I didn’t change the subject. I’m saying those right were earned by unions and not gifted by politicians.
As somebody who lives and works in Sweden with a PhD in computer science, I had more disposable income when I washed dishes in NYC. So, yeah, I would say wages are pretty low.
You mean the country with basically universal union membership and literally 0 legislation around minimum wage?
The one where worker’s rights are guaranteed by union negotiations and the threat of a strike rather than national legislation?
You have failed to list a single example of legislative change that didn’t have the backing of a mass mobilization and credible threats to capital. I have presented several instances that support the claim that legislative change is dependent on working class organization.
I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying that crediting the the UK for progressive politics while they enslaved half the world is a weird take.
I would make the exact same claim about the US, considering that neo-slavery (indentured servitude/whites only towns) wasn’t abolished until after world war 2.
In fact, one of the most violent events in US history was a white mob that murdered an entire town of black people for trying to unionize.
Those white folks sure understood the power of working class solidarity and it’s fundamental threat to capital.
That’s also probably why MLKJ was assassinated during the poor people’s campaign that sought to unite the grievances of the civil rights movement with the concerns of poor whites.
nah, man. Being able to vote inalienable. You get the vote by existing, not by meeting some arbitrary standard set by the ruling party. Stop blaming the voters and start blaming the party that failed them
Right. So it was a 50 year long struggle led by the working class and groups like the Wobblies and your solution is to vote harder?
To what extent can we credit colonial nations like Portugal and the UK and the Netherlands for extending this right exclusively to white people with political capital?
Is it really a “pass” if the comfort of the homeland was predicated on slavery and/or empire elsewhere?
Also, I need a source about other countries enacting this before the US. In the 1880s, there wasn’t exactly a plethora of Democratic governments anywhere. Germany was a brand new idea and so was Italy. France encompassed parts of Spain and Sweden, which was itself an empire with a military dictator. The UK is still a monarchy with colonies that want to secede (namely Jamaica) and the Netherlands is too. Swedish people didn’t have surnames yet–they adopted the last name of their employer.
Eastern Europe had serfdom and antisemitic laws were the norm.
I would totally believe the UK got it first, but not without a mass mobilization of working class people.
Seriously, what are you talking about?
I think the law is irrelevant without a mass movement. You simply won’t get the law without the mass movement.
You can’t get from where we are to working class liberation without passing through working class struggle.
no, no. you must mean how school lunch exists because of electoral poltics and not because the original program was started by the black Panthers.
Or did you mean when US military service members occupied DC to get the GI Bill?
Maybe this coal miners strike that was an armed uprising?
ah ok. In that case, I’ll point you to the bombing of a police vehicle that led to the 40 hour work week and an international holiday for workers.
Nah. monarchies were largely ended by the Napoleonic wars and world war 1. It’s ahistorical to say Democracy was earned through electoralism. It also just makes no sense.
The Spanish revolution was definitely a bloody conflict. So was the foundation of Yugoslavia and it’s NATO backed dissolution. So was Finnish independence from Russia. Or Ukrainian. Or Polish. Or Estonian or Latvian.
Switzerland was founded by war too. Germany’s democracy was imposed by an occupying force-- as was Japan’s.
France murdered their entire royal family. British India faced a decades long insurgency and worker strikes. The Magna Carta was signed after the king was fucking kidnapped.
America’s founding myth is centered on a symbolic action to destroy private property (the Boston tea party).
The only country (that I can think of) that voted for it’s democracy was Canada and that was only after a genocide of the indigenous population and centuries of colonial rule.
No. Other countries got there with protests and organizing the working class and building widespread solidarity. Those rights were earned with blood, not by electing the lesser of two evils.
And, yes, I do think direct action and specific, localized outreach would be the way to build up that kind of movement. Showing up one day every 4 years while the Dems move further right every time is certainly not going to work anymore than voting for the republicans they’re trying to emulate.
Unionize your workplace or set up a tenant’s union. Establish actual resistance and build up trust with these disaffected communities. Steal food from Walmart and give it to homeless people. Block an ICE detention vehicle or surround an eviction with people from the neighborhood. Power has never been given up willingly and no working class movement has ever succeeded without being a categorical threat to capital. The Democratic party is not that and will never be.
Stop doubling down on polarized partisan poliltics and create instances for solidarity and mutual education. That might actually work.
If the shoe fits…
Huh? I did no such thing. I merely hinted at the electoral split between people with and without higher education. It’s quite clear that more education is strongly correlated with a tendency to vote Democrat. I understand why someone who did not go to college would not necessarily understand how tariffs will raise prices or how trickle down economics has never had empirical success. I made no claim about people of color and their education level. I was simply discussing the measured demographic numbers around who voted for whom.
I watch the news every day and understand that when I worked 60 hours a week making minimum wage, that wasn’t really a priority or something I had time for. If I had kids in addition to multiple jobs, it would be incredibly difficult to stay informed about economic and social policies, especially when there are powerful interests pushing disinformation to my tv and phone.
I don’t know what the Dems have done for them-- it’s a genuine question. They haven’t raised the minimum wage, secured women’s bodily autonomy with legislation, passed the equal rights amendment, or made any progress on redlining and historical segregation patterns that categocially lead to less wealth generation for non white families in the 2nd half of the 20th century. They didn’t prosecute anyone after the 2009 crisis and have adopted the Republican border, China, and hawkish military policies wholesale since 2016.
They haven’t even passed drug policy reform legislation – an issue which has overwhelming bipartisan support nationally. However, I do know that the Dems pushed the 90s crime bill that disproportionately criminalized black men and instituted racialized penalties for drugs that were more common in black communities than white ones.
I guess we can talk about the expanded childhood tax credit, but that was a COVID era law signed into law by Trump, which passed with bipartisan support, so it’s kinda weird to credit that to the Dems. Or Obamacare, which came out of the Massachusetts program proposed by the heritage foundation and implemented by Mitt Romney, so it’s at least weird to credit that as a liberal policy. It was written by the same people who put Brett Kavanaugh on the supreme court.
Since we’re on the topic of Huckabee more generally, while governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee pushed for socialized medicine for children in the state. That doesn’t make him a good person, but certainly suggests that healthcare/childhood poverty concerns are not in the exclusive domain of the Democrats.
if you don’t see the problem, then I don’t know what to say. I hope the boot tastes good, at least.
This is false.
At most, I see state level requirements like this
And, yeah, poll tests are classic Jim crow tactics.
Here’s an example of what to expect from the red states, especially after the Supreme Court gutted the voting rights act.
Instead of blaming the voters that showed up to vote, please reflect on why 10 million people who voted for Biden simply didn’t vote for Harris and think about how elitist thoughts like “being too stupid to vote” in a democracy are the root of the problem.
Instead of calling voters stupid, try to understand why they feel hopeless under the current regime so that the Dems can re-establish the working class solidarity and big tent coalition that gave Obama a confortable majority. There is not path to 270 that can neglect the very real and tangible concerns of those “idiots”.
What? I’m not “looking over” anyone or treating anyone as children. I don’t understand how you can confuse compassion for paternalism. I’m saying they’re full people capable of forming their own opinions about what is best for their interests and you’re calling them idiots.
I can disagree with them without condemning them or insulting them and it’s not clear why you would attack me or them.
I’m blaming them for exercising their rights? I’m blaming Trump voters for being idiots and working class Trump voters as being the biggest idiots.
So, they’re idiots, but you’re not blaming them? I’m not sure I understand. It’s either because they’re dumb (your position) or it’s because they have one lever to pull and the Democratic party hasn’t given them anything since FDR (my position). I’m actively sympathizing with them while you’re insulting them.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160812025917/http://www.iariw.org/papers/2014/GustafssonPaper.pdf