mental health industry, and as the home of such morally uncompromising religious zealots as Jonathan Edwards and Sylvester Graham. In 1805, 15,000 Northampton residents gathered to celebrate the hanging of two Irish immigrants condemned by a kangaroo court that required no evidence. A few decades later our town became a major stop on the Underground Railroad. Northampton continues to flutter mysteriously in the political breezes. L3Harris did not build Northampton from scratch, but arrived quietly as an afterthought. Most of us don't even know that it is there, manufacturing death and selling lethal components around the globe.
The Manhattan Project was kept secret by design and centered in Los Alamos because of its remote proximity to nowhere. In our times the military-industrial complex no longer needs to conceal its intent. Our secrets are not secrets at all, but, rather, we share a repressed understanding that—whatever tiny measure of agency the masses might possess—war is none of our business. The balance of control has made ordinary people into particles of sediment carried passively downstream by the momentum of corporate aspirations and the Orwellian gifts of politicians and media. But Northampton likes to sometimes think of itself as a world apart.
Can we really do the impossible and evict a major component of the US military-industrial complex with the tools of civil disobedience and local elections?
There might be 30-35 of us here, and now the cops have arrived looking uncertain, but peeved. A line of L3 employees' vehicles wait to turn into the blocked driveway. The biggest, most muscular cop recognizes me with a smile—we both workout at Planet Fitness and I wave to my fitness comrade. Some L3 employees have parked at the mental health facility across the street and cross our picket line like so many strike breakers. A young man in his early 20s wears a particularly fierce scowl. Most armaments employees self-consciously avoid eye contact with us. The moral fault lines of the US seldom become as explicit as they now are.
The civil disobedience ends with a whimper. A couple of particularly nasty, loud-voiced cops intimidate us, and we take down the yellow tape, remove the bloody babies in body bags, and move aside while fire hoses wash away the blood of Gaza. As a piece of counter-theater, the cops grab two women from Jewish Voice for Peace and shove them roughly into cruisers. My imagination runs wild. The police are an appendage of the city, its mayor, and city council members. This protest is the tip of the iceberg—what would an event like this look like if the police were constrained by a socialist mayor—our version of Zohran Mamdani? Can Northampton—the so-called most progressive city in America—live up to the 3.5% rule. The 3.5% rule generally refers to the needed percentage of people nationally willing to engage in sustained civil disobedience in order to bring about the collapse of an oppressive regime, or a drastic shift in policy. The 3.5% rule may not be entirely applicable to town politics, but still, I wonder what would happen if Northampton elected a Zohran Mamdani sort of mayor and mobilized civil disobedience with a thousand protesters blocking the entrance to L3Harris' parking lot?
Speaking of Planet Fitness, I note that L3Harris and "The Planet" pay the town similar property taxes despite the enormously unequal revenues recorded by each business. Bomb guiding systems and periscopes for nuclear subs bring in some 40 times the national revenue generated by free weights and treadmills. Northampton politicians gave L3Harris over a decade of tax breaks—these town authorities justified this because L3Harris provided local jobs. But the act of pandering to corporate giants has not solved Northampton's financial struggles. The schools wrestle with financial shortfalls every year, and this has led to cuts and layoffs. Rents have become impossible for working people; the streets, rutted and pock marked with neglect, swallow tires and bust axels. Last winter a snow storm and brutal freeze made streets almost impassable for two weeks, but, more than any other issue, the underfunded schools have inspired an unprecedented political movement featuring younger candidates vying to unseat the centrist town council incumbents that have been faithful to Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra. Some identify as democratic socialists, including 24-year-old Will O'Dwyer, whose campaign website lists a number of laudable policy intentions including:
Oppose further tax breaks and subsidies for L3Harris and support the removal of the company and its operations from Northampton.
Niko Letendre-Cahillane is another young democratic socialist running for a councilor seat in my ward one district. His campaign website lists the following proposal:
Recognize that Northampton is part of a wider global community, and will push for divestment from weapons manufacturers and harmful and extractive businesses, while supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement to end apartheid in Palestine.
Letendre-Cahillane specifically named the removal of L3Harris from Northampton as a critical campaign goal in a recent public debate.
Luke Rotello, running for a council seat in Northampton ward five, states on his website that he "will seek ways to remove war profiteers from our city." He also specifically named L3Harris as the target for removal in public debates.
The incumbent from ward three, Quaverly Rothenberg, has hosted several activists in her office for months now who wish to brainstorm strategies to remove L3 from Northampton.
I have been told by more experienced observers of local politics that it is possible to have councilors from all seven of Northampton's wards, and two at-large councilors who will all work to remove L3Harris from Northampton.
Current Northampton Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra stated in a debate on August, 26—I am paraphrasing—that she is not happy with L3Harris being in Northampton, but there isn't anything the town can do about it. This is rather par for the course for this mayor who has failed to prevent the loss of critical school staff, and who has blatantly soft-pedaled her pitch to get the local Smith College (with their multibillion-dollar endowment) to increase the college's piddling PILOT (payments in lieu of taxes) to make up for the shortfall. Sciarra calls herself an "unapologetic progressive." In Northampton every politician to the left of Donald Trump claims to be progressive. Phrases like "social justice," "human rights," and "standing up for working families" fly out of their mouths like spittle pouring from the mouth of a rabid dog.
Sciarra's strongest opponent in the upcoming mayoral election preliminaries, Dan Breindel, calls Sciarra a Republican. Nobody paying attention would mistake Sciarra for a "progressive" given her stingy refusal to apply ample resources to the critically underfunded schools and her penchant for austerity combined with gaudy, gentrifying downtown projects. The population who send their children to public schools is much poorer than the overall voting public. Northampton has the most unequal distribution of wealth in Western Massachusetts. Politicians like Mayor Sciarra can piss all over the rights of poor constituents and appeal to a substantial base of retirees and moneyed residents who can afford to send their kids to nearby Williston—a private school. And Sciarra is a dead weight upon the aspiration to force L3Harris to leave town. Mayoral candidate, Dan Breindel, on the other hand, wrote this in an email to me:
On a personal level, I am extremely anti-war, so please rest assured my aim is to rid the world of the military-industrial complex, starting with this town. 100%. Not only are they (L3Harris) here in our backyard making money off murder, when they considered leaving a few years back the city effectively gave them one of our most beautiful plots of land, which they in turn restrict all public access to. So there's nothing good about having them here and it's frankly baffling they've been here as long as they have seemingly without any real government opposition.
The sudden emergence of candidates for every single local office, who are eager to remove L3Harris from the city, reframes our weekly protests and actions at L3Harris from a futile gesture to a burgeoning movement. I had previously been discouraged by our lack of numbers, but even small protests have meaning. Some of my fellow anti-war protesters are barely aware that their struggle to evict L3Harris now has a resounding echo in the effort to overthrow the neoliberal, corporate-friendly mayor and city council. What role will a truly progressive mayor and council have in growing and energizing our protests? I fantasize about taking on the role of liaison between young socialist candidates and mostly older anti-L3Harris protesters. I also think about being arrested. My time has come to cross that threshold.
Can we really do the impossible and evict a major component of the US military-industrial complex with the tools of civil disobedience and local elections? Our efforts have escalated on many fronts—notably, Mathew Hoey, who once collaborated with Noam Chomsky to bring attention to the US nuclear expansion into South Korea, has written a superb op-ed for the local Hampshire Gazette. Hoey details how L3Harris' proximity endangers the local community which may become a "counterforce" nuclear target. It simply astonishes me that local people in our fascist times have the energy and imagination to undertake a seemingly impossible quest. It now seems less impossible than it did mere months ago.
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