This is a difficult discussion, and I want to be graceful about all mourning.
But the American liberal proverb "powerful political individual X doesn't owe you anything" must be destroyed. They're means to ends on behalf of millions of ordinary people, and nothing more.
For example: is descriptive representation a means or an end? The answer should be clear. It is, again, merely a means to an end via empowerment and increased participation of people with shared identities. It's not an end in an of itself.
Is the kid touching Obama's hair photo an end? Maybe to some extent. But more important is that it represents the inspiration and empowerment of young Black people, who will then participate and run for office and...ya know...implement policies that help regular Black people!
Is criticism like this disproportionately leveled when women are the political actors whose strategy is in question? Surely. We have to understand that, as well as the original point.
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Here's my new working paper w/ @robmickey & @dziblatt.
tl;dr influxes of Black people during the Great Migration led Northern towns & cities to remove directly elected mayors & replace them with appointed city managers
The 20th century saw the US democratize. Black people moved out of Jim Crow to states where they had voting rights. Eventually the South democratized with the Voting Rights Act.
But US democracy is decentralized. As I show in other work, state govts can constrain democracy.
2/n
In this paper, we show how *local governments* can also counteract national democracy trends. Northern local governments reduced democracy in response to expanding numbers of Black voters.
They did this by (among other changes) switching to city manager systems.
3/n
Labor unions are mostly thought of as just about wages/benefits. But unions give workers political socialization, class identity, & racial solidarity. Historically, labor backed the Voting Rights Act. In recent years they've organized & spent to support democracy reforms.
2/n
RTW laws reduce labor funds by increasing free riding on union dues.
As a consequence, they reduce union membership & funds (pic #1)
His last statement in this clip should be disqualifying for participation in public life. He could do 1000 "twitterfiles" things and it wouldn't come close to this. One of the most disturbing video clips I've ever seen. Let that sink in.
Disturbingly accurate
Ironic to make comedy legal on twitter only to kill it
Where we’re at with policing is that BLM protests increased voting for Democrats.
But they also caused a police wildcat strike, and real policy change in blue states & cities (like Memphis) was minimal. And even the successful reforms mostly went unenforced.
Police still rule.
Two blue states sort of reformed qualified immunity. Two more passed delicensing reforms that haven’t really been used in practice. Many blue cities passed reforms that they didn’t enforce, like chokehold bans. Blue cities couldn’t even get their police to obey COVID orders.
Local governments lack the capacity to hold their LEAs accountable. By contrast, the military has serious problems but soldiers are paid less than police yet obey their commanders in chief more. States & feds should probably take over these unaccountable local LEAs
The contemporary American pseudopopulist right is people with extremely expensive educations telling people with medium expensive educations that people they assume have no education support the labor exploitation of people with medium expensive educations because they're too gay