Michael Araujo: Are we making our demands to people with the power to give us what we want?
"It’s past time to make appeals. It is time to make demands, ceding not one iota of our inherent power."
These are terrible times. Our people are in peril. We have serious choices to make as workers: what works and what doesn’t. How will our friends and ourselves be able to afford this new version of our world? We are all desperate for change, for something to break this pregnant moment. We have our precious hearts that have as much goodwill and hope as we have beats and blood. This is when we have to be careful not to play into the hands of the ambitious and heartless. Those who would take the time we could be building solidarity and harm elimination redirecting us to fruitless efforts that only lift up the name of the opportunist who is careful not to ruffle feathers. These ambitious individuals only see you the way the boss, landlord, and politician do, as instruments, not as individuals organized or a class with real power. They see you as tools in their opaque political games.
We must ask: Are we making our demands to people with the power to give us what we want? If not, it’s not worthy of your time, or your trust. There is too much work to do, too much is now at stake to waste our limited energy on symbols and spectacle. It is time for us to ignore the attention thirst of politicians and the wannabe. Refuse to be rendered into an object, a commodity which could be a vote, or a resource, As working people it was a status quo that produced this moment, returning to the status quo will just set the conditions for it to happen again. Every action must be a strategic one. Actions where we never again allow fascists to poke their heads up to see if the time is right. We have to ensure that the time is never right for them.
Our real power lives inside us, not in a phone call to a politician who revels in the attention and is never able to deliver on any lofty or minimal promises, or in a vote in which the parties treat our hopes as currency. It’s past time to make appeals. It is time to make demands, ceding not one iota of our inherent power. As working people, we are trusting because we have to be; we trust that our paychecks are right, we trust that rent won’t go up too fast, we trust our kids to be safe when we have to let go, and we trust. So knowing this, to play politics when the times are calling for more steals our efforts, wastes our time, and most cruelly abuses our trust.
Refuse to be instruments of their power and ambitions, and center our collective ambitions as working people to get more.
The endless “spectacle” as you say which I take to be lots of people listening to some people talk while carrying signs is no longer a calling for me. Back in the day we might see some tangible results. But the power situation, currently, is beyond skewed. The remaining value is to bring people together and offer an opportunity to feel less helpless and more engaged. Many hard-working orgs do that with strong hearts and brains. And the criminals in power count on this dynamic. Tactics need to shift. I do not have any tangible suggestions. Boycotts are powerful. Humor is powerful. Can all these warriors move beyond rote and change their minds? ☮️
Michael, I'm with you.
Unfortunately, the Dems are playing within the confines of the political process, while the Trump Administration and lackeys are thumbing their noses at us...
They are picking up the ball, throwing into the goal and celebrating, while the Dems are arguing to the referee... who can’t be bothered.
The following may sound familiar:
Changing a long-established union should not be considered for light and transient causes. But when continued ambivalence to progress, abuses, and moral injustices becomes normalized, and part of a pervasive design that empowers the branches of government to collude to its cause, and empowers citizens to wage class warfare, it is the peoples’ right and duty to abandon such a union.
We need to prepare NOW for this moment, not when it's too late.