I’m late linking to Jeff Sparrow’s excellent post because I couldn’t decide which aspect to highlight. Perhaps this: “The fight against the virus now depends on direct politics: the democratic mobilisation of the entire population. That’s the only way we might sustain popular enthusiasm for the measures required. A radical response to Covid … would rest on employees deciding for themselves whether their industries could or should operate or close down; it would entail neighbourhood groups providing mutual aid; it would refocus the entire economy on people’s basic needs. Obviously, that all sounds fanciful, in a context in which community groups and unions have never been weaker. But it’s far more fanciful to imagine that an entirely marginal Left could somehow compel the state to act on its behalf. … Yes, we’re in a terribly weak condition. But that makes articulating, as best we can, our own, independent positions even more important. The response by the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism to the attack on the CFMEU provides a good example. Using the hashtag, #DontScabGetTheJab, the group is encouraging workers to circulate pics in which they display the slogan ‘pro-vax, pro-union, anti-fascist’. Ok, it’s small beer: everyone knows that social media won’t, in and of itself, change the world. Conceptually, though, there’s an important difference between neatly-coiffured politicians belittling vaccine-hesitant communities as ignorant morons and ordinary workers presenting the fight against Covid as an expression of social solidarity by which we might keep each other safe.”
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