My Thoughts On The Remarks Made By Shawn Fain and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the DNC

I found the remarks offered by UAW President Shawn Fain and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Democratic National Convention last night to be historic. That a militant union leader and a democratic socialist Congresswoman both addressed the convention and spoke one after the other signals a progressive shift in the Democratic Party and a change in our national political scene. Moreover, both support a ceasefire in Gaza, national healthcare, and a break with what gets called "neoliberalism." They were given enough time to make their cases, which they both did quite well, and their talks were scheduled close enough to the remarks made by Hillary Clinton and President Biden that listeners could not put Fain and Ocasio-Cortez in silos and forget about them or take the line that progressives and labor are being taken for granted at this point in the Democratic Party.

The lessons here are not that the Democratic Party gives us enough or is enough or that it can't move backward. What we're seeing is coalition politics and an exceptional level of unity against Trump and the far-right. So-called "Bidenomics" slowly and almost surreptitiously has begun to take us away from the worst aspects of globalization and neoliberalism, and the political expression of this philosophy has given the working-class in the United States the ability to make or win limited advances. I want to stress "limited" because progress has been uneven and has not gone deep enough or far enough and depends to some extent on a foreign policy and relations that risk world war, more famines, increasing global warming, and a deeper global and corporate fascist reaction. And---let's face it---some of the existing limits have been imposed by conservative and fascist forces here at home and through cave-ins by Sinema and Manchin and some others. 

I'm stressing "limited advances," but I also want to stress the potential in the current moment. If we can elect more pro-labor progressives in November, do much better at supporting progressive unions and union leadership at all levels, extend the unity and good vibes that many of us are feeling right now, build on the successes won under the Biden administration, make our movement younger and darker and women- and LGBTQIA+-led, and break the systemic drives to war, globalization, increasing exploitation we will be storming heaven, as the saying goes. And I do believe that we can do that.