Almost all these discussions of "working class" start from the premise that the "working class" is White. In the West and Southwest, the "working class" is Brown, Black, and newish immigrant. That's the preponderance of who is doing the work society treats as low value in many places; for all I know, that may be true in most Democratic cities. These discussions seem to me to go on mired in fictitious assumptions. Democrats need to speak to the extant working class, not to an Ohio steelworker who fears the emerging working class. Folks certainly have issues: health care, housing, ... you name it. But also feeling dissed for their non-whiteness/not American enoughness too. They may not look the way they exist in some speakers' brains.
If you go look at the Hispanic Republicans web pages, you'll see they're being played on their elders' social conservatism - crime, status of women, abortion. The planet doesn't have time for their younger people to vote us out of trouble.
A woman who has just returned from Israel/Palestine on a tour run by a progressive family foundation told me that in Israel, people talk about what they derisively call The American Solution. This solution = all parties get together and talk and a resolution will emerge. People in both countries laugh at this. The fact is that Palestinians and Israelis have different foundational narratives, which are fundamentally in conflict. The Palestinians were invaded by both British military forces and European jews, and had their lands stolen from them by force and by legal chicanery. The Holocaust survivors -Israelis were promised this same land as a homeland, by the United Nations, and they fought both the British and the Palestinians for it.
It is not a level playing field, and no peaceful resolution is probable. The same is true in the USA today. The GOP have a fundamental narrative which is in direct conflict with my values. They are heavily armed and violent and intend to prevail, law notwithstanding, by force of arms and legal chicanery. European friends say that we are heading for a civil war. We are already in it.
Almost all these discussions of "working class" start from the premise that the "working class" is White. In the West and Southwest, the "working class" is Brown, Black, and newish immigrant. That's the preponderance of who is doing the work society treats as low value in many places; for all I know, that may be true in most Democratic cities. These discussions seem to me to go on mired in fictitious assumptions. Democrats need to speak to the extant working class, not to an Ohio steelworker who fears the emerging working class. Folks certainly have issues: health care, housing, ... you name it. But also feeling dissed for their non-whiteness/not American enoughness too. They may not look the way they exist in some speakers' brains.
If you go look at the Hispanic Republicans web pages, you'll see they're being played on their elders' social conservatism - crime, status of women, abortion. The planet doesn't have time for their younger people to vote us out of trouble.
A woman who has just returned from Israel/Palestine on a tour run by a progressive family foundation told me that in Israel, people talk about what they derisively call The American Solution. This solution = all parties get together and talk and a resolution will emerge. People in both countries laugh at this. The fact is that Palestinians and Israelis have different foundational narratives, which are fundamentally in conflict. The Palestinians were invaded by both British military forces and European jews, and had their lands stolen from them by force and by legal chicanery. The Holocaust survivors -Israelis were promised this same land as a homeland, by the United Nations, and they fought both the British and the Palestinians for it.
It is not a level playing field, and no peaceful resolution is probable. The same is true in the USA today. The GOP have a fundamental narrative which is in direct conflict with my values. They are heavily armed and violent and intend to prevail, law notwithstanding, by force of arms and legal chicanery. European friends say that we are heading for a civil war. We are already in it.