Future of Capitalism here.
Original article here.
The head of NY biggest nurse’s union:
“I’ve absolutely been an activist since high school,” said Ms. Furillo. “It helped make me who I am.”
When Ms. Furillo was 25, she was an active member of the Young Workers Liberation League, a youth arm affiliate of the Communist Party USA, and an editor of its Young Worker publication. She wrote in 1975: “It is clear that for youth today, there is no real and meaningful future under capitalism. Capitalism means joblessness, racism and degeneracy.”
And from the NY Times on current NYC mayor Bill de Blasio’s past:
‘His activism did not stop. In the cramped Lower Manhattan headquarters of the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, where he volunteered, Mr. de Blasio learned to cause a stir. He and a ragtag team of peace activists, Democrats, Marxists and anarchists attempted to bring attention to a Central American cause that, after the Sandinistas lost power in a 1990 election, was fading from public view. “The Nicaraguan struggle is our struggle,” said a poster designed by the group’
Let’s call the activism of our current President more tame, less radical and more ‘progressive:’
A WaPo piece looked at Organizing For Action, the President’s bid to to make a non-profit fundraising machine out of his coalitions and activist supporters around the time of his second election.
An OFA spokeswoman’s defense of the group’s mission:
“We are confident as we have always been in our abilities to programatically and financially fulfill the mission we have laid out, working on issues like raising the minimum wage for Americans and continuing the fight for action on climate change. It is because of OFA’s strength of having 4.6 million action takers, an average contribution under $40 and more than 420,000 contributors that we are able to choose not to solicit new large donations now through November as we expect some of our supporters will also choose to shift their focus during the midterm season.”
If by ‘grassroots’ you mean organized from the top-down…and if by ‘individuals’ you mean they call you ‘an individual’…for now…then I see a lot of laws that interfere with individual liberty, overpromise money and benefits in poorly-designed systems that favor certain coalitions (unions, activists), and also a governance model that feeds on emotions and outrage often over facts and statistics, encouraging membership on political and ideological grounds.
Addition: Or as a friend points out, OFA is a more sanitized version of activism, made to adapt to a national audience, a breach into which the other radicals run.
A national leader with such commitments needs to use the budget to reward friends and fellow activists, and find the broadest policies possible that keep him in touch with his base (climate change, labor unions, immigration policy tapped into La Raza and Wall street backers), so if the gap can’t be breached, it’s the other party’s fault.