Read on Twitter
Weekend thread. In addition to 100m shots and another large relief bill, @JoeBiden Dems should fully support union certification drive of Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama. MLK knew there could be no racial/social justice without economic justice. King was murdered in
Memphis supporting a sanitation workers strike. Bessemer is between Montgomery and Birmingham, two cities that were landmarks in his career. Reagan ushered in the neoliberal anti-labor era forty years ago by busting the air traffic controllers strike. Biden could start to usher
it out by supporting the Amazon union drive in a move with very powerful symbolism. Supporting Alabama Amazon workers will help expose the faux “populist” GOP “right” politicians, esp those from the traditionally anti-union south, such as Hawley, Cruz, Rubio, Cotton, right-wing
media/talk radio and extreme Trump supporters. When push comes to shove, most will side with multinational capital against labor, showing their true colors. Amazon is an extremely good target to drive home that point. Its warehouse workers have been essential during the Covid-19
crisis. Its stock is near its all-time high, its founder is one of two richest men in the world. He is strongly anti-union, as is most of the libertarian tech elite. Perhaps their even more “woke” politically correct upper middle class employees might justify support for labor,
the “precaritariat” who deliver their groceries, hot meals and other essentials, care for their kids, etc. in racial/social justice terms, there are a lot of blacks and women among the 6,000 workers in the Amazon warehouse. It will also put the MSM/Twitter liberal commentariat
to the test, which has praised the “diversity” of Biden’s inauguration, administration and Harris as a “historic” VP (Harris “won” in the same way Pence and Biden did as VPs, they were picked for obvious political reasons). In a shift from her “identity politics," Harris should
co-lead Biden’s support of Amazon workers, visiting the warehouse. Liberal social/MSM might move beyond support of upper middle class “glass ceiling” issues, which are very real, but have little to do with the bottom 50%, who are too worried about paying rent/mortgage, buying
food to care much about “diversity training” in the workplace, much less becoming CEO or President. It would also be interesting to see where BLM and Women’s March leaders stand on the Amazon workers. Again, their concerns, protests, focus are perfectly legitimate, but about 100k
blacks died with Covid last year (~5000x the number of unarmed blacks killed by police like Floyd, Taylor), and 200k women, I never saw them organize any protests over that. Nor over the tens of millions of low-income people who are un/under-employed, w blacks, women especially
hard hit. Long before corporate America and Wall St moved American jobs to Mexico and China, they moved them from the unionized north to the anti-union south. So unionizing the south will start to reverse fifty years of economic and political trends, politically in that the GOP
broke FDR’s New Deal labor/minorities coalition which brought Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid. LBJ signed the Civil and Voting Rights Acts in 1964-65, which Nixon based his “southern strategy” to split off the Dems’ racist “Solid South.” Then Reagan finished off the New Deal
coalition by shifting northern white workers into “Reagan Dems” using racist dog whistles as he busted their industrial unions, which Bill Clinton’s New Democrats abandoned as they fused neoliberal welfare/crime/financial policies with “identity politics.” The end result is that
Biden took office with the S&P 500 at an all-time high, while tens of millions are battling Covid and un/under-employment. Btw, in contrast, Obama, who won a much larger mandate than Biden, took office in 2009 45 days before the S&P hit its intraday low, down well over 50%. That
index did not surpass its Aug 2007 peak until early 2012, nearly 4 ½ years later. This time around, it exceeded its Feb 2020 peak in early Aug, a little more than 5 months later, due to extraordinary actions by the Fed and Congress. Almost huge gains in wealth from their policies
since March have accrued to the top 1-10%, which own most of the financial assets, and to the upper middle class, from large gains in the value of their homes, which includes the liberal MSM/Twitter commentariat. Very little of it has “trickled down” to the bottom 50%, which
often has little or negative networth, and is spending the relief money thrown its way to pay the rent/mortgage, buy food, etc, w a five-month delay in passing a second bill from July to Dec. So there is a crisis, but it is not for top 1%, nor upper 20%. Biden can start to
reverse forty years of neoliberal anti-labor misrule. Will he do so, will he try to live up to his image as “regular Joe” from Scranton, PA? If he does, after that he should then negotiate a new trade deal w China based on benefitting the workers in both countries, not global
corporations/Wall St, protecting environment
from climate change. Hopefully the CCP will be open to that, since it is a putative workers party, trying to shift its economy into “dual circulation” with higher quality growth and consumer spending. Thank you for reading. End thread.
from climate change. Hopefully the CCP will be open to that, since it is a putative workers party, trying to shift its economy into “dual circulation” with higher quality growth and consumer spending. Thank you for reading. End thread.
