Malcolm X once said that the most astute capitalists and imperialists know that to get people to run towards a fox, you have to show them a wolf. 
Kamala Harris laid a few traps to draw out the wolf in Donald Trump during the US presidential election debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday night (US time). He duly obliged, rambling about “illegal aliens” eating American cats and dogs, about everyone loving what he’s done on abortion and about how Viktor Orban, the far-right ruler of Hungary, really respects him.
More notable, however, was Harris herself parading as the wolf. She repeated a promise to maintain the US military as “the most lethal fighting force in the world”, described Trump as weak on foreign policy and scolded him for being insufficiently deferential to members of the armed forces.
Malcolm X understood that the president of the United States is but the figurehead of a violent system that rules much of the world. So lord knows what he would have made of the Democratic National Convention’s Nebraska delegation donning T-shirts with his likeness as they pledged allegiance to Harris last month. 
In this debate, however—and in the entire period since Hillary Clinton ran similar attack lines in 2016—he probably would have recognised that the fox and the wolf are one in the Democratic Party.
Harris proudly touted Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent endorsement of her campaign. The architect of the invasion of Iraq ought to have been dragged to The Hague and locked in a box for the term of his natural life. Instead, along with “the late great” John McCain, another warmonger, Cheney’s name was uttered as though the ground on which he walked is now hallowed.
The last person to generate liberal excitement on the scale of Harris was Barack Obama, whose gift to the ruling class in 2008 was his ability to provide US imperialism with a mask of reason with which to cover its eight years of catastrophe under George W. Bush and Cheney. Obama’s speeches—delivered in a measured, reverie-inducing baritone—attracted crowds not seen since in US electoral contests.
“A good performer, with an ear for how to make white liberals like him”, Adolph Reed caustically remarked at the time. Obama overwhelmed first Hillary Clinton, and then Republican candidate McCain, before delivering eight years of image rehabilitation for the empire.
Harris promises much more than this. The Democrats under Joe Biden are in imperial expansion mode: building alliances, not just mending them; preparing for confrontation, not coexistence, with China. 
Yet Trump is so odious that the enthralled Democratic base seems to view these as minor details. With a prosecutor’s training, Harris can’t deliver Obama’s oratory. That didn’t prevent the Democratic campaign from smashing fundraising records in August. Young women, in particular, appear to be preparing to storm heaven, or at least ballot booths, for Harris. 
Voter registration surged in the week after she became the presumptive nominee in July. According to data analytics firm TargetSmart, new registrations were up more than 175 percent among young Black women, 150 percent among young Latinas and more than 80 percent among young women in general compared with the same period in 2020. One analyst described the numbers as “astonishing” and without precedent in the last 30 years. 
In the debate’s wash-up, the liberal media is triumphant—a stark contrast to the mood after Biden’s performance in July. Yet Harris’s polling is underperforming Hillary Clinton’s at the same stage of her 2016 campaign against Trump. The partisan polarisation has put a high floor and low ceiling on each candidate’s potential vote in November.
At any rate, the most unfortunate political outcome of 2024 may well be that a new generation of young people runs headlong into the arms of the Democratic fox-wolf just a few cycles after the disappointments and disaster of Obama, and just as the Palestine solidarity movement portended a break from liberal imperialism’s status quo.

Ben Hillier

The fox and the wolf in the presidential debate

“Hope is making a comeback!” The words are Michelle Obama’s, from night two of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. At least among US liberals, it seems undeniable. Guardian
columnist Emma Brockes, watching from New York, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/21/democratic-national-convention-kamala-harris-joe-biden">wrote of being taken</a> by “giddiness” and “hysteria”. The convention, she wrote, “unleashed a psychic energy”. “It was emotional! Friends on the east coast stayed up late watching, and cried. I cried!”
It would be easy to dismiss this as the usual fawning of a member of the media class captivated and ultimately overwhelmed by the spell of political power. Yet it is indicative of a broader phenomenon. The Harris effect reaches well beyond the circles inhabited by Guardian columnists; the new presidential nominee has generated an excitement among sections of the Democratic voter base not seen since Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was contesting the primaries, but with a breadth of support not seen since Barack Obama ran in 2008. 
Various indicators tell the story—polling, volunteer numbers, donations and crowd sizes.
The Washington Post this week noted an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/19/harris-poll-surge-is-driven-heavily-by-women-younger-voters/">18-percentage-point shift towards Democrats</a> among people aged under 40 after the party dumped Biden for Harris. An <a href="https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/documents/monmouthpoll_us_081424.pdf/">August 8-12 Monmouth University poll</a> found that Democratic enthusiasm about the election jumped from 46 percent in June, before Biden dropped out, to 85 percent after Harris became the presumptive nominee. Enthusiasm among independents increased from 34 percent to 53 percent. The poll also found that 92 percent of Democratic voters are enthusiastic about Harris being their nominee. Pew Research likewise found that <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/08/14/harris-energizes-democrats-in-transformed-presidential-race/">nine in ten Democrats say they are happy</a> that Harris is the candidate.
Contrast this with the last two Democratic presidential candidates. <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/07/07/2016-campaign-strong-interest-widespread-dissatisfaction/">Pew polling in 2016</a> found that only 43 percent of Democratic voters were satisfied with Hillary Clinton being the party’s candidate. In 2020, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/08/13/perceptions-of-trump-and-biden/">just 42 percent</a> were happy with the choice of Biden.
Another proxy for gauging “positive enthusiasm” is the proportion of a candidate’s supporters who are voting “for” the candidate as opposed to “against” the other candidate. In 2016, Pew found that less than half of Clinton’s supporters viewed their vote as being “for” her—50 percent said they were voting “against” Trump. In 2020, 56 percent of Biden’s supporters said their main reason for backing him was that he wasn’t Trump. <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/official-polls/fox-news-poll-new-matchup-same-result-trump-bests-harris-one-point">Fox News polling</a> in May found that about half of this year’s Biden supporters were primarily voting “against” Trump. 
By contrast, nearly two-thirds of Harris supporters polled by Fox described their vote as being “for” her, with around one-third voting “against” Trump. That puts Harris somewhere in between the paradigmatic lesser evil candidates (Clinton and Biden) and the more popular Obama, only one-quarter of whose 2008 supporters said their vote was more a vote “against” Republican nominee John McCain.
In terms of volunteers, Harris has also seemingly outperformed. Five days after Biden withdrew from the race, her campaign reported that more than 170,000 people signed up to volunteer. There are signs that the surge has continued: reports of 5,000 sign-ups in Nevada in the first week of August, more than 1,000 sign-ups in Detroit on the second weekend of the month, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/harris-trump-campaign-volunteers-philadelphia/">more than 43,000</a> in Pennsylvania in the last month, and 15,000 in Florida in the three weeks to 15 August, according to two sources. Presumably, there will be an update on national figures at the end of the month or in early September.
Harris’s numbers aren’t as impressive as those of Bernie Sanders’ last campaign, however. In one week, he signed up <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/02/25/bernie-sanders-says-1000000-people-have-signed-campaign-volunteers">1 million volunteers</a> after announcing his presidential bid in early 2019—a year before voting began in the primaries. (By contrast, Hillary Clinton’s 2015-16 primary campaign reported <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/hillary-clinton-campaign-2016-numbers-217271">89,000 volunteers</a> a month before the first ballots were cast in Iowa.)
While volunteer enthusiasm indicates something, it’s important not to read too much into the numbers. The major parties’ political machines will consistently deliver for the confirmed nominees, no matter who they are. For example, despite Democrats’ misgivings about his candidacy, Biden, <a href="https://join.mobilize.us/blog/2020-election-recap">according to one report</a>, mobilised at least 2.7 million people between April and November in the 2020 campaign.
Nevertheless, from a standing start, the mobilisation for Harris indicates a swell of enthusiasm. Coming out of the national convention, her campaign will likely shift into yet another gear as the entire apparatus of the Democratic machine is turned full tilt to November.
Donations, like volunteers, have also flooded in. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/08/22/us/elections/kamala-harris-donors.html">According to a New York Times analysis</a> of Federal Election Commission data, more than 1.5 million new donors gave a collective US$183 million to the Harris campaign in the last 11 days of July. “Just 10 percent of Mr. Biden’s donors in July were under 45 years old, compared with 28 percent of Ms. Harris’s donors”, the Times noted. According to the Harris campaign, two-thirds of the donations came from first-time donors and 94 percent were for $200 or less. 
This month, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, which can hardly be accused of liberal bias, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/kamala-harris-fundraising-donors-election-2024-724da4f6">related anecdotes</a> capturing the mood of Democrats nationwide. They are only sketches, but are suggestive of a broader shift:
“Heather Ahern Huish was so elated when she read online that President Biden was endorsing Kamala Harris for the White House that the English teacher in rural Maine did something she hadn’t done in years. She made a political contribution, clicking on a Harris Facebook ad and donating $100—about the same amount she spends on groceries each week. ‘I was just so swept up in the moment’, said Ahern Huish, who is 56 and lives with her husband. ‘There was, like, zero hesitation.’ ...
“More than 6,000 people have handed over a $10 donation for an abstract ‘Kamala’ quilting pattern made by a couple in Illinois. The haul from a ‘White Dudes for Harris’ call left its organizers dumbstruck. ‘If you had asked me if I would be someone who raised $4.5 million for a presidential campaign before this, I would have told you, “There is no chance in hell”,’ said one of them ...
“In late July, political strategist-turned-businesswoman Jotaka Eaddy set up one of the regular Zoom calls she hosts for Black women in business, called Win With Black Women. Usually the calls attracted a few hundred people. But this time, Eaddy’s Sunday gathering became a vehicle for Harris fans looking for a way to show their support: More than 44,000 people joined the event with tens of thousands others listening in, according to Eaddy. She raised $1.6 million in roughly two hours.”
Finally, Harris’s crowds indicate a campaign galvanising the Democratic base. <a href="https://ash.harvard.edu/articles/the-real-numbers-tracking-crowd-sizes-at-presidential-rallies/">Harvard Kennedy School’s Crowd Counting Consortium</a>, which tracks public mobilisations across the United States, estimates that the vice president, before this week’s convention, averaged 13,400 attendees at her campaign rallies (of which there had been only six, however)—more than double Donald Trump’s 2024 average of 5,600 attendees. 
By contrast, lesser evil candidates are renowned floppers when it comes to pulling a crowd. Biden’s average this year was 1,300 people. In her time, Clinton wasn’t much better.
“The pictures have told the story over the past six months. Republican Donald Trump is filling convention centres, airport hangars and parks. Clinton, on the other hand, is filling community centres and small colleges, but just barely”, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2016/11/5/why-donald-trump-draws-crowds-hillary-clinton-doesnt">noted a 2016 Al Jazeera report</a>. Clinton did pull some larger audiences, but reports indicate that they generally, or only, materialised when she double-billed with celebrities or more popular figures—such as an election-eve rally of 40,000, which was also a concert featuring Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen, with a guest appearance by Barack Obama.
It’s too early, however, to make meaningful crowd comparisons between Harris and the last two Democrats to have generated significant enthusiasm. Obama <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2008/10/big-crowds-for-obamas-red-state-tour-014965">at least twice drew more than 100,000</a> in his first presidential race and drew many “smaller” attendances of 20-40,000. Bernie Sanders’ biggest rallies were in the order of 30,000. But it’s difficult to ascertain the average crowd size for either of those candidates—they both held hundreds of rallies, displaying an endurance that Harris need not match, seeing as there are only a couple of months until polling day. 
At any rate, objective indicators point to a groundswell within the Democratic base; it is overwhelmingly pro-Harris rather than simply anti-Trump. Whether it will last is another question—but there’s no point in making predictions about the outcome of the November poll. As Sanders showed, motivating and captivating a base is not the same as carrying a majority. As well, US politics can turn on a dime. It was just six weeks ago, for example, that Republican candidate Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt. In its aftermath, a chorus of commentators predicted with certainty that the billionaire now had a lock on the election. That the shooting is now almost forgotten is illustrative of how quickly the media cycle and the political narrative can turn. 
It should also be noted that Hillary Clinton, at the same point in the 2016 race, held a larger average polling lead that Harris currently enjoys—<a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/national-polls/">6 percentage points</a> compared to <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/">less than 4 percentage points</a> (though this could bounce after the convention). Clinton’s lead blew out to almost 7 percent just three weeks from election day after an Access Hollywood tape, recorded a decade earlier, exposed Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women. One NBC News/Wall Street Journal
poll put the former secretary of state ahead by 14 points soon after. At the time, even Republican leaders described Trump as unelectable and were <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/07/the-gops-brutal-responses-to-the-new-trump-video-broken-down/">calling on him to withdraw from the race</a>. Yet he still threaded a victory through the Electoral College.
Most progressives will view the Harris surge—and with it, a shift in the national polling—as a positive development. After all, who wants Trump to be again installed in the White House, from where he would resume his attacks on women, trans people, the environment, immigrants, workers and unions? Who wants fascist activists to be emboldened by Trump emerging victorious in November after a campaign of far-right invective and promises to deport millions, crush the left and further enrich billionaires? No-one with a left-wing bone in their body views a potential Trump second term with anything other than horror.
Yet there is something profoundly disturbing about a vice president up to her eyeballs in the Palestinian genocide managing to inspire legions of progressives. There is something unsettling about a Democratic National Convention that <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/22/they-want-to-erase-us-how-dnc-rejected-demand-for-palestinian-speaker">refused even to allow a Palestinian speaker</a> to address delegates about the horror of Gaza, funded by a Democratic government. There is something bizarre about <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/what-makes-the-democrats-different-from-but-the-same-as-the-republicans">a party run by billionaires</a> parading itself as the hope of the American working class. And there is something just flat-out dishonest about the party of the CIA talking about international “security”.
The Sanders campaign, whatever its limitations, injected the language of class and socialism into the US national debate. It got millions of people talking about how socialism, however broadly defined, sounds like a good thing. At the Democratic National Convention this week, party representatives got everyone talking about how prosecutors are heroes for middle America. 
“I’ll tell you what …”, Joe Biden started on the first night. The applause erupted before he could even begin waffling; before he could elaborate on what the “what” was. It went on. The delegates cheered in unison at whatever demented babble emanated from the stage, like a parody of the Hunger Games opening ceremony scene, when the gathered audience deliriously cheered contestants about to maul each other for the citizens’ amusement. 
Just an hour before Harris’s closing address, the enthusiasm was for a Michigan sheriff thundering about how police funding has increased in his county, and that’s why you should vote for Kamala. Then came former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta talking about how Harris would keep the US military the strongest in the world. Under her, he said, the US would remain interventionist. That is, it would continue invading countries and overthrowing governments that the State Department declares enemies of US imperialism.
For all the danger of Trump, here’s the Democratic rub: this is a party that can get away with anything precisely because its base will allow it. As long as the party comes with a scent of hopium and is decorated with a liberal dose of diversity, there is no left-wing challenge that it cannot overcome. That’s partly why it is the governing party of choice for big business in the US—an insurgent Democratic Party generating enthusiasm is the greatest safeguard to the establishment’s status quo. 
In the past twelve months, in the face of the horrors of Palestine, a new student movement began to emerge, the likes of which had not been seen in generations. A mass anti-war movement developed across the country, bringing together anti-Zionist Jews and Muslims, activists with generations of organising experience and young people moved to resist oppression and injustice for the first time. There was, arguably, even an emerging rupture in the ideological core of US liberalism as young people broke to the left.
These green shoots of an entirely different way of doing politics—one that put humanity first and was led by people on the ground rather than pro-imperialists in comfortable offices—have been poisoned by the DDT of the DNC. 
Outside the convention, a resilient minority continued to raise their voices for Palestine. But a combination of intimidation and co-option—along with an understandably sapped momentum after ten months of resistance to genocide—have taken their toll. In a city of nearly 10 million people, just 5-7,000 could be mobilised. Democratic-run Chicago might have mobilised more police than that.
Inside the convention, the renewed energy of the party of war was palpable. Republicans were warmly welcomed, but Palestinians were personas non grata. “Stray dis­sent­ers have had Palestinian flags taken away; a hijab-wear­ing pro­tester was drowned out by chants of ‘We love Joe’ and hit with a Biden plac­ard after inter­rupt­ing the pres­id­ent’s speech”, <a href="https://ft.pressreader.com/article/281891598603982">observed Eduard Luce in the Financial Times</a>. 
Imagine a Black woman being treated like that at a Republican convention. Now you know what the Democrats are capable of. They can do this and still hypnotise Guardian columnists.
Like the first Obama campaign, the momentum of Harris portends a domestic rehabilitation of US liberalism and the Democratic Party’s credentials, which will only help them sell the next war. That’s just as frightening as the prospect of another four years of Trump.

The end of the lesser evil election?

Australia’s run-for-the-rich economy is hammering young people.
Living standards for those aged 15 to 34 went backwards between 2004 and 2022, according to a <a href="https://www.burnouteconomics.com/p/the-profoundly-sick-australian-household">new analysis of Bureau of Statistics figures</a> by economist Tarric Brooker. That’s despite national wealth per person increasing nearly threefold in the same period.
As if that weren’t shocking enough, the situation has dramatically worsened in the last two years, real consumption spending collapsing by nearly 13 percent among 25 to 29-year-olds. 
“Given the size of the decline, it’s entirely possible that this is the largest sustained drop in real consumer spending for this vital demographic since the Great Depression”, <a href="https://www.burnouteconomics.com/p/burnout-economics-and-aussie-household">Brooker noted last month</a>. 
Consumption is also down by more than 7 percent among 30 to 34-year-olds, 6 percent among 35 to 39-year-olds, and 2.7 percent among 18 to 24-year-olds.
<a href="https://www.commbank.com.au/content/dam/caas/newsroom/dynamic-media/2024/CommBank%20iQ%20report_23%20May%202024.pdf">According to the Commonwealth Bank</a>, spending on essentials such as groceries and utilities has fallen significantly in real terms.
For several years, there have been warnings that, for the first time in living memory, a new generation could end up financially worse off than their parents. That prediction has now come to fruition. 
Real wages are down around 7 percent in four years. The federal Treasury says they won’t fully recover until sometime in the 2030s—and that’s certainly not guaranteed. While that affects all workers, renters—who are disproportionately young people—have been hardest hit because landlords have jacked up rents far faster than the rate of inflation. 
Capital city asking rents for units have climbed by around 50 percent, and asking rents for houses have jumped even more. 
Also, if they can afford a house in the first place, younger people are more likely to have larger mortgages because they have spent less time paying off their debts and have had to buy at the latest stratospheric prices. The increases in interest rates mean that they are also disproportionately hit in the current economy. 
Indeed, the Bureau of Statistics’ <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/price-indexes-and-inflation/selected-living-cost-indexes-australia/latest-release">selected living costs indexes</a>—which, unlike the regular inflation measure, show the effects of rising interest rates—show that the cost of living has been much higher for working-class households than reported in the press over the last two years.
We are seeing a significant transfer of wealth from renters to landlords and from mortgaged homeowners to banks.
As an example, the Commonwealth Bank last week reported another $10 billion yearly profit. It’s doing so well that Mathew Hodge of investment adviser Morningstar said that the bank’s “excess capital” (its reserve of money) is growing so fast that it now “faces the high-quality problem of what to do with it”.
You read that right—analysts say the bank has more money than it knows what to do with.
Other asset holders are also riding a wave of prosperity. In fact, they are being treated to, in the words of the Financial Review’s Chanticleer column, “a deluge of dividends”—“the capital returns incentivised by Australia’s tax” system.
A bank with too much money. An investor class drowning in dividends. And young people enduring a Depression era-like collapse in living standards. 
Welcome to the Australian economy in 2024.

Young people are getting smashed—and not in the fun way

Having narrowly survived attempted assassination and now formally anointed as the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump’s takeover of the Grand Old Party in the United States is complete. The far right is cemented at the apex of one of the world’s most powerful and influential political organisations and is on the cusp of power in the globe’s largest imperialist state.
<a href="prod-static.gop.com/media/RNC2024-Platform.pdf">The Republican election platform</a>, for the first time written as a purely Trumpian document, promises, among other things, to use federal laws “to keep foreign Christian-hating communists, Marxists, and socialists out of America”; carry out “the largest deportation operation in American history”, including “millions” of undocumented migrants; and defund schools that teach what it calls “left-wing propaganda”.
Trump’s choice of J.D. Vance as vice-presidential running mate underlines the inability of the party’s old establishment to influence this season’s electoral ticket. Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon describes Vance as “St. Paul to Trump’s Jesus—the zealous convert who spreads the gospel of Trumpism further than Trump himself ever could”, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/15/mr-maga-goes-to-washington-00147054">according to Politico contributor Ian Ward’s paraphrasing</a>.
The booing and jeering of longstanding Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell at the party’s national convention, even as he pledged his state’s delegates to Trump, is another indication of the far right’s supremacy in the party (if not numerically in terms of registered voters, certainly as the most organised faction in the apparatus). So too the mixed reception for “never Trump” establishment candidate Nikki Haley, who was blown out of the water in the primaries but came to pledge support in a pathetic display of fealty.
There is a very real prospect of a hellishly far-right Republican administration taking office in January. But while the November election appears Trump’s to lose, the contest is unlikely to be a landslide—at least in terms of the popular vote. Nothing like the 1980 or 1984 elections, for example. In those polls, Ronald Reagan, who oversaw the last significant Republican political realignment, won by 10 and 18 percent, respectively. (Although that was partly a function of <a href="https://www.electproject.org/national-1789-present">very high rates of abstention</a>.)
According to survey aggregates, <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/">most Americans</a> have an unfavourable view of Trump. An NBC News poll last year found that just <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/maga-movement-widely-unpopular-new-poll-finds-rcna81200">one-quarter of adults</a> approve of his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. Against the Republican far right and its array of opportunistic hangers-on, the Democrats could run a fossilised stegosaurus turd and still expect a better turnout than Walter Mondale managed in ‘84. 
Yet the Democrats are in disarray, and the maths of the Electoral College looks increasingly challenging. President Joe Biden’s ineptitude and arrogance have significantly undermined his presidential authority and his standing even within Democratic ranks. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-trump-poll-drop-out-debate-democrats-59eebaca6989985c2bfbf4f72bdfa112">The latest AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey</a> found that two-thirds of Democrats want Biden to drop out of the presidential race. But most telling is that his base—the party establishment—has turned. It’s hard to see him running for re-election.
One curiosity of all this is that the turmoil of official politics seems at odds with the mood of the US ruling class. When Trump launched his first campaign in 2015, there was strategic confusion, paralysis and malaise in establishment circles over how to contain China, which was widely predicted to overtake the US economically and challenge geopolitically. The prognosis almost everywhere was that the United States was a declining global power and that China’s rise was inexorable.
In recent years, however, US imperialism has been revived through a combination of <a href="https://tempestmag.org/2021/05/imperialist-keynesianism/">industrial policy</a> and international diplomacy. The reinvigoration has been achieved while also satisfying the rapacious greed of US capitalists: company profit margins are at highs <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/corporate-profits-are-booming-biden-wants-that-to-be-a-campaign-issue-080049714.html">not seen since the years immediately following World War Two</a>, and a <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/stock-market#:~:text=Historically%2C%20the%20United%20States%20Stock,on%20July%2017%20of%202024.">Wall Street bull run</a> has delivered tremendous gains for fund managers and investors. As a result, much of last decade’s establishment disquiet and disarray have abated.
For the first time this century, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-01-26/global-economy-latest-us-and-china-battle-for-top-economy">America is economically outmuscling China</a>, which teeters on the edge of debt deflation and faces an increasingly hostile trade environment. Beijing is discovering that state capitalism, like “regular” capitalism, eventually succumbs to crisis. Some economic indicators, such as youth unemployment, have turned so sour that the government has stopped publishing figures. Others, such as the solvency of an array of regional governments, are probably unknown to all but local officials. Talk of “China’s century” has evaporated, along with the country’s foreign capital inflows. All this could be temporary, but the current situation is starkly transformed from the panic gripping the US government during the Obama presidency.
Further, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States has re-entered European politics with all the swagger of Eminem re-entering the Billboard charts. (“<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22tVWwmTie8">Guess who’s back?</a>“) Washington’s reconstruction of a new sort of international bloc politics for the 21st century in the Asia-Pacific is also affirming in the eyes of many—be they allied, neutral or adversary states—that the US is again becoming, in the words of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, “the indispensable nation”. This is a far cry from the situation during George W. Bush’s presidency, when the “coalition of the willing” had to be constructed via chequebook diplomacy.
The US does face many challenges, of course. The government’s operations are funded by incessantly increasing the national debt, and economic growth is driven by massive but ultimately diminishing fiscal support. Wall Street could suffer yet another collapse, bond traders could turn against the government, as they did against British PM Liz Truss in 2022, or commercial real estate losses could provoke another financial panic. Israel could stuff Washington’s plans for a more settled Middle East and further distract from its Asian focus.
But the point is that the Biden presidency has generally been a time of imperial advance. A significant reorientation, begun under the first Trump presidency, has continued. There is no longer a sense of crisis within the ruling establishment—no longer a feeling that there is no plan to maintain US global domination and to advance the interests of the US capitalist class.
Many Democrats have wondered why the country isn’t rewarding them in the polls for delivering such outcomes. They clearly believe it’s the messenger, Biden, and not the message or their overall approach to governing. Time will tell if they can turn it around with a new leader without proposing anything much to reverse the decades-long stagnation in working-class living standards. The real question is whether a party of the status quo can triumph when the status quo appears so intolerable for so many.
Either way, right now, the fundamental dynamic is the far right again being ascendant. 
Trump’s first term was characterised chiefly by policy paralysis rather than fascism’s march through the institutions. The billionaire was surrounded by establishment appointments and significantly constrained by Congress, the federal bureaucracy, and his own isolation.
If he is re-elected, there will again be limits on what Trump can carry out. He could end up at war with a range of states and sections of the judiciary. But he will not be as constrained a second time. The Supreme Court is more favourable to him now. And thousands of officials and public servants will be replaced with MAGA loyalists ready to fight for, rather than moderate or obstruct, the president’s program.
But it’s not only what a Trump administration does. Outside of government, Trump’s base has become more organised. The confidence and encouragement it would receive from the far right taking over the executive branch could unleash a wave of grassroots activism by people who have spent years building their networks.
Unlike what many US progressives seem to think, most of this will not take the form of brownshirt wannabes trying to emulate the Third Reich. While there may well be odious border mobilisations and vigilante attacks on migrants, much of the fascist campaigning will be in school districts, libraries and public offices. It will be led Christian mothers, not jackbooted young white men carrying torches through the streets.
In fact, Trumpism now looks more dangerous precisely because it often defies the crude stereotypes of progressives whose only political framework seems to be that provided by racial, ethnic or gender identities. Yes, there is a core element of white supremacy in the US far right. But the Trump movement’s glue is a more powerful adhesive than racial resentment: God, family, nation, order. In the US, this program transcends white supremacy, even if it cannot seem to live without it. It is a program around which the far right is trying, with some success, to rally a multiracial, anti-leftist coalition rather than one constitutionally averse to racial diversity.
Undergirding the nationalist political and cultural messaging is an ambitious economic nationalist program for a more potent US empire: rebuilding the military-industrial base, expanding energy production and reorienting supply chains away from China in anticipation of war. 
In his speech to the national conference, J.D. Vance favourably quoted Reagan on keeping government out of people’s lives. But the new Republicanism marks the return of strong-state nationalism: very little in the program can be achieved without huge intrusions into the economy and society. One suspects that this is very much part of the appeal, given the ravages that free markets have wrought across the country.
If the right retakes power, the question is how the streets react. As it stands, Trumpism appears normalised, if widely unpopular. For all the talk about political polarisation in the United States, there is little organised expression of it outside of the far right—indicating perhaps that “polarisation” might flatter a disintegrated left and a progressive movement with no claws. Maybe that will change. If it doesn’t, politics will be all downhill.

US far right prepares for power under Trump

What does <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race">three-quarters of a billion dollars</a> in presidential campaign fundraising buy? Two old men who struggle to construct coherent sentences. 
In the debate between the Republican from America’s wealthiest 1 percent and the Democrat from the top 2 percent, one clear loser emerged: everyone who tuned in. 
“Are the two candidates going to shake hands tonight?”, ABC News anchor David Muir asked prior to the commencement of proceedings. “That is one of the big questions”, his colleague responded.
A huge question. Right up there with discussions about the nature of human consciousness and the origin of the universe.
“What really matters is the moments”, Democratic strategist Joshua Karp told the Washington Post
in anticipation of the debate, “and I think that’s what I’ll be watching for the most”.
Cherishing moments—that’s usually how one talks about approaching the final weeks of life. Yet in this instance, it was almost prophetic: for the first half of the debate, Biden’s seemed to be a mind <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej4gFT21VOM">already halfway to the great beyond</a>.
There were plenty of moments to ponder. But that’s just the nature of time, in which instants form an infinite sequence until the universe collapses on itself and all being is annihilated. Many viewers may have wished for this when the elderly candidates began <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re2kZfoyo7g">arguing over who would win at golf</a>. 
On and on the moments came and went. But the time spent viewing was time that will never be recovered. Everyone who did watch is quite likely stupider for having done so. 
Yet the biggest loser will be those who tuned out long before now: the millions of US workers keeping the economy afloat for the 1 and 2 percenters like Biden and Trump, yet struggling to make ends meet—and who will continue struggling no matter which party wins the White House in November.
“When asked what drives the economy, many Americans have a simple, single answer that comes to mind immediately: ‘greed’”, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/21/opinion/economy-research-greed-profit.html">a group of researchers</a> from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences wrote recently. “They believe the rich and powerful have designed the economy to benefit themselves and have left others with too little or with nothing at all.”
This belief corresponds with reality. <a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/institute-for-economic-equity/the-state-of-us-wealth-inequality">The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimates</a> that the top 10 percent of US households hold more than two-thirds of total household wealth. The bottom 50 percent hold just 2.5 percent.
Household debt is $17.7 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s latest <a href="https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc">household debt and credit report</a>. In the first three months of the year, almost 9 percent of credit card balances and 8 percent of car loans “transitioned into delinquency”, it says.
The Census Bureau’s May <a href="https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2024/demo/hhp/cycle05.html">Household Pulse Survey</a> observes that almost one-third of adults—81 million people—find it “very difficult” or “somewhat difficult” to pay their usual household expenses. Unsurprisingly, the trouble is concentrated at the lower end of the income ladder: more than 50 percent of adults living in households with incomes below $50,000 struggle with bills.
More than 9 percent of adults—24 million people—often or sometimes don’t have enough food to eat. Unsurprisingly, the wealthiest people—those with household incomes above $200,000—barely registered problems putting food on the table. But the proportion rises to 28 percent in households earning less than $25,000, 18 percent in those earning between $25,000 and $34,999, and 14 percent in those earning between $35,000 and $50,000.
This isn’t a blip. The US, the richest country in the world by many measures, has for decades led the way among “advanced” economies for its higher poverty rate, lower life expectancy, higher level of wealth inequality and lower minimum wage.
And for years, most Americans—about seven out of ten—have said that the economy is rigged and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/01/09/70-of-americans-say-u-s-economic-system-unfairly-favors-the-powerful/">favours the powerful</a>. “I just feel like the underdog can’t get ahead, and it’s all about greed and profit”, one Kentucky resident told the American Academy researchers.
Yet workers are offered only establishment parties and establishment politicians—or a billionaire fraudster pretending to be the great outsider and champion of the disenfranchised. And they get a media that thinks the biggest political question is whether the shysters running the show are civil enough to shake hands as they clamour for high office.
“We’re a failing nation”, Trump declared during the debate. He’s not wrong.

The presidential debate’s biggest loser

“You better work in Michigan, boy, or you’ll become a senior and they’ll throw you in that nursing home and all’s you’ll get is a room and three meals. My brother’s in there—three to a room. No movie nights. No activities. Get me out of here, he said. Ward of the state. I said the state has a foot on your neck and I ain’t got no lawyer.”
The talker is hauling a garbage bag full of empty cans on a bus heading north-west on Grand River Avenue. Like a lot of people in this part of the world, he’s loud enough that every other passenger can be part of the conversation. That’s made easier since the bus is just idling, going nowhere.
The driver spent maybe seven minutes tending to an elderly woman who, he realised, needed to be on a different route. So now he’s taken off on foot—across the block, behind a service station—carrying her shopping trolley to chase down the right bus on a cross street. Lacking the stride of youth, she trails behind at a shuffle, which is all the pace those bowed legs and withered frame can muster. 
“He’s got God’s spirit, that man!”, another passenger cries out to general agreement. “Yes, sir—here’s a good man. You want a son like that!”
Decency of the kind that stops a bus, to hell with the timetable, surely is common in Detroit. It’s hard to believe many people could pull themselves up without frequent doses of “God’s spirit” in this city, which is an endless series of punches in the gut and slaps to the face. 
It’s the drunk, maybe drugged, woman selling her services mid-morning, stumbling and tripping over the almost deserted Michigan Avenue pavement in Southwest.
It’s the congregation of men about a homeless shelter just south of the freeway in Highland Park not long past day break.
It’s the billboard on 8 Mile Road rented by Javontae Nixon’s family, overlooking the wasteland Bel Air car park in Osborn, offering money for information about who killed him.
It’s the sign nailed to the street pole at Van Dyke and Harper avenues: “Cash 4 diabetic supplies”.
It’s the woman in Prince Valley market assailing the cashier over the price of a can of grape soda she can’t afford.
It’s the once stately McGregor Public Library on Woodward Avenue, windows smashed, overgrown, gate chained.
It’s the boarded and burned-out houses, derelict and empty, balconies collapsing, which stretch block after block between vacant lots where other homes were bulldozed and the unused footpaths have been reclaimed by untended lawns that resemble urban savannahs. 
It’s church after church after church, mainly Baptist missionary, some looking little different from corner stores. In this place desperate for economic deliverance, the promise of spiritual salvation appears everywhere—yet even churches are boarded and deserted, as though the almighty himself gave up and left town. (“No Trespassing”, scolds a Derrick Memorial Missionary Church yard sign in one empty lot on 7 Mile Road.)
It’s the bricked-up and shuttered shops disrupted only by basic or obscene markets: Family Dollar, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Dollar Castle, baleful liquor store after baleful liquor store offering “checks cashed”, pawn shops and nail and beauty salons, auto repair and service stations, personal injury lawyer adverts and fast food chains serving up only hardened arteries among all the heartache.
It’s the certainty that this devastation is no natural disaster. 
What was once a prospering city in what is still the richest country in the world has been flattened in so many districts, not with the sort of weaponry being used to level Gaza, and not at such speed, but by other means.
Detroit was the heart of the US union movement, the birthplace of the United Auto Workers and of the much vaunted “middle class”—workers who could live in relative comfort and security. Workers who didn’t just dream of getting ahead, but who really made life work, and inspired others throughout the country to follow their lead. 
It was America’s fourth largest city in 1950, with 1.8 million residents and about 300,000 manufacturing jobs. The League of Revolutionary Black Workers was born here. Martin Luther King <a href="https://medium.com/@carceralstateproject/remembering-martin-luther-king-jr-s-i-have-a-dream-speech-at-detroit-s-walk-to-freedom-74b49c85eaf5">first delivered a version of his “I have a dream” speech</a> here in 1963, which was followed several years later by some of the country’s fiercest Black rioting against racism and discrimination.
The city’s decline has been widely documented. Keith Wagstaff, a former staff writer at The Week, <a href="https://theweek.com/articles/461970/detroit-declares-bankruptcy-what-happens-now">describes it</a> as “a slow-motion, decades-long collapse that began when manufacturers left what used to be an industrial powerhouse, abruptly halting the progress of a growing black middle class”. 
Capitalists killed the city. After squeezing workers for all they could get, and not being satisfied with the surplus, bosses moved factories to non-union states and deserted the population. Part of it was making an example of those who resisted and who rose “above their station”. Part of it was just the humdrum logic of capitalism: discarding workers when opportunities arise elsewhere or when economic competition becomes more intense.
At any rate, Detroit has been humiliated, devastated and depopulated. By 1980, the number of residents had dropped by a third from its 1950 peak. In 2013, the city filed for bankruptcy. Today, there are just over 600,000 people left, three-quarters of whom are Black, <a href="https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/2023/05/23/detroit-largest-black-city-census-population-duggan/70235685007/">according to last year’s census</a> estimate. Median household incomes are less than half the national average, and the poverty rate is nearly 34 percent, <a href="https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/2024-04/Q2%202023%20Economic%20Indicators%20Report.pdf">per the city’s published statistics</a>.
This weekend [these notes are from the end of May—ed.], there’s a summit going on downtown, <a href="https://peoplesconferenceforpalestine.org/">the People’s Conference for Palestine</a>. It feels appropriate to discuss Gaza here, though not for the reasons the conference organisers announce (we’re in one of the heartlands of Arab America). 
Detroit has been destroyed. Not just unrepaired. Not just neglected. Destroyed. Whole blocks bulldozed. Whole neighbourhoods ruined. The devastation stretches along and adjacent to Van Dyke, Grand River, Woodward, Gratiot, 8 Mile, 7 Mile and so many narrower streets in between. 
Detroit is a reminder that the US ruling class doesn’t just obliterate foreign cities; it obliterates its own. In fact, it does so all the better to accumulate the resources used to create the weaponry that flattens cities all over—Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki; Baghdad, Basra, Fallujah; Gaza City, Khan Younis, Jabalia, Rafah. Not just cities, but countries—the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and more.
Workers of all colours and creeds are the source of the United States’ immense wealth, so much of which is used to feed the military industrial complex and aid Israel’s genocide. F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, 900kg bombs, tank munitions, artillery shells—tens of billions of dollars of horror have been shipped to Tel Aviv by the US. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that the United States <a href="https://www.sipri.orghttps://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/2024-03/fs_2403_at_2023.pdf">provided nearly 70 percent</a>
of Israel’s conventional weapons between 2019 and 2023. 
Those resources have been looted from places like Detroit; from workers all over the country. It’s money that could have been used to refurbish and reopen McGregor Public Library. To fix the pavements and potholed roads. To rebuild the abandoned homes so that the homeless shelters are no longer needed. To pay for a living wage and for health care and aged care, so that women don’t have to sell themselves on the street, so that old men don’t have to haul bags of cans around to cash for a few dollars; so that their brothers don’t feel like prisoners in care. 
Instead, the wealth, at least part thereof, pilfered from those who create it, has been turned into means of destruction blowing Gaza to smithereens. 
It’s impossible to settle into the conference for the devastation right in front of us: a city in distress, obscured only by the glitz of a refurbished downtown into which billions of dollars have flowed, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/03/realestate/ford-detroit-michigan-central-station.html"></a>driving up rents and property taxes and, perversely, threatening yet more displacement of poorer communities. Billionaires are back, finding new ways to exploit the town, which <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-06-03/detroit-real-estate-rebounds-after-dan-gilbert-ford-buy-up-offices">is on a rebound</a>—for some at least.
No doubt downtown is absolutely sparkling. Municipal authorities have paid for landscape gardeners, stonemasons and sanitation workers. Buildings have been refurbished by new owners. There’s waterfront development, newly paved streets, newly grassed areas, lots of streetscaping work going on and new condominiums planned. 
The money drifts north along the Cass Corridor through midtown in pockets of gentrification all the way to Wayne State University. There’s also a little “money drift” evident along Michigan Avenue: new lampposts have been installed for a few miles and new traffic lights hang at intersections, although there’s not much if anything in terms of commercial development. It’s just a bit of city hall money on basic infrastructure amid a litany of shuttered shops and deserted lots.
The money drifts only so far. City authorities don’t bother with basic street cleaning or repair in many of the residential areas—except for those with obvious money, which admittedly are not difficult to find, like Arden Park and Palmer Woods. North Corktown is looking revitalised as well. No doubt other areas are doing okay or thriving. As in any city, there are different classes of people and different classes of neighbourhoods. But that trite truism fails to inure one to the generational devastation in so many working-class areas.
On 7 Mile again and Derrick is swilling spirits out of a Gatorade bottle. “Mother fucker. What are you doing here?” It’s the sort of exasperated-chuckle greeting one might get bumping into an old friend in a strange place. Here, a white boy’s presence just seems cause for bemusement. Discovering that it’s an Australian horrified by the city and trying to understand it stirs a little curiosity. 
Derrick sits down and we suss each other out like two dogs in a park sniffing the other’s whiskers. Small talk. Some pencil pointing. Slow nodding. Then he comes through. “Here’s my number—write it down. You call me tomorrow and I’ll show you ’round. I’ll show you everything you need to know”, Derrick says. “My car’s in the garage, but we’ll get around—you’ll see.”
But tomorrow is a morning Greyhound to Illinois. 
“Oooh, Chicago”, he rumbles with a shake of the head. “They’s worse than us. You be careful in Chicago.”
And that, for us at least, is Detroit’s last word. Derrick on 7 Mile, almost penniless and his car in surgery, is thinking of the welfare of a stranger from the other side of the world.

Talking Gaza in Detroit

‘Divest to reinvest’: how one encampment is thinking global and acting local

What we’ve learned in New York City

In what is a first for the United States, and perhaps the world, staff members at The New School, a private university in New York, today established their own Gaza solidarity encampment. They have committed to support suspended students and to back their calls for divestment from Israel.
In the foyer of the University Center building at the corner of 5th Avenue and East 13th Street, several tents have been assembled and faculty members are painting placards. One staff member, who wanted to remain anonymous for the time being, tells Red Flag:
“[We] decided to set up an encampment today in continuation with the demands for divestment from the Israeli war machine that our students started. So we are standing in solidarity with our students. And not just our students, of course—students around the country and around the world.
“On university campus after university, around this city and beyond, the police have been called in and have engaged in violence, in aggressive mass arrests. The New School, the alleged school of social justice, was no different.
“Last Friday morning, very early, the university president called in the police to wake the students and they arrested more than 40. So we are standing where our students stood because they have been suspended—many of them are no longer allowed on this campus.
“We are calling for the immediate revocation of any disciplinary measures against these students and standing with their profoundly moral demands. We stand with the call for divestment as bombs fall on Rafah—600,000 people trapped, children trapped, 44,000 already dead. 
“Our students led the way. It’s our time to step up, follow them and join them.”
Reportedly, there are more than two dozen staff committed to staying overnight. But the support extends far beyond this number. As previously reported in the <a href="https://www.newschoolfreepress.com/2024/05/03/faculty-and-students-cast-a-vote-of-no-confidence-in-tns-leadership-after-mass-arrests-at-gaza-solidarity-encampment/">New School Free Press</a>, more than 200 staff met on 3 May to cast votes of no confidence in university President Donna Shalala, the Faculty Senate and the Board of Trustees.
At the time of writing, the university administration has not issued a statement on the staff encampment. The faculty move comes just fourteen hours after the <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/too-many-cops-not-enough-justice-as-last-nyc-encampment-cleared">last New York City Palestine solidarity student encampment was cleared</a>.
Outside on 5th Avenue, two student organisers—AJ and Aisha—are part of a contingent of staff and students chanting and cheering on the new encampment, less than a week after theirs was dismantled by police. How do they feel watching tents blossom again?
“We always knew the fight wasn’t over. And so it’s pretty fucking beautiful to see this”, Aisha says. “The faculty are stepping up. The faculty are putting their bodies on the line. This time, we’re very happy to be in solidarity with them. We’re very happy to be in this fight with them.
“The faculty inside have been with us for some time and are just showing up in a different way now—and we’re very glad to have them.”
Of course, a student occupation is one thing—a staff encampment is quite another.
As is often the case, there are more questions than answers at this point:
Will more staff—and students—join this encampment?
Will staff at other universities follow suit?
How quickly will the administration move against New School faculty?
The answer to this last question will no doubt determine, in part, answers to the first two. 
AJ is optimistic about the prospects. 
“Our movement started with a handful of people. Even at the original­ Columbia encampment, it was a handful of students who were willing to be brave and risk something”, he says.
“It opened the floodgates for hundreds to come and support them. At Columbia, in the first days, the students who organised the club and encampment were pretty much immediately suspended and were not allowed back on campus. But it sparked what we have now which is like an unbelievable uprising. 
“There’s a handful [of faculty] in there that are opening the door the same way we did. I’m really proud of them and I’m really excited.”
There are, however, greater barriers to a staff movement taking off. Students in general have a higher degree of freedom and flexibility in their lives, and fewer financial commitments. They also can act as a minority with greater abandon.
A broad faculty encampment movement seems unlikely, particularly seeing that it’s now the end of the teaching year and many staff will have to find other jobs over the summer. 
Then again, sometimes you just never know. After all, last night we were talking about the end of NYC encampments altogether. And now this world first comes out of the blue.
Even if things go south from here, the encampments, AJ acknowledges, are but one tactic of the movement.
All power to them.

World first as New School faculty establish Gaza solidarity encampment

How many cops does it take to move on a couple of dozen undergraduate fashion and design students?
If you’re the New York Police Department, fewer than 200 evidently would leave officers fearing for their safety. You’d want at least 50 with batons drawn and helmets and visors on. Plus a bunch on push bikes. And a smattering of white shirts to stand around for hours strategizing. And a car full of people from the NYPD Legal Bureau.
You’d want to set up four to six separate cordons. You’d want a drone hovering overhead. Possibly a helicopter? How many vans and other vehicles? Enough to jam up half of 7th Avenue and a bunch of 8th Avenue (and most of West 27th Street in between). Busses? Yep, at least three of those. Oh yeah, and a truck full of metal barricades.
What about the deli on the corner with the bagels and soda? You’d surround that pretty good as well. In fact, you’d put most of the uniforms in close proximity to be sure nothing happened there.
After the week of violence that students have endured for campaigning against the genocide in Gaza, it doesn’t seem right to joke about the latest immense and unjustifiable NYPD mobilisation. But at the Fashion Institute of Technology tonight (Tuesday 7 May), the last New York City Gaza solidarity encampment, the scenes bordered on the absurd—like employing twenty people to dig one hole with one shovel.
But then, that’s part of policing: just displaying overwhelming force to put the fear of God into people. In this case, a bunch of young undergraduates who have sacrificed hours and hours of their time trying to do something positive and meaningful in the face of one of the 21st century’s greatest crimes.
It’s not enough that they have been ritually maligned and slandered in the press and by politicians.
It didn’t matter that their demands are sensible—for their university administrations to disclose any investments in companies that aid in the genocide of Palestinians, and, if such investments exist, to divest from those companies.
It counted for nothing that they have been peaceful and generally restrained in the face of endless provocations.
That they were unarmed and posed no threat was inconsequential.
They were met with the threat of overwhelming state violence regardless.
“Today our committee met with our staff and the chairman of our school, and they threatened to call the NYPD on us—which they have—if we didn’t disperse by 7pm today. They called NYPD on peaceful protesters who are standing our ground for our encampment”, J, one of the organisers told Red Flag as the police moved in. 
“We want to stand here to let them know that we’re not moving until they divest from Israel ... Today, they’ve suspended most of the people from this encampment. And we’re still standing here. It’s absolutely disgusting that we pay so much money to these institutions for them to just … disregard our opinions.”
The couple of dozen FIT activists were joined by supporters from other campuses when word got out about the impending eviction. But when the police arrived, officers barricaded both ends of the block on 27th Street to prevent supporters reaching the encampment.
With the students totally out muscled, there was a sense of inevitability about who would prevail. But the FIT activists and their comrades kept up the chanting for several hours. When the police finally moved in as midnight approached, those from the encampment made good on their word, refusing to simply walk away.
They had to be arrested—the police said the charge was trespassing. The students’ hands were tied and they were marched onto one of the police buses. Cheering erupted as they passed their comrades, who made sure the arrestees knew that they were appreciated.
But just when it looked over, supporters put their own little exclamation mark on the evening, blocking 8th Avenue and preventing the bus from moving for five to ten minutes. 
The cops had to use force to clear the road and made a few arrests. But after such a night, and such a few weeks, this was a little, tiny victory for these students to savour: they didn’t just bear witness to their comrades’ arrests. They got involved; they had a crack. They were a minor annoyance. But they did something.
And then, just when you thought it couldn’t drag on any longer … it didn’t. The cops left; their job done. But the remaining students claimed just one more little bit of pride: they outlasted this giant mob in blue.
“Yeah, fuck off pigs!” 
“Pigs!”
“Fucking pigs! Fuck off!”
Defiance in defeat is sometimes the most respectable form of defiance.
The last of the city’s encampments is no more. In other US cities, and around the world, they continue. For how much longer? And what next for the Palestine solidarity movement in New York City? The activists will decide. And time will tell.

The fox and the wolf in the presidential debate

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US far right prepares for power under Trump

The presidential debate’s biggest loser

Talking Gaza in Detroit

‘Divest to reinvest’: how one encampment is thinking global and acting local

What we’ve learned in New York City

World first as New School faculty establish Gaza solidarity encampment

Too many cops, not enough justice, as last NYC encampment cleared

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