When Liberals Criticize Liberals About the Election

Dissent Magazine has posted a piece, "The End of Progressive Neoliberalism,' by Nancy Fraser.
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/progressive-neoliberalism-reactionary-populism-nancy-fraser

Dissent does not offer an opportunity to comment on its articles, so I will comment here.  (below)
by Duane E. Campbell 

Thank you for the piece, The End of Progressive Neoliberalism .I wondered how folks such as the writer justified the position of not organizing all available forces to defeat Trump.  It is good that you came out of the closet. I think you represent many, I have been looking for someone to speak up from this perspective ( not my own). The position puzzles me.

From your essay you seem to consider the contamination of our politics by the Clinton, neoliberal machine as a greater danger than the potential victory by Trump and his neoliberal proto fascists.

I have some issues of dissent from your piece. Contrary to your statement, there is a left in the US.  Weak, yes, but it exists. For example the CCDS says of the election,

“”The movement for justice and progress in the U.S. has suffered a great setback. And the depth of the reactionary movement that led to this setback was underestimated by most on the left. It’s necessary to reflect on what it has taught us and about our shortcomings but it’s also vital to assess our strength to meet this great challenge.” 

  I think they are referring to your position  when they say,

“And the depth of the reactionary movement that led to this setback was underestimated by most on the left.”

Democratic Socialists of America’s position is here:

http://www.dsausa.org/we_fight_for_socialism_dl_npc

There were a good number of socialists ( not liberals) who worked night and day to defeat Trump including myself.  Most did so on some form of this perspective.

http://www.dsausa.org/trump_racism_and_the_left_dl

While you make good points in criticizing liberals  ( you call them  progressive neoliberalism), I encourage you to continue to explain your own view.

I will use data from California  in response since I know the data from here more than national data. The Trump election is most likely going to eliminate health care for some 2-4 million children, in particular the children of the undocumented.  Some 2-4 million workers ( immigrants) now face deportation.  At least 40 % of these are parents of U.S. citizen children.

On closing schools

By Josh Eidelson and Sarah Jaffe - Summer 2013 

  

In 2010, a slate led by Karen Lewis ousted the incumbent leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union, promising deeper community engagement and a more aggressive defense of teachers and public education. In 2012, with Lewis as president, CTU mounted the city’s first teachers’ strike in a quarter-century, and the most dramatic recent challenge to the bipartisan education reform consensus. For the inaugural episode of Dissent magazine’s podcast series, labor journalists Josh Eidelson and Sarah Jaffe sat down with Lewis to discuss teaching and gender discrimination, professionalism and solidarity, unions and the Democratic Party. An edited version of the transcript appears below. The full interview can be heard on the Dissent website. The interview was conducted in April, before the Board of Education voted to close fifty public schools in Chicago. —Eds.

Dissent: How does the current fight over school closures in Chicago fit into the larger aims of the union?

Karen Lewis: The school closures are one symptom of a really bad school policy that we as Chicagoans have been struggling with for over ten years. The leaders of No Child Left Behind came around and said, “Oh, if the school’s bad, we’re going to close it down because, you know, it’s bad.” As if the building makes something bad. And what’s happened is, as schools close, they destabilize other schools that are close by. So there’s this domino effect they never took into consideration.

Children don’t do better when schools close. They lose anywhere from three to six months on their learning or at least on their testing.

I kept saying, “Why are they continuing to close schools, open up charter schools that don’t do any better, and not even taking the kids that were in the schools that were closed?”

But that was never good enough for the “reformers,” so they started stepping it up. Instead of closing just one or two schools, they would close seven, eight, nine, ten. And they weren’t keeping up with the children. So when schools would close, if kids didn’t go to the school they were sent to, there was no way to find out where those kids went.

Not all of them went to private school, not all of them went to charters, and not all of them left town. So where were these kids going?