> Portland City Council stands with the people who may one day face difficult decisions about pregnancy, and we respect their right to make the best decision for themselves.
Also Portland, "Portland to city employees: Get COVID-19 vaccine or lose your job" [1]
Women making their own reproductive choices is not the same as a global pandemic that will not end until we vaccinate nearly everyone. And people not trusting a corrupt media and government is but one of many problems. The need to produce vaccines globally running into desire for billions comes to mind here.
I am not defending the anti vaxxers. Not at all. They do us all harm due to how covid will mutate, potentially requiring a do over and or consuming health systems to the point of real risk for everyone when they face lack of availability. However, we also need to take a really hard look at what drives their lack of trust and I will point right to corruption as cause one. Again, not making excuses here, just stating hard observations. Anti vax behavior is strongly correlated to education level. How are poorly educated people going to develop trust and understanding in a sea of poor clarity media and government they see failing to represent them?
Hard question, I know. But, everything costs something. We are seeing some of those costs play out now and with high costs and severe risks.
I also understand the strong desire to get more people on board, and conflating these two things is unlikely to further that goal. They are two different matters.
I am social and economic left, but not extreme. Probably European center. Markets are fine, but so are social programs, safety nets.
Corruption isn't, and the US has a lot of money in politics right now.
Just some context for what I am about to say:
The US left, in terms of who holds power, has pushed some real social progress. I am happy to say I did my part as an activist, voter, citizen. More of us do not have to live lies and or suffer discrimination for things we have no choice in. Good.
Put simply, I was there, sometimes at great personal cost.
All this social progress has come at increasingly severe economic costs. Far too many people are paycheck to paycheck, working too much and able to afford too little.
Year after year more face this, and every year more turn away convinced they lack meaningful representation. And that adds right up to things like we are seeing now.
Social progress is under real threat due to lack of economic progress.
Those people were there for the social fights and plenty of wins are in the record for all to see.
It is time we show up for economic reasons.
Not doing that puts all of us at the very real risk of increasingly authoritarian, potentially fascist government. And that will be driven by the need to check growing unrest due to economic factors.
All a real fascist will need to do in the next couple elections is speak right to all that and sell people on a vision. And they do not actually have to mean it any more than we have seen other elected leaders mean it.
Desperate people will gamble and hope.
Why?
Think in terms of hard priorities:
Say one is forced to choose between feeding the kids, paying rent, seeing the doctor and paying for that
, or
More hard social policy fights?
They will try and eat before they will try and end bigotry, for example. Same goes for sexism, theocracy, racism...
I am gonna show up for labor. It is long overdue.
You should too. It will matter as much as the long list of social causes have mattered and not having enough is just as cruel as being told one cannot present as who they are, or that they are somehow less because of some attribute or other.
It all hurts. And when it hurts enough, there is no need to judge pain. It just hurts.
And all of this is unnecessary. We really do not have to be making others lives hell socially or economically.
4 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 21.6 ms ] thread> Portland City Council stands with the people who may one day face difficult decisions about pregnancy, and we respect their right to make the best decision for themselves.
Also Portland, "Portland to city employees: Get COVID-19 vaccine or lose your job" [1]
[1] https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2021/08/portland-to-city-emp...
Women making their own reproductive choices is not the same as a global pandemic that will not end until we vaccinate nearly everyone. And people not trusting a corrupt media and government is but one of many problems. The need to produce vaccines globally running into desire for billions comes to mind here.
I am not defending the anti vaxxers. Not at all. They do us all harm due to how covid will mutate, potentially requiring a do over and or consuming health systems to the point of real risk for everyone when they face lack of availability. However, we also need to take a really hard look at what drives their lack of trust and I will point right to corruption as cause one. Again, not making excuses here, just stating hard observations. Anti vax behavior is strongly correlated to education level. How are poorly educated people going to develop trust and understanding in a sea of poor clarity media and government they see failing to represent them?
Hard question, I know. But, everything costs something. We are seeing some of those costs play out now and with high costs and severe risks.
I also understand the strong desire to get more people on board, and conflating these two things is unlikely to further that goal. They are two different matters.
We should not be having these squabbles.
I just want to point out something important:
I am social and economic left, but not extreme. Probably European center. Markets are fine, but so are social programs, safety nets.
Corruption isn't, and the US has a lot of money in politics right now.
Just some context for what I am about to say:
The US left, in terms of who holds power, has pushed some real social progress. I am happy to say I did my part as an activist, voter, citizen. More of us do not have to live lies and or suffer discrimination for things we have no choice in. Good.
Put simply, I was there, sometimes at great personal cost.
All this social progress has come at increasingly severe economic costs. Far too many people are paycheck to paycheck, working too much and able to afford too little.
Year after year more face this, and every year more turn away convinced they lack meaningful representation. And that adds right up to things like we are seeing now.
Social progress is under real threat due to lack of economic progress.
Those people were there for the social fights and plenty of wins are in the record for all to see.
It is time we show up for economic reasons.
Not doing that puts all of us at the very real risk of increasingly authoritarian, potentially fascist government. And that will be driven by the need to check growing unrest due to economic factors.
All a real fascist will need to do in the next couple elections is speak right to all that and sell people on a vision. And they do not actually have to mean it any more than we have seen other elected leaders mean it.
Desperate people will gamble and hope.
Why?
Think in terms of hard priorities:
Say one is forced to choose between feeding the kids, paying rent, seeing the doctor and paying for that
, or
More hard social policy fights?
They will try and eat before they will try and end bigotry, for example. Same goes for sexism, theocracy, racism...
I am gonna show up for labor. It is long overdue.
You should too. It will matter as much as the long list of social causes have mattered and not having enough is just as cruel as being told one cannot present as who they are, or that they are somehow less because of some attribute or other.
It all hurts. And when it hurts enough, there is no need to judge pain. It just hurts.
And all of this is unnecessary. We really do not have to be making others lives hell socially or economically.
Consider showing up.
It’s one thing to decline to do business with another state, it’s another to ban travel and trade.