Debs & the Green New Deal

Our new leaders have finally come to continue the fight started by Eugene V. Debs and Franklin D. Roosevelt on behalf of the 99 percent. Joining Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in this fight are congresswomen New York’s Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC), Minnesota’s Ilhan Abdullahi Omar, Michigan’s Rashida Harbi Tlaib, Massachusetts’ Ayanna Soyini Pressley, California’s Katie Moore Porter, and Washington state’s Pramila Jayapal. It looks like Massachusetts’ Senator Elizabeth Warren may be returning to her progressive roots, as well. These people are thinking of big and bold ideas to combat the deterioration that the 1 percent has caused to our economy and planet. They are sick and tired of the slow walking, do-nothing Congress and Senate that is supposed to represent all Americans, but cater to and follow the direction of the 1 percent. The pressure from these progressives is why the Democrats introduced the Green New Deal last week, championed by AOC and veteran Massachusetts’ Ed Markey. The Green New Deal is perhaps the most far reaching legislative bill since Medicare. It takes on the dual challenges of income inequality and climate change, and encompasses at once a total restructuring of our environmental energy, social and economic policies. All people with basic healthcare, medical leave, sustaining wage and retirement security (think, maybe a universal basic income (UBI)). A lot of the Democrats or progressives who are campaigning for president now support this Deal, including Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Julian Castro, Pete Buttigieg, and Andrew Yang, and possibly Bernie Sanders. This Deal will be talked about and re-talked about on the campaign trial and the term “socialism” will be thrown out there like it’s a bad thing. Progressives will have to remind people that we already live in a somewhat socialist country, given our Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid/MediCal, roads, fire departments and law enforcement, to name a few. In 1912, Debs said this is our year to think big (sound familiar). A million Americans cast their ballots for him to be president despite Debs sitting in a jail cell. In these days, both Democrat and Republican parties embraced progressive reforms long advocated by socialists and populists, ideas such as women’s suffrage, trust-busting, economic reforms, maximum-hour wage and minimum wage laws, the abolition of child labor, and the direct election of U.S. senators. Debs said, that 1912 was to be socialism high water mark in the U.S. “You may hasten socialism,” he said, “but you cannot stop it.” So, like our newly elected representatives, think big when it comes to climate change, healthcare, Medicare for All, free education, a living wage, UBI, higher Social Security amounts, and more unions. But one element that needs to be addressed is how we reach and convince everyone in the 99 percent population that this is in their best interest. Some trump followers are slowly waking up to their own participation in their demise through the lack of appropriate governmental response to natural disasters and having to now pay additional income taxes so the wealthy could receive a huge tax break. There are those who stubbornly stick to the self-defeating rhetoric spewed by the 1 percent who have no problem exploiting people for their own self-interest. These people have been convinced to look down upon progressives as defective or weak. They can’t seem to wrap their heads around the fact that they’re being used, a pawn in the rich man’s power and money grab. They are so entrenched in the belief that they will be harmed if the wealthy are to be held accountable and have to pay their fair share in taxes, that they vote against their own best interests. They do not think, consider or ponder the catch phrases or talking points they so readily buy into. The rhetoric sounds good, sounds American, but behind the words are empty promises and cutthroat policies that harm those of us in the 99 percent.