Race and Class: This Socialist Moment

Twenty-nine years ago (July 26, 1989) I wrote an introduction to a book I was writing on revolutionary movements in America. I titled that introduction "Against Amnesia" and opened it with these words:

I am really scared about loss of memory. I keep thinking that the revolutionary movement in this country won't revive until there is nothing left of the organizations of the last generation to provide a bridge to the past. I'm afraid that the new generation of radicals will have to start from scratch, just like we did, as if nothing had come before.

We are living through an ascendance of unabashed racism, misogyny, xenophobia, corruption, and unrestricted capitalist greed associated with the presidency of Donald Trump. Despite (because of?) that, it is also a moment of enthusiasm for socialism in this country. Bernie Sanders did well as a candidate for the Democratic nomination two years ago while broadcasting his identity as a democratic socialist. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortéz scored a primary upset against the number-four Democrat in the House of Representatives a few weeks ago and has been riding a wave of national enthusiasm since then that shows no sign of ebbing.  She, too, is unafraid of the word socialist, which she defines with a platform of extending free public education through college, Medicare for all, and a living wage.  So I definitely think we are looking at a new birth for the radical movement. But will the young socialists of today have the benefit of understanding the victories and defeats of previous generations? And - importantly - can we elders share our own experiences without descending into grumpy-old-codger behavior?

Yesterday I listened to Nathan J. Robinson, editor of Current Affairs, as he discussed the revival of American socialism with Bob Garfield on WNYC radio. Robinson spoke enthusiastically about the history of socialism in America, especially the period between 1908 and 1912 during which socialists held over 1000 elected offices in this country. When he referred to the divisions among those socialists I thought I was about to hear something significant and difficult, but, no; he only wanted to talk about their debate over the importance of elections. He described the 110-year old argument between electoral and direct-action socialists. He saw a parallel between that dichotomy and the differences between the Justice Democrats of today and the Occupy movement of 2011.

Why did this disappoint me? Because the challenge facing a socialist movement is the same as that facing this country as a whole: Race.

Remember how this showed up in the 2016 campaign? Remember the Black Lives Matter activists who interrupted a Sanders rally in Seattle that August? And do you remember the fury of the Bernie supporters on Twitter, insistently whitesplaining that Bernie was the best friend Black people had and referring to his 50+ year-old participation in the civil rights movement (which they insisted on characterizing as "marching with Dr. King")?

I don't want to argue that Bernie Sanders is personally racist toward Black people. I do want to argue that he assiduously avoids issues, phrasing, and slogans that he fears may alienate white people. After he was pressed on the question of Black Lives, he responded by speaking out about criminal justice reform. See the difference? When he was pressed on the question of reparations, he responded by arguing that tuition-free college, a living wage, and investment in our cities would help "the most impoverished communities, often African American and Latino." See the difference? For the Sanders socialist, everything has to be expressed in color-free terms. Benefits for working-class Americans will automatically address the problems of racism.

It may be necessary to clarify why this is untrue. You may want to revisit how the discussion of a "white working class" since the 2016 election has made excuses for racism. You may want to look at the extent to which the U.S. union movement has been a bulwark securing good-paying jobs from members of racial and ethnic minorities, and not just in the building trades. You may want to look at how people of color have been historically excluded from the benefits of FHA loans. You may want to consider how AFL agitation against Americans of Mexican descent during the Great Depression led to the deportation of over 400,000 (about half of whom were US citizens!) You may want to remind yourself of the role of labor organizations in perpetrating mob violence and pogroms against people of color. (Just two examples: the 1885 Rock Springs massacre of Chinese coal miners in Wyoming; the 1917 massacre of African Americans in East St. Louis, Illinois.)

If we return to that period of 1908-1912 that Nathan Robinson was talking about, we find that there were two distinct views among socialists on race. On one side you find those like Victor Berger of Wisconsin, the first socialist member of the House of Representatives, who said, "There can be no doubt that the Negroes and mulattoes constitute a lower race." Kate Richard O'Hare, the socialist candidate for Senate from Missouri wrote a pamphlet supporting racial segregation and opposing what she called - in its title - "Nigger Equality"!

The opposing view was represented the by Socialist Party's candidate for President, former union leader Eugene V. Debs. Debs stood firmly for racial equality. He responded directly to views like those of Berger and O'Hare, writing, "The man who seeks to arouse prejudice among workingmen is not their friend. He who advises the white wage-worker to look down upon the black wage-worker is the enemy of both." He rejected the fear that belief that social equality is "divisive":

I say that the Socialist Party would be false to its historic mission, violate the fundamental principles of Socialism, deny its philosophy and repudiate its own teachings if, on account of race considerations, it sought to exclude any human being from political equality and economic freedom. Then, indeed, would it not only "jeopardize" its best interests, but forfeit its very life, for it would soon be scorned and deserted as a thing unclean, leaving but a stench in the nostrils of honest men.

Yet this is the same Debs who wrote: "We have nothing special to offer the Negro, and we cannot make special appeals to all the races. The Socialist Party is the Party of the whole working class, regardless of color - the whole working class of the whole world." How? Because he believed that the class struggle is colorless. In writing about this in 1990 I commented that "The most obvious 'special' things in those days were an end to segregation, an end to lynching, an end to discriminatory voting laws" and added: "These are things Debs should have been able to see."

Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in January 2016 that he found it hard to believe that Bernie Sanders was concerned that reparations were politically divisive because "there are few political labels more divisive in the minds of Americans than socialist." He identified Sanders's reluctance to address race directly in what he identified as "the 'class first' approach, originating in the myth that racism and socialism are incompatible." It is precisely the view of Debs in his articles of 114 years ago. It is a view that insists on working-class unity, but without asking white people to reject the less obvious (to them, not to people of color!) benefits of white supremacy.

Consider the current debate on immigration. Bernie Sanders has tried for years to thread a needle that allows him to retain progressive credentials while continuing to ally with the dominant elements in the AFL-CIO that see immigrants as competitors for work. I have always been mystified by the blindness of this view. When the law restricts migration into the US but the economy demands workers that mismatch creates a caste of workers who are restricted from defending themselves, either in court or through organizing unions. It is immigration restriction that puts downward pressure on wages, not immigration. But Bernie opposed the 2007 immigration reform and was only a reluctant voter for the 2013 immigration reform. And he still characterizes any policy that would provide a welcome to immigrants as a "Koch Brothers proposal." On its face these positions are nuanced discussion of policy. Hiding behind them, though, is the belief that everybody south of the Mexican border is some other kind of person.

What about Black Lives? Everybody who has met with Bernie on this subject is quick to point to his willingness to discuss the problems with mass incarceration, asset forfeiture, and inequality in the justice system. But they also remain uncomfortable with his insistence on talking about the "hard job" police face in providing safety in some neighborhoods. He seems not to be aware of the role of police as an occupying force, nor to recognize the way the "blue wall" protects those who took jobs in urban police departments just so they could be abusive toward people they hate. I could point to the rush of racists into ICE, which provides them the cover of a rogue agency for their vicious behavior, but you see the same thing in so many departments. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter began trending in 1913, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the racist murder of Trayvon Martin. Ever since, there have been white people who pretend not to understand it. They forlornly ask, "What about my life?" They counter with the hashtag #AllLivesMatter, although they don't seem to insist on this to cry for justice for Sandra Bland, or Eric Garner, or Philando Castile. When Bernie finds other words, when he calls for "criminal justice reform" instead of insisting that "Black lives matter," I feel that he is echoing Debs in refusing to offer something "special" and claiming that fighting for workers' rights is enough.

I don't think Bernie has any problems personally with people of color. I don't think he is racist in that way. I have long suspected, though, that Bernie moved to Vermont fifty years ago because people of color introduce too much complexity into his class analysis. In Vermont (95% white) he could talk about labor and capital without talking about race. Brooklyn, where Bernie grew up, is -- by contrast -- 36% white, 35% African American, 20% Latino and 12% Asian. Roughly half the people speak a language other than English when they are in their homes. Chicago, where he went to university, is similarly diverse. So I can't help but feel that he wanted to avoid talking about things that "didn't fit" with his theory.

I can't say that about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortéz. She is Puerto Rican herself. Even if she hasn't developed a theoretical understanding about the relationship between Puerto Rico and the US, she sees the effects of colonialism, especially since last year's hurricane. I cant't say it about Kaniela Ing, either. He is not afraid to speak about colonizers in Hawaii. That's why I have a great deal of hope about the new generation of socialists. But I also feel strongly about the need to share what we have learned about the relationship between race and class. History tells us that there will be white people in the socialist movement who are afraid of antagonizing "the white working class" with talk of "special demands," even if those demands are as elemental as not killing people of color.

This conversation is not unique to the United States. Throughout the imperialist world there are colonizers on both sides of the class divide who take the supremacy of white people and culture so much for granted that it is invisible to them as a question. In 1960, Ousmane Sembène wrote Le Bouts de Bois de Dieu  about a railway strike in 1940's Senegal. The meeting between the workers' committee and the company gets off to a contentious start when the manager insists that it be conducted in French. Bakayoko, a leader of the strike replies:

"I am not alone in this strike," he said, looking at the personnel director, "but since your ignorance of any of our language is a handicap for you, we will use French as a matter of courtesy.  But is is a courtesy that will not last forever."

This exchange has stayed with me because the demand for French could as easily have come from a white union leader. In February 2017 I wrote an essay questioning the very existence of a working class in the US today. I pointed out that in 1964, when there was still an immense steel industry in this country, a quarter of union steel workers were African American, but no African American had yet been elected as a national officer of the USW. The contract negotiated by the union itself had the effect of keeping African American steel workers in the hottest, most dangerous, worst paid jobs in the mills. There is nothing about working class organization that guarantees justice for all. That requires "special demands."

איכה ישבה העיר רבתי עם

Tonight begins the Jewish fast of Tisha B’Av on which we mourn the many calamities that have befallen the Jewish people:

-The destruction of the Temple of Solomon by the Babylonians in 587 BCE

-The destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE

-The destruction of the Jewish communities of France and the Rhine by the Crusaders in 1096

-The expulsion of Jews from England in 1290

-The expulsion of Jews from France in 1306

-The expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492

-The Shoah attempting extermination of all Jews begun in 1941

All those calamities were initiated by our enemies, but our tradition treats them differently, looking to those enemies as instruments of retribution for our failing to live up to what we claim of ourselves. We commemorate Tisha B’Av with the reading of Eicha, the Book of Lamentations, attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, mourning Zion from his captivity in Babylon. Consider how this book treats the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the people.  It opens:

Alas!
Lonely sits the city
Once great with people!
She that was great among nations
Is become like a widow!

But Jeremiah quickly moves to his explanation for the destruction:

Her enemies are now the masters,
Her foes are at ease,
Because the Lord has afflicted her
For her many transgressions.

And that is the theme of Lamentations. We mourn the humiliation of Jerusalem and our people, but we confess our sins which led to it. In other words, our adversaries are carrying out God's will by humbling us for our pride. Each chapter of Eicha follows this pattern and each concludes with the prayer that God will once again have faith in us and restore us to grace:

Arise, cry out in the night
At the beginning of the watches,
Pour out your heart like water
In the presence of the Lord!
Lift up your hands to Him!

The message is consistent with the prophecies of Jeremiah before the Babylonian captivity. He repeatedly foretold destruction and warned the people of its source in their own failures. You can find these predictions everywhere in the Book of Jeremiah. Consider this:

Thus said the Lord:
Cursed is he who trusts in man,
Who makes mere flesh his strength,
And turns his thoughts from the Lord.
He shall be like a bush in the desert,
Which does not sense the coming of good:
It is set in the scorched places of the wilderness,
In a barren land without inhabitant.
Blessed is he who trusts in the Lord,
Whose trust is the Lord alone.
He shall be like a tree planted by waters,
Sending forth its roots by a stream’
It does not sense the coming of heat,
Its leaves are ever fresh;
It has no care in a year of drought,
It does not cease to yield fruit.

This reading of God - that he punishes us all for rejecting our calling to good - lost favor in my community after World War 2. People were horrified by the suggestion that we had somehow brought the Holocaust on ourselves. What could we possibly have done that was bad enough to warrant the burning of 6 million souls? We chose to attribute this evil to the presence of evil itself in the world, not to God. Frankly, I prefer that view. A God who would destroy children as a performance of punishment does not deserve worship. But with that rejection of Divine retribution seems to have come the arrogance that believes that we know more than we in fact do, a worship of ourselves.

Then, too, there was the birth of the State of Israel. Instead of waiting for a miraculous restoration to Zion, Jewish people began to believe that we could do it ourselves. Instead of focusing on our belief that God wants justice, we came to the faith that our weapons were instruments of God and that whoever stood in the path of our conquests was an enemy. We adopted the idolatrous view that God wanted us to destroy his children! That worship of "mere flesh" - that "trust" in ourselves - is the beginning of the calamity that I commemorate on this Tisha B’Av.

When we confine our brothers to outdoor prisons like Gaza and the towns of the West Bank,

When we tell our neighbors that they are no longer citizens of the land,

When we rip out their vineyards and olive groves in violation of our Torah,

When we bulldoze their homes,

When we shoot their children,

When we bomb them from the air,

When we deny them food and water,

Whe we do these things we are praying for our own destruction.

But it is not only a prayer.

Because when we do these things we have already surrendered our humanity.

We have hurried to repudiate our Judaism.

We have ceased our worship of God and replaced it with a worship of missiles and guns.

We are idolators who no longer know what it is to be a Jew.

This year on Tisha B’Av I mourn the destruction of Judaism itself, not by Romans or Babylonians or some other enemy serving the destructive will of God, but by ourselves and by the State of Israel.

For my friends who fast this year in the other mode, thinking our most important enemies are external, I recommend the prophet Amos:

You who wish for the day of the Lord, why would you want the day of the Lord?
It shall be darkness, not light!
As if a man should run from a lion and be attacked by a bear.
Or if he got indoors, should lean his hand on the wall and be bitten by a snake.
Surely the day of the Lord shall be not light, but darkness, blackest night without a glimmer.
I loathe, I despise your festivals.
I am not appeased by your solemn assemblies.
If you offer Me burnt offerings or meal offerings I will not accept them.
I will pay no heed to your gifts of fatted calves.
Spare me your hymns, don't let me hear your praise songs.
But... Let justice spring up like water and righteousness like an unfailing stream.

These are not Democratic or Republican questions

You’re a mom in La Ceiba (or Amatitlán or Ilopango).

A cop (or a gang member or your ex-husband) tells you to transport drugs (or prostitute yourself or prostitute your 9-year old daughter.)

He tells you that if you don’t, he will cut that 9-year old daughter into pieces and leave them on your doorstep.

You pack your daughter and your two sons (six and three) and you flee north.

You tell none of them about the particulars of this threat; you’re a mom and you want to protect your children. You just tell them that things will be better in the north.

You survive hunger, thirst, and predators (human and otherwise) as you travel by foot, truck and train the 1300 to 1500 miles to the US Port of Entry at McAllen, Texas.

You feel that sanctuary may be in reach as you and your three children start walking across the international bridge to request asylum in accordance with international law.

Armed CBP agents block you. You tell them you are requesting asylum. They tell you to take your children and go back to Mexico.

You return to the Reynosa side with your children, and hope to try again tomorrow.

You and the children try again. CBP agents turn you back again.

After a week you decide to try floating across the river itself into the wildlife refuge on the Texas side and then turn yourself in and request asylum.

Instead of processing your asylum request, CBP agents arrest you for crossing the river at a place other than the Port of Entry that they blocked you from approaching all week long.

CBP agents inform you that you will be incarcerated for this misdemeanor. Your daughter and your sons will not be incarcerated, however. They will be taken from your arms and declared “unaccompanied minors.”

At booking, CBP agents offer you the option of returning to Honduras (or Guatemala or El Salvador) where the police (or gang or ex-husband) is waiting to dismember your child or - as an alternative - to never see your children again.

CBP turns over your children to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, who separate them from each other and fly each of them 2000 miles to New York (or San Francisco or Buffalo.)

CBP and ORR “lose” the documentation connecting you to your children.

CBP and its captive court system quickly process your case and deport you back to Honduras (or Guatemala or El Salvador)

(Or you remain incarcerated in a for-profit prison, awaiting trial for ten days or fifty days or a hundred and fifty days. Or you are released with an ankle monitor.)

In any case, you have no idea where your children are, or even how to find them. CBP gives you a piece of paper with an 800 number which cannot be called from outside the country. In any case, nobody picks up the phone at that number. In any case, nobody at that numbers knows where your children are.

Your children are brought in separately to immigration court and asked why they are here. They don’t know about the threats of death and dismemberment. You tried to protect them by not telling them. They can only answer that mami said it would be better in the north.

Maybe you are one of the few and the lucky who locate their children because a journalist happened to witness your arrest  (or a lawyer was present or you made your eight-year old daughter memorize a relative’s phone number in Orlando.) They want to make you pay exorbitant bond. They want to make you pay for a 2000-mile trip. They want to make you prove that the children are yours. They want to make you prove that you are a fit mother.

And if you get your children? And if you get an asylum hearing? The Attorney General of the United States says that those threats to the life of your child (or gang violence or domestic violence) are not grounds for asylum in the United States.

If all this does not trigger your outrage and despair, I question your humanity. If any single part of this does not trigger your outrage and despair, I question your humanity. These are not political questions. These are not partisan questions. These are human questions.

What Gospel Are They Reading?

I am not a Christian. It is none of my business what people who style themselves "ministers of the Gospel" are teaching the people who choose to follow them. 

When I hear some so-called evangelical speaking passionately about Deuteronomy 22:5 (which forbids women wearing men's garments and vice versa) but totally ignoring Deuteronomy 22:11 (which forbids wearing garments of wool and linen woven together) I may smile about their selective reading of scripture, but it is -- again -- none of my business. When I hear Joel Osteen insisting that God wants me to be rich, or T.D. Jakes saying that poverty is a barrier to living a Christian life, I have to wonder to myself about what happened to their Bibles. Did somebody tear out Matthew 19:24 or Luke 18:24? (Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God), but it is, you know, none of my, etc...

I watched the movie "Come Sunday" on Netflix. It's a true story. The protagonist, Bishop Carlton Pearson of Tulsa, came to doubt that God intended to punish nonbelievers by sending them to Hell for eternity. Bishop Pearson began preaching that the message of the Gospels is that Jesus saved all souls, which he called "the gospel of inclusion." This was ruled a heresy by the Joint College of Bishops, a leading body in African American Pentecostalism and Bishop Pearson lost his congregation. I understand the impetus of so many churchgoers to want to imagine eternal punishment for the sinners around them. If you are trying hard to lead a sanctified life, shouldn't there be some reward? It those sinners are doing whatever they want, shouldn't there be some consequences? Believers fear that nobody will even try to be good if they know they are already redeemed anyway. My reading of the Parable of the Laborers in Matthew 20 supports Bishop Pearson's view. The workers who started first thing in the morning -- the workers who worked faithfully all day long -- complain about receiving the same wages as those who didn't start until late afternoon. The landlord asks them: "Are you envious because I am generous?" And the people who resist Pearson's teaching, demanding Hell for non-believers, remind me of the older son in Luke 15 who angrily reproaches his father for feasting the return of his younger brother, the one who squandered his wealth with prostitutes. But I really have no standing to express an opinion on these question. I am not a Christian. It's none of my business.

So why do I feel the need to express my feelings about Pastor Paula White, President Trump's favorite evangelical? I don't care about the Senate investigation into her finances led by Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Making millions from the donations of credulous believers is a sin, but I am not God. I don't care that she pretends to have a PhD although she never graduated from college: she is self-employed; it's not as if she's lying on an application. Leading evangelicals call her a heretic for preaching against the trinity and for preaching that God rewards us with material wealth and for preaching that we are all Gods. It really does not feel like I should be setting out litmus tests for heresy. That is the responsibility of believers.

But this week she began preaching a whole new story of Jesus, one that is completely unrecognizable to me as coming from the Gospels. This was a week which saw Customs and Border Patrol agents arresting asylum seekers in violation of international law, seizing their children, and losing the paper work that showed which children belonged to which adults. This is an immigration policy I disagree with, this is demonic behavior. To do this you have to either hate children and families, or not believe that these children and families are human. And the supporters of this policy have stated publicly and repeatedly that they do not -- in fact -- believe the refugees on our southern border are human. They have publicly and repeatedly claimed that these refugees are gang members and that they are animals. The hatred American showed for fugitive families, fleeing for their lives from their homes in Central America, resonated powerfully with Christians. They could think of nothing but the Holy Family and their flight into Egypt, fleeing for the life of the infant Jesus from their home in Nazareth (Matthew 2:13).

But somehow Pastor Paula White doesn't find this in the Gospel of Matthew at all. She told CBN News: 

"I think so many people have taken biblical scriptures out of context on this, to say stuff like, 'Well, Jesus was a refugee.' Yes, He did live in Egypt for three-and-a-half years. But it was not illegal. If He had broken the law then He would have been sinful and He would not have been our Messiah."

I find every part of this astonishing. Jesus was legally proscribed shortly after his birth. All the babies  of Nazareth were ordered to be executed in order to kill Jesus (Matthew 2:16). Joseph and Mary took the infant Jesus to Egypt precisely in order to evade the law. It boggles my mind to hear a Christian minister claim that Jesus did not break the law. He violated purity laws regarding corpses, he violated the laws of the Sabbath. He violated the dietary laws saying, "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man." (Matthew 15:11) I don't know what to think of a Christian minister who somehow doesn't notice that Jesus was executed for breaking the law: He was crucified after a trial and a conviction in the court of Pontius Pilate. All four gospels agree on that. 

But I also don't know what to think about a Christian minister who thinks asylum seekers are criminals. Deuteronomy 10:19 commands: "Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." Making room for asylum seekers is not just a religious "suggestion" like "be charitable." It is a matter of US and international law. But there is also scripture here for those who really want to believe in eternal punishment for sinners. There is the "parable" of the sheep and the goats:

He will say also to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you didn’t give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you didn’t take me in; naked, and you didn’t clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’ 

“Then they will also answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn’t help you?’ 

“Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Most certainly I tell you, because you didn’t do it to one of the least of these, you didn’t do it to me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:41-46)

The words of Jesus are clear. The sinner is not the asylum seeker; the sinner is the one who rejects the asylum seeker, who rejects the stranger.

I am not delusional enough to think that I am the first to have noticed all of this. The Jesuit public intellectual Father James Martin told Anderson Cooper on CNN, "I wonder what Gospel she is reading." He went on to say that he was appalled at the use of the Bible to justify taking kids from their parents. Disciples of Christ minister Reverend Doctor William Barber tweeted: "Those of us who took vows to preach the Gospel can’t do our job in America today w/out helping people distinguish b/w #SlaveholderReligion & the Christianity of Christ."

And that gets me to why I feel that this is my business, why I feel the need to comment, why I had to write this. Everybody is entitled to their personal beliefs. But the belief that God wants us to return people who are fleeing for their lives to the people who would kill them is no longer a personal matter. It abets murder and torture. I say that it is demonic and I mean that as literally as I mean anything.

The belief that God wants us to steal children from their parents and to move them thousands of miles away and erect bureaucratic barriers to their reunification is not a personal matter. It abets atrocity and it is demonic.

The belief that God blesses those who commit these abominations is demonic. The Apostle Paul wrote (from prison, according to tradition, because he, too, was a criminal according to the secular law) that "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." (Ephesians 6:12) Those principalities and powers are the ones who steal children and confine them in kennels. They offer parents the Sophie's choice of losing their children forever or returning to the countries where those very children's lives were explicitly threatened. Those principalities and powers threaten countries with economic warfare for encouraging moms to breast feed their babies. And those principalities and powers preach the righteousness of all these abominations.

This is not a difference of opinion. It is not a private religious matter. It is not a nuance of a faith tradition to which I don't belong. It is evil. And we are all called to speak out against evil.

Is water a right?

Today the lawyers for the city of Flint and the state of Michigan will argue that a federal judge should dismiss a class action lawsuit on the grounds that there is no Constitutional right to potable water!

This may be literally true. The Constitution was ratified in 1788. The first water systems weren’t even built until 1796 (Boston) and 1800 (New York) but they were privately-owned, for-profit entities and they were inadequate from day one. New York’s Manhattan Company (today, Chase Bank) was mainly a legal cover for Aaron Burr to enter the banking business in competition with Alexander Hamilton’s Bank of New York (today, BNY Mellon).

Philadelphia was the first city to realize that private capital would not protect its people from cyclic cholera outbreaks. It established a municipal water system in 1801. New York didn’t begin construction on the Croton system, nor Boston on the Cochituate aqueduct until after the devastating cholera epidemic of 1842.

These facts tell me these things:
1) The US Constitution doesn’t explicitly mention things that didn’t exist when it was written
2) Private capital always takes care of itself, not the public good
3) Government has always been slow to respond to public need
But I already knew those things; didn’t you?

We live in a time when market ideologues and vampire capitalists (often the same people) are actively moving to privatize our schools, our roads, and our criminal justice system. They have made beginnings on all these things. In some states, private toll roads were built so people who could afford it could bypass rush-hour traffic. Well-to-do felons can pay to go to a better class of prison. Profiteers dream of a dystopian future in which firefighters will ask for your credit card before saving you and your home. 

The framers of our Constitution may not have imagined a society that had to provide clean water (or clean air, or fire service, or schools, or paved roads, or electricity, or health care, or WiFi) to its members. That doesn’t mean that we can’t imagine such things. Nor does it mean that we are incapable of seeing the horrors that await us without these things.

The vampires’ publicists threaten us about the “danger” of socialism. The vampires’ privately-owned politicians cut funding to public services and then, when they are - predictably - in disrepair, they shout: “Failing! Privatize!” That doesn’t mean that we are incapable of seeing their hustle. Nor does it mean that we are blind to how helping one another benefits all of us. It is worth noting here that their dreams of profits in private toll roads have ended in failure: bankruptcies and state takeovers. Chris Whittle's dream of for-profit schools also failed.

The vampire capitalists don’t recognize any “us.” They prefer a war of all against all. Right now they are in the ascendant. That doesn’t mean there is no “we.” That doesn’t mean that WE cannot prevail. Water bottlers say we have no right to clean water at all. The chairman of Nestle says water is a commodity, like any other food, and that we should pay for it. They profit from drought. They profit from climate change. We can say that we do have a right to water.

What is socialism? Socialism says that the people of Flint have a right to clean water, regardless of some politicians' desire to cut costs and ruin services. Socialism says that the people of West Virginia have a right to clean water, regardless of some private company's desire to save money and poison the rivers. Socialism says that the people of Fryeburg, Maine have a right to clean water, regardless of some bottler's desire to pump it out and sell it elsewhere.

The Constitution doesn't mention water. We do.