IT’S THE WORKING CLASS, STUPID:
A Post Election Discussion with Labor Journalist Harold Meyerson
Brigette Browning (UNITE/HERE and Labor Council Leader)
Jim Miller AFT , Political Director
AJ Estrada, Building Trades Political Director
Sunday November 10th 2024 2:00 pm on Zoom
“It’s not just Kamala. It’s a Democratic Party which increasingly has become a party of identity politics, rather than understanding that the vast majority of people in this country are working class. This trend of workers leaving the Democratic Party started with whites, and it has accelerated to Latinos and Blacks……Whether or not the Democratic Party has the capability, given who funds it and its dependency on well-paid consultants, whether it has the capability of transforming itself, remains to be seen.” Bernie Sanders
All,
There is obviously going to be a struggle in the Democratic Party over its direction over the next few months. I am with Bernie, and believe that only if the party recognizes the centrality of working class people of ALL ethnicities will there be hope for recapturing power. In this struggle for the hearts of the working class, the Labor Movement under leaders like Sean Fein and Brigette Browning will play a crucial role. Our discussion this coming Sunday as originally conceived was important, now it is essential. I quote below our speaker Harold Meyerson’s response to the election that reinforces this point.
What last night also made clear was that the Democrats cannot win if they can’t do better with the working class. Though their exact numbers are subject to question, exit polls showed that Trump won a narrow majority of Americans with family incomes under $100,000, while the Democrats won a narrow majority of those with incomes exceeding that. This is in no small part the long-term consequence of the working class’s deunionization, of the near-disappearance of a working-class culture rooted in ordinary workers banding together to successfully advance their interests in both bargaining and politics. When the rate of private-sector unionization is down to its current level of 6 percent, those levers of power that once yielded victories are almost nowhere to be found, and demagogues who tell workers that banishing immigrants will solve their problems may sound plausible in the absence of alternative solutions.
Finally, here is a link to two pieces making this same point about the working class written BEFORE THE ELECTION. The first is by one our other speakers, Jim Miller (https://thejumpingoffplace.substack.com/p/note-to-harris-dont-surrender-economic), and the second by me (https://thejumpingoffplace.substack.com/p/economic-populism-and-working-class).
In Solidarity,
Gregg Robinson, President
San Diego Labor Democratic Club