Losing The War

Progressives are missing opportunities for unity with mainstream America
opinion by RedCedar

The battle over globalism and the WTO is being lost by the left. The fight began with organized labor in the anti-NAFTA protests, at which the left was conspicuously absent. Labor made another strong showing over WTO, joined this time by a disorganized left bringing unwanted baggage.

We brought the anarchists from Eugene, and they gave the police a needed excuse for violence. We now are bringing apologists for the anarchists, which ensures that future protests will be violent, and also poorly attended. Neither labor nor moderate greens will accept another dose of pepper spray, nor should they, so direct action on the issue has been effectively shut down.

We also are losing the chance to unite labor and environment, thanks to the ruffians from Eugene and to leaders of the left that for ten years have worked to divide us. The left elite wants weak social movements to control and exploit. So they apologize for a splinter group that still believes that destruction of property is okay--unlike the majority of protestors or the mass of liberals that tuned us out when windows started breaking.

In their June commentary, the Z Magazine editors dream of 100,000 people from labor and religion who will provide cover for civil disobedience. They then call for unity in the movement, though hardly any left journals have been willing to follow the protestor/liberal consensus of nonviolence.

Strong social movements--like environment, religion and labor--are threats to elite power. But their views are left out of debate, and their interests are excluded from policy. In the mainstream national journals, working class people are dupes, racists and right wingers. Spiritual folk are irrational. And mainstream greens are simply ignored. Yet now that there's a chance for the blue/green alliance, progressives of all stripes should re-think their devotion to elite policy, and ask themselves what they can offer to labor.

Low-skilled labor wants what we have always wanted: reduced immigration and a halt on business relocations. Our own interests aside, we know that moving US industry overseas is a strategic mistake. We know that reduced immigration would serve all of the working classes and all minorities, from organized labor to the working poor to the homeless. And the greens should know that making industry sustainable will be a lot easier if the industry remains in the US.

Why should labor join a coalition harmful to its economic interests, and with an elite cheerleading for a colonialist device such as open immigration? Instead, the greens should consider supporting genuine labor policy in exchange for labor's support of sustainable industry. Such an alliance might then have good success with a Gore administration, which could use neo-liberalism to bribe business into cooperating. Greens also should either take control of the anarchists or take steps to exclude them from future demonstrations.

In the real world of course, the coalition is doomed. The elite are doing everything they can to stop it, and the rank and file left are too weak to control their own leaders. The left journals will continue to offer well-styled defenses for those who have made peaceful action all but impossible. They will offer meaningless tokens of respect to the poor, along with economic policies that keep them in their place. And the Green Party will give itself to Ralph Nader--and every other career activist from Harvard to Stanford--for another counter-productive run for the presidency. Celebrities may be fun, but they have a habit of articulating elite interests, and the focus now should be on bringing together the labor and environmental movements.