On Sunday (Aug. 20) Daily Kos ran a front-page story applauding Elizabeth Warren’s Netroots Nation speech in which she reminded us that we mustn’t draw a false choice between either fighting for economic justice causes or fighting for social justice causes — we can and we must fight for both. As we reflect on that, here are some sobering numbers which underscore Warren’s point, from a diary I posted a few months ago.
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A landmark 2011 study led by epidemiologist Sandro Galea attributed 291,000 U.S. deaths in the year 2000 to poverty* and income inequality, 245,000 deaths to low education, 176,000 deaths to racial segregation, and 162,000 deaths to low social support (New York Times; Science Daily). When people are dying from raw economics at the same time as people are dying from racist policing, I surely don’t want Democratic politicians to stand in a room with Fight for 15 activists and Black Lives Matter activists and declare that one life-and-death issue is secondary to another. Democratic politicians should have their constituents’ backs on all these issues.
One of the very strengths of progressives is that we recognize there are myriad issues that need to be addressed and we are determined and able to work on multiple problems at the same time. Progressives can achieve the most when we’re being supportive toward all folks who are focusing on critical concerns, from racist policing to income inequality to transgender rights to global warming and a multitude of other areas I haven’t listed.
It makes sense that people will choose to focus on different issues or approach the same issue from different angles. For example, as I illustrated in a recent diary, people have been working in a united way to resist the GOP’s assault on the Affordable Care Act, even while individually some are emphasizing economic justice aspects and others emphasizing social justice aspects.
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As Elizabeth Warren said:
We all came to this fight from different experiences. We all get fired up about different issues...we can’t waste energy arguing about whose issue matters most or who in our alliance should be voted off the island. We need to see each other’s fights as our own.
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*The official U.S. poverty rate in 2000 was 11.3%; it is now 13.5%, based on 2015 estimates (this equates to 43.1 million Americans living below the poverty line).