Unsent Letter to my Labor Union

Sometimes, I have to write something. But then I realize sending it implies a promise that I don’t yet feel ready to keep. Sending it might also make some people feel obliged to a response that they don’t yet feel ready to make. And there’s something else wrong with this letter— foremost being that it’s too long. Everything I write is too long in relation to the existing desire of others to read what I write. To match that desire as it presently exists (or doesn’t) I should write short punchy things, so at least less time is wasted and I spread less exhaustion to the already exhausted. This is not short and punchy, though who knows if it’s otherwise to the right audience and at the right time?

Subject: The impeding death of democracy and what we can do

I’m going to write this while I can muster the courage to think about it. If no one else feels a zeitgeist pull, that might actually be a relief. I can then just go back to distracting myself however I can from looming realities and focus on the little domains it’s easiest for me to imagine I have some partial control over. But anyway, here goes:

One of the silver linings of being effectively forced back to work on campus in probably unsafe buildings (aside from the incentive for masses more young and working class New Yorkers to be vaccinated and move the city towards herd immunity) is the opportunity to mobilize teach-ins, protests and the like in anticipation of the upcoming/ongoing coup.

Our government very recently failed to create a commission to investigate the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol (and to end the filibuster to accomplish this basic act of national reckoning and other essential things to prevent a U.S. re-enactment of Chile September 11, 1973). This is just the latest in an ominous set of reminders that the fragile achievements for U.S. democracy since the 1960s are unraveling.

There’s no way to talk about what we’re up against without giving away our differences in opinion about it. I have strong and somewhat idiosyncratic opinions packed with parentheses. I share these opinions below with full expectation that they will differ from the opinions of others whom I want to see united in solidarity nevertheless. But if there is a time to lay out where we’re at, now is it.

I am a registered Democrat largely because that’s the only way to influence, with a vote, what happens in the city and state, and of course because the GOP is irredeemably wholesale fascist (even if individual salt-of-the-earth Republican voters are often kind of nice, like a lot of people who get seduced by fascism or who can’t distinguish folk-homesy conservatism from fascism). But I also do not see Democratic politicians taking a sufficient lead — or having the habits of character to take such a lead — on the matter of rescuing our partially-post-apartheid pseudo-democracy. They readily admit this already imperfect democracy is on the brink, but don’t seem committed to saving it from death. That and many of the narratives circulating in Democratic circles are inclined (possibly by design) to make the existing problem worse.

And third parties, while making radical noises when not being delusionally libertarian, are largely lost in a structurally-incentivized “both parties are equally terrible” rhetoric that, if possible, is even more useless than the empty platitudes and distracting rabbit hole discourse of the Democratic Party set (e.g. scapegoating Putin-Russia to the exclusion of all other equally or more corrupting domestic and international clusters of malevolent power). When I say “even more useless”, I have in mind post-Trump Glenn Greenwald — who came up on another thread (and who softpedals Putin to the point of self-parody). Contemporary Greenwald embodies most unnervingly how the “third party” perspective has morally atrophied a lot since the days of Ralph Nader’s year 2000 run. Parenthetical note: it’s worth recalling that Nader’s run was punished severely by the Bush-Cheney coup, a precursor and ground-layer, whatever fronting Liz Cheney may now be doing, for the 2016 coup, the January 6 putsch, and the ongoing coup attempt we’re living through now.

At least there’s “the Squad”, who seem to have their heads on straight, and with functioning hearts too. But I think we need movements with a Squad ethos to wash their hands of Washington, D.C. and mobilize people in the streets. That will mean generally preparing the country for a general strike and countercoup. The coup is ongoing and predominantly legislative at this point, and might establish its rule subtly rather than with another dramatic display like the Capitol putsch. If the coup is allowed to give rise to a dramatic crowning that everyone can identify as a coup, it may be too late.

Democratic politicians seem like they are mostly just waiting for it to become too late, while telling everyone disingenuously that Trump and all his henchmen will be in jail soon, just you watch. Tick tock tick tock tick tock. Are they all in jail yet? No? Well, just keep waiting and watching Netflix. Everything will be okay. We have rule of law, the system works, etc. etc.

The country is likely, in the absence of intelligently radical and timely collective action from the ground up, to revert more thoroughly to the racist apartheid rule that it has had — de facto or de jure — throughout most of its history. We have a preview of what’s to come with this non-exhaustive list of racist fascist atrocities from last year:

— deliberately killing — with purposeful pandemic neglect — half a million Americans, disproportionately working class and of color. Half a million. Dead.

— the accompaniment of this Indonesia 1965-level mass murder with hundreds of police killings — including numerous police murders of unarmed Black people and an unconcealed assassination of an “antifa” murder suspect

— repulsive acts of police brutality and sometimes severe legal punishments for unarmed protestors

— stepping up the lethal intensity and extensiveness of barbaric U.S. treatment of undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers,

— the ongoing relentless killing of people overseas in undeclared and often secret wars

— the continuing obsession — ignoring a historic U.N. resolution and change to international law — with expanding our genocidally insane stockpile of nuclear weapons

— and finally the symbolic crowning of all this horror with the much less lethal but more brazenly obvious and core institution-targeting Capitol attack,

Even though compartmentalization, memory erasure and the power of inertia allow us to walk the warmer and vaccinated-people-filled streets feeling normal and even happy again in the wake of all this, it still all really happened. And it matters, and it’s an omen of our possible/likely future. It suggests that a full-on coup victory following what we must now admit is January’s partial success will likely result in an extremely deadly and catastrophic form of fascist apartheid rule, rule that will make us feel at least as abnormal as we’ve felt for the last 16 months. We might feel like everything is going back to normal, but the sustainability of this refreshing and comforting wave of normal just had a big nail hammered into its coffin.

The post-coup apartheid rule we’re now headed for would likely be formally continuous enough with the recent past to be plausibly deniable as apartheid, so expect lots of gaslighting along with the violent oppression. And some of that gaslighting will come from people formerly on the left and ostensibly still there on some things — like Greenwald and that whole constellation of left-right agents of righteous-sounding moral confusion (occasionally making an underplayed good point here and there, so don’t count them out totally).

And it’s not a good omen for the future to see the rise, even under a “new and improved” federal government, of anti-Asian violence. A recent PSC resolution has identified that this rise has occurred, not coincidentally, as bipartisan support has become more salient for demonizing and scapegoating (a depressingly authoritarian and predatory but also clear-eyed about some global realities and not-more-evil-than-us) China. Even neocon David Frum thinks the scapegoat-China narrative is stupid.

So do I expect you to agree with my take on all that? No, I’m not even 100% sure I agree with it all. But I think that as a democratic union we have enough overlap of values and priorities to see that this is a dangerous time. The time calls for a well-discerned and strongly-committed collective response outside of our usual comfort zone, and possibly independent of our ongoing struggles with CUNY central, Cuomo, etc.

So what can we do? I hope that there is some way to coordinate, as a union, and in conjunction with other unions and movements, adequate preparation for what is coming — including disseminating strategically the diversity of relevant information that we have from our various groundings in expertise. Teach-ins, panel discussions, whatever we can do. But I hope we can mobilize more radical action also. This is a political moment for many of us to spend some time in jail, especially once we’re vaccinated.

We’re a bread-and-butter-focused union for the most part, like most unions have been forced to be, and otherwise just send our money to Democrats and hope they don’t betray us too much (consoling ourselves that the most powerful likely alternative is worse, which it is). But our political role can be stronger than that, and should be especially at times like these.

The bread-and-butter is bedrock and the union collapses if we don’t keep it front and center. But we can nevertheless make some more space for helping do what needs to be done in this historically crucial time — beyond what we do with our COPE payments. How can we do it exactly, specifically? Them’s the details where the devil lies. But I trust our better angels, and collective discernment skills, to figure it out. If we’re willing to try.

Or, if we won’t try, maybe I’ll just try to chillax and binge Netflix and forget forget deliciously forget, and hope to God I’m wrong.

Ian