Organizing In Spite of Democratic Leaders

Now, we shouldn’t expect Democratic leaders to be our actual leaders. When has that actually happened? In the history of American social movements, basically it has never happened. But in our 24 hour news cycle, when everyone is a pundit, we’ve lost an understanding of how change happens. The endless focus on elections has all sorts of problems, but among them is that people elect politicians they think actually lead them. That just isn’t going to happen. That’s what we are seeing as well with the protests Trump, especially the amazing work happening in Minnesota. Democratic leadership has been precisely worthless on resisting Trump. It’s coming from people going out into the streets and making demands. Elie Mystal notes this here, arguing that Democratic leaders need to do a lot more on resisting ICE, for example. While I agree, that happens when people make demands of leaders, not the other way around. Democratic leaders are very cautious people, no question, and there’s a lot of problems with that. But any change is going to come from the street, as it has with every other social movement in American history. If we are going to resist American fascism, that’s where the change is going to happen, not from just electing more Democrats.