Abolition was an unpopular position for a few decades. A struggle made votes for women, civil rights, marriage equality popular enough to become law. On the other hand the KKK had its popular periods. Popularity is bunk. The question is if you lead or follow. - ThreadSky

rebeccasolnit.bsky.social • 6 days ago

Abolition was an unpopular position for a few decades. A struggle made votes for women, civil rights, marriage equality popular enough to become law. On the other hand the KKK had its popular periods. Popularity is bunk. The question is if you lead or follow.

Reposted from jamelle

the thing about “democrats should take popular cultural positions” is that what constitutes popular is a function of an interaction between the public and elites. if a faction of elites start screaming about a vulnerable minority and another faction says they have a point, this shapes the public.

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rebeccasolnit.bsky.social•6 days ago

But I do believe devoutly, because it's well documented, that people who start out in the shadows and the margins can advance an idea, a value, & make it a reality. That's what all the struggles mentioned above did. The puny abolitionist movement of the 1830s is so instructive. Then came abolition.

katehammer.bsky.social•6 days ago

I agree. Kwame Anthony Appiah's book The Honor Code opened my eyes to seismic culture shifts, including abolition as you mentioned, Rebecca.

wealthofflows.bsky.social•5 days ago

For those speaking German, @janboehm.bsky.social on @zdfmagaz.in did (once again) an excellent segment on popularity of topics (in the form of “Stimmung”) and the potential damage caused by politicians and the press trying too hard to “meet the voter where they stand”.

https://youtu.be/apnde-Dpq8E?feature=shared

kathytafel.bsky.social•6 days ago

And this Thoreau essay is required reading, published 1849. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aesthetic_Papers/Resistance_to_Civil_Government

bettinaschwarzen.bsky.social•5 days ago

I hope that is still true - feels like nobody is hearing or seeing the same things anymore even if they're sitting next to each other on the sofa. How do movements grow under such circumstances?

bkuhnhaus.bsky.social•5 days ago

Oh yes, love this so Rebecca. Your writing and connecting to the ecosystem of germinating possibility has helped me so many times. This recent piece by @garrettbucks.bsky.social really spoke to me deeply today too. https://open.substack.com/pub/thewhitepages/p/if-the-despots-can-engage-in-magical?r=ftzjh&utm_medium=ios

mswoodlander.bsky.social•5 days ago

It's like saying, "Well, if the Democrats could just agree to marginalize transgender people, then I could get on board."

billjank.bsky.social•6 days ago

That’s exactly what we’re seeing in MAGA. 20 years ago, blatant racism, letting billionaires be above the law, and the idea that the President should be a king were fringe ideas. They’re still exceptionally unpopular, but the DNC kept tiptoeing around them, without providing a clear alternative.

kbyrd.bsky.social•5 days ago

Also, MOST GOP policy options are wildly unpopular with the public. That doesn't stop the GOP from forcing them onto people. Dems need to read the damn poem and understand that protecting trans people is part of protecting everyone.

theultrasecret.bsky.social•6 days ago

estarianne.bsky.social•6 days ago

Democrats need to be LEADING with "Human rights for everyone is the way to a better society."

thatboyoveryonder.bsky.social•6 days ago

I would argue they should be calling and campaigning for property reform, wealth redistribution, and a debt jubilee. Saying “human rights for all” is well and good, but if you don’t make it real in the world beyond flowery language on a piece of paper it is little more than hot air.

estarianne.bsky.social•6 days ago

All of those come out of human rights. 100% of them.

thatboyoveryonder.bsky.social•6 days ago

I agree, and I think they’re one and the same. It must be made real in the world for it to be realized, which means doing like all societies before us have done when wealth and land has concentrated unto a very small few; property reform, wealth redistribution, and a debt jubilee.

estarianne.bsky.social•6 days ago

But you have to make human rights the bulwark around which you organize all of your other ideas. So people understand why things happen the way they happen.

thatboyoveryonder.bsky.social•6 days ago

Yes, they happen because wealth and land have been concentrated. Everybody is in debt to like 300 people, who are unelected and stateless beings not subject to our social and public and civic realities and completely without obligation to any people or project other than their own self-worship.

thatboyoveryonder.bsky.social•6 days ago

Rights and protections are never given, they must always be forcibly extracted at great sacrifice from private concentrations of wealth and their state power.

downtowntbrown.bsky.social•5 days ago

The thing about woman suffrage being unpopular is that they ended up making some pretty wild arguments to convince men to support it. "Women clean up the house and they can clean up politics" is persuasion, not an outright moral call for women's autonomy and citizenship. How do we persuade now?

greatdanega.bsky.social•6 days ago

Democrats ran from Obamacare for years - until the public fully understood its value. They didn’t exactly lead on that issue, either….

We still owe Obama a debt of gratitude- he took a lot of flack for it early on.

thatboyoveryonder.bsky.social•6 days ago

Yeah, passing a Heritage Foundation crafted piece of legislation was really the coup for the Republicans. And they still opposed it! The Republicans recognize that if an ideologically coherent party takes all three branches they have carte blanche to do as they please, Constitution be damned.

thatboyoveryonder.bsky.social•6 days ago

It’s really quite brilliant. And proved the absolute ineffectiveness of the Democrats to combat such a strategy. They aren’t willing to commit, they want to pretend bipartisan consensus is what gives something legitimacy, but it’s not. It is ideological coherence and party discipline. That’s it.

greatdanega.bsky.social•6 days ago

Fair. Bipartisanship only works if both parties are negotiating in good faith - a reality that died 30+ years ago for people with accurate rear view mirrors.

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