What a week

We were just shown how organizing to resist is more important that ever

Sometimes you forget how much can happen in a day, let alone a week. But the United States saw more consequential events in the 24 hours starting Thursday night and heading into Friday than we’ve seen packed into such a short period in a long, long time. You’ve probably heard more than enough about the first Presidential debate these past few days, so I’ll keep that part short. Biden looked like he was barely there, Trump lied nonstop, and much of the country agonized over the fact that these are our two realistic choices, for now. But, most notably, Biden’s fitness was so bad, physically and mentally, that numerous talking heads and prominent figures and even party loyalists are now saying he should step down and allow someone else to run. Even the New York Times editorial board has now gotten on that wagon. 

Friday morning, just when you thought that the seismic shift in the conversation around the presidential race couldn’t be overshadowed, the Supreme Court handed down multiple rulings that will very likely change the course of U.S. and world history. First they essentially legalized the criminalization of existing without housing. The town of Grants Pass, Oregon had banned camping in all public space, even when there’s no shelter beds for people to lay their heads. This law went against decades of precedent saying that to criminalize acts like sleeping outdoors when people have no alternative is effectively cruel and unusual punishment. But Grants Pass, and other local governments, would rather criminalize homelessness or force anyone without housing out of their towns than provide shelter. That’s the brutal reality we face, and it’s now legal to pass similar laws nationwide.

Immediately after that atrocious ruling on homelessness, the court released a decision that might have an ever more wide-ranging and detrimental impact: they overruled Chevron deference. If those words mean nothing to you, like they did for most of America until Friday morning, the precedent set by Chevron said that judges should defer to federal agencies to interpret ambiguous parts of the law. What that did was give federal agencies more power to enforce the law and create regulations without endlessly being bogged down in legal battles, battles that corporations are now immensely likely to win given the conservative nature of the judicial branch. As Justice Kagan’s dissent reads: “In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue—no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden—involving the meaning of regulatory law. As if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar.”

The consequences of the Chevron ruling appear very likely to be the gutting of an untold number of federal regulations, like those that help us have clean air and water, those that might help us forestall climate change, or help us have reasonable public health regulations and worker safety norms and more. It’s impossible to know the full impact, at the moment, and many legal battles will certainly be fought. But as it stands it has become much harder for the government to reign in corporate practices that harm each and every one of us. Even the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, for example, called the ruling "a monumental setback.” Oh and this massive setback was authorized by a heavily bribed court which also happened to legalize de facto political bribery Thursday. In other words a handful of very rich people are very happy at what the Supreme Court has done this week while most of us stand to suffer, unless things change rapidly.

And yet, somehow, that was not all that happened this past week. Most notably I want to talk with you about what happened, and is happening, in Kenya and Bolivia. The upheaval in the U.S. has certainly swamped the coverage of these important events abroad, and I would imagine the same is true in the West as a whole. But for more than a few reasons what has happened in these two nations is vitally important, both for the millions of people living there and for the rest of the world.

I’m no expert on Kenya, but I’ll try to concisely explain some of what’s happened so far, and link a few good articles. In May, Kenyan President William Ruto introduced a sweeping finance bill in an effort to address the country’s financial woes. The bill, supported by the IMF, aimed to raise more than $2.7 billion in revenue. But some of the provisions, namely raising taxes on basic necessities like a 16% levy on bread, were immediately met with mass opposition. Some of the worst provisions, like the bread tax, a cooking oil tax, and more, were withdrawn about two weeks ago. But not before the protest movement that led to their withdraw had built up a head of steam, fed by violent police repression and arrests, all of which has only seemed to fuel an outpouring of people into the streets.

Photo by Tito Texidor III on Unsplash

Then, this past week, things escalated. After walking back of some of the most hated provisions, President Ruto still wanted to move ahead with the bulk of the bill, part of a broader plan to meet the conditions set by the IMF under its multi-year program with Kenya. Tuesday and Wednesday saw protesters in the capital of Nairobi storm the parliament and set sections of it on fire. Police killed over 20 protesters, launched tear gas, and the military was called in. And yet, despite the repression, the President ultimately withdrew the entire bill Wednesday. But then, the protests didn’t stop; Ruto now faces pressure to resign. 

At almost the exact same time that Kenyan protesters were sweeping towards their significant win, Bolivia was seeing it’s own major event thousands and thousands of miles away. On Wednesday a segment of the military suddenly arrived in the capital and stormed the presidential palace of Luis Arce, Bolivia’s socialist President. And yet, within hours, the soldiers were retreating, the general leading the coup attempt was arrested, and the whole affair was safely done with. A new commander of the military has been sworn in, the coup leaders are under arrest, and democracy in Bolivia appears to be on solid footing. So what the hell just happened?

The full story will likely not be known for some time, but there are a few indicators as to why this effort to topple the democratic government failed in record time. For one, Bolivia’s trade union confederation, representing 2 million workers, immediately announced a mass mobilization. This organization embodying mass worker power urged people to mobilize to the capital of La Paz to defend democracy and said they were calling a general strike until the coup attempt was defeated. Likewise, social movements sent out the same call, and the streets of the capital were soon flooded with countless people, sending a very clear message to the coup leaders. These scenes were reminiscent of how President Arce came to power in 2020, winning an election against the conservative forces that had couped Evo Morales. His victory four years ago only came with the help of a coalition of workers and indigenous leaders and social movements that had forced the election largely through mass protest, occupation of the streets, and shutting down some of the country’s key arteries.

Photo by Teemu Paananen on Unsplash

We have so much to learn from Bolivia it’s difficult to know where to start. But the overarching theme we have to look to is people power, real power in the hands of the masses. As American labor legend Big Bill Haywood said, “If the workers are organized, all they have to do is to put their hands in their pockets and they have got the capitalist class whipped.” And Bolivian workers are organized. This isn’t new, the people have been engaged in this work of building power for decades. Their ability to credibily threaten coup leaders with a general strike and their ability to flood the streets instantaneously is remarkable; we must seek to replicate both. In the U.S. labor organizers and a broad swath of the working class are already eying the UAW call for a general strike on May 1st, 2028, and other unions are attempting to align their contracts for that day.

That one day is unlikely to mean a working-class revolution in the United States, but that’s exactly the point. There is no one silver bullet, silver moment. It takes social movements, union organizing, mass political education; it takes everything. We have to learn to build power from the movement in Bolivia, and we have to learn to how to not settle for crumbs from the movement in Kenya. The young people of Kenya are still in the streets at this very moment; after their initial victory they’re continuing to push. Protesters are demanding the President resign, they’re demanding that Kenya police forces be withdrawn from Haiti, and much, much more.

Among the demands circulating in Kenya is the end to state capture of the judiciary. And while our problems in the U.S. are slightly different, with the bribed and conservative judiciary engaged in its own capture of the rest of the government, the parallels are not hard to see. Kenyan protesters see the West, from the IMF to business interests as having captured their state, Bolivians speculate that capitalist, U.S. forces are attempting to interfere in their democracy, just as they did during the successful coup in 2019, and here in the U.S. the very oligarchs who exercise disproportionate influence around the world are steadily increasing their control over our country.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Despite differences from one country to the next, the same capitalists, their institutions, and the systems they prop up are the source of our ailments. In the U.S. these oligarchs just struck a devastating blow to our government’s ability to regulate their corporations, legalized the criminalization of poverty, and legitimized their own acts of bribery. They won these victories using an illegitimate court that they’ve thoroughly bribed, of course. And we look ill-equipped to fight back. There are few politicians interested in combating corporate greed, and the most likely future President is an avowed fascist raking in millions from the super-rich because he’s more than happy to roll back regulations and let corporate interests have free reign. 

There is no silver bullet to beat back this regressive, fascist, capitalist tide. But there are lessons to learn and implement. We have to build real mass power like we see our siblings across the globe doing. We have to have an empowered working class that is organized and able to fight economically, as well as take protest movements to the street when the need arises. There are no shortcuts – this will take all of us. Each of us has to be organizers in the ways that we’re able to do so. At work, in our neighborhood, in online communities. Each of us has to be educators in the ways we can: with friends, neighbors, coworkers and more. Ultimately we have to build the power to do collectively what we cannot do alone. We see that it’s possible to build such power around the globe, and we see that the institutions we were taught are the highest form of government are not able to protect democracy against this onslaught it faces. In fact, the reckoning we face is that this country has never been a true democracy, and that we instead have one to build — a task that will take all of us. That is the work that lies ahead.

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P.S. I wrote a little something expanding on the problem with silver-bullet thinking last year, and more importantly listing six ways we can get organized to resist. I hope it’s helpful: