The Leap is part of a shift in the political zeitgeist, as many are realizing that the future depends on our ability to come together across painful divides, and to take leadership from those who traditionally have been most excluded. We have reached the limits of siloed politics, where everyone fights in their own corner without mapping the connections between our various struggles, and without a clear idea of the concepts and values that must form the moral foundation of the future we need.
That recognition doesn’t mean that resisting the very specific attacks—on families, on people’s bodies, on communities, on individual rights—is suddenly optional. There is no choice but to resist, just as there is no choice but to run insurgent progressive candidates at every level of government, from federal down to the local school board. In the months and years to come, the various resistance tactics described in this book are going to be needed more than ever: the street protests, the strikes, the court challenges, the sanctuaries, the solidarity across divisions of race, gender, and sexual identity—all are going to be essential. And we will need to continue pushing institutions to divest from the industries that profit off various forms of dispossession, from fossil fuels to prisons to war and occupation. And yet even if every one of these resistance fights is victorious—and we know that’s not going to be possible—we would still be standing in the same place we were before the Far Right started surging, with no better chance of addressing the root causes of the systemic crises of which Trump is but one virulent symptom.
A great many of today’s movement leaders and key organizers understand this well, and are planning and acting accordingly. Alicia Garza, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, said on the eve of Trump’s inauguration that after five years of swelling social movements,
whether it be Occupy Wall Street, whether it be the DREAMers movement or Black Lives Matter…there’s a particular hope that I have that all of those movements will join together to become the powerful force that we can be, that will actually govern this country. So that’s what I’m focused on, and I hope that everybody else is thinking about that too.
Many people are, and as they do, we’re seeing a rekindling of the kind of utopian dreaming that has been sorely missing from social movements in recent decades. More and more frequently, immediate, pressing demands—a $15-an-hour living wage, an end to police killings and deportations, a tax on carbon—are being paired with calls for a future that is not just better than a violent, untenable present, but…wonderful.
In the United States, the boldest and most inspiring example of this new utopianism is the Vision for Black Lives, a sweeping policy platform released in the summer of 2016 by the Movement for Black Lives. Born of a coalition of over fifty Black-led organizations, the platform states, “We reject false solutions and believe we can achieve a complete transformation of the current systems, which place profit over people and make it impossible for many of us to breathe.” It goes on to place police shootings and mass incarceration in the context of an economic system that has waged war on Black and brown communities, putting them first in line for lost jobs, hacked-back social services, and environmental pollution. The result has been huge numbers of people exiled from the formal economy, preyed upon by increasingly militarized police, and warehoused in overcrowded prisons. And the platform makes a series of concrete proposals, including defunding prisons, removing police from schools, and demilitarizing police. It also lays out a program for reparations for slavery and systemic discrimination, one that includes free college education and forgiveness of student loans. There is much more—nearly forty policy demands in all, spanning changes to the tax code to breaking up the banks. The Atlantic magazine remarked that the platform—which was dropped smack in the middle of the US presidential campaign—“rivals even political-party platforms in thoroughness.”
In the months after Trump’s inauguration, the Movement for Black Lives played a central role in deepening connections with other movements, convening dozens of groups under the banner “The Majority.” The new formation kicked off with a thrilling month-long slate of actions between April 4 (the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination) and May Day. Nationwide “Fight Racism, Raise Pay” protests linked racial justice to the fast-growing workers’ campaign for a $15 minimum wage and the mounting attacks on immigrants. “In the context of Trump’s presidency,” the new coalition argues, “it is imperative that we put forth a true, collective vision of economic justice and worker justice, for all people.”
And in June 2017, thousands of activists from diverse constituencies are descending on Chicago for the second annual People’s Summit, organized by National Nurses United, to continue hashing out a broad-based “People’s Agenda.” Several similar state-level convergences are also under way, in Michigan as well as North Carolina, where “Moral Mondays” have been bringing movements together for several years. As one of its founders, Reverend William Barber, has said, “You have to build a movement, not a moment…I believe all these movements—Moral Mondays, Fight for $15, Black Lives Matter—are signs of hope that people are going to stand up and not stand down.”
As it has in Canada, the climate crisis is pushing us to put plans for political transformation on a tight and unyielding deadline. A powerful and broad coalition called New York Renews is pushing hard for the state to transition entirely to renewable energy by 2050. If more US states adopt these kinds of ambitious targets, and other countries do the same (Sweden, for instance, has a target of carbon neutrality by 2045), then Trump and Tillerson’s most nefarious efforts may be insufficient to tip the planet into climate chaos.
It’s becoming possible to see a genuine path forward—new political formations that, from their inception, will marry the fight for economic fairness with a deep analysis of how racism and misogyny are used as potent tools to enforce a system that further enriches the already obscenely wealthy on the backs of both people and the planet. Formations that could become home to the millions of people who are engaging in activism and organizing for the first time, knitting together a multiracial and intergenerational coalition bound by a common transformational project.
The plans that are taking shape for defeating Trumpism wherever we live go well beyond finding a progressive savior to run for office and then offering that person our blind support. Instead, communities and movements are uniting to lay out the core policies that politicians who want their support must endorse.
The people’s platforms are starting to lead—and the politicians will have to follow.
CONCLUSION