Why is the Pro Act, whose passage is contingent on unlikely filibuster reform, considered a more "grown up," real wold, achievable goal than withholding COVID bill votes for the $15 min wage? Or FTV? We discuss on the latest @BadFaithPod https://twitter.com/briebriejoy/status/1385272505993154560
Because one has the entirety of organized American labor behind it and the other was an idea someone had on a podcast.
Yeah, that’s the problem, genius... someone on a podcast shouldn’t be coming up with these ideas, because they’re extremely simple and easy to figure out.
Pressuring politicians to force them to do what their supporters/constituents want is not really that complicated.
https://twitter.com/Left_Blacksmith/status/1385937077598965762
another post in conversation under that anti-FTV/anti-podcaster (!) guy's feed:
why is the symbolic vote on the PRO-act that does nothing and won't become law so superior to a symbolic vote on M4A that does nothing and won't become law?
Because unions are an important institution in the labor aristocrat wing of capitalism. Who else is going to send newsletters to worker telling them to vote for the Democratic candidate? The CFL-AIO are literally agents of CIA imperialism, these Liz Warren voting radlibs who are pushing this program are just maintaining their hegemony with this virtue signalling capitalist reform bullshit.
I think it's also possible that Democrats could roll the PRO Act - or at least wide swaths of it - into the infrastructure bill and get it through with 51. Plus Schumer has promised a floor vote on it if it gets 50 cosponsors (currently has 47). Interesting that the FTV people are attacking organizers for trying to force a vote on something...almost like FTV's about punching left not actually winning votes...
And notice how the PRO Act people are actually organizing people and groups to push the issue. FTV's idea of movement building was to shit on people on Twitter/YouTube.
Nah I agree with the OP that this is just making more
labor aristocratsprivileged workers, who will then live in a defensive crouch to protect their $18/hr. jobs with a .33cent raise every 5 years against working class incursions.Ackshually, garbage collector in rural indiana is a municipal job with full benefits and $20/hr starting pay with overtime.
This is actually insane. The only thing that's bad about this is the possibility that the new unions might get de-fanged. Even then, a de-fanged union can grow them back. A dead union can't
I guess my anxiety is that even with the growth of unions, they will probably still represent a small portion of workers. And while those workers will have better wages / conditions, they will be mollified and will be more likely to defend the capitalist system than to seek to alter it.
Historically, that makes no sense. Union membership is always significantly more radical than union leadership. As unions grow, the leadership feels more pressure to change. Especially because the new members aren't conditioned to the current status quo.
Grow the unions and hamstring the leadership. Labor aristocrats are the first in the line of trash that needs to be taken out.
Stop listening to people who have no fucking organizing experience or involvement in this movement. People understand the real usefulness of organizing around these sort of efforts, its not that deep.
I feel like her first post there is kinda gesturing around the real issue as not to offend people. The Pro Act is essentially Biden policy that the left is able to attach itself to as the subservient partner. FTV was in direct opposition to the party and needed the left to display a level autonomy it doesn't seem capable of so far.
It's called "Force the Vote" - the idea that the Squad should ask Nancy Pelosi to hold a floor vote in the House on Medicare for All. Basically Jimmy Dore has decided that if the Squad doesn't beg Nancy Pelosi for a floor vote on Medicare for All they're all deep state sellouts or whatever and two or three left podcasters started repeating it because controversy gets clicks. It's three podcasters using Medicare for All as a cudgel against the left. Honestly don't waste your time with FTV shit it's a dumb online argument.
Agreed that FTV is a dumb online argument, but you are on the wrong side of it, are pretty crucially misrepresenting it, and are mischaracterizing Grey as some obscure leftist podcaster rather than the most prominent non-Bernie member of the Sanders campaign
The Sanders campaign effectively died like over a year ago and so all she is now is exactly that, an obscure leftist podcast (note: all leftist podcasts are obscure).
I never called her obscure. I know who she is, it was her writing that got me to subscribe to Current Affairs and she was great on Hear the Bern. She was one of the best voices on the left before getting into the FTV grift.
if the FTV thing is a grift, pretty much everyone is grifting and there's no point in discussing anything. Is AOC not grifting by calling Biden her friend and saying the admin is working in good faith?
I don't actually need answers to these questions I already know what I believe. Just putting it out there.
"Is AOC not grifting by calling Biden her friend and saying the admin is working in good faith?" - how is that relevant to this discussion or FTV? I have no problem with calling AOC out for saying that. She was wrong to say it and I wish she was harsher on the Biden administration than she is. Good faith left criticism of AOC and the elected left is necessary and should be elevated.
I call FTV a grift because the FTV people don't organize, have no problem allying with reactionaries against the elected left, and these podcasters literally make more money punching left than the congresspeople they criticize do. I have no problem holding elected leftists accountable for their mistakes. I just wish we also held our left media figures accountable for theirs, too.
I think calling someone a leftist podcaster implies they are obscure but alright, if you used to like her work I encourage you to pay more careful attention to her explanations of FTV, she is very convincing on the matter
I think we might agree to disagree here. I have read her Current Affairs piece and listened to her talk FTV on Bad Faith and I find her arguments extrmely unconvincing.
I think these arguments are convincing:
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It's never been real. There's no organization. It's just podcasters and YouTubers saying what things they want to happen. FTV only makes sense as part of a long-term M4A campaign that repeatedly forces the issue.
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It not only wasted time and resources, it provided a source of disunity at exactly the point where leftish people could've attempted to screw Pelosi. All it could ever accomplish is toxicity and splitting because of its non-organizational, non-praxis-focused nature.
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"Don't even THINK about legislation or congressional strategy unless you make 50k a year scrolling Twitter in an office chair at a think tank funded by DOD contractors, sweaty."
While this is true and people should have room to grow, it's also concerning watching someone with a huge platform go from Warren Democrat to "AOC and the DSA are CIA plants controlled by the Democratic Party to undermine revolution" in less than a year. Because the end result is the same: Knight went from punching at AOC/DSA from the right to doing the same thing but saying "I'm a communist now so it's okay."
Like, if your views are shifting that rapidly over such a short time period maybe it's best to admit your views are in flux, listen more than you speak, and admit you might not have all the answers right now rather than using your platform to attack fellow leftists as not being left enough.
Ha this is exactly why I took a break from political activism for a while. Ideological positions were in flux, didn't feel comfortable committing to work until I felt more settled.
I am really confused About the point this post is trying to make. Also it's the AFL-CIO
I'm not really sure what your point is, but to Gray's critique, it's obvious that labor actually has some institutional power and they actually care about the PRO act which they stand to benefit immensely from, whereas a federal $15 dollar minimum wage didn't really offer them that much. So what organized political force was pushing for a $15 dollar minimum wage? Nobody was. Who was pushing FTV? A bunch of too online people who can't even vote for AOC. Labor is involved in politics and has a hand on the wheel. Random twitter accounts are not. That's why one is realistic, the others are not.
Now it's probably true that labor is still coopted by imperialists, but the PRO act does something which nothing else does, and that makes it easier to initiate working class struggle. It very well could harm our efforts (by removing the "struggle" from labor struggles), but it would also make it a hell of a lot easier to organize a union and communists could stand to gain from that by leading labor struggles, recruiting and educating leaders, and directing the movement. This is especially the case if the rate of profit is falling despite imperialist ventures, because the imperialists will be forced to be antagonistic to labor.
Imagine if we could build a new CIO and radicalize the rank and file of the AFL-CIO by reinvigorating their struggle against the capitalists and their leadership. The PRO act might be that opportunity.
