Imagine that you’re twenty years old. You were born in 1996. You were five years old on 9/11. For as long as you can remember, the United States has been at war.
When you are twelve, in 2008, the global economy collapses. After years of bluster and bravado from President George W. Bush — who encouragedconsumerism as a response to terror — it seems your country was weaker than you thought.
In America, the bottom falls out fast. The adults who take care of you struggle to take care of themselves. Perhaps your parent loses a job. Perhaps your family loses its home.
In 2009, politicians claim the recession is over, but your hardship is not. Wages are stagnant or falling. The costs of health care, child care, and tuition continue to rise exponentially. Full-time jobs turn into contract positions while benefits are slashed. Middle-class jobs are replaced with low-paying service work. The expectations of American life your parents had when you were born — that a “long boom” will bring about unparalleled prosperity — crumble away.
Baby boomers tell you there is a way out: a college education has always been the key to a good job. But that doesn’t seem to happen anymore. The college graduates you know are drowning in student debt, working for minimum wage, or toiling in unpaid internships. Prestigious jobs are increasinglyclustered in cities where rent has tripled or quadrupled in a decade’s time. You cannot afford to move, and you cannot afford to stay. Outside these cities, newly abandoned malls join long abandoned factories. You inhabit a landscape of ruin. There is nothing left for you.
Every now and then, people revolt. When you are fifteen, Occupy Wall Street captivates the nation’s attention, drawing attention to corporate greed and lost opportunity. Within a year, the movement fades, and its members do things like set up “boutique activist consultancies.” When you are seventeen, the Fight for 15 workers movement manages to make higher minimum wage a mainstream proposition, but the solutions politicians pose are incremental. No one seems to grasp the urgency of the crisis. Even President Barack Obama, a liberal Democrat — the type of politician who’s supposed to understand poverty — declares that the economy has recovered.
I know stuff like this has been a topic of conversation on my dash for years but this bit was a nice articulation:
Capitalism, in other words, holds less appeal in an era when the invisible hand feels like a death grip. Americans under 20 have had little to no adult experience in a pre-Great Recession economy. Things older generations took for granted — promotions, wages that grow over time, a 40-hour work week, unions, benefits, pensions, mutual loyalty between employers and employees — are increasingly rare.
As a consequence, these basic tenets of American work life, won by labor movements in the early half of the twentieth century, are now deemed “radical.” In this context, Bernie Sanders, whose policies echo those of New Deal Democrats, can be deemed a “socialist” leading a “revolution”. His platform seems revolutionary only because American work life has become so corrupt, and the pursuit of basic stability so insurmountable, that modest ambitions — a salary that covers your bills, the ability to own a home or go to college without enormous debt — are now fantasies or luxuries.
On this day, 26 October 1881 communist Indigenous activist Dolores Cacuango was born in Ecuador to a family of poor hacienda workers. She ran away from her family to Quito, where she got a job as a maid, learned Spanish and gradually became radicalised. Cacuango moved back to her home town to help organise with the working class to improve their conditions. A liberal revolution took place in 1916, which claimed it would give back land stolen from Indigenous people by big landowners and the Church. But the promises of the new government were largely unmet, and poor campesinos continued to be largely landless and ruthlessly exploited. Cacuango took part in the landless and Indigenous movements, and strongly advocated for women’s rights and campaigned against the endemic sexual of abuse of Indigenous women by hacienda bosses, becoming famed for her fiery speeches in Spanish and Kichwa. She took part in various uprisings and strikes, became a leading member of the Communist Party, co-founded the Indigenous Ecuadorian Federation in 1944 and lived until the age of 89.
If you value our content, connect with us directly via our email list: https://workingclasshistory.com/sign-up/https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1246592638859217/?type=3
“Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.” – John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
On this day, 1 September 1911 during the Mexican revolution, peasant army leader Emiliano Zapata managed to escape from the military forces of Ambrosio Figueroa, the governor of Morelos. Troops, led by Federico Morales, arrived at Chinameca and stormed its front gate, but they failed to surround the property beforehand. So Zapata and many local residents who were fighting with him were able to slip out the back and escape through the sugarcane fields.
We recently released posters of this photograph of Zapata celebrating his 150th birthday to help fund our work: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/homeware/emiliano-zapatahttps://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1201012873417194/?type=3
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
