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<\/a>Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker<\/p><\/div>\n
Parents lose their children to a certain auto defect. The parents organize, get press attention, and gain the attention of legislators. Mainstream auto safety groups latch on, see the parents as a threat to their inside the beltway turf, and try to push the parents to the side.<\/p>\n
Activists hold a three day conference in Washington, D.C. on how to bypass the two mainstream parties to secure a people\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n
Inside the building, those who organized the meeting talk about single payer, militarism, and unequal distribution of wealth. During the break, organizers of the conference go across the street to a restaurant.<\/p>\n
Outside, smoking cigarettes, attendees who spent their last dime to get to the conference discuss why the rhetoric they are hearing inside the building isn\u2019t working and how they believe that most of the people inside the building will fold back into the Democratic Party come election time.<\/p>\n
These three incidents are real. I witnessed each first hand over the past few months. In each case, the grassroots rabble run up against inside the beltway careerists. This type of clash is happening all over the world. But it\u2019s more pronounced in North America because what University of British Columbia Professor Peter Dauvergne calls \u201cthe corporatization of activism\u201d<\/a> is more advanced in North America. The result — the non profit industrial complex.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just the likes of Sierra Club taking $25 million from Chesapeake Energy<\/a> and backing natural gas expansion or Sierra Club aligning itself with Clorox to greenwash the company<\/a>. Or nominally anti-corruption groups like Transparency International in the United States<\/a> and Canada<\/a> getting taken over by corporate lobbyists and law firms.<\/p>\n It\u2019s more the public interest careerists who want to be players. And to be a player means to cut deals. And to cut deals means to cut out the grassroots activists, who are less likely to want to cut deals.<\/p>\n Even the best of the inside the beltway public interest groups, who refuse to take money from corporations, who refuse to cut deals with corporations, still are subservient to the corporate dealmakers within the corporate Democratic Party.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a look at the Washington, D.C. People\u2019s Convergence conference<\/a> as a case in point. It was held earlier this month at American University Law School in Washington, D.C. It was organized by those who said they believed that the Democratic Party was incapable of becoming a people\u2019s party and who wanted to create a new party to challenge the Republicans and the Democrats.<\/p>\n There were about 250 people at the conference. A good number of them were with a group called Draft Bernie for a People\u2019s Party. Another good number of them were from third party or independent movements.<\/p>\n And while almost everyone there was drawn by the initial founding document calling the Democratic Party incapable of being a people\u2019s party, you did get a sense that the majority of the people in the room would follow Bernie Sanders back into the Democratic Party come 2020 if and when Bernie runs again.<\/p>\n Trump is just \u201ctoo ugly.\u201d And Bernie is just \u201ctoo adorable.\u201d And the liberal Democrats would just go nuts if you pulled an N word* and went third party to the wall — no safe states strategy — allowed. (* Nader)<\/p>\n Even the nominal devotees of third parties at the conference would go nuts all if you actually believed what you were saying and tried to organize something outside the two parties that wouldn\u2019t cave to the two parties.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take the case of two of the leading lights at the conference — Medea Benjamin and Jill Stein.<\/p>\n Jill Stein was the Green Party\u2019s presidential candidate in 2012 and 2016.<\/p>\n From what I could tell, Stein was at the conference to send a message to the delegates that a new third party wasn\u2019t necessary — because there already was a third party that fit the bill — the Green Party.<\/p>\n One problem — Stein has sided with the David Cobb if push comes to shove, let\u2019s cave to the Democratic Party wing of the Green Party.<\/p>\n According to Maryland Green Party member Kevin Zeese — he\u2019s planning a run for Governor of Maryland in 2018 — back in the N word days (2004), Stein sided with Cobb in his safe states strategy approach — encouraging Green Party voters to only vote third party in states where the Green Party was not going to make a difference — states like New York, California, Alabama or Texas, where the Democrats or Republicans dominate.<\/p>\n But in states that are contested — Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida — encourage voters to vote for the least worst militarist Democrat — Gore, Kerry, Obama, Clinton.<\/p>\n And then there was the 2016 recount debacle, where according to Zeese<\/a>, Stein raised millions of dollars with the help of Democratic Party affiliated groups like MoveOn and Democracy for America to recount the vote with the hope of flipping the election back to Clinton.<\/p>\n According to Zeese, before the recount began, Stein was explicit about this, telling colleagues excitedly — \u201cWe are going to flip the election to Clinton.\u201d<\/p>\n How Green is that?<\/p>\n Peace advocate Medea Benjamin ran for Senate in California as a Green in 2000.<\/p>\n But as a member of the advisory board of Progressive Democrats for America, and an admitted David Cobb safe states strategy person, she worked for the militarist Kerry\/Edwards campaign and against the peace candidates — Nader\/Camejo.<\/p>\n That would be Camejo, as in the late Peter Camejo.<\/p>\n Camejo was the California peace candidate who penned an article in 2008 titled Capitulation <\/a>recounting Medea Benjamin\u2019s role in 2004.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere was Medea Benjamin during the Democrats hate campaign against democracy in 2004?\u201d Camejo asked. \u201cYou were campaigning for a pro-war candidate and supporting the vicious anti-Nader\/Camejo campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMedea Benjamin in her effort to support John Kerry helped successfully to manipulate within the Green Party support for David Cobb, the anti-Nader pro-voting Democrat candidate who favored US occupation of Iraq in two public debates with me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe worked to get the Green Party convention to prevent Nader\/Camejo from being endorsed after Nader\/Camejo representatives won a number of Green Party primaries and state conventions, including California.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDuring the 2004 campaign, there was a letter on David Cobb\u2019s web site titled \u2018Vote Kerry and Cobb.\u2019 And it was signed by Medea Benjamin, among others.\u201d<\/p>\n Zeese, by the way, is part of something called Green Party Power<\/a>, a group which includes Stein\u2019s vice president running mate in 2016 Ajamu Baraka and single payer doctor Margaret Flowers. The idea behind Green Party Power appears to be to build up an independent force within the Green Party to challenge the Cobb\/Stein wing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe began this project in the fall of 2016 by publishing two statements that emphasized the independence of the Green Party, especially from the Democratic Party,\u201d Zeese says. \u201cMore than 500 Greens signed the two statements — the first — Greens Speak Out on Recount and Our Commitment to an Independent Party<\/a> and the second — Building Green Power for 2018 and Beyond.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n Whether the likes of Baraka, Zeese and Flowers can wrest control of the Green Party from the likes of Cobb and Stein is to be determined.<\/p>\n Which brings us to single payer.<\/p>\n Watching the neoliberal Senator from California Carmela Harris — as Bernie called Kamala Harris (she of OneWest Fame<\/a>) — and the neoliberal Senator from New Jersey Cory Booker (he of Big Pharma fame<\/a>) stand beside Bernie the other day promoting single payer made us wonder — what the hell is going on?<\/p>\n Bernie had no Senate co-sponsors for his single payer bill until a couple of weeks ago. Now he has sixteen, including Harris and Booker. They figured — we might as well sign on with Bernie so that we can ride the single payer wave to retake the Senate in 2018 and then the White House in 2020.<\/p>\n They figured — in 2020, Bernie can sheepdog** the fractured left and their single payer supporters back into the Democratic Party, and then when we are in control, we can push the public option or some other variant of Obamacare and keep the health insurance insurance industry in the game. \u00a0 \u00a0(** See Black Agenda Report\u2019s Bruce Dixon in Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders: Sheepdogging for Hillary and the Democrats in 2016<\/a>).<\/p>\n To quote the Intercept\u2019s Lee Fang from a recent tweet <\/a>— \u201cI think the single payer momentum is great but Democrats have long used the issue to rile up base — see California in 2006 — and no action when it matters\u201d — referring to the California Democrats passing single payer twice knowing that Governor Schwarzenegger would veto it.<\/p>\n And then Fang again — \u201cObama indeed lied and campaigned on single payer\u201d — referring to Barack Obama as a state Senator in Illinois<\/a> saying that he favored single payer, but that it wouldn\u2019t happen until the Democrats took over the Congress and the White House. And then when they did take over the Congress and the White House, Obama kicked single payer to the curb and got behind the insurance industry written alternative to single payer now known as Obamacare.<\/p>\n What matters of course, as always, is the people at the grassroots, those outside the influence of the non-profit industrial complex, who have lit the prairie fire that will not be extinguished by Democrats, or Green Democrats, or public interest Democrats, or the Democratic public option, or Democratic incrementalism, or Democratic affiliated sheepdogs.<\/p>\n It will not be extinguished until single payer becomes law. That means overcoming the the pharmaceutical industry, the healthcare industry, the Democratic Party, Green Democrats, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and the non-profit industrial complex.<\/p>\n Onward to single payer.<\/p>\n (via Single Payer Action Newswire.)<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Residents of a small town in West Virginia are approached by land agents for a gas pipeline company. The residents are told that unless they sign over their property rights to the pipeline company, the company will use eminent domain … Continue reading