Op-Ed: Talking Social Justice & Connecting Dots
By Simon Turner
Editor’s Note: This article arose from open and candid conversations on social justice between coworkers in a global company. When we create a safe space for each other at work, we can build bridges…even across the pond! Enjoy!
My outlook has been formed by noticing inconsistencies in what we are told by the organizations we depend on for information and being prompted to dig deeper.
"The technical and professional trustworthiness and independence of the National Electoral Council of Venezuela are incontestable" pronounced the International Electoral Accompaniment Mission (150 representatives of many countries), the election observer organization on the ground for the 2018 Venezuelan elections. Representatives wrote to the EU, calling the latter's "dictatorship" stance a disgrace.
Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Center was the election observer for the 2004 elections, said in 2012, "As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best."
The entire mainstream Western media, and leading political organizations like the EU and both US political parties, not only drew the polar opposite conclusion, though having no other election observer data for this country with the largest oil reserves in the world, but did so vociferously. The next questions are, who are these organizations we depend on for truth and leadership lying for, and so emphatically, and who or what has such influence that they would do so?
JPMorgan Chase has influence. CEO since 2005, Jamie Dimon, played a critical role in lobbying the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act by the Democratic administration under Bill Clinton. Glass Steagall was the Great Recession law to curb high-risk speculation by separating investment and retail banking in the wake of the Wall Street Crash. The law's 1999 repeal preceded massive bank investment in the home mortgage market and risky credit practices leading to the crash of 2008.
Chase Bank is the world's top funder of fossil fuels by a wide margin, and its Lead Independent Director until May 2020 was Lee Raymond, who was for 15 years the CEO of Exxon oil company.
Facilitating the exchange of ideas is the 2010 Citizens United decision that allows unlimited corporate spending in politics, and the Democratic Party accepts fossil fuel funding to this day.
"They are nice people: many of them are pro-choice; many of them have gay friends. Yet they run the world, and their greed is destroying this world." I listened yesterday to Bernie saying this about Wall Street and identity/social justice at a meeting of The Progressive International, which formed in 2018 to unite and organize progressive forces around the world.
Social justice. Social justice is getting at the structural changes needed for fundamental change.
Obama received the most ever Wall Street funding for a presidential campaign then let the bankers off after the crash, but this is more a structural issue than one of the individuals involved. The banks are viewed correctly as too large to fail: when they are doing well, they keep their profits, but when the bottom falls out, the taxpayer is obligated to pay for them to be bailed out. If banks are too large to fail without ordinary people paying the price and are even more likely to fail by successful lobbying to get regulations like Glass Steagall repealed, then the banks are also too large to sustain.
"Breaking up the banks" always sounds extreme, but this "bank insurance policy" due to the size of the banks shouldn't be necessary, especially considering the banking sector's propensity to gamble, its ability to do so under current laws, and the way the US and world have suffered as a consequence.
Last month, the Justice Department fined JPMorgan almost 1 billion dollars (920 million) for manipulating the energy and metals markets despite the practice being a criminal offense since 2008. We can only guess the returns on investment of the tens of thousands of illegal transactions over the eight years in question. But the DOJ agreed to defer prosecution.
Talking social justice in the pandemic, it's worth remembering that the Democratic Party under Clinton left the government unable to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. Obama later refused Democratic lawmakers' request to use existing federal laws to bring the prices down of critical medicines. Now, Joe Biden would receive a boost versus President Trump if he and the Democratic Party were to accept Medicare for All as it is overwhelmingly popular in the country. But Biden has said he would veto Medicare for All if it came up, and the party recently rejected the proposal to support it in its 2020 platform.
All of the above seems bizarre or would do if it weren't for money in politics. Again, it's (big) money, leaving 87 million people uninsured or underinsured.
In July, a proposal to fund healthcare, housing, and education through a 10% cut of the military budget was defeated by more than three to one in the House of Representatives, though the House is Democrat-controlled.
For people to be able to change their own circumstances, workers' rights are essential. Oxfam rates the worst US state for workers' rights as Virginia, in which Democrats run every area of government. It seems Democrat leaders must view it as in Democrat interests not to appeal to a blue-collar base. Chuck Schumer has said as much: "For every blue-collar Democrat we will lose in Western PA, we will pick up two, three moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia. And you can repeat that in Ohio, in Illinois, and in Wisconsin."
Though potentially leaving blue-collar Democrats to drift into the arms of Trump, the party can more readily accept money in politics because they don't need to bring up blue-collar workers' rights with their donors.
When very large companies signal they are supportive of identity politics, the question is whether these are empty gestures or are even deliberate distractions from the companies' workers' rights at their warehouses, factories, and front-lines. Another consideration is whether companies find issues useful to latch onto to avoid liability in the workplace by restricting speech. Next in line is "whether the pressure to suppress non-racist ideas that do not align with the dominant ideas becomes more likely as part of the restraint of free speech" (Glenn Greenwald: The Intercept, System Update.).
Identity has been falsely weaponized versus social justice at high levels: Sanders as a misogynist (but he stepped up for the 2016 election only when it was clear Elizabeth Warren wouldn't), and Corbyn in the UK as an anti-Semite. (Corbyn has for decades campaigned for human rights, crucially in this case for the rights of Palestinians.)
As Yannis Varoufakis, co-founder of the Progressive International, puts it: "Bringing down the symbols of institutionalized racism, like offensive statues, or changing the name of Yale University; obviously, it's good, but it offers no relief to someone barely getting by on the low wages they get and can't do anything about."
The biggest 50+ companies pay no federal taxes; they have the system so much set up in their favor and no less so on workers' rights. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may kick up such a fuss that Amazon sets up base in New York without its billions in subsidies, and Sanders shame the company into raising its workers' wages, but it shouldn't fall to them. Again, though, the Democratic Party leadership can't act because of money in politics.
From Martin Luther King in the months leading up to his assassination:
"We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are all tied together. You can't get rid of one without getting rid of the others. The whole structure of American life must be changed." May 1967.
"We must ask the question: 'Why are there 40 million poor people in America?' And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy." Aug 16, 1967.
Meet the Writer
Simon Turner is a part-time writer, cultural center, and squatted building film programmer, outsider environments witness and photographer, and self-taught world hitchhiker.
