(Photo – Ticonderoga, NY – the local tourist slogan is “America’s Fort”.)
[Update – 10/22/21 – At the outset, we felt that this climate protest was political cover. We wrote that it was:
designed to provide cover for Congressional Democrats, like their “progressive” friends AOC and Co., who are NOW caving to Manchin/Sinema
Well, right on time, here they are:
Echoing the demands of demonstrators who were arrested outside the White House throughout last week, Congresswoman Cori Bush led a dozen other progressive lawmakers Friday in pressuring President Joe Biden to block fossil fuel projects and immediately declare a climate emergency.
But still, progressives did nothing with their legislative power, they merely wrote a letter to Biden, that praised him!
While praising the president’s commitments to climate action and serving frontline communities, the 13 House Democrats sent Biden a letter to express their “grave concern that ongoing actions by your administration threaten to undermine our shared goal to further climate, racial, and economic justice.”
Lame and shameful – again.
[Update: 10/14/21 – I need to clarify this post. Of course – and I shouldn’t have to say this – I support climate activists taking direct action, occupying public space, and protesting to hold political officials (like Biden) accountable and demand real climate action. See just one example, from 2014:
But the timing, location, target, message, and demands for this action are all wrong, i.e. “Build Back Fossil Free” or People Versus Fossil Fuels.
Perhaps hypotheticals might help:
- suppose anti-Vietnam war activists, during the DNC Chicago 1968 convention, instead held a protest at the Pentagon demanding cuts to the military budget?
- Suppose anti-globalization and anti-corporate protesters, instead of engaging the Battle In Seattle, went to Washington DC HQ of the WTO or World Bank and demanded loan forgiveness for third world countries?
- Suppose the original Occupy organizers went to San Francisco to target Silicon Valley to protest the internet’s treatment and harm of women and young girls, instead of to Wall Street to protest income and wealth inequality and the abuses of the 1%?.
Get it: wrong place, wrong target, wrong time, wrong demand – and they missed the real target. (even though the issues and targets were legitimate grievances).
The time to organize and mobilize protesters to focus demands on Biden was BEFORE the election. The time to Occupy Washington DC to focus on Biden and demand strong executive branch actions (i.e. Executive Orders, policy, regulatory, legal strategy, and appointments/personnel) – or to “declare a climate emergency” – was during the period after the election and before the Inaugural (i.e. the transition). That action could have been sustained through the first 100 days.
Activists did none of that. Biden’s executive branch agenda is locked in – and it sucks.
In contrast, now is the critical time to focus on Congress and the infrastructure and climate reconciliation bills. Democrats are caving to the hostage taking of Manchin and Sinema. Those Senators are blocking an already drastically watered down and weak climate package and the infrastructure bill has lots of really bad stuff in it, including: promotion of logging under the guise of wildfire prevention; rollback to NEPA; new loopholes in other environmental regulations; huge subsidies to carbon capture and nuclear; more privatization and deregulation; and lots of pork barrel traditional road building projects that will INCREASE carbon emissions. Yet activists are silent on all that.
Worse, by now focusing on the Biden executive branch agenda, they throw in the towel on the Congressional battle and divert resources from the real battle.
And all that is just either incompetence, more over-reliance on cultural and identity politics issues, or designed to provide cover for Congressional Democrats, like their “progressive” friends AOC and Co., who are NOW caving to Manchin/Sinema – or all of the above. Strategy and tactics matter and require careful thought, planning, organizing, and discipline. I see none of that.~~~ end update]
My head is spinning right now upon reading this.
After negotiating a compromise with Biden (e.g. the Sanders – Biden Taskforce, et al), and months of praising his Administration;
And then walking away from the Green New Deal (and now even the CCC) in favor of “pragmatic progressivism”;
And then neglecting to organize or mobilize massive public support for the Congressional battle on infrastructure and climate legislation;
And now, just at the moment we’re getting screwed by Democrats in Congress on Infrastructure & Climate, the activists abandon that fight & shift focus to Biden’s Executive authority!
WTF are they doing? Clueless clowns.