New Year, New Activism for 2018
America took a big hit in 2017 — from environmental protections, to immigrant rights, from consumer protections and net neutrality, it seems the Trump administration’s playbook was to blitz and sack democracy on every down and keep Americans disoriented and exhausted.
Despite this non stop assault, Americans took to the streets, organized, protested, and burned up the phone lines and fax machines like never before. As we get closer to the 2018 primaries, Americans across the country are gearing up to renew the fight to save the country. As 2017 opened with a Women’s March, 2018 will start much the same way with marches planned from New York to San Francisco. Close on its heels will be the 2018 March for Science with over 400 marches planned across the country.
And while congress drags its feet on the Russia scandal and safeguarding our democracy from foreign influence, Team Mueller continues its work into 2018, which will have a profound effect on the primaries and the general election. Indeed, the number of Democrats running for House races has been tremendous — historic by any standards. Fueling this blue wave — by no small measure — are the election results in Virginia and Alabama.
There are, of course, two areas Americans need to be vigilant heading into the elections: the influence of the donor class and the desire for a perfect candidate. Republicans currently have out raised Democrats so far in 2017. This will certainly be exacerbated by conservative corporations who are now beyond flush with cash with the passage of the tax cut and a Koch brother driven PR campaign ready to flood the airwaves. If Americans can see through this propaganda and know that their tax cut expires and the corporations don’t, that would be enough to make this advertisement negligible. The other area, supporting a perfect candidate (a cautionary article I wrote about previously for Medium), is already starting to infiltrate even the most progressive of movements and could be detrimental to the movements going forward. Still, these groups helped fuel the small donation drive that filled the coffers of many successful Democratic candidate this past year, and if this trend continues, Americans will be able to wrest away any financial dominance the conservative corporations currently have.
There is plenty to do in 2018, and saving our democracy is at the top of the list.
Keith Carmona is an independent progressive and a member of Foothills Progressive Alliance and Sierra Forward. He can be reached at kcnlc3@gmail.com.
