Earlier this month, we sent an email to the subscribers of the Adalah Justice Project with the subject line: Are you ready to fight with us against Biden? Almost immediately, we received angry responses telling us we had gone too far, that we should give Biden a chance, and taking us to task for discounting the significance of Biden’s defeat of Trump.
It goes without saying that the removal of Donald Trump from the presidency is a major accomplishment, and indeed one that should be celebrated. However, this is not the time for complacency. The fight is different, but just as urgent under a Biden administration. It is vital that our movements for social justice resist Joe Biden’s pull to a status quo guided by corporate interests and imperialist calculations.
Two interlocking realities must drive opposition to an administration which has already confirmed its repudiation of a progressive agenda. First, Biden and the Party establishment are actively working to undermine the Party’s left wing as progressive forces inside push for policies that center people at home and abroad, not business and defense contractor concerns. Polling shows a majority of Democratic voters support universal healthcare and environmental laws that protect the planet, and an increasing number supports an end to US military interventions including unchecked funding for Israel and other human rights violators. Second, we must resist a return to the centrism of the Democratic Party establishment because the only means to effectively advance Palestinian rights in the US are tied to the success of other progressive movements. Funding for social justice agendas, such as the Green New Deal, requires that the US reprioritize the federal budget away from military spending and defense.
The War Within the Democratic Party
As soon as the election results started coming in, establishment Democrats started punching left, blaming its progressive wing for the Party’s weak performance in congressional races. Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants blamed demands to defund the police and succumbed to Republican red-baiting to absolve themselves of responsibility for losses in swing districts. Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez swung back pointing out that the Party’s losses could be explained by lack of investment in its working class base. She pointed out that all 112 candidates who backed progressive policies like Medicare for All won their elections.
Polls taken shortly before the election found that climate change was one of the top issues on voters mind, both nationally but also in swing states like Florida and Arizona. Of the 93 co-sponsors of the Green New Deal, only one lost their bid for reelection. Four of these candidates were in swing states and still won their seat. Election day polls make it clear that the vast majority of the Democratic base supports measures that most centrist Democrats are fighting to curtail.
This rift within the Party and between its base and the leadership has powerful implications for the future of the country and for Palestine. Nothing is guaranteed by a Biden presidency, and there is no time or reason to “give Biden a chance.” If anything, Biden told us who he’s batting for when, shortly before the elections, he assured his billionaire donors that should he win, “nothing will fundamentally change.” What’s more, Biden repeated calls for unity and a desire to “reach across the aisle” signal a commitment to turn back the clock, and blunt progressive gains and rebuff demands made in the aftermath of one of the largest Black-led rebellions in US history.
Now that the transition is on, Biden is putting his retrograde policies in place. He appointed Louisiana congress member Cedric Richmond as a Senior Advisor for Public Engagement to lead national climate change programs. Richmond’s record suggests he has no interest in reversing climate change as he has taken money from oil and gas companies and ignored the to concerns of his own constituents in “Cancer Alley”, an area in Louisiana with one of the nation’s highest risk of cancer due to airborne toxins left from oil and gas projects.
You can’t separate climate change from imperialism. To lead US foreign policy, Biden turned to Tony Blinken. Blinken served as both Deputy Secretary of State and Deputy National Security Adviser under Barack Obama. He has made it clear that he intends to return to unequivocal bipartisan support for Israel, no questions asked. In a meeting with Democratic Majority for Israel last May, he said a Biden presidency would mean a constant and unconditional flow of military funding to Israel and when asked how he would react to UN condemnation of Israel’s flagrant violations of human rights, Blinken responded,”Will we stand up forcefully against it and try to prevent it, defuse it and defeat it? Absolutely.”
Blinken reminds us that with Biden in office we’re back to the slick, corporate boardroom world of neoliberal Democrats. It’s a world that puts working people last and treats the Global South as a military playing field.
Intersecting Left Movements: Climate, Militarism, and Palestine
The race for the next chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is indicative of the impact the left flank of the Democratic Party has had on what used to be run-of-the mill appointments. Rep. Brad Sherman (CA-30) was the shoo-in for the position. He ticked all the right boxes to fit the criteria for a hawkish establishment politician, the kind who have run the HFAC since its birth.
The position of chair is up for grabs after the defeat of Eliot Engel, as hawkish a Democrat as there is, voting ‘yes’ on the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and ‘no’ on the Iran nuclear deal. In a recent interview with Jewish Insider, Engel said, “We support Israel because Israel supports us, and we have values that we stand for, and Israel stands for the same values.”
That Sherman is not expected to win this position is a sign of the pressures of the left on foreign policy. Instead, Gregory Meeks (NY-5) and Joaquin Castro (TX-20) are in a tight race. Meeks, though touted as a progressive, has a long history of lobbying for trade agreements, like the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement (TPP), that entrench corporate power and produce an unwieldy number of environmental and labor violations. Castro’s positions were described aptly in a recent Mondoweiss piece,
“Some of [Joaquin Castro’s] votes in past years have been unhelpful, to be as charitable as possible, but his recent actions distinguish him from the other candidates, like signing bold “Dear Colleague” letters in March and last week to end US complicity in Israel’s ‘creeping annexation’ of demolishing Palestinian homes. Alone among the candidates and rare among Congressional leadership, Castro has courageously opened the door to consider new ways forward in this situation that include seeking and listening to the voices of the people most affected, Palestinians themselves.”
The Sunrise Movement, a powerful collective of young organizers demanding U.S. policies to fight climate change, signaled its understanding that the fight against climate change is linked with the fight against imperialism by endorsing Castro, After all, the US military is the world’s greatest polluter. Additionally, there is growing awareness that progressive agendas like the Green New Deal can only be funded by reducing military spending and redistributing military funds to uplift communities across the U.S., especially now as we endure waves of COVID-19 that have seen the US poverty level rise steeply in just a matter of months. The intersecting struggles against climate change and militarism is an important point of collaboration and strategic thinking as we in the Palestine movement push against a Biden administration that is hostile to our demands for real change. Ending US military funding must be a crucial pillar among the broad array of progressive movements demanding change.
“Give Biden A Chance”
The chorus of “give Biden a chance” are missing a very important point: centrist and establishment Democrats that Biden represents have been given enough chances and each and every one of them ended with a common outcome: a widening gap between the rich and poor in the United States. That’s why a new generation is demanding an end to this status quo and building movements rooted in the call for a world built bottom-up, with voices like AOC, Cori Bush, and Zohran Mamdani creating ruptures within the political status-quo and charting a path that is not new, but that is growing in numbers.
Our goal here here in the US, and in Palestine, must be so much more than simply replacing our oppressor. Author and organizer Adrienne Maree Brown reminds us that what we pay attention to grows. If we limit our demands to what is pragmatic or politically expedient, our movements for justice will always fall short. Let’s dream bigger than what the Democratic Party is selling as progress. Let’s collectively demand the world we know is possible, one where oppressed peoples, from Palestine to Kashmir to Flint, rise up to take control of their own lives.
This article is part of the Mondoweiss series Redefining Liberation by the Adalah Justice Project on moving past the narrow definition of national struggle and embracing liberation strategies grounded in the rich Palestinian legacy of joint struggle and transnational solidarity. With strong connections to radical organizing happening in their Palestinian homeland, Adalah Justice Project‘s vision of transformation is rooted in the understanding that race, gender, sexual orientation, and class all intersect to create the conditions of our current reality. AJP is a Palestinian organization that works to transform public discourse and U.S. policy on Palestine through public education, coalition-building, and advocacy within all realms of political activity, from the grassroots to Capitol Hill. Learn more about AJP’s work, and follow the entire series here.
I’ve always admired carrot and stick diplomacy, and I think it should be applied to the Democratic establishment and its current leader, Joe Biden. Progressives should continue to support Joe and the Party in its battles with the Republicans, but only if it is willing to work with, and not against, the Party’s progressive wing.
Without the Democratic establishment making a sincere attempt to bridge the gap with the Party’s progressives, the Party is likely doomed to lose both houses of Congress in 2 years, and the presidency along with it in 2024.
Education is key. There’s a Holocaust museum in Washington – why isn’t there also a Nakba museum?
Someone said that comparisons between Nazis and Israel are an obscene comparison.
I don’t think the Nazi-Israel metaphor is particularly useful, but who am I to argue with a former Israeli general?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/incoming-mk-yair-golan-again-compares-right-wing-to-nazis-drawing-ire/
And he’s not the only prominent Israeli to say similar things.
A story I’ve told before. Nablus, 1988. Soldiers were firing live rounds at youngster throwing rocks. When things calmed down I walked up to a soldier, “What are you doing?” “Look, when they learn how to take what is rightfully theirs, we can afford to give it to them.”
Recently Abbas said he would no longer pay families for lone wolf violence, something of great PR value. He did it quietly, in the dark so to speak. Hardly anyone heard or reported. Those kind of mistakes are self inflicted wounds. Like disagreeing with Trump so disagreeably. And Biden is to ride to the rescue? Time to get real.
“the significance of Biden’s defeat of Trump.”
The significance is that it shows the Democrats have improved their election rigging techniques, so that they overcame the Republican election rigging techniques.