Rachel Kleinfeld says we need a broad-based, multistranded, prodemocracy movement around a positive vision concretized in locally rooted action if we're going to change America's direction.
Kentucky Senate candidate Charles Booker’s slogan, is the best: From the Hood to the Holler. It evokes exactly what he’s focused on — that generational poverty has similar root causes (structural and intentional disempowerment, exploitation, disenfranchisement) and similar impact in poor Black urban communities and poor White rural communities both. Gotta acknowledge an unfortunate caveat though: two New Yorkers have asked me, “What’s a holler?”
Having grown up in a small Western town with an incredibly dense network of social institutions and events that bound everyone together, I'm glad we're discussing the importance of building community trust at the most local of levels. It's hard to overstate the ways in which these kinds of connections can transform people's hearts, lives, and politics. I am personally becoming attached to a community like this -- my close neighbors in a small cluster of homes -- and it is slowly beginning to remake who I am.
I despair about progressives' ability to agree on common symbols, though. Quite a few great attempts have come and gone in recent years -- all of them vanishing within weeks after someone in our vast and motley coalition found whatever it was "problematic." (Pussy hats, anyone?) There are large stretches of the left that are utterly committed to denying us any shared narratives, symbols, or tribal indicators that might suggest unified purpose and a common future. The minute one crops up, and people start seizing on it, these folks will start sending around the memos explaining why using it is hurtful, appropriating, colonizing, exclusionary, or or or....
These are usually the same folks who've carefully policed out all forms of religious expression on the left. The thing is: tribalism and religion WORK. The right is shamelessly weaponizing them against us. And we don't seem to have the sense to pick up these powerful tools and start striking back.
Kentucky Senate candidate Charles Booker’s slogan, is the best: From the Hood to the Holler. It evokes exactly what he’s focused on — that generational poverty has similar root causes (structural and intentional disempowerment, exploitation, disenfranchisement) and similar impact in poor Black urban communities and poor White rural communities both. Gotta acknowledge an unfortunate caveat though: two New Yorkers have asked me, “What’s a holler?”
Having grown up in a small Western town with an incredibly dense network of social institutions and events that bound everyone together, I'm glad we're discussing the importance of building community trust at the most local of levels. It's hard to overstate the ways in which these kinds of connections can transform people's hearts, lives, and politics. I am personally becoming attached to a community like this -- my close neighbors in a small cluster of homes -- and it is slowly beginning to remake who I am.
I despair about progressives' ability to agree on common symbols, though. Quite a few great attempts have come and gone in recent years -- all of them vanishing within weeks after someone in our vast and motley coalition found whatever it was "problematic." (Pussy hats, anyone?) There are large stretches of the left that are utterly committed to denying us any shared narratives, symbols, or tribal indicators that might suggest unified purpose and a common future. The minute one crops up, and people start seizing on it, these folks will start sending around the memos explaining why using it is hurtful, appropriating, colonizing, exclusionary, or or or....
These are usually the same folks who've carefully policed out all forms of religious expression on the left. The thing is: tribalism and religion WORK. The right is shamelessly weaponizing them against us. And we don't seem to have the sense to pick up these powerful tools and start striking back.