The thing is, it isn't possible to totally wipe out bigotry and only THEN get economic justice.

[Ken Burch]

The lack of economic justice will always keep us from establishing social justice.

As has happened continuously since the late Sixties, greater economic insecurity and injustice always end up making bigotry worse, because a country getting poorer and more unequal economically is always going to get less inclusive, because austerity always causes tribalism.

That's why we need to find the way, with leaders we don't currently have, to fight for both.

Social justice won't get us to economic justice, but we can't get there without it. Economic justice won't get us to social justice, but we can't get there without it.

Can we start the dialog, taking this entirely out of personalities, about how to create, from below, that dual justice struggle that we still need to fight?

[metroins]

1. Education

Teach people how to open businesses properly.
Teach people real world math and other societal issues.
Focus on family units and working together.

The jobs of today, and the future, require innovation at higher levels and education is the key, which opens the door to innovation. This doesn't have to mean formal education, just education in general that can make life easier.

Provide tools to allow citizens to be productive and have the backing of a family unit to support the process.

[MADem]

2. A rising tide lifts all boats...

The thing is, in Trump's America, some of us are left floating, hanging on to the wreckage, and not all of us are even allowed IN those fancy lifeboats.

[Ken Burch]

3. I'm a sickened about that as you are.

Which is why we need equal access to the lifeboats and MORE lifeboats.

[bettyellen]

4. Social justice won't get YOU closer to economic justice. Fixed that for you.

[Ken Burch]

5. By itself, it doesn't get POC closer to it.

I wish it did.

And we do need to keep fighting for it, as everyone here agrees.

What I want is justice for everyone who is hard hit.

Not privileges for anyone who is currently privileged.

[bettyellen]

6. I suggest you read up on the spectrum of issues POC and women are fighting for...

Because right now it's obvious you are arguing from a position of ignorance. You have no idea.

[Ken Burch]

8. I support what they are fighting for.

All I'm saying is that there isn't a conflict and there's no point in saying "social justice first, THEN economic justice".

They are distinct, but related.

But what we had this year was a "social justice" thing that treated economic issues as if they only affect white men.

And a lot of what is happening now is the corporate wing of the party using "social justice" as an ideological human shield to block any decision by the party to embrace a more egalitarian economic position. The Wall Street Dems are relentless in pushing the argument that any decision to address class and greed somehow means abandoning the fight against hatred and repression.

[bettyellen]

10. I don't see anyone saying economic justice is unimportant- just that betraying women and POC or

Asking them to de-prioritize their struggle to assuage racis/ sexist "working whites" is NOT an option.

You don't seem to know much about our struggles if you think there's not huge economic impacts we're fighting against- why don't you address those?

[Ken Burch]

12. No one is saying women and POC should de-prioritize their struggles. Even Bernie.

And nobody was saying we should try to get the votes of wealthy whites.

We need to stand with the victims of hate, the victims of greed, and the victims of both.

None of which equates to telling anyone to let bigotry ride.

[bettyellen]

13. Then why this insulting OP- insinuating we can't end these isms- what we're you implying?

I hat was Bernie implying when he said running only as a woman? Who the hell was he talking about? Who are you talking about? You're both being pretty coy.

[Ken Burch]

14. I meant no insult and apologize if I managed to give one. I stand with you on social justice.

Always have.

In both this year AND 2008(you yourself didn't make this argument, so I beg you not to take this personally), that electing someone of a race or gender not previously represented in the presidency,would be SO transformational that we really didn't need to place as much emphasis on what that person actually proposed to do. That, whoever we nominate, we need a strong program of change, enunciated clearly and often.

Hillary actually had a good program. I spent a lot of time this fall arguing with people to my left that the program, with the Sanders language or without, was a change for the better.

But the program and what it would do for people needed to be spelled out more in the ads...and I'd have run ads in heavy rotation in the Upper Midwest pledging that she'd kill the TPP...but her strategists(not her, her strategists) placed far too much emphasis both on the gender breakthrough possibility(something that was there without even having to be mentioned, as was identity with our 2008 nominee) and on pointing out that Trump is a scumbag. A greater emphasis on that platform and how progressive it actually was would have served us better.

What I hear Bernie saying is that our future, whoever we nominate, hinges far more on what we loudly and proudly fight for(to me, that means embracing and seeing as complimentary BOTH justice struggles, as I think you and I, and Clinton and Sanders supporters in general both do in practice even though we tend to sound like we are at war about things, NOT ever telling anybody to put their struggle to the side) and our ability to create a program of change that speaks to the vast majority of the country-which can easily be done, because far more people need justice and a reset of the system than don't. I agree with you that he phrased it horribly(I'm pretty sure Jane and every woman on his staff gave him an earful) but he isn't a Jewish socialist George Wallace.

Sorry for all the words. Sometimes I just need 'em.

[JCanete]

15. but it is their struggle. And goddam it, ask Martin Luther King if

economic justice mattered. How do you think you are going to convince people not to be racist when they are so stressed out and panicked they aren't thinking straight? How are you going to do it by saying "be fair now, and stop being racist." That gets interpreted as "give us what you have". Loss avoidance freaks people the fuck out. The cure for this is to say to people, we aren't coming for what you have. And by the way, we aren't coming for what the immigrants have because last time I checked, that's not where your income went. They sure as fuck don't have it. We're going after the people who have gamed the system and milked the commons. We're getting it back for all of you, and we need all of you on the same side to do it. And you know what? While we're at it? We're going to make minimum wage 15 dollars and we're going to put an end to the other ways in which the system has been gamed and rigged that is hurting us all, like our massive system of incarceration and our crumbling infrastructure.

Don't tell me it doesn't work, because Bernie pulled white voters across the aisle with a message that very much spoke to inequality. The DNC and the media didn't like that message so much so they tanked him by labeling him a candidate for white dudes, but nothing about his message was weaker on minority rights and social justice than Clinton, and I would argue the opposite.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

11. amen. nt

[mythology]

7. I would argue it's actually impossible to do in that order

There is a reason the Civil Rights Movement occurred after World War II. It takes money to support a political movement and that was before the amount of money in politics today.

We have to better address economic inequality. But that's hard when people think that something as simplistic as repealing NAFTA is a panacea. NAFTA has far less to do with job loss than automation does. Repealing NAFTA won't turn that tide back. But we obviously need both a better message than job retraining and a solution that is easier to see in the short term. Yes long term people are going to be less and less hands on in manufacturing, but it's hard to radically shift from working in a factory to working a white collar job. Not that people can't do it, but we have a cultural baggage around identity and "man's" work that I think needs to be addressed.

[Ken Burch]

9. No, repealing NAFTA won't, by itself, get us to a golden age of justice for all.

But we can't make life better for the working poor the and kept-from-working poor without breaking with the current notion of globalism-the power structure in which corporations get to erase virtually any significant piece of progressive legislation in the tribunals(institutions that are always biased for corporations and against the global majority and in which the people almost never win).

If we must have trade deals, then we need to write them in order to make it explicit that investments in social services, education, and healthcare, labor laws, environmental laws, consumer protection laws and anti-discrimination laws are NEVER considered "tariffs" and can never be forced down by corporations overruling the actions of the government of the day in any country.

We don't need a global means of enforcing austerity to have open trade.