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    The Politics of Spectacle: On Eviction Moratorium, The Squad Talks the Walk 📂 Archived Message

    Posted by sashimi on August 4, 2021, 3:15 am

    Daniel Haiphong, 3 August 2021

    Lede: The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that not even the most
    "progressive" elected officials in the U.S. are willing to do what is necessary
    to meet the needs of the people.

    (quote)
    Members of Congress departed for a seven-week vacation at the same time that the
    Center for Disease Control's (CDC) national eviction moratorium expired on July
    31. The Squad, a subset of members of the House of Representatives who espouse
    Bernie Sanders' policy agenda, gathered at the Capitol building to demand that
    Congress come back to work and hold a vote to renew the moratorium. Cori Bush,
    Jamal Bowman, and other Squad members slept on the Capitol steps overnight as
    part of the ongoing protest. Critics on social media pointed out that the rally
    was too little, too late while others remarked that the low attendance of the
    rally, comprised mainly of political surrogates, rendered the action nothing
    more than a photo opportunity for the Squad.

    Founder of Black Agenda Report (BAR) Glen Ford died three days before the
    protest. Ford strongly opposed the politics of diversity, which privilege
    political representation over substantive policy demands and the popular power
    required to achieve them. He closely monitored the Congressional Black Caucus
    (CBC) to demonstrate that voting for elected officials who look and behave like
    their constituents does not necessarily equate to representation. Ford led BAR's
    effort to expose how the CBC, for example, voted in large majorities to
    militarize U.S. police departments and enshrine their officers with protected
    class status under federal hate-crime legislation.

    The Squad rose to prominence following Barack Obama's two-term presidency. Obama
    represented the pinnacle of diversity. Obama was famously touted as a victory in
    the long, hard struggle of Black Americans for human rights, yet his
    administration greatly expanded the theater of the U.S. war machine and enacted
    a broad policy agenda friendly to the rich. Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential
    campaign emerged from the economic discontent once encapsulated by Occupy Wall
    Street - a protest movement that Obama's DHS and FBI brutally repressed at the
    tail end of his first term. In a pivot away from protest, an increasingly
    left-leaning Democratic Party base placed their energy into electing
    "progressive" members of Congress.

    Talking the walk
    The Squad combines the politics of diversity with a politics of
    spectacle. Unlike Obama, who openly chastised Black Americans and separated
    himself from the Left, the Squad professes to stand with working people and
    "walk the walk." U.S. Representatives Cori Bush and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
    (now better known as AOC) frequently identify themselves as organizers in a bid
    to relate to their young, left-leaning supporters. This was evident in their
    response to the expiration of the eviction moratorium, which has left more than
    11 million Americans at risk of eviction. The Squad took to the streets as
    organizers in the hours before the policy ended despite offering little more
    than statements in the months leading up to July 31.

    Even worse, the Squad has struggled just as much as the rest of the Democratic
    Party to articulate just who is to blame for the negligence surrounding the
    eviction moratorium. Members of the Squad have been hesitant to cast full blame
    for the crisis onto House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or President Joe Biden. AOC told
    journalist Chuck Modi that the Biden administration failed to respond to the
    Supreme Court order in June indicating the need for congressional involvement
    until just days before the moratorium expired.

    "The House was caught off guard by the White House's statement, there was some
    resistance in the House and members literally started getting on planes"
    AOC on last month since court order to Biden to call on Congress. (Sat.)
    pic.twitter.com/jEM1hA6SQs
    -- ChuckModi (@ChuckModi1) August 1, 2021

    Cori Bush explained to journalist Max Blumenthal that she didn't know why Joe
    Biden had not issued an executive order to renew the eviction moratorium and
    said that the crisis "wasn't about" Nancy Pelosi. AOC's assertion that the Squad
    doesn't subscribe to a theory of change that posits one must be nice to the
    powerful to get what you want is seemingly at odds with their unwillingness to
    directly challenge Democratic Party leadership in a moment of crisis.

    I asked Rep. @CoriBush about Pelosi and Biden's role in letting the moratorium
    reach its expiration pic.twitter.com/r8iveSWXcW
    -- Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) August 1, 2021

    In truth, the Squad has been more than amenable to the establishment wing of the
    Democratic Party. Instead of participating in public protests over immigration
    policy, as was the case during the Trump administration, the Squad has limited
    itself to sharp statements now that Biden is deporting undocumented immigrants
    at a rate far higher than the prior administration. Last year, AOC called Nancy
    Pelosi the "Mama Bear" of the Democratic Party despite the fact that majorities
    support a third-party alternative to the current electoral duopoly. And not one
    member of the Squad was willing to force a vote for Medicare For All during a
    deadly pandemic in exchange for their support of Nancy Pelosi's bid for speaker
    of the House.
    (/quote)
    -- Cont'd at https://www.mintpressnews.com/on-eviction-moratorium-progressive-agenda-squad-talks-the-walk/278126/

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