This year, my holiday greeting is Healthy New Year! My biggest wish is for everyone to have great motivation to do what we all can do uniquely — and in solidarity — for a better world, especially for those people whose days of birth happened much later than our own.
What can we do? Many crucial steps can be taken to push ourselves and the Biden administration in the first 100 days. Why the urgency? Because the worst pandemic of our lives is happening now, alongside a depressed economy and threatened planet!
The election is over, the PUSH begins. Let’s take all the energy that was spent focusing on Trump or on electing anybody-but-Trump, and use our energy in the many ways we already know, to pressure for change, including an easy and effective way that you’ll see in the postscript. Especially when this pandemic eases off, we cannot forget that major changes happen in the world when people take to the streets, and when people participate in strikes.
In the first campaign I ever ran, my short slogan was “Follow The Money.” The longer version was “To understand what’s going on, Follow The Money. To know what to do about it, Follow Your Heart.” We all have uniquely individual talents — and wounds — and that’s lucky because the problems are all interrelated and so are the solutions. An improvement in one area expands to improve other areas.
Here’s one big example of connecting the dots. When we make progress reducing racism perpetuated by institutions, we improve the climate by disallowing areas where it’s “okay” to site hazardous waste dumps and transcontinental pipelines. We improve mass transit. We spend a lot less money and destroy fewer families and communities by reducing our country’s outrageous incarceration rates, our unneeded border walls, and our hostile actions abroad. This list of interrelated social and economic benefits goes on, and on, and on.
Medicare for All is top on the list for 2021, and the good news is that we don’t need to convince people it’s a good idea. A majority of people — across the political spectrum — now want an expanded and improved Medicare for All. Unfortunately so far CONGRESS and PRESIDENTS and GOVERNORS are against it! People moved beyond the much-promoted fear of “socialism” — we just need to convince people that we have the power to get it done.
THE LIST 2021
- Expanded and improved Medicare for All, follow #ForceTheVote
- Effective climate action, including stopping the pipelines and fracking
- Universal basic income
- Community policing, including restorative justice
- Whistleblower protection
- Debt-free education
- Public banking
- End sanctions and other coercive actions around the world
What’s on your list of issues? And what about the whole system? If we want real electoral democracy, we need what 90-plus other countries already have, proportional representation, which takes a big bite out of the power of money in politics. If we want real grassroots democracy, we need citizens’ assemblies and could start with civilian police oversight that is truly empowered, so that those involved in lethal use of force are put on trial. Also, we could certainly update our elderly constitution! Say goodbye to the Electoral College.
How do we pay for all that? Let’s consider how expensive the current policies are, in healthcare, the environment, the economy, criminal justice, our foreign policy and the military. We can spend less and have lives that are more just, safe, sustainable, and healthy.
A better world is possible, and for that, a better U.S. is necessary!
Laura
P.S. A significant individual action you can take RIGHT NOW is to change your voter registration from the billionaires’ and corporations’ favored options — Democratic or Republican parties or “no party preference” — and instead register Green or Peace & Freedom or whatever is the most progressive political party in your state. Search online for “register to vote [state].” In California you can quickly check how you’re registered here and change your registration at this link. Let me know so I can welcome you!