Column: Lessons of the audio leak: Solidarity is dead. Let’s ditch the label ‘people of color’ and come out with a new, progressive word.
Solidarity is dead. Let’s ditch the label “people of color” and come out with a new word — one that’s not in the dictionary. That would be “progressive.”
I’ve spent the past month talking to some of the most powerful people in the country, and now — with the publication of Donald Trump’s leaked audio record — I’m hearing that their reaction to those recordings is a lot like the reaction of the world’s leading corporations to the WikiLeaks dump of documents exposing the war crimes of Wall Street.
Yes, the world’s largest corporations did eventually cave in to Trump’s demands for corporate welfare, but that’s because they had already made an offer, or a promise, the same as many of us did during our 2016 presidential campaign. They promised to not only open their checkbooks, but to contribute to his campaign.
And when he got what he wanted, they were ready to donate millions of dollars. Which means that what’s really at stake is not just our election and economic stability but the future of the world as a whole.
And the world’s leading corporations have the same choice facing us. They can follow Trump to the White House without blinking their giant, stinky, capitalist eyes, or they can support his candidacy at what I expect to be one of the most shameful moments for the corporate establishment in American history.
They don’t have a choice. They have to follow Trump to defeat him, but that means embracing the same corporate strategy of cutting, slashing, and dismantling — and the very same tactics that will bring the White House to its knees.
And that means they must do it not only with their wallets, not only with their votes, but with their support for Trump’s politics. Like Trump, the corporations are selling us out — and they’re selling us out not as “citizens” in an
