The Rich Started the Class War. Let's Win it

A Roadmap for the Left.... All of it

(Derived from prior rants with some added concrete steps people should take right now to push back against the other side’s sociopathic dismantling of everything we love.)

Working and poor people everywhere - urban, rural, suburban - deserve to be treated with respect and solidarity. The left has failed to organize its natural base while its political party chases donor dollars and suburban votes.

The right - and the rich - happily filled that void by distracting good people (just like you and me) who work and struggle to make a decent life for their families with culture wars about transgender athletes, gay marriage, and diversity initiatives. The other side is callous, street smart, organized, and RUTHLESS. That's how the tea party was born.

Those issues are, of course, important and the left should always fight for marginalized people. Always.

But ….

The Universal Message

People have lives, jobs, kids, struggles. They want their kids to go to schools with enough money for heat and A/C; they want to be paid and treated well at work; when their houses catch fire, they want a public employee to answer the phone; when they get sick, they want to not go bankrupt; when they drive, they want the traffic lights to function; when they fly, they want enough air traffic controllers that their plane doesn't crash into another.

The message is universal. Point the ship toward justice for the working class - all of it, urban, rural, whatever. Talk to everyone about class politics the same way: be kind, clear, direct, flexible, patient, understanding, non-judgmental, thoughtful, sympathetic, and relentless. That is how we win.

Democrats lost the election when Kamala Harris stopped talking about the economy and started touring US suburbia with Liz Cheney soliciting donor dollars talking about "watch out for fascism." What actual real working or poor person in 2024 - rural or urban - cared about the specter of future fascism or what the Cheney family was up to?

Democrats have abandoned the rural poor and working class. Set aside policy and platform (for now). Where are the field offices located, advertising dollars spent, organizers/canvassers (paid and unpaid) sent? The professionals running the party are neglecting every working and poor part of the country.

Concrete Actions

For Ordinary People Feeling Angry and Helpless

• Join or form tenant unions in your apartment building or neighborhood

• Attend school board and town hall meetings to demand better funding for public services

• Support local strikes with your presence, donations, or spreading awareness

• Talk openly with family members who vote against their economic interests about how corporate interests hurt all working people

• Volunteer with mutual aid groups providing direct support to your community

• RUN FOR LOCAL OFFICE!

For Democratic Activists

• Stop canvassing only in comfortable suburban neighborhoods - expand to rural and working-class areas

• Learn to speak about economic issues without academic jargon

• Build relationships with labor unions, tenant organizations, and community groups

• Create permanent organizing structures that persist between election cycles

• Train working-class members of the community to become the face of local organizing

For Democratic Party Leadership

• Put resources into year-round field offices in rural and working-class communities

• Focus messaging on bread-and-butter economic issues that affect everyone

• Stop chasing mega-donors and build a small-dollar fundraising machine

• Recruit candidates from working-class backgrounds who speak the language of their communities

• Invest in local media to counter right-wing dominance of rural information ecosystems

For Elected Officials

• Show up physically in struggling communities between elections, not just during campaigns

• Deliver visible material benefits that people can see, touch, and use in their daily lives

• Fight publicly and loudly against corporate power, even when it costs you donor dollars

• Speak plainly about how the rich are screwing over working people

• Stand with labor consistently, not just when it's politically convenient

How We Win

We can do this.

Stop talking down to people and start working with them against a common foe: the businesspeople and billionaires in charge who want more more more at everyone else's expense.

This is not only about red states. Rural CT, NY, VT, PA, and WA are virtually indistinguishable (culturally) from rural Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, etc. And if you disagree with them about something, so what? Children of bigots shouldn't starve, right? It's that simple.

Talk to everyone the same way - clearly, kindly, and directly - about the corporate structures making their lives so miserable and hard.

Bernie's been doing it for decades. That's why he's so very loved by rural working people in Vermont, who are culturally and economically indistinguishable from rural working people in Alabama.

Harness the justified economic rage and ignore the lies and distractions. Signalgate took up like 5 pages of the New York Times yesterday, but outside small circles around DC/Yemen it doesn't have any impact on anyone's lives.

Don't get distracted. Kindly harness and focus the justified rage toward building a solid party that speaks clearly about class politics, of and for working and poor people everywhere.

Stop looking/talking down, look people in the eyes, be kind and clear and flexible and non-judgmental and direct and ruthless and relentless, be reliable, show up to THEIR meetings on THEIR schedule rather than expecting them to show up to yours. Sit quietly in the back and listen, understand, think, strategize, communicate, contribute, and build.

Don't look at people as "uneducated" because they haven't read the same words as you. The rural car mechanic knows what's wrong with your car and how to fix it. That's educated in my book. And skilled to boot. Treat people like people and we'll win. Because we're right. Because we aren't cruel. Because we're thoughtful, non-judgmental, generous, flexible, and relentless.

Because we work together.

The Policy Part

If we approach everything this way, we'll win. Now let's talk policy for a minute. Stop globalizing wealth, stop deregulating, stop supporting the deportation machine tearing families apart for no reason, stop supporting genocide, and stop gutting public services in the name of "bipartisanship" or "balanced budgets" or "compromise".

Deliver material benefits - health clinics, broadband, everything. The IRA signed by Biden was a good start, but it didn't materially change lives or help anyone until this year, 2025. Too late for a '24 election.

We got this.

Me

I lived in rural Tennessee from 2010-12, a legal aid lawyer fresh outta law school. I represented entire trailer parks against well-connected slumlords who used guns and cops to evict.

Most of my clients voted Republican.

Some of my clients had Confederate flags on the walls of their trailers and on their car bumpers.

All of them were good people doing their best.

When I showed up to fight for them, to fight with them, they didn't care about my race or ethnicity or funny sounding name.

Meanwhile Obama's deportation machine, which connected the criminal justice system to the immigration system, was ramping up. Racist rural police pulled everyone over who didn't look white and arrested them for driving without a license. ICE was at the jail, ready to take away - kidnap - a child's parent. POOF. A family torn apart for no reason.

I spoke and organized with those undocumented families the same way I did with the white trailer residents.

We can do this. Push back.