The Politics of Spectacle: On Eviction Moratorium, The Squad Talks the Walk

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that not even the most “progressive” elected officials in the U.S. are willing to do what is necessary to meet the needs of the people.

[mintpressnews.com]

{Founder of Black Agenda Report (BAR) Glen Ford died three days before the protest. Ford strongly opposed the politics of diversity, which privilege political representation over substantive policy demands and the popular power required to achieve them. He closely monitored the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to demonstrate that voting for elected officials who look and behave like their constituents does not necessarily equate to representation. Ford led BAR’s effort to expose how the CBC, for example, voted in large majorities to militarize U.S. police departments and enshrine their officers with protected class status under federal hate-crime legislation.}

I highlighted (politics of diversity) above for which in the article you'll find a link to Glen Ford on Chris Hedges (On Contact) program, a great discussion on political diversity. In which Ford has, in my opinion, done a great job of relating AOC and the squad at Black Agenda Report as being virtually the same as the Congressional Black Congress, miss representation.

{The Squad rose to prominence following Barack Obama’s two-term presidency. Obama represented the pinnacle of diversity. Obama was famously touted as a victory in the long, hard struggle of Black Americans for human rights, yet his administration greatly expanded the theater of the U.S. war machine and enacted a broad policy agenda friendly to the rich. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign emerged from the economic discontent once encapsulated by Occupy Wall Street — a protest movement that Obama’s DHS and FBI brutally repressed at the tail end of his first term. In a pivot away from protest, an increasingly left-leaning Democratic Party base placed their energy into electing “progressive” members of Congress.}

As I have suggested before, these people along with the fake socialist DSA and Jacobin Magazine coming into notoriety after 2016 wasn't a coincidence, but an agenda by the democratic party as part of their distracting elements of the corruption of the 2016 election cycle and protest at the end of the Obama administration. Unwittingly aware of the amount of citizens ready for a socialist to support, the democratic party misstepped by placing Sanders beside Clinton. A significant amount of the nation climbed aboard highly numbered with youth. This group of youth had to be diverted towards a deceptive rabbit hole. Rig the election and then create a narrative that the party can be changed from within. You can do a search at the WSWS website of the DSA and Jacobin and find a ton of articles related to the WSWS analysis and discovery on many fronts exposing them to their true nature.

{The Squad combines the politics of diversity with a politics of spectacle. Unlike Obama, who openly chastised Black Americans and separated himself from the Left, the Squad professes to stand with working people and “walk the walk.” U.S. Representatives Cori Bush and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (now better known as AOC) frequently identify themselves as organizers in a bid to relate to their young, left-leaning supporters. This was evident in their response to the expiration of the eviction moratorium, which has left more than 11 million Americans at risk of eviction. The Squad took to the streets as organizers in the hours before the policy ended despite offering little more than statements in the months leading up to July 31.

Even worse, the Squad has struggled just as much as the rest of the Democratic Party to articulate just who is to blame for the negligence surrounding the eviction moratorium. Members of the Squad have been hesitant to cast full blame for the crisis onto House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or President Joe Biden. AOC told journalist Chuck Modi that the Biden administration failed to respond to the Supreme Court order in June indicating the need for congressional involvement until just days before the moratorium expired.}

We seen the same tactics when Trump was president. Last minute media coverage on important issues, hyperbole voting opposition for a day, a page right out of the Paul play book, then poof, these issues are swept under a rug. Spectacle of too little too late too gone now.

{In truth, the Squad has been more than amenable to the establishment wing of the Democratic Party. Instead of participating in public protests over immigration policy, as was the case during the Trump administration, the Squad has limited itself to sharp statements now that Biden is deporting undocumented immigrants at a rate far higher than the prior administration. Last year, AOC called Nancy Pelosi the “Mama Bear” of the Democratic Party despite the fact that majorities support a third-party alternative to the current electoral duopoly. And not one member of the Squad was willing to force a vote for Medicare For All during a deadly pandemic in exchange for their support of Nancy Pelosi’s bid for speaker of the House.}

{Such stark contradictions speak to the differences between political spectacle and political substance. Political spectacle feigns support for the interests of working people (i.e., organizing a small protest of the eviction moratorium or tweeting daily about the ills facing the working class) while failing to take the necessary action to ensure that the interests of working people become a material reality.}

You end up with Cori Bush and AOC making a last ditch unorganized event with Bush repeating "I don't know" several times and claiming it isn't about Pelosi when it dam well is. Maybe working a mere 1/3 of the year should change to where you can address the nations issues more timely could come to mind.

{On numerous occasions, members of the Squad have repeated the State Department’s racist narratives about Venezuela, Syria, and other countries targeted by U.S. sanctions and military interventions. AOC has even stood with the fascists responsible for the destructive coup in Bolivia in 2019.}

ding ding ding

Lee Camp takes a look back at how Congress played economic brinkmanship with the eviction moratorium over the past week. Millions of people were threatened with eviction without the moratorium. If it weren’t for Representative Cori Bush and the people who slept at the Capitol with her, evictions would be in full swing right now. But the extension of the eviction moratorium is just a temporary fix for a problem that requires a radical solution – guaranteed housing.

[rt.com]