3. Single-issue advocacy and the New Left

This is the third and final installment in my series on public perception of progressives.

Although most people in America have probably never heard of the New Left, all of us have certainly witnessed and experienced the major changes in progressive politics that it was instrumental in leading.

To give some very brief background, the New Left was a radical left-wing democratic (not Democratic) movement in the 1960s and 1970s that consisted of students, young intellectuals, and older intellectuals stumbling from the ruins of the American and British communists parties. After the USSR ordered the violent suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and Khrushchev delivered his secret speech criticizing Stalin, many communists and sympathizers became disillusioned with the bureaucratic rigidity and authoritarianism of the USSR.

In the letter that popularized the term, “New Left” in 1960, C. Wright Mills wrote, “It is no exaggeration to say that since the end of World War II in Britain and the United States smug conservatives, tired liberals and disillusioned radicals have carried on a very wearied discourse in which issues are blurred and potential debate muted.”

The New Left sought to capture, build, and direct the energy coming out of the collapse of European communism and direct it into a more humanistic, democratic form. In the same letter, C. Wright Mills wrote of his fears that political discourse was moving away from ideology and critique and towards a liberalism, whose “sophistication is one of tone rather than of ideas.” He added that, as the left-wing activists and intellectuals moved away from old-school Marxism they were abandoning any sort of coherent criticism of the capitalist system as a whole, consequently that “their power to outrage, their power to truly enlighten in a political way; their power to aid decision, even their power to clarify some situation — all that is blunted or destroyed.”

Simply put, then, the New Left advocated a more distanced relationship with old-school Marxism and with the working class, whom they no longer saw as the primary motor of social, economic, and political reform. However, what they retained from the old Communist movements was the necessity for a critique of “the system” (it sounds like a parody of the 1960s, but these are Mills’ own words, not mine), whether that system was American-style capitalism or the Eastern Bloc’s impersonal bureaucratization.

Groups like Students for a Democratic Society, many feminist organizations, and the budding environmental movement took their impetus from this basic tenet of the New Left: the working class were no longer the core of left-wing politics, but a critique of “the system” was still necessary.

Although the move from Soviet-style communism to the anti-authoritarian, democratic, rainbow-flag New Left radicalism is perfectly understandable, it quickly revealed major shortcomings.

First of all, whereas the New Left pushed a counter-culture critique of “the system,” it did not simultaneously theorize what it would do if it were to gain influence and take power. As a result, when many members of the New Left rose to positions of influence in the major cultural institutions and universities that they had so stringently attacked, they looked and felt like hypocrites. A lot of them deflated. Future radical movements should remember this and take heed: it’s not enough to just critique “power” and “the system” without developing a better model of social, economic, and political organization, because any radical movement that is organized and large enough will eventually find itself in the awkward position of having to replace (and, too often, to become) that which it critiqued.

Secondly, and perhaps most seriously, without the working class and a strong form of Marxist critique of capitalism to center them, the movements growing out of the New Left failed to develop a coherent theoretical system that could unite feminists, the LGBT community, and environmentalists, for example. And this remains a problem today: who can honestly tell me how gay rights activism is related to the environment and why the two movements ought to work together?

Finally, wouldn’t you agree with me that American politics are still very similar to the situation the New Left wanted to get out of, in which “smug conservatives, tired liberals and disillusioned radicals have carried on a very wearied discourse in which issues are blurred and potential debate muted”?

If anything, the only change in this dynamic since the New Left is that there aren't even any disillusioned radicals around anymore. When the New Left’s cultural influence combined with the affluence of America and Britain in the 1980s and 1990s, which for many people validated the free market, the result was the gradual fading of radical critiques of capitalism, including that of the New Left, in our political discourse. Let’s face it, manufacturing went abroad and the critique of capitalism, even a democratic, humanist critique, just doesn’t resonate as well in the suburban house of a middle class family as it did in factories. The people who favor capitalism are often the people capitalism favors.

The liberal mentality the New Left despised took hold of America as the left failed to develop an ideology to fuse the single-issue advocacy groups together.

It seems to me we’ve reached the time to reevaluate the New Left, taking from it it’s democratic tendencies and its support for civil rights, feminism, gay rights, and environmentalism, and weaving these back into a strong critique of free markets’ tendency to boom and bust.

How does this relate to public perception of progressives in America? It’s very simple: poll after poll has shown that the majority of Americans support the core policies of the American left–letting taxes on the rich go back to their pre-Bush levels, creating jobs, and providing a cushion for the unemployed, for the elderly and the children living in poverty, a better health care system… And yet the American electorate is fleeing to the staunchest defenders of the free market, the contemporary “Do Nothings,” who will not enact any of the policies the American electorate wants… Why?

Without the core critique of capitalism binding us together, left-wing movements across the world were left confused and aimless after the 2008 recession. Of course we believe in more government involvement in the economy and some assistance to the most vulnerable members of our society, and of course most people agree with us, but how do we justify these policies to a country that has grown to believe the free market can do no wrong? Worse, how do left-wing leaders who’ve come to embrace capitalism justify these policies to themselves?

One way is to face the shrill calls of “socialist” and “extremist” head on, i.e. to put economic progressivism back at the core of left-wing politics, to elect leaders who are willing to make a strong case for reform/overhaul of the free market.

Sure we’re going to get labeled socialists, but if there were ever a time when the American people might reconsider socialism’s core tenets, that time is now. If we back down because we’re afraid to be associated with Marx and the critique of capitalism, we will miss a huge opportunity to address the fundamental problems of the free market that brought us to this stage. I fear we’ll never find a significant justification for massive interventions in the market, and, consequently, I fear we will end up abandoning millions (unemployment is at ~9% right now!) of people to suffer the worst excesses of the free market.

Mill’s essay at Marxists.org

http://www.marxists.org/subject/humanism/mills-c-wright/letter-new-left.htm

2. Banding together: progressive demographics and the politics of marginalization

This is my second post in an ongoing series on public perception of the democrats and the misconception that the US is generally a right-leaning country.

In my last post I showed that, historically, consistently more Americans have identified with democrats than with republicans, yet republican talking-points still so often portray us as isolated left-wing radicals. Taking a closer look at the demographic makeup of the progressive voter base goes a long way to explaining why it is so easy for republicans to make us feel like marginalized extremists, disconnected from Mainstreet, mainstream America.

The left wing draws heavily on minorities and, despite the fact that, when African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, and (some) Caucasian-Americans come together they form a strong coalition that almost always outnumbers the republicans, it’s very easy to make minorities feel like, well… minorities. Taking into account the underrepresentation of all minorities in politics and the history of political discrimination which they have faced, it is understandable that so many minorities translate the alienation they feel in their everyday lives into widespread disaffection with a political system that locks them out. Thus the transformative potential of a candidate like Barack Obama.

When you consider that the other group that regularly tends to vote democrat, women, has also faced intense discrimination and prejudices in their personal, professional, and civic lives, I think you begin to see why it is so easy for the right to make us feel isolated and marginalized: on some levels, it’s the truth! Even though women make up a slight majority of the general population, they are still severely marginalized and underrepresented politically. One of the more frightening aspects of the 2010 elections were that only 49% of women voted democrat and 48% voted republican. This probably has a lot to do with lack of voter enthusiasm on the left, but it's a dangerous trend nonetheless, especially given the republicans' new strategy of fielding fiery conservative women like Palin, O'Donnell, Haley, and Bachmann.

The last bastion of left-wing electoral power comes from the lower-income brackets, from all races, both men and women. Small wonder that they, too, feel shut out from a political system that does little to help them deal with the harsher realities of capitalism: unemployment, expensive health care, underfunded schools, abusive bureaucrats and police force… If you need concrete examples, I strongly suggest Barbara Ehrenreich’s recent article on the new face of poverty since 2008: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-ehrenreich/nickel-and-dimed-2011-ver_b_922330.html.

The constituent parts of the progressive electorate face discrimination in their personal, professional, and civic lives. What the right has done is exploit our sense of alienation to make us think that our ideas, our movement, and our leaders are just as marginalized as we feel in our day-to-day lives, which is very far from the truth: when we band together, we form a strong plurality/majority of the electorate.

The right is relying on our diversity as an electorate to keep us from turning the tables on them. This has been a problem for the left throughout North America and Europe as left-wing organizers have struggled to help workers unite with immigrants, minorities, women, and most recently the LGBT community to realize that they have the same interests and must work together. Considering the many prejudices that already exist, it’s very easy to understand why it’s so much harder to unite this electorate than to split it up. It’s also something to be very proud of: despite coming from extremely diverse backgrounds, communities, and paths of life, all of these groups regularly come together under the large tent of progressive politics. 

It’s also comforting to think that progressives are making inroads in the fastest growing demographic: Hispanic-Americans.

Finally, some of the democratic electorate is made up of people like me. I’m a white male who votes progressive; I’m from a primarily white region, and I have lamentably few African-American and Hispanic-American friends. If this is your situation, chances are you really are an outspoken progressive voice in your community: Caucasians, especially Caucasian males, are the core of the right’s electorate. In fact, this trend is only becoming more pronounced, with the biggest GOP gains since 2008 coming from this demographic. Take a look:  

http://www.pollwatchdaily.com/2011/07/22/republicans-post-big-party-identification-gains-among-white-voters/

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/roberts/101109 (analysis of a Tea Partier)

[And this is wonderful essay a blogger at the Nation, Jamelle Bouie, explaining how the Southern Strategy is playing out today and how the trends amongst minorities and whites mentioned above, particularly in the south, are becoming more pronounced.]

Most members of the democratic Congress belong to this demographic—white males–and thus really are isolated, outspoken progressive voices… amongst other white males that is! If only our representatives were as diverse as our electorate!

Despite knowing these demographic trends, since the Iraq War I have felt very alienated by my community, and that sentiment has only increased since 2008. I’m sure that many of you, my readers, feel the same way: we were as relieved to see a democratic president then as we are horrified at how strange American politics are now. 

What we see in Washington DC: a very vocal conservative minority (controlling only one chamber of Congress) painting the larger progressive majority (controlling one chamber of Congress and the White House) as extremists, is mirrored in the greater population: a vocal conservative minority made up primarily of white males branding a larger, more diverse, progressive majority extremist.

But, if you’re like me, it’s not enough to just know more Americans are progressive than conservative, we want to meet those people and commiserate with them. Well, the solution is easy to point out and much more difficult to put into practice: we need to build communities of support that bridge differences in race, class, nationality and immigration status, and sexual-preference. Another way to meet more progressives is just to increase the number of ladies in your circle of friends, which is easier sad than done for a nerdy guy like me... Chances are, if we get out of our demographic bubbles, we’ll find there are a lot more progressives out there than we’d thought!

Tomorrow, in my last installment in this series, I’ll talk about the New Left, the fading of the working class foundation of progressive politics, and how this contributed to the fragmentation of progressive politics into various smaller single-issue advocacy groups.

PS The blacklisted, union-funded film, The Salt of the Earth, does a great job of showing how difficult it can be to get minorities (in this case Hispanics miners) to band together with women to win a labor dispute. This clip from another great film about a real strike, Matewan, shows the same difficulties, but between white and black coal miners. It sends shivers up my spine every time I watch it, enjoy:

Special request: London riots

This post is in response to a reader's request that I say a few words about the London riots.

On the one hand, there are very legitimate reasons to protest and occasionally to riot. On the other hand, these days, so often, the people with the will to riot are not the people who know how, when, or why to riot.

One sad feature of left wing politics throughout Europe and North America is that the kernel of progressive movements: organizing and leading people who are frustrated, marginalized, and angry to constructive political action, has been mostly lost as the working-class manufacturing base of progressive parties faded demographically and progressives struggled in the 80s and 90s to appeal to middle-class voters. I want to quote a passage from the NYT that I just keep coming back to over and over:

“There’s an illusion that grass-roots activity just begins spontaneously, that people get mad and suddenly say, ‘I’m not going to take it anymore!’ ” says Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University. “But that’s not how it happens.”

Intellectuals used to play a big role in organizing labor. In the 1930s, Communists and socialists were a major force. Later, labor unions stepped in.

But today’s unions are not set up to serve the unemployed; they generally organize around workplaces, after all.

I think what we've seen with the London riots and with riots in the suburbs of Paris and elsewhere are that, without solid organization and leadership from left-wing activists, they often amount to little more than looting and a bad PR stunt for rough urban areas with a lot of minorities.

This is actually a very dangerous situation for everyone, because as the economy worsens (and it looks like it will), there will be more frustration, more widespread chronic unemployment, and perhaps more rioting and protesting. A lot of people have nowhere to turn and nothing to lose. With no major political organization containing and directing this energy, it will just end up legitimating right wing politics and prejudices about the unemployed, poor, urban youth, and immigrants.

Just to make it absolutely clear though, I don't blame the rioters. I think many of them have very real frustrations. I think it is the left's collective responsibility to take a much more proactive stance in leading these people to more constructive political action. On a broader scale than just this riot, a lot of us on the left have this idea that a more progressive society will rise out of the ashes of capitalism. This is very far from the truth. If people are not mentally prepared and organized into an effective political force, it could just as easily lead to an end of law-and-order or a strong, authoritarian right-wing counteraction (witness the calls for a military response and Cameron's response...)

With this goal in mind, one thing we can all do is be a lot more honest with ourselves and with the people around us about what we believe. Today's left needs desperately to reevaluate its values and reestablish its core principles so that it can make a strong, constructive response to the right wing's vandalizing of government's most basic functions.

Here's the NYT article I keep mentioning in full. Right wing bloggers have picked up on it to try and shame the NYT for saying the unemployed ought to turn to communism. It's really worth a read: The Unemployed Somehow Became Invisible

***Update: Prime Minister David Cameron, also known for having said that multiculturalism has been a failure, called the riots "criminality, pure and simple," but is criminal behavior ever simple? Isn't crime, in all its forms, always tied to broader sociological, economic and cultural issues? Although it saddens me to see peaceful protests degenerate into looting, Cameron denying that this has anything to do with larger issues in the UK and Europe insures that the government will do little to address the underlying issues.

Also, this is a hilarious interview on the topic:

1. We’re not alone: A plurality of Americans are democrats

This is my first post in an ongoing series on public perception of the democrats and the misconception that the US is generally a right-leaning country.

Other developed nations have been racing ahead of us when it comes to enacting progressive policies; left-wing politicians in the US regularly face charges that they are not patriotic, that they are socialists–New England, Ivy League elites out of touch with mainstream, mainstreet Americans. And if you spoke out against the Iraq War, like I did, chances are you felt like an isolated heretic in a sea of conservatives. Heck, that’s how I still feel most of the time when I turn on the news and hear about what’s going on with the Tea Party!

But believe it or not, polls tracking partisan trends sends 2004 show that a consistent plurality of Americans identify with democrats. When these polls are expanded to include sympathizers (people who generally vote republican/democrat but aren’t necessarily members of either party), we find the same trend: with very few exceptions, more Americans sympathized with the democrats than with republicans from 2004-2010. When sympathizers are included, we also find that for most of the 2004-2010 period either a majority of Americans or a very significant plurality (almost a majority) supported the democrats.

Here are two well-regarded polls tracking partisan trends. Rasmussen shows a more consistent democratic trend in the US, unbroken until November 2010; Gallup includes the sympathizers and shows a strong democratic trend despite a little bit of variation.

The Gallup poll: http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx

The Rasmussen poll: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/archive/mood_of_america_archive/partisan_trends/summary_of_party_affiliation

Of course, both polls show that since 2010, there has been a lot more back and forth between republicans and democrats. For now though, let’s content ourselves with the knowledge that from 2004-2010, more Americans identified with democrats than with republicans. I’m going to have to write an entire post later on why things started getting mixed up: what’s happened since 2008 on the right is unprecedented in American history and deserves a much closer look.

Now, what about before 2004, you ask? The Pew Research Center has shown that more people supported democrats from the 1930s all the way up until 9/11, when republican affiliation jumped to about 30% and democratic membership fell to 31%. They point out that, actually, it wasn’t until 9/11 that republicans had even close to the membership of the Democratic Party. Since then, as shown above, more Americans support democrats than republicans, but the margin is much smaller.

As the study points out, since Republicans have higher voter turnout rates, the smaller advantage of the democrats puts them at risk in elections. I'm sure we all remember Bush/Gore, when the country consistently polled democrat, even voted democrat, and yet still lost the election by a hair's width.

Granted, for a good deal of the period in the Pew Research Center study (1930s and on), the democrats and republicans did not represent what they do today. Many people switched sides during the Civil Rights movement, thanks in part to the Southern Strategy–republican pandering to the rise of the white middle class in the south and their racial prejudices. Still, since that realignment and up until 9/11, the democrats solidly trounced republicans when it came to the raw number of people identifying themselves with either party.

The Pew Research Center study: http://people-press.org/2003/11/05/part-1-party-affiliation/

Historically then, America is not a conservative nation, and certainly not a republican nation. If you’re a progressive out there feeling lonely, you’re definitely not alone. You shouldn’t be afraid to speak out for what you believe–much of the alienation is self-enforcing: conservatives tell us we are marginalized extremists out-of-touch with mainstreet so we don’t speak our minds when we’re around “normal” people, and we probably often mistake solid democrats for republicans.

The fact that so many of us live in the closet politically also means that a large swath of the population, folks who aren’t particularly keen on politics and aren’t sure who believes what and who they agree with, don’t know what progressives stand for. As it turns out, many progressive policies, such as raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, are very popular, even amongst conservatives. Undoubtedly, if we spoke out more in our everyday lives, more people will know what we stand for, and consequently, more people will realize they already support some of the fundamental tenets of the American left.

In my next post, I’ll talk about the democrats’ voter base, which draws heavily on minorities and women, and how this might feed into the perception that we are so isolated.

Why I don't blame Barack Obama

After disappointments in the extension of the Bush tax cuts, budget deal, and especially the deficit deals, liberal bloggers have started castigating Barack Obama for his incompetence at the bargaining table. Although I agree that the results in these recent deals were disappointing, I don't blame Barack Obama.


I never expected much out of Barack Obama. As someone who believes fundamentally in the progressive nature of the free market and, like most democrats, thinks the government should only protect people from the worst excesses of the free market, he was never going to come along and drastically change the way Wall Street works. He wasn't going to impose heavier taxes on the rich (repealing the Bush tax cuts is just the start, since they really only amount to a few percentage points off the historically low tax rates rich people pay now); he wasn't going to launch a massive works program to make sure everyone had a job; he wasn't going to be a vocal critic of corporate influence in American politics.

At the very best, we can only expect Obama to put off the nation's backslide into the economic abyss. Granted, I thought he would be able to turn things around for maybe 5 years or even a decade and never expected that we'd already be facing a recession now, but then again, who could have predicted the disturbing and wacky events of the past two years. Death panels? Michelle Bachmann? Donald Trump? Birthers? Threatening to not raise the debt-ceiling? One of the reasons the left is still so unorganized is that many of our minds are still trying to figure out what the f*** is going on, which I fully sympathize with. But it's definitely time to stop staring at the freak show on the right and get down to business.

If we had elected McCain, the crisis we're expecting to start on Monday would have come two years ago, when republican leaders were struggling to wrangle enough votes on the bailouts and stimulus to keep us from backsliding into a depression.

In short, the first reason I don't blame Obama is that we, as voters on the left, should know we are electing representatives who are very moderate historically speaking. FDR democrats had a much more progressive vision of the world and were more willing to make drastic changes in the economy. We have let the wild cries of "socialist!" on the right go to our head, such that we go out of our way not to appear as extremists and not to elect extremists. But now we've seen that, no matter how moderately conservative Barack Obama becomes, the right is still going to call him a radical Kenyan Islamic communist.

The second reason I don't blame Obama is that the left is not fired up at all about what is happening. We are entering a new phase of American politics, one in which civic involvement is going to become increasingly important. If the 51-52% of us who sympathize with the left don't want to see our values steamrolled, we are going to have to speak out a LOT more to combat this stereotype that the US is inherently conservative.

Whereas the Tea Party has been turning out to town halls and launching protests, we just sit at home despairing about how inherently conservative the US is. Hogwash! Most polls show a plurality* of Americans sympathize with the democrats. The only reason the right is dominating the debate is that they are louder and more organized. It's high time that we started to respond in kind with the massive protests and civil disobedience that we are known for.

Protesting and engaging in civil disobedience will raise the profile of the progressive side of American politics and drown out a good bit of the "libtard" mentality that currently gets so much coverage in the media. It will also go a long way to making Obama's job easier, because, let's face it, even as the moderate he is, he hasn't been able to do most of the things he wanted since he got elected because of the unprecedented opposition he has received from the right.

You hear that noise? It's me tapping my foot impatiently. Let's get on the move! Let's go stand up for what we believe!

*Edit: changed "majority" to "plurality" in  the third to last paragraph. More on polling, partisan affiliation, and support for democratic priorities to come.

Unemployment

America was built on the dream of 0% unemployment. Back in Europe, there was no land that didn't already belong to someone, someone who was a lot richer and a lot more powerful than the people who moved across the Atlantic. In America, the government was practically giving away land to whoever wanted it. If you lost your job, fell out with your neighbors, broke the law, or just felt like a change, you could always pick up and move to the frontier. If you wanted to work and provide for your family, chances were high that, with a bit of hard work and ingenuity, you would succeed: clear some land, build a cabin, do a little farming, hunt... we've all played Oregon Trail.

But, somewhat ironically, by trying to escape the strict delimitation of land into parcels of private property in overcrowded Europe, the settlers brought that model to America, not unlike the various pests, rodents, and diseases that hitched a ride on the boats. Two centuries later and we have to dramatically rethink what the United States represents. Everywhere you look, everything you look at belongs to someone. If you can't find work, you can't just move west and start over. Sure you can still try, but if you think unemployment is a problem in New York, have fun in California!

So what is someone who can't find a job and doesn't own any land to grow food on supposed to do? These days America is a lot more like the Europe our ancestors were so fed up with: all the land is claimed, we have high, chronic unemployment and, increasingly, an underclass of people with nowhere to turn. Most importantly, people have less say over the course of their lives. 99.99% of us worked just as hard on Friday as we will on Monday, but because the US debt credit rating was downgraded, the stock market will probably crash on Monday and many of us will have to face pink slips in the coming weeks. And we can't help but wonder, what does this credit rating have to do with us?

Despite the fact that we have less control of the direction our lives will take than previous generations, we still have it ingrained in our political conscious that people who work hard in America will be able to find a job, have a house and maybe some land, and pursue the American dream. Just give people enough freedom and independence and they'll figure things out for themselves. We don't hear that argument now so much as it's reverse: if you're poor and/or unemployed, it's because you're lazy, lack talents that will make you employable, and have no motivation. I've heard this lobbed at women who work all day, then come home to care for their children; I've heard it lobbed at recent graduates who thought that, to be successful, all they had to do was go to a good university and get good grades; I've heard it lobbed at men who have such tough callouses that you're liable to get cut if you shake their hands. It's not just insulting nonsense, it's insulting nonsense that prevents us as a nation from addressing our problems, because let's face it, the first step to taking action is admitting that there is a problem and that not everything can be boiled down to the personal irresponsibility of the millions of people suffering economically right now.

If you look at North Africa, Greece, Spain, Israel, France, or Chile right now, you see educated young people getting frustrated that no matter how hard they work, the economic situation prevents them from succeeding in life. They've taken to the streets to demand their governments focus on jobs, not debt. But this isn't happening in the US yet. There are hardly any protests; young people aren't banding together to talk about these issues and make a plan for action. Instead, we're letting the older generations who already have jobs and houses tell us that we're lazy and apathetic, and so far we seem to be believing it. But there's some good news: up until recently the same thing was said about the people our age in Chile, Spain, and many other places. Almost overnight, young people decided they'd had enough. In Israel they are angry they can't find apartments, in Spain they want jobs, in Chile they want education reforms, in Syria they demand political freedoms and economic reforms, and at much greater risk than we would face if we picket Congress! The Tunisian youth let out a cry that has spread across the Mediterranean into Western Europe and Chile, it's time the young people of America add our voices to the chanting of our peers around the world demanding the most basic of human rights: a place to live and some work to do to help our families!

What is wrong with a society that, the people cry out, "We want jobs! We want to contribute to our societies and build a better tomorrow!" And the governments respond, "No!" like the guard at the door in Kafka's story. Shouldn't our governments and elders be praising us for wanting to work, for wanting to contribute something to society?

We have a right to work, a duty to work, a burning need to work, and if the free market can't keep employment at 100%, then our governments have a responsibility to step in and make sure that everyone who wants a job gets one. When the government did this in the New Deal, it jump started the economy and resulted in some major, lasting improvements in the nation's infrastructures and national parks which we still benefit from today. What are we waiting for? Let's demand the same for our unemployed friends and family!