How does the Democratic Party come to terms with Obama and his legacy?
Because it’s clear that hardly anyone wants to critically examine it.
So you can’t say too much about the Wall Street bailout explicitly; you can’t say
too much about the drones; you can’t say too much about the wars in Libya and Somalia,
and the bombs in Yemen; you can’t say too much about the very ugly Israeli occupation;
you can’t say too much about the ugly Egyptian authoritarianism—though they are tied to
the Obama administration.
So, the Democratic Party is in a very tough situation, because you’ve got Democrats
who are in love with our dear Brother Barack Obama, and we know he’s a zillion times
better in many ways than the Trump in the White House right now, but, on the other hand,
it wasn’t a golden age.
And I think we have to be very candid about this.
And this is part of the tightrope that needs to be walked, I think, by those part of the
progressive wing of the Democratic Party, because you have to be able to tell the truth.
You have to be committed to the suffering of poor and working people.
I don’t care where they are.
They could be in Tel Aviv, in Gaza.
They can be in Mexico City or El Paso.
They can be in Guatemala or El Paso.
They can be in Guatemala or Ethiopia or Somalia, Dalits in India, Uyghurs in China, and so
forth.
And so, those of us who are on the outside, more social movement activists, let’s say,
as opposed to insiders, we have got to be able to speak our truths and bring power and
pressure to bear, even as we connect with various statesmen and politicians.
And one of the reasons why I spend the wonderful time and precious moments that I do with my
dear Brother Bernie Sanders is not because I think he’s pure and pristine, but in many
ways he is the last hope in terms of dealing with the planet in catastrophic mode, in dealing
with the grotesque wealth inequality, in dealing with the legacies of white and male supremacy
and transphobia, homophobia.
How do we keep track of Jewish humanity, Palestinian humanity, Arab humanity?
What kinds of politicians will speak to those issues?
Very, very few.
One of the most remarkable things about last night’s debate, as well as Tuesday’s,
is that there was virtually no mention of foreign policy.
According to a Washington Post count, last night, candidates spent a total of six minutes
talking about foreign policy, which is down five minutes from the 11 minutes they spent
on Tuesday night.
And also, many commentators have pointed out, as, you know, the rhetoric calling for war
with Iran is increasing within the Trump administration, there was one in Iran question, which was
bizarrely asked to Andrew Yang and Jay Inslee alone.
And when Bill de Blasio tried to bring it up, he was interrupted twice by moderators,
and said we have to move on to the Mueller report.
No, I think part of the problem is, is that when you talk about empire, you’ve got the
pillars of the military-industrial complex, you’ve got Wall Street, but you also have
corporate media.
And I thank God for Democracy Now!, thank God for the two wonderful sisters that you
all are, to try to say, “You know what?
Corporate media is an integral part of the empire that is in denial about America being
an empire, and therefore doesn’t want to keep track of the nine countries—five Middle
East, four in Africa—where United States is even dropping bombs or assisting in the
dropping of bombs.”
Nobody wants to talk about the 128 countries of special operations, the over 586 military
units of the U.S. military in all around the world, and the 4,800 that we have throughout
the United States and the world.
Corporate media won’t touch that with a 10-foot pole.
And so you end up with this very narrow, deodorized, truncated conversation that denies the reality
of the U.S. presence in the world.
And as Brother Martin Luther King used to say, those bombs that are dropped in Yemen,
Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, they land—indigenous peoples’ reservations.
We are not a nation of immigrants; we’re a nation with immigrants, with indigenous
peoples and enslaved Africans in our origin.
Those bombs drop in hoods, black hoods.
They drop in barrios.
They drop in white working-class and white poor communities.
Sixty cents of every $1 of U.S. budget goes to the military-industrial complex, Trump’s
$750 billion military budget.
Who voted for that?
Democrats as well as Republicans.
That’s part of the imperial extension, that makes it difficult for us to speak to issues
of healthcare, jobs with a living wage.
It suffocates the domestic agenda.
And Martin Luther King Jr., our dear Sister Dolores and Cesar Chavez and others, those
grand exemplars of the social movements of the past, they understood that.
And I think that’s part of the challenge that we have to bring.