This is the first of two diaries I would like to write on the recent pie fights. Full disclosure: I am a fervent Hillary supporter but that does not change the issue at hand here. I first want to talk about Kos’ recent strategy of us/them, economics/identity politics, alt-left/”regular” progressives etc. I noticed this a week or so ago when I read Kos’ diary on the whole Mello kerfuffle, I was puzzled. It was extremely strident in saying that if you would support someone like Mellow, you are automatically part of the white male patriarchy who is deaf to what other minorities, the other sex, other belief systems want. I countered in my own rec-listed diary that the situation is more complex than that. I for example am a white man but I am also a gay man who is very concerned about women’s access to choice, I do worry considerably about what happens to people in red states and people who are different for me. For me personally, I looked at the two candidates on the ground: one seems to have made an honest effort to change his record on choice in the past 5 years, has been supported by Planned Parenthood and has promised to let Planned Parenthood do its job. Beyond that, the locals, people who have to deal with the realities on the ground, chose this candidate over the opposition. To me, this is the best way to ensure that real women in Nebraska can get the essential services they need. That does not make one thing or the other — it means that I feel that Mello was the best choice out of two. That is why I find Kos’ recent either/or strategy .
In a recent diary, Kos posited that “if you have to choose between a wall and single-payer, what would you choose.” This kind of comparison is bizarre because it again presumes again a either/or dichotomy. Obviously, the progressive answer is: No wall and we fight for single-payer. I have a Mexican friend who lives in Minnesota. He is strongly anti-wall. But is you put him in a position to get healthcare for his daughter if she couldn’t get it, what would his choice be? What would yours be? How about marriage equality or healthcare? Well, I know several gay couples who would choose the healthcare if it mean saving the person they love. What would you choose? What if you are a person who color who lives in a red state where you have to choose between someone who has a muddy past on choice over someone who is overtly anti-choice? What if you live in Flint, Michigan and you pick the candidate who will best address the tragic poisoning of the water supply over choice or marriage equality or….? I think the first step to being harmony is to stop shoe-horning us into this or that category. We are all many things, we have many conflicted issues which we need to address, we have different candidates who must meet different criteria for acceptability in red states vs. blue states, urban vs. rural.
I am thinking about the wonderful Kimberlé Crenshaw who gives very interesting Ted Talks on intersectionality like this one. The basis of her argument is that many of us can fall into an intersection of groups, thereby sometimes creating new and hybrid forms of discrimination within a specific subset. She begins her talk by naming a bunch of names of African American men gunned down and killed by law enforcement. The name recognition of these men is high. But then she moves on to women who were killed in the same manner and most are virtually unknown. So even the differences in this subset is striking. She then talks about a case in which a black woman sought an attorney because she could not get employed at a company — either with black employees who were all men or with women who were all white. She was caught at an intersection of these two worlds. The video is worth watching in its entirety.
Thus, the point is, we are not one thing, we are many things. Our reasons for supporting a candidate or not or a position or not are not as simple as economic/identity politics. People of color, women, other faiths, LGBT people intersect very directly with economic issues. Even when we look at choice: it most affects poor women of color — so is it an identity politic or an economic issue? How about police violence? Very much an economic issue as well as a racial one.
I think to be the best progressives we can be, we need to stop pigeon-holing: I can be white, gay, politically pragmatic, pro-choice and many other things. As someone else is Latina and disabled. We will not move forward as long as it is “us versus them”. I am a progressive so I care about people at the intersections of many issues: race, class, education, gender, faith, (dis)ability, orientation, physical location, environmental conditions, health care status and many more factors. One size does not fit all.