One hint, from my article on climate chaos in Z magazine:
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Obviously, an agenda for fighting global warming blends into a general social justice agenda. By the time we start supporting large public works programs, regulation to improve human well being, huge cuts in military spending, massive international economic aid, and begin opposing corporate globalization it makes sense to support others who work on the same and related issues. In this context, helping to build a larger progressive movement is practical environmental politics.
Practical Politics
Thanks to things like the bankruptcy bill, and a labor relations process that favors owners over workers, workers are losing rights off and on the job. Unions are losing membership and power. Women still don't earn equal pay for equal work, let alone get real social support when pregnant. Women's access to abortion and contraception is also threatened. The glass ceiling isn't exactly kind to women who make it into the corridors of power. Wal-Mart is not exactly kind to the women outside those corridors. African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, American Indians, and Pacific Islanders still face discrimination in hiring, education, home rental or purchase. They also face discrimination by the police and unequal justice in the courts. As do gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered (GLBT)—and Muslims. Muslims in the U.S. not charged with terror related offenses still face, not just discrimination, but deportation and torture. (GLBT and Muslims are probably the only folks in the U.S. you can get away with admitting hate for.) The disabled still face pervasive denials of their rights that most people are completely unaware of.
A climate justice coalition would have a lot to offer a general movement for freedom and equality—including a massive green jobs program, and strong secondary reasons to support most types of equal rights. Climate chaos also offers a concrete example of the destructive failures and inefficiencies markets can produce. On the practical level, the environmental movement has a large existing base of volunteers and staff, and a fair degree of ability to attract more.
Offering these assets to other movements will show that we seek an alliance of equals, one place among many at the table. If we pay attention to other movements, and try to advance our agenda in ways that also advances theirs, we can ask the same in return. That, rather than trying to make our issue the center of everything, will build grassroots strength.
To put it mildly, calls for this type of unity are not new. So what is different that makes success possible this time? I think you are starting to see two types of awareness seep into left and progressive political consciousness.
One, after a long period of downplaying and denigrating class, we are starting to see real awareness of class issues. Even mainstream mildly liberal politicians are starting to mention that there is such thing as a working class, and most of us are members of it.
Second, there is even awareness of a middle class, a class between labor and capital, roughly identifiable by having made above the $84,000 income bracket in 2000. On a lot of issues such households have experienced life differently than the overwhelming majority. The majority of people have not had a raise since 1972 (in real hourly terms). Most of those in the upper 20 percent income bracket have only seen their income stagnate since 2001. The tax breaks that mainly benefited the rich and cost most people money, when reduced services are counted, did modestly benefit almost all of the top 20 percent of households. (Since Bush took office, the percent benefiting is more like the top 1 to 5 percent.)
Middle class is not a matter of income. That is merely a key indicator. Just as capital is defined by ownership, the middle class is defined by relationship to work. The middle class tends to work in technical, managerial, or bureaucratic jobs, to have more control over their work life than ordinary workers, to have more pleasant, less rote jobs. Being a manager or lawyer or even an artist is no constant round of joy. There is still labor involved, but a lawyer lives a very different life from a grocery clerk. Ask a lawyer who puts in 60 hours a week if she would rather put that same 60 hours in as a grocery clerk for the same money. Owners are still the dominant force in our society. But there is a real separation in interests and way of life between the middle class and the working class.
Progressive movements have largely been led by people with different experiences of the world and different short term interests than the majority of the population. Even most unions tend to pay their presidents, business agents, and other top staff many times what the workers they represent earn, giving them more in common with the corporate foes they are supposed to fight than their membership. If groups really intend to be open to working class people, they have to understand that the effort and intelligence needed to overcome the barriers placed before those from a working class background may not be reflected in either formal education or easily documented experience. Someone from a professional family may appear more qualified, even if the working class person is better suited to the job. Just as a woman or a disabled or GLBT person or a person of color may have had to work twice as hard, be twice as smart to get to the same place, so may someone from the working class, compared to someone with a middle class background.
For the most part middle class dominance of progressive movements is not deliberate. But the very unawareness of differences between the groups is similar to the way some white people "don't see color." In organizations with paid staff or boards of directors, those boards and that staff overwhelmingly come from high-income families. In volunteer groups, the most influential volunteers, those who can donate more than ten hours a week, come from such backgrounds. This is quite natural in a way. When it comes to paid staff and board members, who will most likely have obvious qualifications? Among volunteers, who is likely to have spare time to donate?
o the problem is not how the environmental movement gains support for technical and political solutions to global warming, but how some sort of alliance or coalition or informal network between labor, feminists, GLBT, anti-racists, peace activists, the disability rights movement, and environmentalists can combine with others to win a larger agenda. This problem then divides into three questions. Can we really come together? Can we move beyond upper middle class leadership? Can we win if we do?
No single issue can motivate the kind of unity we need, but the common simultaneous emergencies may. More and more, varying groups are trying to reach out to one another. In the long run the question is not just one of building a coalition, but a movement—one with a core of shared values, programs, and strategies that is more than just a laundry list of multiple single-issue viewpoints.