Where We Go Next: Responding to COVID-19 by Building on Bernie’s Multiracial Coalition
By Beth Huang, Boston DSA
In late February, when fellow SMC member Sam Lewis and I published our proposal to stop Democratic Party elites from stealing the nomination from Senator Bernie Sanders in a contested election, I was giddy with the prospect of a democratic socialist President. Bernie’s success with a diverse coalition of working-class people inspired me to knock on doors, recruit volunteers, cook chili for canvassers, and try to persuade every progressive leader of color to endorse Sanders. I wondered, sometimes out loud and often on Twitter, how the left should govern and what we needed to do to energize volunteers through the 2022 midterms.
Within one week between early- and mid-March, Bernie’s path to the nomination narrowed while the rise of COVID-19 changed our everyday lives. It feels like an extraordinary coincidence, and it’s been hard to process.
As a Chinese American, I have received anxious calls since mid-January from my parents about the spread of coronavirus in China. For months, I have known that right-wing nationalists in the Trump administration would likely blame the spread of COVID-19 on China, which for many Americans is indistinguishable from Chinese people in the US and could stoke anti-Asian xenophobia and violence. I am relieved that the coronavirus outbreak in Greater Boston originated at a conference of highly educated biotech researchers, rather than in a working-class Asian community in Massachusetts, which would have stoked more incidences of violence against Asian Americans. It’s ironic that Biogen, a biotech company that is supposed to be discovering the diagnostics and treatment for COVID-19, spread the pandemic.
It’s not the only irony. The pandemic has physically separated us from our neighbors while the community response has fostered networks of mutual aid to break regular patterns of segregation and alienation. The pandemic heeds no national boundaries, spreading in detention centers filled with people who cannot cross borders to reunite with family members. The pandemic has validated the need for Medicare for All and the power of workers, just as Sanders’ pathway to the nomination narrows with every primary contest.
We’re living in extraordinary times, and it’s hard to feel like we can do more than just consume news. It’s hard to feel like we have agency. Many of us are processing what we need to do, and what we still can do, at this moment.
We need to stay connected while we bridge to a better future after COVID-19. Here are five things that I’m committed to do, and how I’m restoring my sense of agency in the face of the decline in Bernie’s viable contest for the nomination and the pandemic:
Rekindling conversations with leaders of social movement organizations that endorsed Bernie or who supported Bernie: After analyzing the electoral map, it is clear to me that Sanders won the working-class cities of Massachusetts, but the coalition often wasn’t deep enough to motivate enough working-class voters of color to turnout, which means that high turnout among wealthier, whiter homeowners fueled Biden to victory in “liberal Massachusetts.” As we all look to each other to make meaning of an ever more surreal world, I’m reaching out to base-building organizations in communities of color to understand how DSA can support their demands to alleviate the impact of COVID-19 on working-class people.
Building relationships with committed volunteers who I met through the Sanders campaign: Unsurprisingly, a lot of committed volunteers are now involved in neighborhood mutual aid networks. We can keep up the solidarity of the Sanders movement by continuing to organize together for mutual aid, political demands to increase aid to working-class people, and more. I’m still making calls through local phone banks organized by the campaign to voters in states with upcoming primary elections because all Bernie supporters deserve to cast their ballot safely, and we need to share information with voters about how to request absentee ballots. Every vote for Bernie is a vote for the world we’re striving to win.
Learning about the role of socialist organizers in Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns and the Rainbow Coalition: Socialists, especially in the League of Revolutionary Socialists and the Line of March, organized for the Jesse Jackson campaigns for president in 1984 and 1988. I’ve been fortunate to know a few of these movement elders and ask them about how they picked up from tough losses, what lessons they learned, and how the Jackson campaigns shaped their politics. I can’t recommend Max Elbaum’s book, Revolution in the Air, highly enough.
Connecting with members of suburban branches of Boston DSA: Workers, tenants, and immigrants need greater immediate relief and a just recovery. Conservative suburban legislators in the Massachusetts statehouse often have blocked even the most common sense social democratic reforms. I’ve been talking to leaders of the suburban branches to put pressure on these conservative suburban legislators to pass the eviction moratorium, paid sick leave, decarceration, and other essential demands to grant immediate relief to working-class people.
The only thing clear to me in these constantly changing and uncertain times is that ordinary working-class people - the home healthcare aids, grocery store clerks, emergency childcare workers, and more - are going to save us during these extraordinary times. As democratic socialists, we need to organize so that the world we return to after the pandemic is more humane. I hope you join me in taking action in fighting racism and capitalism in our response to COVID-19 to restore our own agency and build collective power.