Now is the Time For a Grassroots Movements Revitalization in 2024
Bringing the power back to the people, and what that really means. P.S. Come to the Rhode Island State House on Wednesday, 1/17.
Distrust of American politics, as we all know, is a phenomenon decades in the making. As we also are well aware, the obstructionist approach Newt Gingrich in the House and Mitch McConnell in the Senate have pioneered has not helped. Nor has the full-fledged authoritarianism of Trump-era Republican Party leaders.
But the solution to this distrust must be bigger than the immediate causes of the problem. Nowhere is this clearer than here.
Because of, again, the economic legacy of the Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton presidencies (and more to come on this take), people feel taken for granted and taken advantage of, with less opportunities and no possibility for themselves or their families to receive the benefits of hard work. On the political level, gridlock has completely blocked action on various initiatives popular with a decisive majority of voters (like abortion access and gun control, or even certain bipartisan immigration reform and stronger ethics rules). Politicians, cozied up in gerrymandered districts, rarely take the time to visit or even acknowledge those outside of their core constituencies-especially in the South. Although this has lead to an increasingly radicalized Republican Party, this has also led Democrats, for example, to ignore Rural America to their own detriment. Meanwhile, special interests—including wealthy billionaires and Pentagon defense contractors—have taken advantage of the system that exists today.
Life at home continues to be a struggle for many while the wealthy continue to be as well-off as ever (and some have even profited more off of the misery of the coronavirus pandemic). And, outside of our borders, there is a chaos around the world, chaos that the regular person in America feels basically powerless to stop. Hopelessness and fear are a terrible recipe for disaster in this country. This type of fear paved for the rise of people like Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong, and allowed for events like the Holocaust, regional conflicts, purges, the gulags, and the famines of the Great Leap Forward.
Yes, contrary to what we often hear, there is a lot to feel good about from where we were not just say, 4 years ago, but throughout our history. We have made a lot of progress for our country-and even now in undoing the deep legacy of Reaganomics and Clinton’s neoconservatism. Yet we have a lot more to deal with, and we need to take the actions the people are demanding, but are not seeing.
The middle class in the United States still needs to be fully rebuilt. Though I still have a strong belief in President Joe Biden’s ability to help our country reach new heights, our greatest victory and hope has to come from the whole of the American people. Often, this will be in the form of directly challenging the political establishment however and whenever necessary.
For these reasons, 2024 gives me faith that a resurgence in our true grassroots movements can reset the dynamics of American politics, power, and governance for generations to come. If there is one thing that scares politicians more than money, it is “We the People,” united together in a cause that truly serves our interests-which is what the New Progressives of 2016 and even the Tea Party of 2010 tried to do.
This is what defined the movements that paved the way for the rise of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and will pave the way for a new generation of populist and progressive leaders. Though our goals must be more ambitious now, a similar amount of energy and enthusiasm is needed.
If you need an example of why we need to reform Washington DC—and the way it does business today—look no further than US Commerce Secretary and former Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo.
Her rise to Washington DC, and the compulsively lying propaganda that legitimizes it (e.g., the profiles of her by “Your Crypto Daily Show”), conceals one of the worst kept secrets across Capitol Hill today. Rhode Islanders and people across the country are right now working hard to uncover her track record, and the many, many skeletons tucked away in her closet of the lives she ruined.
Skeletons like her stealing of benefits from workers and retirees by raiding the money in the state pension system to put into hedge funds, private equity, and specifically her own venture capital firm, Point Judith Capital. Of course, she will say, she put her assets there in a “blind trust.” But when a blind trust only contains one company, is it really a blind trust? Although maybe she went to the Donald Trump school of avoiding conflicts of interest and ethical improprieties.
Or her record of obstructing those pension investment records and documents on the status of Point Judith Capital’s finances from the public via secret contracts still to be unveiled by the Rhode Island General Treasurer’s Office.
Or her record of immense conflicts of interests in the unveiling of states contracts and other programs. Particularly for business corporations like McKinsey & Co., various Wall Street institutions, fossil fuel conglomerates like Enron & Invenergy, the charter school lobby which formerly employed her husband Andy Moffit, the cryptocurrency industry, the artificial intelligence sector, and, to top it off, rightly and almost universally-despised Big Tech.
Or her record of administrative misconduct, incompetence, blunders, dysfunction, mismanagement, and neglect running the gamut from a publicly mocked “Cooler & Warmer” tourism campaign, the vastly overlooked blunders of her coronavirus response, the failed Providence Schools takeover, the failed launching of the Bristol Veterans’ Home, the preventable debacle at UHIP, challenges at DCYF, and the ongoing and despicable crisis now at Eleanor Slater Hospital. The worst of all these incidents raise questions about the ability of my home state to comply with basic federal laws under Raimondo’s tenure, and even whether state and federal dollars were misspent fraudulently in several of these instances.
But it also could be her record of failure more generally. Despite her claims of a Rhode Island comeback, Rhode Island faces almost all of the same challenges that it did in 2015 (take it from local veteran reporter Ian Donnis, writing as of 1/5/24). Namely, we still face a brutal business climate, woefully dilapidated infrastructure (thank you RhodeWorks), devastated social services (including a broken and starved RI Medicaid system), an inefficient pay-to-play system, and a state that at large falls woefully short of the standards set in neighboring states like Massachusetts. Her PR farce and her shameless marketing does not change that.
This is the truth (and, by the way, the former governor did not really invest in renewable energy, contrary to another one of her PR talking points. RI Department of Administration records newly released show clear evidence undermining her exaggerated claims).
Secretary Raimondo has been forcefully exposed by the local press and other essential watchdog groups in and beyond Rhode Island. She is a fraud and a con artist. And Congress is well within its right to compel Raimondo to testify on these issues and many more.
Which is why many, in fact, are pushing for a special congressional oversight commission to come right to Providence, Rhode Island (see my previous petitions on Change.org and MoveOn, and my past archive of posts on Raimondo).
That is why the 2024 legislative session on Smith Hill will be filled with peaceful protests, demonstrations, and vigils on all of these ongoing issues. These protests will advocate for proper scrutiny and oversight into Commerce Secretary Raimondo’s questionable conduct in state & federal government. And it all starts on January 17. Save the date. Mark it on your calendar.
2024, as this one example alone shows, is the time to reform business as usual, and build a new future of what we can and should be as a nation.