The Digital Dispatch

From NOEBIE.net

Notes From The Field

Quick Thoughts on the “Dirty Break”

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The historical precedent for this strategy presumes that there must first be an independent organization of the working class. One that is cohesive, disciplined, powerful, and ready to guard its independence with ferocity. If such an organization were to exist today, then perhaps that organization could use a major party ballot line to further build power and momentum for a few years prior to a pre-planned break.

It is silly, in my view, to try to shoehorn any of the current crop of folks who are using the Democratic Party ballot line, into a strategy which requires conditions that don’t currently exist.

In other words, if you’re citing the prospect of an eventual break from the Dems as part of your justification for supporting a candidate with a D beside their name, thinking that power will be built first within the two-party system and then lopped-off in a way that it will accrue to an independent party of the working class, I think that you have it precisely backwards.

People Get Ready

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Here is what won last night in New York’s 14th District:

  • Medicare for all (including medicine, vision, dental and mental health care)
  • A universal jobs guarantee
  • Fully funded public schools and taxing Wall Street to support tuition-free public universities and trade schools
  • Housing as a human right
  • Ending the War on Drugs, demilitarizing the police, abolishing for-profit incarceration
  • Abolishing ICE, protecting DREAMers, simplifying the path to citizenship
  • Investing in 100% renewable green industry
  • Clean campaign finance
  • Peace

This is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‘ platform. She walloped a long-tenured, establishment Democrat who spent $3 million dollars to try to stave her off. She did it on a shoestring, running openly as a socialist, and a “card-carrying member” of the DSA.

The lesson here is not that “progressives” can “run to the left” in Democratic primary elections and win. The lesson is that more and more people are ready to abandon the politics of “let’s be reasonable.”

Medicare for all? Yes, please. Guaranteed jobs? Why not? Abolish ICE? It’s high time, and don’t let the screen door hit you on the way out, fellas. Housing as a human right? Makes sense. Everybody needs a home. Good education for everybody? Green jobs? Stop putting an entire generation of young black men in prison? Of course.

Queue “Eli’s Comin'” and turn it up loud. Here’s to a new world.

Thoughts on the Rule of Law

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If it weren’t so infuriating, it would be laughable when people talk about the law, and the sanctity of the law, and the rule of law, with regard to immigration. We have long since abandoned the rule of law in this country.

Let’s also not fool ourselves about “equality under the law.” Our entire legal framework, institutions and code have been established by a ruling class to protect their own interests.

To pretend otherwise is a cruel, macabre, sickening joke.