Surviving the Next Four Years
My Initial Post-Election Reactions & Updated Links on the Election and Future Action
11/8/2024: I am trying to find a way to say something, both to those who like me were devastated by the many electoral losses that took place this week, and respectfully to anyone else who cares to read, regardless of their views. I have been building a bibliography of key analyses and reading them. I will share some at the end.
This is a pattern for me. I appear to cope with events, from Covid to the murder of George Floyd to 10/07/23, by using my skills in bibliographical database development in Endnote and Zotero to save materials I have read or need to read. It beats worrying and helps inform action!
True, I also cope by listening to music. Since November 5, 2024, I’m wondering if I am the Mr. Jones of which Bob Dylan sang in Ballad of a Thin Man: “Oh my God, am I here all alone? But something’s happening here, and you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones.” I’ll try to share a few things that have been helpful to me in the last few days.
First, as Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal has pointed out, there were many victories on Tuesday. not only by candidates, but via state and local initiatives, referendums, and amendments. These included three red states which raised the minimum wage, four red states which established abortion rights, and one red state which established paid sick leave. The victories by candidates included those who I will venture here to describe as truly compassionate conservatives, well-meaning moderates, “bleeding heart” or otherwise principled liberals, self-described progressives, and a few Congressional or local Democratic Socialists of America members and independent democratic socialists, including in red states and states that turned red.
What the Congressperson and others call the inside-outside strategy—adopted by many social movement activists over the years, and which I endorse—will continue. This will involve many ongoing and new campaigns. Hopefully, we will use updated theories and tactics. I think we should root ourselves in a philosophical perspective which found its origin in these United States of America: pragmatism, in its many varieties. The pragmatic principle as I have defined it involves advocating for a minimum necessary social intervention of government within civil society. This dialectical term may mean a massive social intervention by government, if necessary, but the goal should be to minimize such interventions.
Following an analysis of class inequality, institutional trust/distrust in existing social policy measures—and attention to the continued reality of social group based oppression—based on the above principle, our policy analysis would result in our advocating for the best mix of the public, nonprofit and market sectors best suited to respond within any particular policy arena. The goal would be to successfully tackle social problems—and specifically address unmet human needs—in a way that is sustainable and is consistent with human rights.
In Speaking from the Heart,
, I will soon explain what I see as the range of utopian, libertarian, pragmatic and authoritarian belief systems in contemporary political thought. In doing so I seek to retire the simplistic right, center left spectrum, replacing it with one on which I have been working for 20 years. It contains four columns and five rows, with 20 “boxes”. I will discuss which combination of boxes are the best political alliance to work constitutionally and politically to dismantle—abolish if you will—the systemic sources of human injustice: oppression, mechanistic dehumanization, and economic exploitation.
Short of that, our analysis can work to prevent human injustice from producing wrongfully unmet human needs, via the way these unrestrained systems produce systematic inequality in opportunities to access satisfiers of human needs. As Ian Gough has suggested, we can engage in prevention upstream (primary), midstream (secondary) and downstream (tertiary), in order to prevent or respond to the social suffering which human injustice can cause.
Second, please let me introduce one term now: hyper-localism. I think we should become what I call precinct pragmatists. This means reaching out and building relationships in our buildings, blocks, and neighborhoods, especially in the precinct near our local polling place, to organize events and form clubs that can build bridges among caring people of a variety of current political outlooks. A good place to start would be connecting with the Community Gatherings which hundreds of people are organizing right now in response to the online event which over 100,000 people attended the evening on November 7, 2024 or are listening to now: See below link to Post-Election Mass Call: Making Meaning of the Moment (see YouTube link and transcript below).
Why not invite someone from your neighborhood to join you at the nearest one, and then join you in calling a truly local gathering? If all politics is local, let’s act accordingly! Then we will find ways to go from case to class, and from local to global.
Third, the struggle for representation must go on. I wrote about it on substack here on Speaking from the Heart, prior to the election, where I also wrote about the lessons of Dr. King's sermons for acting resolutely and urgently in defense of immigrants. The struggle also goes on to insist on implementation of the UN Security Council cease fire resolution now—via a unilateral Phase 1 ceasefire by Israel, if necessary. If negotiations lead nowhere. I called for such a ceasefire in my New York Times letter of January 26. We must also work for peace with justice and self-determination for Ukraine and for Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East, including US support for recognition by our allies of Palestine, as I called for in the Washtenaw Jewish News of February 26 (see links below).
Fourth, our efforts to protect and exercise our democratic rights must also go on. If there was one victory that all voters won on Tuesday, it was that our elections went smoothly. Even if Trump had lost, in my view there would not have been a repeat of the January 6, 2021 riot and attempted insurrection at the Capitol. Our obsession with mounting that accusation was one of the political mistakes we made this year. Also, the political problems we face are much deeper than the machinations of a wannabe fascist and a proponent of “extra-constitutional” action.
Nevertheless, we must be vigilant and prepare ourselves individually and collectively to insist that the current and incoming administrations and Congress do what is necessary to ensure what Rahna Epting of MoveOn—starting at minute fifteen in the YouTube event I discuss below—called a "small d democratic transition."
Rahna stressed—as I understand it—that we have to (1) Build transformational change, (2) Bridge with others to re-build a pro-democracy coalition, (3) Block attacks on our constituencies—especially the most vulnerable among us—and on our democratic institutions, (4) Break up the ability of MAGA elites—such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel—to cynically manipulate the MAGA movement voters to support their authoritarian, reactionary agenda.
We might ask—since the phrase MAGA movement is now part of public discourse—what should we call our own movement, which is a combination of campaigns.
Fifth, right now, we must connect with our own feelings and re-connect with people and groups where we can sustain each other over the next four years. Every four years since November 1968, I have said to myself after each presidential election day, "I'm going to survive this presidency, live another four years, and do my best to keep the faith."
Also, each year I formulate a new year's resolution. For this coming year it is, "Life must go on, but must death go on?" By this I mean not the death none of us can escape, but the unnecessary death and suffering we are seeing from at least two wars and from too many instances of local conflicts, famines, and natural disasters.
I think each of us in our own way is right now trying to formulate our own approach to the days, weeks, months, and years ahead.
Sixth, it is helpful to listen to the speakers at that remarkable November 7 event, which I attended along with over 100,000 people on Facebook and YouTubeLive: Post-Election Mass Call: Making Meaning of the Moment. The Speakers included elected officials such as Jaimie Raskin and Pramila Jayapal, leaders of national advocacy groups such as Public Action and the Sunrise Movement, and many other leaders of activist groups advocating for oppressed and vulnerable populations.
For members of my profession, social work, and discipline, sociology—regardless of our diverse political beliefs—it is important to be open-minded to these points of view, even if we do not all agree with all of them. They certainly go beyond the pronouncements on the major TV and cable networks.
The event’s goal was this: “It's up to us to build the movement that will fight for each other. Join with members of 200+ organizations as we make meaning of the moment, lay out concrete actions, and share thoughts on the path forward. Because giving up is not an option.” See the links below for a link to the event, the transcript, and other materials. And what for my Langiappe Links newsletter on this substack, which will focus on posting and brief comments to key material to watch and erad. Why not have discussions where each person listens to one speaker and summarizes that speaker’s points to the entire group? Followed by open-minded discussion, critical thinking, alternative views, and new epiphanies?
The event was sponsored by the Working Families Party (WFP), which supports Democratic and independent candidates and played a major role in the work that led to the election of Senators Warnock and Ossoff in Georgia in 2020. WFP did so by endorsing Warnock and doing deep canvassing statewide in the year up until the election. This led to the election of a Black man and a Jewish man in the deep South. Along with the WFP, the work of several nonpartisan voter registration groups, the work of Warnock and Ossoff and their volunteers, and the work of the Georgia Democratic Party—which at my suggestion produced a joint Warnock x Ossoff bumper sticker—produced this historic example of Black/Jewish unity.
The Warnock/Ossoff victory was a great example of the inside-outside strategy of which Congresswoman Jayapal spoke. It involved activists working within the Democratic Party and its candidate campaigns, working within unions, professional organizations, and other civic groups, and working also independently of them, as part of organized social movement organizations. Individual supporters of both the WFP and Progressives for Harris continued that work inside and outside this year, on behalf of Harris/Walz and other candidates in Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and other states.
Last night’s event was not just about these organizations. The event was about providing a platform for tens of thousands of people to hear from speakers from dozens of representatives of the among the over two hundred supporting organizations, in order to "make meaning of the moment, lay out concrete actions, and share thoughts on the path forward.”
Finally, in the weeks to come, I hope to emulate the call by Congressman Jaime Raskin last night to continue to do serious analysis of the election results and their significance. For me, this first piece is just a start. Why, I must wonder to myself, did I not realize what Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado warned a few weeks the election, namely that Trump might win in a landslide, and take the Senate and House with him. Earlier—before I was willing to accept it it—Bennet was also the first Senator to publicly warn that President might not be able to beat the former President. (See links below).
Why were so many of us, including myself, insufficiently committed to droping everything and recognizing the need for vigorous social and political action to address what Bennet called a “moral question about the future of our country?”
11/23 Update: One way I am coping is by collecting/listening/reading material to help understand what the elections meant. This is focused not on what to do now but how to understand the results, and is regularly updated: https://tinyurl.com/2024ElectionAnalysisItems
For an initial list of Post-Election Action items including groups defending immigrants and trans people see: https://tinyurl.com/Post-Election-Action
References and resources
Post-Election Mass Call: Making Meaning of the Moment: https://tinyurl.com/PostElectionMassCall
Even follow-up Conversations, see
https://weareworthfightingfor.org/
(Chose Host link)
25 Points on Trump's 2024 Win: What Happened, Why, and What Next? by Peter Dreier of Occidental College, in his newsletter, at Common Dreams and on Portside.
Did We Just See an Electoral Realignment? By Harold Myerson in The American Prospect
Letters from an American (Heather Cox Richardson on Substack)
Hopium Chronicles by Simon Rosenberg on Substack
Vice President Kamala Harris concession speech: “"The light of America's promise will always burn bright, as long as we never give up, and as long as we keep fighting." (On YouTube)
AOC Reacts to 2024 Election: It's Time to Build Community (On You Tube)
Don’t Let Trump Make America into an Image of Himself by Jamelle Bouie
How Could Trump and Abortion Rights Both Win by Jill Filipovic
Senator Bernie Sanders on X and a full PDF of his statement 11/6/24
What Will You Do? Life-changing choices we may be forced to make if Donald Trump wins by Rick Perlstein in The American Prospect.
Bennet becomes first Democratic senator to publicly turn on Biden
Senator Michael Bennet’s pre-election concern about a Trump landslide: “it’s a moral question about the future of our country.”
Human Needs Overview by Michael Dover, open access at the Encyclopedia of Social Work, 2023, https://tinyurl.com/HumanNeedsDover2023
A Needs-Based Partial Theory of Human Injustice, open access at Humanity& Society, 2019 (https://tinyurl.com/2019TheoryOfHumanInjustice)
Updated Figure 1 adapted from Dover 2019 and 2013: Theories of Human Injustice, Human Need and Human Liberation https://tinyurl.com/2024FigureOfHumanInjustice
Let’s Talk Turkey about Pragmatic Ways to Address our Common Human Needs, op-ed by Michael Dover, Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 2024
Bringing Human Needs Back into Policy Practice, by Michael Dover, Summer 2003.
An Israel-Hamas Ceasefire? Letter to the New York Times, January 26, 2024
Agreeing on One Thing Letter to the Cleveland Jewish News, February 26, 2024
Social Justice Song List of Michael Dover and Collaborators (On YouTube).