Beyond Trump: 2018 Wins & The Way Forward
Donald Trump makes it very easy to come away from 2018 seriously bummed. He is the unwanted guest that keeps drinking but won’t pass out. He smells, is sticky, and kicks when you try to move him. We stand in the corner and jump every time he farts, worrying that he is now our new roommate.
We are so fixated on the unwanted guest that we forget that we live in a very large house. There are lots of rooms where Trump is not. Open a door over there and you’ll find a party. Behind the green door, people are making music. There is a room full of puppies and another filled with snakes. One room is underwater, another is dry. There are closets, pantries, game rooms, and saunas. There’s a greenhouse out back and an attic stuffed with broken toys. Check out the pool table in the basement, pour yourself a drink at the bar in the corner. And, of course, there’s a room with thousand and thousands of records.
On February 22, in the deep red state of West Virginia, 10,000 teachers went on strike. They marched in the street and crowded the state house. They wanted a 5% raise and they got one. In April, more than 10,000 teachers in right-wing Oklahoma walked off the job. The were on strike for 10 days. They returned to the classroom with a $6,000 raise, a $1,200 raise for support staff, and increased school funding.
Thousands of teachers staged one-day strikes in North Carolina and Kentucky demanding raises and increased school funding. In Colorado, 6,000 teachers walked. A two-week strike got them a 2% raise and a pre-Recession school budget.
Arizona topped them all. Over 20,000 teachers in this Republican bastion held a one-week strike. They took to the streets and paid a visit to the state capitol. Their solidarity got them an immediate 9% raise, raises of 5% in 2019, and a 20% raise in 2020. They also snagged raises for their support staff and increased funding for schools.
Down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, teachers and other school employees voted to stage a one-day walkout. They weren’t looking for more pay. They wanted to stop a $6 million tax exemption for Exxon-Mobil. The threat of a strike was all it took for the Board of Industry and Commerce to shit-can that giveaway.
September saw the biggest hotel strike in U.S. history. After a summer of dicking around with management, Marriott hotel workers walked off the job. Workers struck 23 hotels. They hit Detroit. They hit Boston. San Diego, San Jose, and Oakland went dark. In San Francisco, strikers serenaded guests and scabs with a drumline. Even workers in the mellow confines of Maui and Oahu walked off the job. And, they stayed out until they got raises, better benefits, and better security for housekeepers.
One of the reason Wall Street loves charter schools is because charter don’t have to deal with unions. Well, let’s change that don’t to didn’t. Charter school teachers across the country are organizing. In Massachusetts, the Boston Teachers Union organized their third charter school. In California, the 750 teachers of California Virtual Academies (CVA) threatened to strike. CVA is one of the largest online public charter schools in the country, a division of K12 Inc. It didn’t take long for K12 to cave to workers demands, workers who mainly organized through text, email, and conference calls.
Check this out: Chicago is home to fifteen Acero charter schools. Acero teachers were making $13 thousand a year less than Chicago’s public-school teachers. Thirteen grand! No more! For the first time in history, charter school teachers went on strike. The teachers won. Their pay will match that of their allies at public schools.
Unions tend to make the news when workers go on strike. Thing is, strikes are labor’s last act. As noted, the threat of strike can bring the bosses to heel. Often, union workers don’t have to threaten. A whiff of labor unrest is often enough to get management to negotiate (especially in a tight labor market). While successful negotiations can lead to great contracts for the workers, unless you scour union press releases, you wouldn’t know that hundreds of thousands of workers got pretty good raises last year.
Las Vegas is a union town. Nearly all its hotels and casinos are organized — lots of bars and restaurants, too. This year more than 50,000 workers represented by the Culinary Workers Local 226 and Bartenders Local 165 scored a five-year contract that “addresses sexual harassment in the workplace, job security, wage increases and immigration status.” Tens of thousands more took on Station Casinos, Nevada’s third largest employer. After year’s battling management, workers at the Palm’s and other Station properties will be union.
Nurses across the country are on a tear. National Nurses United (NNU) unionized nurses at St. Joseph’s Hospital (Tucson, AZ), St. Mary’s Hospital (Tucson), Methodist Hospital of Southern California (Arcadia, with CWA), Stanford ValleyCare Medical Center (Pleasanton, CA), University of Chicago Medical Center, and Shasta Regional Medical Center (CA). NNU won new contracts for RNs and nurse practitioners in California, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, Texas, Virginia, and Washington D.C. won a new contract.
Remember when Trump loved steel? You know who else likes steel? The United Steelworker (USW). The USW used Trump’s “steel revival” to ink new contracts at U.S. Steel, ArcelorMittal, and Universal Stainless & Alloy. Tens of thousands of workers got raises, affordable healthcare, and defined pension plans.
California agriculture is in a bit of a pickle. Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy has led to a severe farm labor shortage. Once seasonal farm workers return to Mexico, Border Patrol makes sure that they stay there. Immigrant workers who stay in California get swept up and harassed by ICE. According to right-wingers, now that The Mexicans aren’t ”stealing” farm jobs, the white man should have plenty of work. Ha! Despite good wages and benefits, whitey won’t work the fields! The few who show up to pick strawberries and almonds hardly last the day. Farmers are frantic.
This labor shortage puts the United Farm Workers (UFW) in the position to do right for their workers. In June, the UFW sat down with D’Arrigo Bros. and got its 1,200 workers a nice pay raise, full medical and dental, increased paid holidays, and a pension. The union is working up and down the West Coast organizing workers, scoring new contracts, and fighting ICE harassment.
You just read 1000 words on labor. I could easily write 9,000 more on strikes, new contracts, and successful organizing drives that happened in 2018. If I spent a couple days hitting websites of state labor federations and union locals, I am pretty sure I could triple that word count. Unions are doing a lot of great work.
Ever notice that the lawyers who are held up as heroes tend to be cops? We hail the law & order prosecutor, but what about the attorneys who fight the power? EarthJustice is a scrappy mob of attorneys who fight for the planet. Whenever Trump or one of his henchmen issues an order that will trash the environment, EathJustice lawyers file suit to stop them. I’m not talking one or two or a dozen lawsuits. EarthJustice has topped 100 this year alone. Here is a partial list of their victories:
- Forced the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to prohibit child workers from handling dangerous pesticides.
- Stopped the EPA from unlawfully delaying the Clean Water Rule, which protects our streams and rivers.
- Compelled the Department of Energy to stop dragging on implementing energy efficiency standards for appliances, standards that will save consumers money and protect the environment.
- Stopped Trump from taking Yellowstone grizzly bears off of the endangered species list, something which would have subjected them to trophy hunts.
- Forced EPA to identify the areas that are in violation of the 2015 smog standard, the vital first step in addressing air pollution under the Clean Air Act.
- Made Food & Drug Administration (FDA) ban seven cancer-causing artificial chemicals from use in beverages, baked goods, candy, chewing gum, ice cream, and other edibles.
- EPA was not enforcing fine particle pollution pollution-standards in the San Joaquin Valley, home of California’s most toxic air. The courts ordered EPA to do so.
- Challenged, in court, the National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to “hold legally required consultation about offshore drilling’s harms to threatened and endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico, following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.”
- Forced EPA to reinstate protections limiting methane emissions and other pollutants generated in oil and gas production.
- Stopped an EPA rule change that would have exempted “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations” — industrial livestock operations — from reporting “air pollution” — methane from cow farts.
There are a ton more lawsuits. Many of them seem like “little things,” but that is how the Trump administration is working. Their war on the environment is waged with rules changes, stalling, and obstruction. Their attack is death by a thousand cuts. But every time they thrust, lawyers fighting the good fight parry. And not just environmental lawyers.
The ACLU, American Immigration Lawyers Association, Lawyer Moms of America, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), and others are fighting Trump’s horrific “zero tolerance” immigration policy. Every move Trump makes gets countered by these attorneys, and every time the lawyers win. “It could be worse” is never a great thing, but it really could be much much worse. Two dead children could be dozens or hundreds if lawyers did not intervein. And, immigration and civil rights lawyers are not just attacking Trump’s policy. Thousands have gone to border states to represent asylum seekers pro bono.
Criminal justice reform is in the air. Not only did the appropriately named First Step pass through Congress and get Trump’s signature, but, more important, there are a whole slew of progressive and reform-minded district attorneys. The midterms saw over 1,000 elections for district attorney. According to the ACLU, “85 percent of elected prosecutors historically run unopposed and 95 percent are white men.” That didn’t happen in 2018. Most prosecutors had challengers, many are progressives or reformers, many women and people of color.
Reformers won in Sudfolk County (MA), Birmingham, Dallas County, St. Louis County, Bexar County (TX), Rensselear County (NY), Fort Bend County (TX), Whatcom County (WA), San Bernardino County, Durham County (NC), Pitt County (NC), Mecklenburg County (NC), and a handful other counties. Many reformers already in place, were reelected.
Voters also elected a lot of reform-minded judges. In Harris County, Texas — home of Houston — voters filled all 59 judgeships with Democrats, one of them a socialist. Durham County, North Carolina put a couple progressives on the bench. Cook County, Illinois got rid of a particularly bad judge, replacing him with a reformer. These victories — and more — are significant, not just because progressive got elected, but judges, who often get reelected forever without opposition, had plenty of challengers.
We read tons about how countering implicit bias and better police training will reign in bad cops. But those are only two ways to stop police abuse. One very effective solution, one that doesn’t get talked about, is the using the law’s that are already there. For decades, we’ve had law & order DA and judges refuse to apply law & order to police. Without legal accountability, cops are tempted to do as they please. Send a few free-shooters to prison and watch police violence drop. With progressive DA’s and judges, the demands of protesters on the street are no longer ignored.
More encouraging is that — win or lose — running progressive for DA and judges expands the debate. As the ACLU says, “the first time in at least a generation, many voters were actually being offered a choice between competing visions for the criminal justice system.” No longer are these contests of who can lock up the most people. Now we have debates over what is just, fair, logical, and effective. In more progressive cities, you can throw in compassion.
I guess I should write a few words on the Democratic takeover of the House. No problem there. We desperately need a check to Trump, and I am glad that Nancy Pelosi is there to lead the street fight. More important in the long term is who got elected and how. Voters didn’t send a bunch of old, white guys or rehashes to the House. Our choices reflect America: Lots of women; plenty of African Americans, Asian American, Latinx, and Native Americans; LGBT folk; Christian, Muslims, Jews, and probably a few closet Buddhists and atheists.
Democrats also embraced ideological diversity. Midterms 2018 saw the shattering of Democratic centrist conformity, something that has plagued the party since the rise of the Democratic Leadership Council and Bill Clinton’s presidency. Bernie Sander’s run in 2016 challenged the party’s centrist power block. The midterms blew it up.
Moderate Democrats are still with us — and I am fine with that — but the party no longer insists that only moderates and centrists can be elected. Liberals, progressives, and radicals got elected in places liberals, progressives, and radicals can get elected and in areas deemed “too conservative” for anyone but a moderate to run. Left-Democrats succeeded by running on bread & butter issues. Moderates did the same. Yes, some progs and radicals lost, but so did some moderates — that’s politics.
The important thing is that moderates are no longer the party’s first choice for progressive districts. Why elect a centrist to represent Oakland, California, Ann Arbor, Michigan, or Queens, New York when you can put someone in the seat who will open up political possibilities while expanding the electorate? Of course, it is foolish to run a Bernie Sanders acolyte in a solidly red district. If you have a chance to pick off a red seat, run a moderate. The Democrats can play smart, strategic politics without being a one-size-race-gender-sexuality-religion-political bent party. Let the GOP be the all-white Christian ghetto.
Democrats also successfully dodged “identity politics” — a term which seems to no longer have a fixed meaning, yet is used mostly as code for “whatever the womens, the coloreds, and the homos are talking about.” Critics tell us that “identity politics” is regulating “free speech” and nagging people to vote for someone because they are a woman, a person of color, or gay. The critics are full of shit. Reality: Real-identity politics demands nothing more than equally treatment/opportunity regardless of identity and an end to identity-based harassment and violence. Simply, people want equal pay and not to get sexually harassed or gay-bashed.
Republicans and the right-wing tried hard as hell to make identity the issue, but Dems didn’t let them. Dem candidates didn’t dodge race, gender and the lot. They talked about “identity” issues when appropriate –sexual harassment at the workplace and Black teenagers getting shot down by cops — and addressed the “bread & butter” (though, if you think about it, isn’t wanting to go to work without threat of groping or a desire to walk down the street without the threat of being gunned down bread & butter?).
While we were busy opening up possibilities, those who most aggressively want conformity to white supremacy and misogyny took a beating. Milo Who? is now officially a has-been. The man has no venue and burned his followers. His schtick has been reduced to ping-ponging between how much money he has and how broke he is. Fox News viewer ship is stuck or declining, depending on what ratings you consult.
Far right rallies across the country draw no more people than a couple dozen locals and some imports. A handful of ultra-nazis are going to jail, including the Charlottesville killer. A dynamic campaign by Antifa activists puts names to fascist faces, preventing right-wingers to act without consequence. Fascist right funding sources have been cut off. And little by little the extremists are being denied easy avenues to organize. While the far right will continue to be a problem, activists are fighting its growth and many of its most vocal mouth-pieces have been reduced to fad.
Now, before you yell, “Soriano, stop blowing sunshine up my ass!”, let me assure you that there is plenty to harsh your mellow. Trump’s biggest accomplishments have been be aiding & abetting climate change and increasing the chasm between the rich and the rest of us. But, understand, while Trump is a chump, neither of these disasters are his fault. We got fucked on climate change when the Supreme Court gave George W. Bush the presidency that Al Gore won. Trump screwing us to help the rich is text book Reagan. These are now institutional problems.
Our biggest challenges for the future are reversing the money flow and mitigating climate change’s damage — two things that go hand-in-hand. Climate change means stuff gets wrecked. Some parts of the world will get too much water, other areas too little. Availability of food and clean water will be a big issue. If we continue down the Reaganite economic path, the rich will retreat to their enclaves and leave us to fight over scraps.
The only way we get to a livable and sustainable America and the world is to share what we have. That is a big order but it can be done. At the top of this essay, I gave you a thousand words on unions, the most effective tool we have for recapturing the wealth we’ve been cheated out of. Unions are on the move. Democratic socialism is being talked about. I doubt that the US will ever go socialist (beyond Social Security, unemployment insurance, the national highway system, the postal system, public schools, free university education, federally funded R&D in medicine and science, universal healthcare, etc.), but socialism should be part of the debate, if only to counter extreme libertarianism. The press is doing a great job reporting on important issues, often referencing the Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s of America.
I have absolutely no idea how things will play out. However, I know that by focusing only on the unwanted guest that is Trump, we limit our possibilities. Trump was not on the minds of the teachers who went on strike and won in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Arizona, and who fought Exxon-Mobil in Louisiana. The hotel workers who beat Marriott weren’t fighting Trump. Trump certainly had something to do with Democratic midterm victories, but not the variety of people who ran and won. Pressure to reform the criminal justice system started building before Trump. He had nothing to do with progressive prosecutors and judges winning office.
The environmental and immigration legal work I cite is a reaction to Trump. I mention these things to point out that when we fight Trump, we win. However, everything else is proof that when we organize and fight for ourselves, we can also win. We can play offense and defense. We are limited only by our resources, our will, and what we embrace as possible. Use our imagination and expand the possible, and we not only have a fighting chance, but we can make this planet a little better place to live. We cannot limit our concern to that one room occupied by the throbbing gristle that is Donald Trump. This house, this world is way bigger than him. Please do remember that for that is the key to getting to 2020.
Happy New Year!
This piece first appeared in Soriano’s Comment, №43, January 1, 2019. Subscriptions are free. Sign up here. Your monetary support is appreciated.
