Responding to Injustice Part 2: What Kind of an Approach Might Work Today?
How can we convince everyone it is easier to get to the mountaintop together, not separately? (photo from Unsplash)
““Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.” ”
When it finally comes time to do the right thing, politicians seeking to create an America that works for all Americans have historically sought to call the country to a common, higher purpose.
In his first inaugural address, on the eve of the Civil War, President Lincoln appealed to what he hoped would be shared “mystic chords of memory” to help us activate the “better angels of our nature” and stay together as a nation.
Hubert Humphrey in 1948 appealed to the fracturing Democratic Party to walk “into the bright sunshine of human rights.”
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King called Americans divided on race to the “mountaintop” and the “promised land” – together.
There is no question that today we have millions in America who aren’t able to fully participate in the economy due to economic transition, neglect and policy changes:
· As we have offshored and automated, millions of people of all colors who’ve lost their jobs in factories have struggled to find new work that pays as well;
· As we ignored the problem, huge numbers of people, 70% white, disproportionately rural and less educated, got addicted to painkillers;
· We’ve enacted law enforcement and sentencing policies that have resulted in a prison population that is 69% of color, and disproportionately urban and less educated.
· We’ve marketed four-year degrees so aggressively that hundreds of thousands of people don’t have the skills to do well-paying jobs in building, repairing and fixing things (see this post).
Those who are left behind by these policies have a good case to come together and demand change. Instead, both major parties seem intent on dividing up the poor, convincing them that if one group of poor people wins, the other loses. Democrats at their worst condescend to poor, less-educated whites who are struggling in rural areas, and Republicans at their worst villainize poor less-educated Blacks in cities who are struggling. The message: the enemy of poor people is those other poor people.
But what if someone came along who could be a warrior and a spokesperson and a leader for all those who are left behind?
One promising model might be Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Shapiro, a Democrat, has been focusing on one of those issues: jobs. People, he finds, regardless of race, religion or rurality, want to find ways to work. And he’s finding solutions to that problem by being willing to talk to people.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (center) appears to be finding an argument that a diverse coalition of those left behind can hear (Photo from Philadelphia Inquirer)
“You’ve got to show up everywhere,” he told E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post in an interview last week. “And you’ve got to speak to everyone, and you’ve got to speak in plain language and in practical terms. I went to counties the Democrats had written off a long time ago and spoke about workforce development and spoke about how we’re going to bring back the economy and talked about it in very tangible, practical ways.”
Shapiro’s conversations resulted in a series of actions that have the practical effect of addressing people’s core concerns.
When your old job gets automated or offshored, it is hard for mid-career people to afford the training to get a new job. Shapiro is focusing more on apprenticeships and directing some of the new federal infrastructure funding to “on-the-job training for work installing broadband, repairing roads, rebuilding bridges and plugging pipes.”
Mindless requirements for job applicants to have college degrees hold back many - black and white, urban and rural - from being considered for some jobs that don’t really require college degrees. Shapiro signed an executive order removing the requirement of a college degree for 92% (!) of jobs in state government.
It’s the kind of get ‘er done approach that some thought leaders in both parties have called for (see this earlier post), but rarely moved forward on and the kind of language Democrats rarely use: “I think that we’ve gotten too elitist in our attitudes that the only way you can succeed is if you go to college,” Shapiro told Dionne. “I just fundamentally think that is the wrong approach, and that’s something I’m trying to change.”
According to Dionne, Shapiro is not turning his back on Democratic priorities like LGBTQ+ and abortion rights; he is creating a larger narrative that links those issues to good jobs and incomes. It’s all about “the freedom to chart your own course.”
So far the approach appears to be working for him politically. His margin of victory in 2022 was significantly greater than Biden’s margin in Pennsylvania in 2020 and he ran especially stronger in Republican-leaning counties.
The rest of an agenda for the left behind almost writes itself — for starters imagine adding strong policies on opioid recovery programs (20% of those opting out of those missing from the workforce are out because of addiction issues), sentencing reform and aggressive efforts to reconnect those with a prison record to work (see this earlier post).
So far, it would appear that poor and working class folks in Pennsylvania are responding to a politician who not only seems to be listening to their needs, but is actually listening to their needs. And there’s no compelling reason a Republican couldn’t craft a similar ecumenical message to meaningfully address the concerns of the struggling families in their state – or nation.
There is potential for a powerful, multiracial coalition of poor, less educated, inner city and deep rural Americans standing together, demanding that “better angels” wake up and help us walk, together, into the “bright sunshine” of the “promised land.”
Imagine a cadre of candidates who figured out how to help lead them there.
-Leslie
What would it take to form a multiracial coalition of the working class in America?
References:
Skepticism about the quote attributed to Churchill: https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/americans-will-always-right-thing/
Lincoln’s First Inaugural: http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/1inaug.htm
Humphrey’s speech to 1948 Democratic National Convention: https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2023/07/17/75-years-ago-hubert-h-humphrey-called-for-dems-bright-sunshine-of-human-rights
King’s “Mountaintop” speech in Memphis: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm
Opioid addiction demographics: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/fentanyl-and-us-opioid-epidemic
Demographics of incarceration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20people%20of%20color,times%20the%20white%20rate%2C%20respectively.
E.J. Dionne’s column on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/06/shapiro-pennsylvania-democrats-fixing-politics/