A six pack of election related reflections

Some hope, some trash talk, some hot takes

I meant to send this out the week of December 16th, the last week of school before the holidays for my eight year old son. Then he got sick and stayed home with me. Then I got sick. Then we had several weeks of winter break that were exhausting, meaningful and even sometimes fun.

So I am sending this now. In abridged form.

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On November 4th, the Monday before the election, I posted this on social media:

Well, shit. That hot take didn’t age well.

Relational organizing does matter. A ground game does matter. And it wasn’t enough. I was not expecting what happened. The Republicans winning a trifecta was not on my bingo card.

It’s been quite a few months since the election. I’ve spent a lot of time avoiding the news, questioning everything I know or think, and trying to sort through all the stages of grief. It’s been a lot. Trying to really take in how the world is, rather than how I want the world to be, is a humbling and engaging project.¹

As usual, I want to do multiple things at once. Face the hard stuff. Face the real defeat that this election was for me and so many people and projects I care about, and always, always, notice the hopeful victories along the way.

In that spirit, here are a few post-election reflections, especially as they relate to organizing the rich towards justice. In this list I try to share some of the edges of my thinking, even when I can tell the idea needs some workshopping.

1. We all get to be proud of every effort we made during this election to move forward a pro-human agenda. We didn’t get all the results we wanted and what we did made a difference.² THANK YOU.

2. I’m inspired by bold asks. My two favorite asks of wealthy progressives since the election have come from SURJ and Solidaire. Ava Bynum, Director of Impact at SURJ, sent out this letter to their white wealthy donors. I love how direct and generous it is, asking them to get in formation, make multi-year pledges, and oppose any tendencies they/we have to isolate, withdraw, never touch their principle, avoid risk or act with urgency.
   
   I also love that Ava, SURJ and Solidaire are asking their wealthy donors and members to donate the money they’ve made off their investments since Trump was elected. So smart! Ava got the initial idea from Jason Franklin (a dear friend, colleague and leader in this work), who came up with the ask while at a recent Democracy Alliance meeting.
   
   Ava subsequently shared it on a SURJ donor call and Solidaire took the idea and ran with it, sending an email out to all its members with the subject line “Resist Profiting off of Authoritarianism.” In it, Solidaire asks its members to pledge to donate their stock market profits since Nov 5th to social justice movements.
   
   Creative, bold, direct. I am cheering on these efforts and hope others are inspired to join.
   

3. We are the obnoxious, classist ass-holes they say we are. 😬💛😅😭 There is a rigid, dogmatic culture in my part of the progressive left that is just too much. We post lawn signs that say “In this house…” without mentioning unions, a living wage, workers or any type of redistributive policy. We disdain Trump voters while seeing no contradiction investing in and profiting off Fortune 500 companies that drive down wages. We call union busting meetings that start with a land acknowledgement and include sharing gender pronouns in the introductions, because doing so costs us nothing.³

   
   We engage in a culture of performative virtue signaling, and much of it is middle and owning class culture dressed up in the clothing of leftist language. Over the holidays, I fell in love with this series of videos from comic Pooja Tripathi, which skewer bougie lefty culture better than almost anyone I’ve seen. I’m also reminded of one of my favorite pieces on class and culture, “It’s not them, it’s us” by Betsy Leonder-Wright.
   
   This culture is mine as much as anyone’s, and is one of the repercussions of a ‘social movement left’ in the US that has become more and more economically dependent on the rich and dominated by professionalized non-profits. In many ways it is a result of the growing support of wealthy people for social justice causes (like me and my people!) without an understanding of classism or a commitment to redistribution to match.
   
   There is a bad-faith backlash from the right to this culture, that says “See! Those people are bullshit, don’t trust them, trust us.” And yet, there is also something for us to learn and address.

   
   I hope this election can be part of a larger wake-up call. I am glad to be seeing conversations about the working class and class struggle in every corner of the progressive world. I hope we can continue to center the multiracial working class parts of progressive movements, like labor. I hope we can continue to shift to a healthier movement culture that is more direct, kind, funny, honest and powerful. Especially about class and classism.

   
   And leave no one behind or throw anyone under the bus in the process.
   

4. Let’s analyze, map and widen the cracks in the unity of the owning class. In some key material ways, the billionaires are winning. At least for now, though certainly not in any real human way.
   
   Billionaires bought this election and are running our democracy. That is a bad thing.

   
   There is a crack in the unity of the rich, but we have only won a very small slice of the owning class over to the side of multiracial working class democracy.

   
   Before the election, Linda Burnham emailed me this note…

   
   “After we talked I was thinking about the social justice movement's need to have a much closer read on the split within the corporate capitalist class re pro- and anti-fascist. And the conciliators. Especially in light of the "preemptive surrender" addressed in this article [about Bezos blocking the Washington Post’s endorsement of Harris]. Nov 5th is about which actors and sectors of corporate & finance capital will stand on firmer ground post-election as much as it is about anything else. Tough week ahead.”

   
   As usual, Linda was right. Even if I need a study group to really understand what she’s saying.

   

   When I got her email, I thought immediately of this simple “spectrum of support” visual. It is a tool used by organizers to analyze their allies and opposition, and identity opportunities to move people. In most campaigns, it’s not necessary to win over the opponent to your point of view. It is only necessary to move the central pie wedges one step in your direction. If we shift each segment by one step, we are likely to win, even if the hardliners on the other side never move.

   
   Linda’s note got me thinking that I’ve never used a tool like this to assess how to move the owning class. I’d love to see it used, alongside power mapping, as part of cross-class campaigns.

   
   Could some set of members of Solidaire, Resource Generation, Women Donors Network and Democracy Alliance go through this list of wealthy heirs and heiresses and assess what we know about their relationship to pro-democracy movements and the MAGA coalition?

   
   Could we map the divorced women of the billionaire men? They continue to be some of the most reliably radical billionaires for equity and justice that I know of (shout out to Mackenzie Scott, Karla Jurvetson and Melinda French Gates).

   
   I’m curious what new tactics or strategies could be developed with a better understanding of the divisions and splits within the owning class.
   

5. This is what a collapsing society looks like. Shit. Trump’s victory, and his deep commitment to dismantling any part of government that doesn't mean more profit for him…has me bracing for the increased pace of collapse I expect we’ll see in the coming years.
   
   Wealthy people, like me, are not ready. We are not ready for the inevitable stock market collapses we’ll see in the coming decades. We are not ready for the deportation of underpaid immigrants and essential workers we so fully rely on. We are not ready for all the ways the exploitative systems our wealth and power are built on will crumble. We are certainly not ready to take responsibility for the death and destruction we’ve profited from for centuries, or deal with the fires and floods that have resulted.
   
   Our money will not save us. In fact, the money and power we have amassed is poisoning our lives and relationships…and making us targets for the angry rich kids we’ve raised like Luigi Mangione⁴.
   
   How can we/the rich resist the message that we just need to hunker down, sock away more money, and hide behind bigger walls and bigger guns?

   
   How can we all use our passion, power and money, right now, to help build the fair and just society we want and need?

6. Join a team. The best advice I’ve seen is that we need to pod up. Hang out with friends. Host a potluck. Join a sports team or book group or knitting club. Find a political home.⁵ Find a spiritual home. Find the people and places that will help us face the challenges of the coming years with courage and community. Let’s break the isolation of these times in all the ways we can.

Ok. That’s what I got.

If you have any reactions or feedback, please share them in the comments.

Sending much love, respect and appreciation you’re way,

Mike

1. This google doc, with lots of progressive and left post-election analysis, has been a helpful compilation of reading.

2. I am particularly proud of my work with Seed the Vote, SURJ, Working Families Party, Movement Voter Project, Way to Win, Solidaire and others moving much needed resources to grassroots, progressive electoral organizing efforts around the country.

3. Please know that I want everyone to treat trans people with respect, and support native land back campaigns, while, at the same time, getting more creative, bold and relaxed about what that looks like.

4. I have so much to say about Luigi! He’s a (wanna-be?) rich kid radical, a class traitor, a hottie, and a confused, angry, lone-wolf killer. He murdered a man who was raised working class and became wealthy. This was one white owning class guy murdering another. He raises the age-old question (for revolutionary movements), organize the rich or kill the rich? I think you know my answer, but I also think it’s important to grapple with out loud. We’ll see if I can get some writing out on the topic in the coming weeks.

5. For everyone, become a member of Working Families Party, get involved in your union, church, synagogue, temple or any number of political homes that are well nested in working class led movements like SURJ, Mijente, Hand in Hand, or a local affiliate of People’s Action or Popular Democracy. If you’re wealthy, use this cheat sheet to find a political home. And if you have a cheat sheet of political homes for poor, working or middle class people who want to join movements for the collective good, please let me know or share it below.