Do our political actions even have the power to succeed?
Though we have worked incredibly hard since 2016, our gains have not materially reshaped society as we hoped. All the while, our structural power has been whittled away. How should we move forward?
Many of us in the progressive and left-leaning political movement in the US are facing a moment of critical reflection. Since Trump’s first inauguration in 2016, varieties of mass mobilizations have been featured in media, changed the national conversation, and even led to initial legislative and structural changes. Society has been pushed by movements like #MeToo, LGBTQ+ organizing, the Dreamers and anti-ICE movement, youth climate and climate justice movement, Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police, and Palestine solidarity and increasing anti-militarization movement. This is not an exhaustive list, but illustrative of major trends in social change towards social justice.
While there has been a tremendous amount of organizing and advocacy, with tangible changes coming from these movements, at the same time, other structural and power systems have been moving in the other direction. Our ability to change society is being increasingly whittled away. Our resources like money, time, health, housing, and more are increasingly taken from us while prices increase. Levels of social organization remain low (perhaps with the exception of proliferation of labor unions in recent years). Formal voting rules around campaign financing and voter districting challenge our ability to effectively wield the ballot. Information diets are increasingly fragmented, polarized, while media companies are predatory, manipulative, and sow division. Our cooperative and and political skills are low, and we are prone to infighting, lack of strategy, and little understanding of political systems and how power works.
This is in no way meant to be an unfair indictment of our society; rather, an expression of concern that our social movements may be missing a crucial part of how society is shifting. Our ability to change society for the better depends on how much power we have. By these indicators, it seems that our power is very low, and decreasing, despite an incredible amount of drive and effort. If these barriers persist, our movements may continue to be ineffective or lose their gains.
We are living through a moment of critical reflection for our social movements, and we have to rise to the occasion. Can we win our fights given our current level of ability to change the system? What can we learn about our movements from these gaps in our organizing? All this should inform how we move forward in particularly dangerous times that are challenging the very fabric of our society and determining its future for generations to come.
Reflecting on our recent social movements
The past eight or so years have been a notable point in US history, with a surge of social movements. Since Trump’s first election in 2016, there have been several major efforts to move society towards a more socially just and equitable state: the #MeToo movement, anti-ICE and immigrant rights movement, youth climate justice movement, Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police, Palestine solidarity, and an increase in widespread labor unionization. Now we are seeing emerging movements by scientists, federal employees, and undoubtedly more to come.
These movements have had certain successes that are notable, as well as shortcomings that should be reflected on, while in no way downplaying the tremendous effort, courage, and sacrifice that went into them. Almost all of these movements have achieved large-scale mindset shifts, bringing issues of justice, oppression, dangers of capitalism, and imperialist systems into the public discourse. Some of them led to widespread changes in institutions, like implementation of DEI programs and shifts towards renewable energy.
However, in our current moment, many of these gains are being challenged or utterly destroyed. DEI programs are being shut down across the country, and frightened people are backing away from it. Environmental regulations are being dismantled. Some movements struggled to make widespread material changes in the first place, such as the fight for immigration rights, Defund the Police, and Palestine solidarity — and these fights are only getting worse. Despite many in the nation moving their mindset towards social justice across these issues, others were instead captured by smart counter-messaging by far-right media and manipulated into backlash and more regressive views.
To be extra critical of ourselves, it was not just that movements were defeated by far-right politics. Some of these movements even struggled against the Biden administration to achieve any material wins. Now, what policies Biden did implement stand to be simply obliterated by Trump’s second, more effective, and bloodthirsty administration.
One way to view what happened and is still unfolding is that we never had as much collective power as we might have thought we did. Despite years of massive mobilizations and incredible organizing efforts, we did not substantially increase our power to change the system. In fact, all the while, our power was being taken away. But our movements did not respond en masse to these changes. My caveat to this is that though we do not currently have collective, organized power, we each individually have more power and agency than we think. We can use that to grow our power. We still have autonomy and many more freedoms to act than in other societies, and we should use those to rebuild real power to challenge the system.
What gives us power to change the system?
The avenues of power mentioned above, which were being dismantled while our social movements pushed for certain changes, include things like our access to society’s resources, our levels of social and political organization, formal electoral rules and structures, our relationship to information and media, and our cooperative and political skills. Many researchers and commentators point to the ever-increasing income inequality as something that has continued to skyrocket over the past decade. I argue this is only one type of resource that is a piece of a broader power inequality. In essence, our society has been continually changing so it favors the rich and powerful and cuts off the ability of everyone else to influence its course. Another way to view this is that we have been slowly moved to a system where we are more effectively controlled.
Think first of material resources like money, time, health and healthcare, housing, food, and water. We are, on the whole, making less money over time as compared to the inflating price of goods. Our time is increasingly demanded by work and we have less free time. Our health is deteriorating and our access to healthcare is so bad that some feel motivated to murder healthcare CEOs. Houses are unaffordable, homelessness is widespread in many major cities, and rents skyrocket. Food and water is low quality, expensive, and makes us even more sick. All of these resources are dominated by monopolistic and autocratic corporations who horde it all, give access to premium versions of it to the rich and powerful, and leave everyone else struggling.
We need these resources to make change. If we are hungry, tired, overworked, unhealthy, have no home, and spend all our money on these bare necessities, we have no energy or means to be politically active. We just have to spend our time surviving. On the flip side, those who control us have an abundance of these resources, and therefore an abundance of power.
Now consider structural components of our society like our level of social and political organization or formal electoral systems. As time goes on, we are increasingly individualized and divided, suffering alone. Most of our politics, for the average person, happens through a screen and not face-to-face with our communities. Meanwhile, our political parties are out of touch, manipulative, have no laws governing how much money they can take from corporations and wealthy individuals, and scores of people are entirely dejected by the electoral system.
Our ability to change society strongly hinges on these structural factors. The more organized we are into unions, cooperatives, community organizations, and functional political parties, the more we are unified in our thinking and action, which translates to power in the system. When our political parties are actually accountable to their members, we have a higher level of control. The more isolated, in our own heads, dejected, and disconnected from political power we are, the easier it is to control us.
I should note that the one exception to this trend that I have been aware of is the increased efforts towards labor union organization. These are strong rebukes to the state of isolation, overwork, and domination by authoritarian structures (in the form of corporations). Moreover, they are often much more diverse in demographics and worldview than other social movements. We should all look to labor organization as one of the shining beacons in the fight to take back control of our society, and learn how to apply their strategies and structures to other institutions and aspects of life.
Finally, imagine other aspects of our political life like our information, media habits, cooperative skills, and political skills. Media is highly corporatized, information glut is uncontrolled, and social media companies manipulate us both with information and interaction mechanisms. We are also increasingly addicted to media consumption, mostly likely as a result of being so burned out and exhausted from being resource- and community-starved. Politicians and media divide us, reduce our empathetic capacity for working with others, draw us further into our identities and encourage us to defend them. Technology increasingly makes us antisocial and further isolated from diverse spaces of rich discourse and dialogue. To cap it all off, we largely have no idea how to fight back, how to be strategic or effective, how to map structures of power, or come up with compelling visions.
All of these things are essential for our ability to make meaningful social and political change. You could argue that these are key pieces of what it means to live in a democracy. Democratic life is about much more than voting. If people are to truly have the power to shape society, then we must have access to resources and time, well-structured community life and organizations, responsive political parties, quality information, and cooperative political skills.
Moreover, though I presented them in separate paragraphs, these are all interrelated factors. Just for one example, our resource deprivation leads us to consume media, lose our social skills, further isolate, which makes it easier to manipulate our information environments, which further divides us and makes it easier to take resources from us, and so on. You could make similar arguments for the interrelations of other factors.
Contrast this all with a vision of what our world could look like. We all could have access to enough money, work less and have more free time, be healthy and have access to quality health care, all have affordable places to live where we take care of our neighborhoods together. Our food and water could be high quality, abundant, locally produced and managed — actually make us healthier rather than more sick. We could all have rich social and community lives, not just slave away at work all day every day. We could know our neighbors, be part of community groups actively governing local affairs, have access to our elected representatives who actually reflect our values and aren’t corrupt and manipulated by moneyed interests. We wouldn’t waste so much time and emotion doom scrolling on social media because we would have democratically-governed, high-quality information producers who do not manipulate us, and ways to access it that do not make us fight with each other. Our society could be based on mutual understanding, empathy, cooperation, and share values but also embrace diversity and difference as something that is not existentially threatening but legitimate and part of our ecosystem. When things need to be changed, we would already be organized, politically skilled, able to deliberate with each other, and be actively co-constructing our society in a just way so it works for all of us.
A society with these markers would be much better able to secure the wins we’ve been fighting for since 2016. We wouldn’t be so desperate for resources that we overwork and spend the only free time we have consuming media to feel better. We would already be organized into communities who we could discuss with, share resources, and exert political influence. Our politicians wouldn’t be so easily corrupted and unaccountable to normal people. We would be much more skilled in analyzing politics and its systems so we could strategically intervene and effect change. If society had these features in abundance, we would have a much easier time making meaningful and lasting social changes that would make it more just, equitable, and a net positive contributor to the world.
Critical questions for our movements
For some reason, these types of issues and their related visions of a better future are not widespread in our social movements. If anything, they’re secondary to things like racial justice, gender justice, an end to imperialism and a free Palestine, and a more just immigration system. Don’t misunderstand — I deeply believe in these causes and have spent a tremendous amount of energy trying to fight for them. But at the same time, these more base-level aspects of society are not always visible in the most dominant progressive and left-leaning conversations; nor are they the main focus of our organizing efforts.
Having laid all this out, I believe that it paints a picture that is worthy of strong consideration by political activists and community organizers across the country. We have to reckon with the fact that we are being systematically deprived of power — our ability to change the system — and that we are not currently organized around these issues.
One critical point of reflection, which motivated this meditation, is to consider: If we continued with our current movements and their main concerns, would we actually be able to win what we’re fighting for? Perhaps I’m somewhat pessimistic, but I believe the answer is no. We should be extra critical of ourselves when considering this question, and acknowledge that because of the time, passion, and energy we have already spend pushing for change, we are likely biased towards believing in our ability. We need to take a sober look at the state of society and honestly reflect on our feelings when we ask ourselves how much power we think we have.
Another aspect of this analysis prime for reflection is: Why have our mass movements not been centered around these core issues? Some of these are critical and widespread justice issues, particularly health, food, housing, and income disparity. We are very organized around certain social justice issues but not others. Does that say something about those who are able to work towards mass mobilizations and the issues that affect their lives? In my work with the youth climate justice movement, this was a critique we had to grapple with: many of us were affluent, highly educated, and the spaces were predominantly white. This says nothing to diminish our passion or the real threat of climate collapse. Yet we had to think critically about what it meant that many others had urgent and pressing issues that prohibited their involvement in climate organizing (often related to food, money, housing, and other core needs). The same may be true of other issues.
Another point worth considering is that many of these core power and resource issues are, perhaps surprisingly to some of us, core issues for the right that have been used to push a regressive worldview. There is a lot of discourse in far-right media concerning prices, economy, rent, elites controlling us, political corruption, technology dominating us, and media manipulation. Some of the above issues — like overwork, Republican political corruption, cooperation, and political skills — are not mentioned. But it should give us pause that a large part of society felt unheard enough on some of these issues that they gravitated towards alternative sources of information and politics.
It all leads us to ask ourselves how we should be orienting our movements and efforts. I think we cannot ignore these core issues of power and ability to influence society. But questions remain as to how they are incorporated into existing fights for justice, and how they are synthesized with real concerns of racial, gender, LGBTQ+ justice, immigration, imperialism, and more. Is it critical for us to secure more resources and power before resuming these fights? How would we ensure that resource gains are distributed equitably rather than perpetuating existing disparities?
We need a new vision — one that answers these questions. I believe that this vision will help guide those seeking a better society towards actionable issues that will yield benefits that in turn allow us to fight harder and more effectively. In fact, we may also find that the vision is appealing to a wide swath of society, including many of those who have turned away from social justice or politics entirely. It is up to us to engage in critical analysis, discuss, and forge this new vision to motivate society in a better direction.
