Their Worst Nightmare

So, while reading diaries and comments about Senator Sanders and Black Lives Matter, I am more and more thinking that the whole situation in general is like pre-revolution France.

While we of the Third Estate fight amongst ourselves over "manners" and "who has a better record", the Second Estate, which has ruled us since 1980, is squeezing us so relentlessly financially and socially that we will soon be broken.

The police are only right now a tool of the Second Estate, whose orders are to violently suppress any dissent or objection to their rule.

The elimination of People of Color is just a bonus to them, as they have always been a tribal racist set.

However, something happened which shook their complacency and made them accelerate their plans for total dominance:

The election of a "skinny Black kid with a funny name".

Barack Obama's election showed the power of the Third Estate when unified on one goal.

And it terrified them.

And so we got a backlash, supposedly led by "regular people"--but really Quislings who shared the Second Estate's racist beliefs believing that they would get a piece of the pie if the Second Estate's wishes were carried out.

The police became more brutal. Voting rights were eliminated wholesale in open purges, and the complicit courts allowed it.

When counter movements are arising to break the grip of the Second Estate, what happens?

Factions fight themselves and lose focus on the main goal, and the police brutally eliminate the rest. Look what happened in Zucotti Park, or in Berkeley. Or any other "hippie" protest.

And the Second Estate is Pleased and fans the flames through their control of the media.

Because their worst nightmare is for these people, WE the People, the people they've oppressed so hard and so often, to obtain the political AND economic power to break them.

The political power is easy enough to see, and calculate. Voting rights are one of the uniting things in our struggle. Even on this site with all the pie fights, we ALL agree on overturning the odious ID laws and brainstorm on how to get EVERYONE both registered AND voting.

Which brings us to this quote from MLK:

Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation. They have deplored prejudice but tolerated or ignored economic injustice.

Here MLK equates economic bigotry with racial bigotry. Economic injustice with racial injustice.

Think about it--if you work full time at McDonald's what is the public perception of you? Even among your progressive, non-racist friends? Or among sensible, non-liberal friends?

The Second Estate has co-opted language designed to muddle and obscure. When they take away benefits or block wage hikes, or prevent towns from giving their residents more economic power, it's always "for freedom" and "freedom of choice". Using Lochnerian language to justify the stigmatization of the poor.

And the compliant media has turned our image of poverty to one of people with Brown and Black skin. We rarely see images or hear stories of White poverty, even though there is far more.

In 1967, Dr. King became part of what was to be known as the Freedom Budget for All Americans. Economists and Civil Rights leaders came together to craft a Budget whose objectives many here will be familiar with:

To provide full employment for all who are willing and able to work, including those who need education or training to make them willing and able.
To assure decent and adequate wages to all who work.
To assure a decent living standard to those who cannot or should not work.
To wipe out slum ghettos and provide decent homes for all Americans.
To provide decent medical care and adequate educational opportunities to all Americans, at a cost they can afford.
To purify our air and water and develop our transportation and natural resources on a scale suitable to our growing needs.
To unite sustained full employment with sustained full production and high economic growth.

The legendary A. Phillip Randolph, former President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and President of the Institute that bears his name, had this to say about the Freedom Budget (Bold text by diarist):

"[In] the richest and most productive society ever known to man, the scourge of poverty and must be abolished - not in some distant future, not in this generation, but within the next ten years!... The tragedy is that the workings of our economy so often pit the white poor and the black poor against each other at the bottom of society... [A]ll Americans are the victims of our failure as a nation to distribute democratically the fruits of our abundance. For, directly or indirectly, not one of us is untouched by the steady spread of slums, the decay of our cities, the segregation and overcrowding of our public schools, the shocking deterioration of our hospitals, the violence and chaos in our streets, the idleness of able-bodied men deprived of work, and the anguished demoralization of our youth....[T]he 'Freedom Budget'... is not visionary or utopian, It is feasible. It is concrete. It is specific. It talks dollars and sense. It sets goals and priorities. It tells how these can be achieved. And it places responsibility for leadership with the Federal Government, which alone has the resources equal to the task."

Signatories included Walter Reuther, I.W. Abel, , David Dubinsky, Albert Shanker et al. from the labor movement; academics Kenneth Clark, John Kenneth Galbraith, Gunnar Myrdal, Hylan Lewis, C. Vann Woodward, David Riesman et al.; civil rights leaders Dorothy Height, Roy Wilkins, Floyd McKissick, Whitney Young, Jr., John Lewis, Vernon Jordan; Ralph Bunche, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Jules Feiffer, Father Robert Drinan, Burke Marshall, and Benjamin Spock.

Now, all this was written before the "War on Drugs", and the advent of private prisons, and the need to fill them.

But what's in this document is the foundation for the economic power to break the Second Estate.

But what about the political power?

As I mentioned before, the efforts to restore the Voting Rights Act, repeal "voter ID" laws, and register and get people to the polls is a huge uniting factor for all factions of the left.

But what about candidates?

It is not just enough to fight the system, because we are fighting to make the system pure again.

It must also be done from within, as members of legislatures, school boards, town councils, Congresses.

Ask yourself why is it that in a city like Ferguson, which is 2/3 Black, until recently almost all of the Council members, and the Mayor, were White?

This, then, is the big fear. That not only will an economic plan like the Freedom Budget be passed, but even more worrisome, that more and more People of Color will not only run for office, but WIN.

This is why we MUST be united. Everything is connected. Economics, political power, voting, everything.

By encouraging the division, the Second Estate ensures its survival in a world that hates them and is becoming more liberal.

Sanders supporters--and Hillary supporters, most of whom HAVE some economic and political power already, MUST embrace the causes of BLM, and use their power to FURTHER the causes of BLM. Including helping BLM activists BECOME THE LAWMAKERS.

Because when you can make laws, you can change laws.