EDIT: AOC is doing what the unions wanted her to do.
https://hexbear.net/post/236928/comment/3033122
DISCLAIMER: Before you jump on me, the below post is to show how much of a dead end electoral politics is. You cannot vote in socialism.
But you should still vote in socialists. The more, the better. Building up the organisations needed to actually bring in socialism is much easier under a more left-adjacent government.
AOC and the other progressive Democrats did not vote for the anti-strike legislation because they’re liberals or hate workers or anything. Their vote was necessary to pass the 7 paid sick days bill. That was the agreement between the progressive and conservative Democrats.
But this nuance is fucking lost on people here. When you play the electoral game, you have to compromise. Every elected official will do so. AOC, Bernie Sanders etc. are not betraying the working class when they support such bills. They’re doing the best they can.
But it’s as if the people here don’t want the best. They just want empty gestures. And when people like AOC do the smart thing that would at least benefit some people, they act as if AOC is the same as Nancy Pelosi.
Guess who wants you to believe that? Guess who benefits from that? The Republicans. It’s grifters like Jimmy Dore and Infrared and Glenn Greenwald that push this rhetoric all to drive more leftists to either apathy or direct support for people like Tucker Carlson and DeSantis who are the “true” populists.
The vote passed by like over a hundred votes. The handful of progressive congresspersons couldn’t have stopped it. But what they could do, was get the other bill with the paid sick leave passed in exchange for a vote that was already going to pass. I mean, it’s like people are forgetting that the latter vote barely passed. Almost no Republican voted for it.
Why? Because the Republicans hate the working class more than the Democrats.
Please don’t forget that.
TLDR: AOC, even if it doesn’t seem like it at times, is better than most Democrats and all Republicans. A Congress and Senate filled with people like AOC will be exponentially more conducive to implementing socialism than any other. It will still not bring in socialism. Socialism can only be achieved by a revolution. But creating the conditions and the organisations and the class consciousness necessary for that revolution, is easier under a social democratic government than any other.
Shit will keep getting worse regardless of how hard your or I vote or how hard you or I decry accelerationism. I do not want things to get worse, but understanding socialism is to understand that YOU and I are not protagonists in history we are just people trying our best and the material conditions will do what they do regardless of your or my will upon them.
I have meaningful relationships with my friends and loved ones. I help out with the things that I can within my community and I've been working on organizing my workplace. These things will not create socialism, they'll just make this hellscape that we occupy a little bit better than they were before I got here.
That’s just so defeatist. I sympathise but I cannot agree. We have to prevent fascism. We have to achieve socialism. We just have to.