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We Still Live In 2 Americas, Not 1

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This article originally appeared at . To stay on top of important articles like these, to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!Fridays. The best of the week. EmailYou can read our here.Thank you for signing up for&nbsp;The Nation’s weekly newsletter.EmailYou can read our here.Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our .Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.In the two weeks since Election 2020, the country has oscillated between joy and anger, hope and dread in an era of polarization sharpened by the forces of racism, nativism, and hate. Still, truth be told, though the divisive tone of this moment may only be sharpening, division in the United States of America is not a new phenomenon.Over the past days, I’ve found myself returning to the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who, in 1967, just a year before his own assassination, gave a speech prophetically titled “” in which he vividly described a reality that feels all too much of this moment rather than that one:“There are literally two Americas. One America is beautiful…and overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity. This America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies; and culture and education for their minds; and freedom and human dignity for their spirits…“But tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the ebulliency of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. In this America people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”In Dr. King’s day, that other America was, for a time, laid bare to the nation through mass social unrest and political change, through the bold actions of the freedom fighters who won the Voting Rights Act and then just kept on fighting, as well as governmental programs like the War on Poverty. And yet, despite the significant gains then, for many decades since, has been on the rise to previously unimaginable levels, while poverty has remained locked in and largely ignored.Today, in the early winter of an uncurbed pandemic and the economic crisis that accompanies it, there are poor or low-income Americans, disproportionately people of color but reaching into every community in this country: 24 million Blacks, 38 million Latinos, eight million Asians, 2 million Native peoples, and 66 million whites. More than a , in other words, has been relegated to poverty and precariousness, and yet how little of the political discourse in recent elections has been directed at those who were poor or one storm, fire, job loss, eviction, or health care crisis away from poverty and economic chaos. In the distorted mirror of public policy, those 140 million people have remained essentially invisible. As in the 1960s and other times in our history, however, the poor are no longer waiting for recognition from Washington. Instead, every indication is that they’re beginning to organize themselves, taking decisive action to alter the scales of political power.For years, I’ve traveled this country, working to build a movement to end poverty. In a nation that has so often boasted about being the wealthiest and freest in history, I’ve regularly witnessed painful divisions caused by hunger, homelessness, sickness, degradation, and so much more. In , for instance, I organized with people who lived day in, day out with raw sewage in their yards and dangerous mold in their homes. On Apache land in , I stood with native leaders struggling to cope with generations of loss and plunder, most recently at the hands of a multinational copper mining company. In , I visited millennials living in homeless encampments under constant siege by militia groups and the police. And the list, sadly, only goes on.As the future administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris heads for the White House (no matter the recalcitrant loser still ensconced there), the rest of us must equip ourselves with both courage and caution, living as we do in a divided nation, in—to be exact—two . Keep in mind that these are not the insulated, readymade Americas of MSNBC and Fox News, of Republicans and Democrats, of conservatives and liberals. All of us live in a land where there are two Americas, one of unimaginable wealth, the other of miserable poverty; an America of the promised good life and one of almost guaranteed .Unleashing the Power of Poor and Low-Income VotersOne enduring narrative from the 2016 election is that poor and low-income voters won Donald Trump the White House, even if the numbers . Hillary Clinton won by 12 points among voters who made less than $30,000 a year and by 9 points among voters who made less than $49,999; the median household income of Trump voters then was $72,000.Four years later, initial estimates suggest that this trend has only intensified: Joe Biden attracted more poor and low-income voters than President Trump both in the aggregate and in . Trump, on the other hand, gained among voters with annual family incomes of more than $100,000. Last week, the director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab that this “appears to be the biggest demographic shift I’m seeing. And you can tie that to [Trump’s] tax cuts [for the wealthy] and lower regulations.”In 2016, there were and low-income voters, 32 million of whom did not vote. In 2020, it’s becoming clear that poor and low-income voters helped decide the election’s outcome by opting for a candidate who signaled support for key anti-poverty issues like raising the minimum wage, expanding health care, and protecting the environment. In down-ballot races, who endorsed Medicare for All won reelection, even in swing states. Imagine how many dispossessed and disenfranchised voters might have turned out if more candidates had actually been speaking to the most pressing issues of their lives.said that they would prefer a government-run healthcare plan and supported raising the minimum wage, including . Even in districts that went for Trump, voters passed ballot measures that only a few years ago would have been unheard of. In Mississippi, people voted to decriminalize medical marijuana, while in Florida for a $15 minimum wage got more votes than either of the two presidential candidates.If nothing else, the 2020 election revealed a deeply divided nation—two Americas, not one—though that dividing line marked anything but an even or obvious split. A startling number of Americans are trapped in wretched conditions and hungry for a clean break with the status quo. On the other hand, the and racialized gerrymandering of the last decade of American politics suggests that extremists from the wealthier America will go to remarkable lengths to undercut the power of those at the bottom of this society. They have proven ready to use every tool and scare tactic of racist division and subterfuge imaginable to stop poor Black, Latino, Asian, Indigenous, and white potential voters from building new and transformative alliances, including a new electorate.It’s time to move beyond the defeatist myth of the solid South or even the dulling comfort of a Midwestern “blue wall.” Across the South and the Midwest, there are voter-suppression states still to win, not for a party but for a fusion movement of the many. The same could be true for the coasts and the Southwest, where there remains a sleeping giant of poor and low-income people yet to be pulled into political action. If this country is ever going to be built back better, to borrow Joe Biden’s campaign pledge, it’s time to turn to its abandoned corners; to, that is, the other America of Martin Luther King that still haunts us, whether we know it or not.Fusion Politics in the Other AmericaWhen Dr. King gave his “Other America” speech, he was preparing for what would become the last political project of his life: . At a time when the nation appeared to be fraying at the seams, he grasped that a giant social leap forward was still possible. In fact, he envisioned a protracted struggle that might catapult this country into a new era of not through sanguine calls for unity, but via a rousing fusion of poor and dispossessed people from all walks of life. And that, as he imagined it, would also involve a recognition that systemic racism and other forms of hate and prejudice were crucial to the maintenance of the two Americas and had to be challenged head-on.The idea of such fusion politics echoed of political reckoning and transformation in this country. From the post–Civil War era of Reconstruction into the 1890s, newly emancipated Blacks built unprecedented, if fragile, alliances with poor whites to seize governing power. Across a new South, fusion parties expanded voting rights, access to public education, labor protections, fair taxation, and more. In North Carolina in 1868, for instance, legislators went so far as to rewrite the state constitution to codify for the first time of all citizens to “life, liberty, and the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor.”For nearly 30 years, I’ve been part of a modern version of fusion organizing, even as I studied earlier examples of it—and this country’s history is rich with them. Indeed, the modern that I cochair is itself inspired by such past fusion movements, including the version of politics I was first introduced to by multiracial welfare rights and homeless organizing in the 1980s and 1990s.Organizations like the and the first grew in response to the neoliberal politics of President Ronald Reagan and his attacks on the poor, especially the Black poor, or, as he put it, “.” In response to such myths and deep, divisive cuts, out of shelters and from the streets, began to organize projects of mutual aid and solidarity, including “unions” of the homeless.By the 1980s, the National Union of the Homeless had been created and had upwards of 30,000 members in 25 cities. Meanwhile, organizers across the country soon escalated their efforts with waves of coordinated and nonviolent of vacant federally owned buildings at a time when the government had abdicated its responsibility to protect and provide for its poorest citizens. Those poor and homeless leaders also helped the Homeless Union secure guarantees from the federal government both for more subsidized housing and for protections of the right of the homeless to vote.Today, in the middle of an economic crisis that could, in the end, rival the Great Depression, I’m reminded not just of those moments that first involved me but also of the fusion movements of the early 1930s. After all, in those years, shanty towns called “”—since Herbert Hoover was still president—cropped up in cities across the country.Not unlike the tent cities of the Homeless Union and the Welfare Rights Movement in the 1980s and the ones appearing today, those Hoovervilles were where masses of the unemployed and homeless gathered to survive the worst of that depression and strategize on how to resist its misery. Multiracial organized and fought for relief for workers without jobs then, preventing thousands of evictions and utility shutoffs.Meanwhile, in the abandoned fields of the Southern Delta from Arkansas to Mississippi, groups like the pioneered the dangerous work of organizing tenant farmers and sharecroppers. When the New Deal coalition bet its future on compromise with white Southern extremists, members of that union were among the last guardians of the rights of . Their lonely clarity on the significance of fusion politics in the South stood in stark contrast to the rise of an unmitigated politics of white reaction there.Today, as top Democrats like and Senate minority leader claim the legacy of Great Depression–era President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, remember the fusion organizing that helped bring him to power and pushed him to enact change. I’m thinking in particular of the more than 40,000 unemployed veterans of World War I who arrived in Washington, D.C., in 1932 to demand the early payment of promised bonuses, previously only considered redeemable after 1945. That , as the veterans called it, collected many of the fraying threads of the American tapestry, , sometimes with wives and children, on seized public land just across the Potomac River from the capital’s federal office buildings, while holding regular nonviolent marches and rallies.Eventually, President Herbert Hoover ordered the US Army to tear down the camp in a violent fashion. The mistreatment of those poor and war-weary veterans in the process proved to be a lightning rod for the public, and Hoover lost to FDR in the presidential election later that year, setting the stage for a decade defined by militant organizing and major shifts in national policy.The Mandate of the Poor TodayThere are already those in the media and politics who are counseling restraint and a return to the pre-Trump days, as if he were the cause, not the consequence, of a nation desperately divided. This would be nothing less than a disaster, given that the fissures in our democracy so desperately need mending not with nice words but with a new governing contract with the American people.The battleground states that won Joe Biden the presidency have also been battlegrounds in the most recent war against the poor. In , hit first and worst by deindustrialization, millions have struggled with a failing water system and a jobs crisis. In Wisconsin, where unions have been for years and austerity has become the norm, both budgets and social welfare policies have been slashed by legislatures. In Pennsylvania, rural hospitals have been closing at an alarming rate and, even before the pandemic hit, the poorest large city in the country, Philadelphia, had already become a checkerboard of disinvestment and gentrification. In Georgia, —45 percent of the households in that state—were at risk of eviction this year. And in Arizona, the climate crisis and Covid-19 have ravaged entire communities, including the members of &nbsp;who recently turned out to vote in record numbers.The people of these states and 15 more helped elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and you can count on one thing: With their votes, they were calling for more than just an end to Trumpism. They were demanding that a new era of begin for the poor and marginalized. The first priority in such an era should, of course, be to pass a comprehensive to control the pandemic and buoy the millions of Americans now facing a cold, dark winter of deprivation. The House and the Senate have a to get this done as soon as the new administration takes office, if not before (but just tell that to Mitch McConnell). The first 100 days of the Biden administration should then be focused, at least in part, on launching a to secure permanent protections for the poor, including expanded voting rights, universal health care, affordable housing, a , and a guaranteed adequate annual income, not to speak of divestment from the war economy and a swift transition to a green economy.That should be the of our next government. And that’s why we, the overflowing millions, must harness the fusion politics that was so crucial to the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and organize in the best tradition of our predecessors. Real social progress rarely comes slowly and steadily but often in leaps and bounds. The predictable stalemate of the next administration and its Republican opposition can’t be broken by grand speeches in the House or Senate. It can only be broken by a vast social movement capable of awakening the moral imagination of the nation.It’s time to get to work.

This article originally appeared at . To stay on top of important articles like these, to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!Fridays. The best of the week. EmailYou can read our here.Thank you for signing up for&nbsp;The Nation’s weekly newsletter.EmailYou can read our here.Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our .Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.In the two weeks since Election 2020, the country...

We Still Live In 2 Americas, Not 1

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