Turning It Around: Long-Term Organizing in the U.S.
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- Published on Tuesday, 22 November 2016 21:45
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1333 .... November 23, 2016
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Turning It Around: Long-Term Organizing in the U.S.
Just about everybody is using the slogan "Don't mourn, organize" -- good solidarity with the martyr for the working class, Joe Hill. But it seems particularly apposite after the recent Trump election in the USA. International Viewpont interviewed Joanna Misnik, leading activist in Solidarity, about the election, the reaction and prospects for long-term organizing.
International Viewpont (IV): What are your first thoughts on the election outcome?
Joanna Misnik (JM): The U.S. just elected a new "leader of the free world." Both he and his opponent Hillary Clinton ran their entire campaigns with persistently high rates on disapproval from the public. Fully 12 million people who voted for Trump stated they had an unfavorable attitude toward him. But the... South Carolina Klu Klux Klan held a gala celebration and Marine Le Pen, leader of the right-wing National Front in France, jumped for joy. The Republican Party that Trump overwhelmed when he got the nomination despite his egomania and racist, anti-immigrant, misogynistic utterances will now realign to become much more of an undiluted white nationalist, xenophobic, fundamentalist Christian bastion. The Democratic Party appears to have collapsed, at least temporarily. A new breed of carpetbaggers are consolidating their grip on the government -- racists of all stripes, right to life zealots, climate deniers, Muslim haters, anti-LGBTQ crusaders, trade union busters, anti-immigrant wall builders, creationists, and defenders of the European white race. Unexpected though it was, from the morning of November 9 we live in a vastly different and dangerous political world.