Yesterday my “nauseously optimistic” mood gradually just turned into “nauseous” and here we are again. But worse, because we know about Project 2025. We know the Supreme Court gave him carte blanche. America is so fucked. Women, LGBTQ+ people, minorities, and immigrants are so fucked.
But Hamilton Nolan sent a newsletter yesterday, something with a little hope, telling us to literally don’t mourn, organize:
Fix in your mind, right now, the fact that “resisting” the sort of changes that might come about during four more years of The Bad Man requires not just rage and donations and protests—it requires the construction of competing power centers that can stand up to a weaponized version of the government. Organized labor should be that power center. It is what The Resistance is looking for. You can help make it a reality.
When you win a union and sign a union contract it is not just an act of improving your own life and the lives of your coworkers; it is a battle won in the class war. And the political war that you are stressed about right now is, at its heart, a class war. We must build permanent institutions to fight that class war or it will be lost. The only permanent institution suited to this task is the labor movement. This is the whole ballgame, long term. Not the election. Rather, the question of whether the system that produced the conditions that propelled The Bad Man to the precipice of the highest office in America will be allowed to strengthen, or whether they can be rolled back in the direction of humanity.