Happy 2020, my friends!!!
-Angela Valenzuela
It may feel like the world's ending – but America has reason to hope
Robert Reich Sept. 8, 2019 THE GUARDIAN
 |
| Young activists participate in a climate strike outside the United Nations in New York last month. Photograph: Alba Vigaray/EPA |
If stagnant wages,
near-record inequality, climate change, nuclear buildups, assault weapons, mass
killings, trade wars, opioid deaths, Russian intrusions into American
elections, kids locked in cages at our border, and Donald Trump in the White House don’t at
least occasionally cause you feelings of impending doom, you’re not human.
But I want you to
remember this: as bad as it looks right now – as despairing as you can
sometimes feel – the great strength of this country is our resilience. We
bounce back. We will again.
Not convinced?
First, come back in time
with me to when I graduated college in 1968. That year, Martin Luther King Jr
was assassinated. Robert F Kennedy was assassinated. Our cities were burning.
Tens of thousands of
young Americans were being ordered to Vietnam to fight an unwinnable and unjust
war, which ultimately claimed more than 58,000 American lives and the lives of
over 3 million Vietnamese.
The nation was deeply
divided. And then in November, Richard Nixon was elected president. I recall
thinking this nation would never recover. But somehow we bounced back.
In subsequent years we
enacted the Environmental Protection Act. We achieved marriage equality. We
elected a black man to be president of the United States. We passed the
Affordable Care Act.
Even now, it’s not as
bleak as it sometimes seems. In 2018, a record number of women, people of
color, and LGBTQ representatives were elected to Congress, including the first
Muslim women.
Robert Reich
Read more
Eighteen states raised
their minimum wages.
Even in traditionally
conservative states, surprising things are happening. In Tennessee, a
Republican legislature has enacted free community college and raised taxes for
infrastructure. Nevada has expanded voting rights and gun controls. New Mexico
has increased spending by 11% and raised its minimum wage by 60%.
Teachers have gone on
strike in Virginia, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina – and
won. The public sided with the teachers.
In several states, after
decades of tough-on-crime policies, conservative groups have joined with
liberals to reform criminal justice systems. Early childhood education and
alternative energy promotion have also expanded nationwide, largely on a
bipartisan basis.
Whenever privilege
and power conspire to pull us backward, we eventually rally and move forward
In 2018, South Carolina
passed a law giving pregnant workers and new mothers more protections in the
workplace. The law emerged from an unlikely coalition – supporters of abortion
rights and religious groups that oppose them. A similar alliance in Kentucky
enacted laws requiring that employers provide reasonable accommodations for
pregnant workers and new mothers.
Advertisement
The arc of American
history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire
to pull us backward, we eventually rally and move forward.
Sometimes it takes an
economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble. Sometimes we
just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn
into action.
Now, come forward in time
with me.
Look at the startling
diversity of younger Americans. Most Americans now under 18 years old are
ethnically Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander, African American, or of more
than one race. In 10 years, it’s projected that most Americans under 30 will
be.
Three decades from now,
most of America will be people of color or of more than one race. That
diversity will be a huge strength. Hopefully, it will mean more tolerance, less
racism, less xenophobia.
Young people are
determined to make America better. I’ve been teaching for almost 40 years, and
I’ve never taught a generation of students as committed to improving the nation
and the world as is the generation I’m now teaching. A record percentage of
them voted in the 2018 midterm elections. Another sign of our future strength.
Meanwhile, most college
students today are women, which means that in future years even more women will
be in leadership positions – in science, politics, education, non-profits, and
in corporate suites. That will also be a great boon to America.
To state it another way, there
is ample reason for hope.
But hope is not enough.
In order for real change to occur, the locus of power in the system will have
to change. Millions will need to be organized and energized – not just for a
particular election but for an ongoing movement, not just for a particular
policy but to reclaim democracy from the moneyed interests so that an abundance
of good policies are possible.
The oligarchs and
plutocrats would like nothing better than for the rest of us to give up and
drop out. That way, they get it all. But we never have, and we never will.
Preserving and expanding democracy has been America’s central project since its
founding. It’s an unending fight. And no matter how bleak it may look, we will
never stop fighting.
- Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. He is also a columnist for Guardian US
No comments:
Post a Comment