Hi,
Republican and Democrat voters overwhelmingly agree on so many important issues, but you would never know this if you only followed mainstream corporate media, or even more tragically, most progressive indy media, such as “Democracy Now,” or right-wing “Fox News.”
The 1% has always understood that to keep We The People divided and conquered, they needed a powerful strategy. So issues are generally framed in such a way as to keep environmentalists fighting with working people; to keep people of various skin colors fighting each other; to keep urban people distrusting rural people and vice versa, etc etc. The political divide that matters most is the 1% vs the 99%, which is why radical candidates like Bernie Sanders and AOC are such a threat to the status quo.
And let’s not forget, Democrat and Republican VOTERS are in general agreement about lower drug costs, adequate funding for childcare, ending cash bail, legal status for Dreamers, bold action on climate change, a livable minimum wage, marijuana legalization, paid family leave, a publicly run internet, universal affordable healthcare, an end to our military interventions, safe drinking water for everyone, and ending corporate-run prisons.
But the vast majority of Democrat and Republican ELECTED OFFICIALS favor none of these. Their priorities are mainly about serving their corporate donors.
So when you cast your vote on November 3rd (and most of you probably already have) please try to remember that VOTERS in the other political party are not your enemies. But the folks RUNNING the country whose only political interest is to protect their own wealth and power likely ARE.
I am not claiming that there are no significant issues that divide progressives and conservatives. Actually, there are many. But there are even more issues that do NOT divide left and right. It’s the invisible corporate donors and the politicians they dominate who divide us, to keep us conquered. And boy oh boy are they good at it!
If we ended corporate influence over our elections and over our politicians, and went back to holding all corporate directors and stockholders fully liable for all corporate harms and debts, both of which were the norm in our early US history (believe it or not), everything would change overnight.
We wouldn’t invade and occupy one sovereign nation after another if there was a total ban on profiteering from war.
It wouldn’t take decades to establish Medicare For All if politicians weren’t funded by corporations.
Our beautiful public forest lands would not be clear-cut logged if our regulatory agencies actually existed to serve We The People.
Oil drilling would have been banned decades ago.
And so on.
The problems are structural. They have little to do with which named person occupies which corporate or governmental seat. Noam Chomsky has been reminding us for 50+ years that our two primary political parties are merely two branches of The Business Party.
This is why Community Rights US works on structural change. We don’t do conventional single issue emergency-response organizing. We would love to be working with YOU. Want to get involved? Please write us HERE.