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The 'New Economic Bill of Rights' Comic Strip: A Vision for 2024 and Beyond
After 50 years of class war from above and concerted efforts to suppress the working class, the great majority of Americans still crave—and deserve—an economy built for working people. Now we have to fight for it.
Aug 07, 2024
With Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, we now have the 2024 Democratic Party ticket—and we clearly recognize that more than that ticket is on the November ballot. But where is the vision to inspire and propel our energies and actions? It’s in our history and our deepest yearnings—and now is the time to make it manifest.
You wouldn’t know it from listening to the corporate media or, for that matter, to Democratic politicians’ campaign speeches and ads, but this year marks the 80th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1944 State of the Union message calling for an Economic Bill of Rights for All Americans. This was a speech that inspired the labor movement and progressive organizations to launch major campaigns to try to secure it.
True, they did not realize that vision. The opposition of the corporations, the wealthy, and the right was too strong. But the vision and aspirations did not die. And even now, after 50 years of class war from above and concerted efforts to suppress the working class, polling reveals that the great majority of Americans still aspire to renew the revolutionary promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and secure the makings of a second bill of rights. So, it’s up to us—progressives and labor unionists today—to reinvigorate and renew the struggle.
In that spirit, Alan Minsky of Progressive Democrats of America and I, with input from Nina Turner, authored a series of pieces for Common Dreams (here, here, and here) to both remind Americans of their own history and to lay out an updated version of FDR’s vision, that is, a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights—a bill of rights that has garnered very promising support. Not only have prominent progressive political figures taken it up, but also the nation’s most dynamic labor voice, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA president Sara Nelson. Moreover, leading the way in trying to get the Democratic Party to embrace it, the Massachusetts and West Virginia state parties have adopted it as part of their platforms.
To enhance the developing campaign—and give the story even greater color—comic-book creator Matt Strackbein (aka The Letterhack) suggested to me that we produce a comic not only to recount the 80-year struggle for an Economic Bill of Rights, but also to project how we today might actually realize it.
So here it is. We hope you find these words and images compelling. Enjoy and please share widely!
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Tonight, Biden Must Vow to Go Even Further to Combat Corporate Greed
Instead of telling Americans the economy is great — which many won’t believe — he must tell them the truth: that most of the economic gains haven’t been felt by average working people because the gains have been going to the top.
Mar 07, 2024
President Biden is addressing the country tonight in his State of the Union address. Here’s some free advice about what he should say about the economy — which is the issue most voters care most about.
Instead of telling Americans the economy is great — which many won’t believe — he must tell them the truth: that most of the economic gains haven’t been felt by average working people because the gains have been going to the top.
Biden should denounce the greed and political corruption that have caused this.
He should explain that the biggest change in America over the last four decades — lurking behind the insecurities and resentments of many working people — has nothing to do with “wokeness,” immigration, critical race theory, transgender kids, the “deep state,” or any other Republican boogeymen.
It’s been a huge upward shift in the distribution of income and wealth.
The nation’s economy has seen massive gains, but the income and wealth of the bottom 80 percent of America have barely budged while the income and wealth of the richest Americans have exploded.
This change didn’t happen because of the so-called “invisible hand” of the free market.
The nation’s economy has seen massive gains, but the income and wealth of the bottom 80 percent of America have barely budged while the income and wealth of the richest Americans have exploded.
It happened because of policy decisions pushed by the monied interests — decisions that deregulated Wall Street, allowed corporations to bash unions and monopolize their industries, opened the American economy to Chinese imports, let pharmaceutical companies charge exorbitant prices, cut taxes on the rich and bailed out the biggest banks while saddling working people with student debt and medical debt.
In Biden’s first term he reversed much of this. He negotiated lower drug prices, funded infrastructure that will create good jobs, forgave some student debt, attacked monopolies, and protected workers’ rights to organize. He even walked a picket line.
But Biden needs to tell Americans that in his second term, he’ll go even further.
Mr. President, tell us:
You’ll stop CEOs from raking in a record-breaking 350 times the pay of average workers. You’ll support legislation linking the rate of taxes a corporation pays to the ratio of its CEO pay to average worker pay.
You’ll enforce the antitrust laws against grocery chains and food processors that have kept food prices high.
You’ll make it illegal for hedge fund and private equity managers to buy up houses to drive up rents when average Americans can barely afford to keep a roof over their heads.
You’ll stop big banks and credit card companies from adding junk fees and charging usurious interest payments approaching 30 percent.
You’ll prevent monopolies like Amazon from hurting small businesses and firing their workers for unionizing.
You’ll raise taxes on the rich and lower them on average working Americans.
You’ll end corporate welfare — the special tax loopholes, bank bailouts, unconditional subsidies, loan guarantees, and no-bid contracts that have lined the pockets of the wealthy.
And you’ll stop big corporations from pouring money into politics to keep the corporate welfare flowing. You’ll get big money out of politics with legislation that prevents federal contractors (20 percent of big companies) from making political contributions.
And you’ll appoint Supreme Court justices who know the difference between money and speech, between corporations and people.
Let Republicans criticize corporate “wokeness.” You’re taking on corporate greed.
Let Republicans obsess about critical race theory and abortion. You’ll protect the freedom of speech of Americans, and their freedom to decide when and whether to have children.
Let Republicans rail against transgender kids. You’re focusing on how obscenely unfair and unequal America has become.
Let Republicans try to divide Americans into warring factions so we don’t look upward and see where the wealth and power have really gone. You’ll pull us together to get that wealth and power back for the people.
You wouldn’t be the first Democratic president to do something like this. On the eve of his 1936 reelection, President Franklin D. Roosevelt told the American people that in his first term of office:We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.
I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.
FDR won by a landslide.
Give ’em hell, Joe.
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US Will Be 'Weimar Republic' If Biden Doesn't Lift Up Working Class and Defeat Trump: Sanders
"The challenge we face is to be able to show people that government in a democratic society can address their very serious needs," says the independent senator. "If we do that, we defeat Trump."
Jan 13, 2024
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is warning that President Joe Biden must do better to lift up, engage with, and mobilize the working class in the United States in order to defeat former president Donald Trump in 2024—and the stakes, says the two-time Democratic challenger, could not be higher.
"It will be the end of democracy, functional democracy," Sanders says in a new Guardianinterview when asked about the potential of Trump winning back the White House in this year's election.
In his conversation with the Guardian's Ed Pilkington, Sanders—the democratic socialist who ran powerful presidential campaigns against the Democratic Party establishment in both 2016 and 2020—said that Trump has "made clear" a second term would be much more corrosive and destructive than his first.
"We've got to explain to the American people... what the collapse of American democracy will mean to all of us."
"There's a lot of personal bitterness—he's a bitter man—having gone through four indictments, humiliated, he's going to take it out on his enemies," Sanders warns. "We've got to explain to the American people what that means to them—what the collapse of American democracy will mean to all of us."
Sanders suggested the conditions now in the United States teeter dangerously close to those that preceded the rise of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party in Germany last century as he warned about Trump's power to exploit the anxieties of a population to guide them toward his unique brand of authoritarianism and fascism.
"The challenge we face is to be able to show people that government in a democratic society can address their very serious needs," says Sanders. "If we do that, we defeat Trump. If we do not, then we are the Weimar Republic of the early 1930s."
Numerous polls in recent months have shown Biden performing poorly against Trump in a hypothetical matchup, but with both candidates the clear frontrunners in their respective parties—and the primary season officially kicking off with the Iowa caucuses this week—time is running out for the sitting president to turn around what many Democrats fear is a sinking ship.
If Biden does not do a better job of addressing the needs of the working class, Sanders warns, the consequences will be dire.
"We've got to see the White House move more aggressively on healthcare, on housing, on tax reform, on the high cost of prescription drugs," Sanders said. "If we can get the president to move in that direction, he will win; if not, he's going to lose."
Sanders advised Biden to campaign directly and aggressively on those concerns and told Pilkington he has been in touch with the president's team.
"In my view," Sanders said that Biden must tell voters "that if he is re-elected, within two months he will bring about the sweeping changes the working class of this country desperately need" and present a concrete set of policies to champion.
Asked if the Biden team was listening to his advice, Sanders responded: "As is always the case, not as strongly as I would like."
"The president has got to acknowledge the enormous crises facing people's lives. You can't fool them."
In his mind, Biden has done some good things while in office but it's just not enough and that must be acknowledged because voters who feel strained economically but don't perceive the threat that Trump represents will be lost to the Democrats.
"The president has got to acknowledge the enormous crises facing people's lives. You can't fool them," explained Sanders. "If I say to you all the great things I've done for you, you will come back and say, 'Well, I can't afford healthcare, I can't send my kid to college.' Americans are feeling anxious right now, and we've got to address that."
Sanders' driving advice is for Biden to learn from the example set by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who didn't run for reelection in 1936 by bragging about some of the recently enacted programs of the New Deal in his previous term, but vowed in his next term to do even more and go even further for working people and the common good.
FDR "didn't go around saying, 'Look at all I've done.' He said: 'I see a nation that is ill-clad, ill-housed. We made some progress, but I know there are enormous problems.'"
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