August 4
GUEST: Lillian Cicerchia, socialist writer, organizer and postdoctoral researcher in philosophy at the Free University of Berlin, talks about her interview in Jacobin entitled: "Voting Harder Won’t Bring Back Roe."
Voting Harder Won’t Bring Back Roe
Lillian reminds us that social change doesn't happen at elections. Applying this concept to abortion rights is easy. For decades, we have relied on a Supreme Court ruling to give women the right to control their own bodies. What should have been happening is the creation of a broad movement to give women their equal rights in all aspects of their lives. The question is not why the ultra conservatives want to take away a women's rights. That happens in all fascist influenced societies. The real question is why society as a whole has offered so little resistance.
Part of the problem is the use of human rights issues in elections. In short, Democrats have run on protecting a women's right to choose. But like most election promises on waging peace, protecting the environment, or taxing the rich, it has been all talk. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are comfortable within the embrace of big money. The billionaires and their corporations make all the real decisions in these United States. And whatever is profitable for the ultra rich is what really gets done.
Of course, there has to be a reinvigoration of the women's rights movement. But more than that, we have to reinvent our government so that our representatives do what we want them to do. That will require the overcoming of both corporate dominated political parties. How to expose the fraud of billionaire backed candidates? How to get our mainstream media to even point out the gross corruption of our system? That's the struggle that we must eventually win. Societies do accomplish massive changes like these, and eventually it can happen here, in the country that invented "Government of the people, by the people, for the people."
