No. Other countries got there with protests and organizing the working class and building widespread solidarity. Those rights were earned with blood, not by electing the lesser of two evils.
And, yes, I do think direct action and specific, localized outreach would be the way to build up that kind of movement. Showing up one day every 4 years while the Dems move further right every time is certainly not going to work anymore than voting for the republicans they’re trying to emulate.
Unionize your workplace or set up a tenant’s union. Establish actual resistance and build up trust with these disaffected communities. Steal food from Walmart and give it to homeless people. Block an ICE detention vehicle or surround an eviction with people from the neighborhood. Power has never been given up willingly and no working class movement has ever succeeded without being a categorical threat to capital. The Democratic party is not that and will never be.
Stop doubling down on polarized partisan poliltics and create instances for solidarity and mutual education. That might actually work.
Most other countries got there by voting people into power that wrote and voted these principles into law. Voted for people that improved their democratic processes.
If you think it doesn’t matter that you voted for the most capitalist candidate as long as you do a little Robin Hood shit on the side, you’ve seen too many movies and not enough history imo
Nah. monarchies were largely ended by the Napoleonic wars and world war 1. It’s ahistorical to say Democracy was earned through electoralism. It also just makes no sense.
The Spanish revolution was definitely a bloody conflict. So was the foundation of Yugoslavia and it’s NATO backed dissolution. So was Finnish independence from Russia. Or Ukrainian. Or Polish. Or Estonian or Latvian.
Switzerland was founded by war too. Germany’s democracy was imposed by an occupying force-- as was Japan’s.
France murdered their entire royal family. British India faced a decades long insurgency and worker strikes. The Magna Carta was signed after the king was fucking kidnapped.
America’s founding myth is centered on a symbolic action to destroy private property (the Boston tea party).
The only country (that I can think of) that voted for it’s democracy was Canada and that was only after a genocide of the indigenous population and centuries of colonial rule.
I’m not talking about becoming a democracy, I’m talking about *improving *and modernizing their democracies. As well as, well, voting for and enacting all the policy examples you listed
Also, I need a source about other countries enacting this before the US. In the 1880s, there wasn’t exactly a plethora of Democratic governments anywhere. Germany was a brand new idea and so was Italy. France encompassed parts of Spain and Sweden, which was itself an empire with a military dictator.
The UK is still a monarchy with colonies that want to secede (namely Jamaica) and the Netherlands is too.
Swedish people didn’t have surnames yet–they adopted the last name of their employer.
Eastern Europe had serfdom and antisemitic laws were the norm.
I would totally believe the UK got it first, but not without a mass mobilization of working class people.
Right. So it was a 50 year long struggle led by the working class and groups like the Wobblies and your solution is to vote harder?
To what extent can we credit colonial nations like Portugal and the UK and the Netherlands for extending this right exclusively to white people with political capital?
Is it really a “pass” if the comfort of the homeland was predicated on slavery and/or empire elsewhere?
No. Other countries got there with protests and organizing the working class and building widespread solidarity. Those rights were earned with blood, not by electing the lesser of two evils.
And, yes, I do think direct action and specific, localized outreach would be the way to build up that kind of movement. Showing up one day every 4 years while the Dems move further right every time is certainly not going to work anymore than voting for the republicans they’re trying to emulate.
Unionize your workplace or set up a tenant’s union. Establish actual resistance and build up trust with these disaffected communities. Steal food from Walmart and give it to homeless people. Block an ICE detention vehicle or surround an eviction with people from the neighborhood. Power has never been given up willingly and no working class movement has ever succeeded without being a categorical threat to capital. The Democratic party is not that and will never be.
Stop doubling down on polarized partisan poliltics and create instances for solidarity and mutual education. That might actually work.
Most other countries got there by voting people into power that wrote and voted these principles into law. Voted for people that improved their democratic processes.
If you think it doesn’t matter that you voted for the most capitalist candidate as long as you do a little Robin Hood shit on the side, you’ve seen too many movies and not enough history imo
Nah. monarchies were largely ended by the Napoleonic wars and world war 1. It’s ahistorical to say Democracy was earned through electoralism. It also just makes no sense.
The Spanish revolution was definitely a bloody conflict. So was the foundation of Yugoslavia and it’s NATO backed dissolution. So was Finnish independence from Russia. Or Ukrainian. Or Polish. Or Estonian or Latvian.
Switzerland was founded by war too. Germany’s democracy was imposed by an occupying force-- as was Japan’s.
France murdered their entire royal family. British India faced a decades long insurgency and worker strikes. The Magna Carta was signed after the king was fucking kidnapped.
America’s founding myth is centered on a symbolic action to destroy private property (the Boston tea party).
The only country (that I can think of) that voted for it’s democracy was Canada and that was only after a genocide of the indigenous population and centuries of colonial rule.
I’m not talking about becoming a democracy, I’m talking about *improving *and modernizing their democracies. As well as, well, voting for and enacting all the policy examples you listed
no, no. you must mean how school lunch exists because of electoral poltics and not because the original program was started by the black Panthers.
Or did you mean when US military service members occupied DC to get the GI Bill?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army?wprov=sfla1
ah ok. In that case, I’ll point you to the bombing of a police vehicle that led to the 40 hour work week and an international holiday for workers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair?wprov=sfla1
And do you think it was the bombers that wrote this into law, or elected politicians?
edit: and why did other countries manage to get it into law a lot faster than the US?
Also, I need a source about other countries enacting this before the US. In the 1880s, there wasn’t exactly a plethora of Democratic governments anywhere. Germany was a brand new idea and so was Italy. France encompassed parts of Spain and Sweden, which was itself an empire with a military dictator. The UK is still a monarchy with colonies that want to secede (namely Jamaica) and the Netherlands is too. Swedish people didn’t have surnames yet–they adopted the last name of their employer.
Eastern Europe had serfdom and antisemitic laws were the norm.
I would totally believe the UK got it first, but not without a mass mobilization of working class people.
Seriously, what are you talking about?
Well, the US only enacted it in 1937
So I only have basically all of Europe off the top of my head
Right. So it was a 50 year long struggle led by the working class and groups like the Wobblies and your solution is to vote harder?
To what extent can we credit colonial nations like Portugal and the UK and the Netherlands for extending this right exclusively to white people with political capital?
Is it really a “pass” if the comfort of the homeland was predicated on slavery and/or empire elsewhere?
I think the law is irrelevant without a mass movement. You simply won’t get the law without the mass movement.
You can’t get from where we are to working class liberation without passing through working class struggle.
Sure. Mass movement, politicians, pen, paper, law
Leave one of those out and it probably won’t work
Maybe this coal miners strike that was an armed uprising?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain