BY ED FELIEN
Consider these contingency plans in case Trump wins the presidency.
Noam Chomsky did a cursory overview of the Trump voter. He (it’s mostly he) is white, rural or suburban, alienated, thinks minorities and women have been favored, not much education beyond high school.
Noam said, “Why aren’t we organizing them?”
That’s a fair question and a good plan.
So far, Bernicrats have been in alliance with bourgeois liberals. We have won important concessions: like free tuition at community colleges.
What a wonderful possibility—a free two-year college education for everyone. Wouldn’t it be great to do that on a national level? Establish it by Executive Order. But the problem with a coalition of bourgeois liberals and Bernicrats against a fascist right-wing populist is that we are fighting against the people who need the program the most. Rural and suburban areas are seeing their young people pack up and go into the cities. Free community colleges in those areas would keep the kids close to home and create jobs and businesses in the hometown.
Someone needs to talk to these people.
Bernicrats who are members of the Sierra Club and like to walk in the woods around that lake up north, need to move up there and run for county commissioner on a platform of free community colleges (and the rest of the Bernie platform).
The Bernie message is built for those communities. We need messengers and shepherds to gather in the flock.
There was a great “Back to the Land” movement among young people from 1969 through the 1970s in reaction to the Vietnam War. They went out into the countryside, and, in many instances, transformed the countryside.
No matter who wins Nov. 8, we have work to do.
“Why aren’t we organizing them?”
