French Resistance fighters, 1944
Democrats have gone into full resistance mode, with Democratic Senators boycotting confirmation hearings to prevent a vote on President Trump’s candidates. (Republicans suspended the rules and approved Treasury Secretary candidate Steven Mnuchin and HHS Secretary candidate Tom Price anyway. See this.)
Meanwhile, a self-described “alternative left” has emerged that is pressuring Democratic elected officials not to co-operate with the Republicans. Notice how the use of the term “the resistance” is taken from what the underground movements that opposed Hitler was called. See a manifesto after the jump.
From Bhaskar Sunkara, The anti-Trump resistance will fail if we don’t ditch establishment Democrats | The Guardian:
An anti-Trump resistance movement must be broad, but it must direct its anger and energy not just at the enemy in the White House, but the failed leadership that let him get there. The Tea Party movement couldn’t have emerged with Bob Dole and George W Bush among their leaders. We can’t build our anti-Trump resistance, settled with generations of unpopular Democratic party leaders either.
The alternative must come from below – and certainly protests like the Women’s March are inspiring starts. Millions marched, many of whom had never attended a political protest before. It was hopefully a sign of things to come. Yet it is crucial that we know what this broad movement is for, as well as what it is against. . . .
Now a whole generation of Sanders Democrats are engaged in a process that at its best creatively produces divisions and polarizations within the party that complements the organizing that is going on outside of it.
The broad sketches of an alternative-left politics in the Trump era are emerging. Socialists and others are doing their part building social movements organized around real, uncompromising demands for things such as free public higher education and a dignified healthcare system to expand the base for progressive politics, while using local elections (both within Democratic primaries and as independents) to spread their message far and wide.
Photo, Members of the Maquis in La Tresorerie (a hamlet part of Wimille, near Boulogne-sur-Mer, France), 14 September 1944.Photograph by Donald I. Grant, Department of National Defence, now in the collection of Library and Archives Canada, PA-166396. Public Domain. Wikipedia Commons.
