Thursday, December 29, 2016

Resisting? "What is there to learn, for our next four years, from a struggle rooted in native leadership and native rights, which also fought to protect the environment on behalf of all Americans?"


I'd seriously advise you to forget about 2016. The year 2017 is going to be very demanding. You might wish to prepare for it. Keeping this sentence in mind might be more useful than an encyclopedic knowledge of Disney fetishism: "Progress isn’t an entitlement, like a train we simply choose to board, but something to be fought for."

Want to Know How to Build a Progressive Movement Under Trump? Look to Standing Rock, by Audrea Lim (The Nation)

Fighting against white supremacy and neoliberalism takes organizing—and lots of it.

... Justice and victory aren’t mutually exclusive. The problem with much of the “race vs. class” debate is that it either fixates on “winning back” the roughly 25.5 percent of Americans who voted for Trump, or supposes that a single line of rhetoric can mobilize every subset of the working class. But ignoring racial disparities won’t make them disappear. That will only happen when they are eliminated through social and political change.

Whatever the limitations of grassroots struggles like Standing Rock—it is focused around a single task, for one—these are the movements that have been mobilizing masses, building a base and holding the line against white supremacy and neoliberalism. We should build on their work, and support others waging similar, invisible fights (like the White Earth Reservation’s battle against the Line 3 pipeline). We should also create space for those communities to thrive by organizing against white supremacy—and the neoliberal policies undergirding it—in the heartland of America.

“We’ll continue to stand up,” said Allard on the phone, somewhat resigned. This was a reminder that progress isn’t an entitlement, like a train we simply choose to board, but something to be fought for.

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