New York, NY - This week will see a series of citywide
worker rallies and demonstrations culminating in a major action taking place at
Foley Square on December 5 - and for hard-fighting progressives pushing the new
de Blasio administration to rein in Wall Street and advance an authentic
people’s agenda - the stakes could not be higher.
“We automatically have fear in our hearts that if we ask for
too much that we won’t get anything,” UnitedNY Executive Director Camille
Rivera said ahead of this week's actions. “And my response is that we have to ask
for everything to get what we need.”
Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s landslide victory in November’s
general election has sparked as much trepidation amongst progressives as it has
joy - as those who supported the Brooklyn Democrat’s mayoral run, now weigh
just how hard they still need push in order to fulfill a progressive agenda.
“Democrats, especially in this city, have been walking
around the desert for the last three decades,” says Ed Ott, former head of the
New York City Central Labor Council and current lecturer at the Joseph S.
Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies. “So, now they feel
like they’re at the promised land.”
That said, Ott is anticipating policy changes affecting
housing, wages and education that happen over time, rather than a “90-day
miracle.”
“There’s so many things that people in this city have to
rethink,” Ott says. “[But] in spite of this election, there is Ghandian
resistance to raising taxes. The problem that the mayor has is that he doesn’t
control his own revenues. He has a little bit of the sales tax, he has some of
the real estate tax - for everything else, he has to go to Albany.”
Shaking up the state capital in similar fashion to New York
City, however, might not be as far outside the realm of possibility as it once
may have been.
“The focus on the 1-percent is something that working people
are beginning to understand,” says Professor William Tabb, author of The
Restructuring of Capitalism In Our Time. “What the left has got to do, is say,
'Yes, government isn’t doing what working people want it to do - and that’s
because the 1-percent controls the government.'"
According to Rivera, the progressive narrative blasting Wall
Street greed has already changed the face of politics, and helped usher in a
new era in New York City.
“Two years ago, you would never have seen the future
mayor-elect getting arrested at a hospital,” Rivera says. “You would never have
had regular people talking about the left wing as if it’s a sexy movement.
Well, the left has taken City Hall.”
Bertha Lewis, a longtime activist and de Blasio supporter,
is certainly rejoicing in the mayor-elect’s win, but she is also keeping
mindful about what's needed to truly fulfill a progressive agenda in New York
City.
“Wall Street, the developers and the right still think this
is their town,” Lewis says. “They like the tale of two cities. It works for
them.”
Bob Master, political director for the Communication Workers
of America, says that progressives “need to see this as a really important time
- and push it forward.”
“We worked really hard for this, but just electing people is
not enough,” Master says. “Our enemies are extremely powerful and will stop at
nothing.”
Despite the challenges, Ott says it’s been a very long time
since “liberals and progressives had a mayor that they felt was theirs.”
“The hopeful part for me is that maybe this is the beginning
of a turnaround where progressives get an opportunity to show that they can
govern in a different way, and they can actually solve some of the problems for
poor people in this city without polarizing it,” Ott says.
For many progressives who had high hopes for Barack Obama,
the 44th president's disappointing time in office thus far, stands as a warning to the left in
New York City about losing its narrative and becoming too complacent.
"We have the first 100 days to make our mark," Rivera
says. "We cannot lose this moment."
Source: LaborPress
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