Tag Archives: feminism

Not Left vs. Right but Top vs. Bottom?

Future Hope, , , ,

“There’s something broken in America. Our economy is broken. Our politics are broken. Even our relationships with each other feel broken. That’s because the most powerful people in the world want it that way. The biggest divide in this country is not left vs. right. It’s top vs. bottom. Billionaires want us looking left and right at each other instead of looking up at them. The people at the top work so hard to keep us angry and divided because our unity is a threat to their wealth and power. So their cable news networks and their social media algorithms tear us apart. They divide us by party, by race, by gender, by religion so we don’t notice they’re defunding our schools, gutting our healthcare, and cutting taxes for themselves and their rich friends. It’s the oldest strategy in the world: divide and conquer.” 

Texas US Senate candidate James Talarico, https://jamestalarico.com/why-im-running/

I recently finished writing 10 of these columns about “21st Century Common Sense,” a relatively short overview of how I see our human realities in 2026 and what we can do about them. In so many ways, what Talarico says above is just “common sense.”

But there’s more that needs to be said about this.

As I thought about writing this column over the last few days I kept remembering an experience in Washington, DC in the early 1980s that I had as a young, progressive activist and organizer. I was there as part of a couple of days of rallying and lobbying around issues of racial justice organized by the National Anti-Klan Network, led by long time African American leader Rev. CT Vivian. Vivian began his anti-segregation, anti-racist activism in 1947 at the age of 23. He worked alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 50s and 60s. He passed on at the age of 95 in 2020.

I remember sitting at a table with him and others at one point, and I said something essentially consistent with what Talarico said, that we need to bring together black and white working people in order to bring about needed change.

Vivian responded, saying that the problem with looking at it that way is the reality of virulent racist ideas and actions of too many white working-class people. We need to work with other white people, he implied, who may be more middle- or higher-class but who get it on the need to speak out and take action on racism.

Today, 45 or so years later, it is very clear that the problems of racism, sexism and heterosexism have not been solved. The fact that Donald Trump is President, alone, underlines that fact.

But it’s also true there is a much more extensive network, a larger number of people, tens of millions of us, who get it on these issues and are willing to take action on them. The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in June of 2020 led to upwards of 25 million people taking action in the streets all over the country. And the fact that an African-American man was elected President twice in 2008 and 2012 is another big example.

Obama’s election victories, while welcome given the Republican alternatives, helped somewhat to strengthen this anti-racist trend in US life, but it is questionable how much it helped to do what Talarico, and many others, myself included, believe in and are working for. The fact that he was no Bernie Sanders when it came to his administration’s economic policies and programs led to significant loss of support from white workers over the course of his eight years in office. A Gallup poll report in 2014, for example, put it this way:

“President Barack Obama’s job approval rating among white non-college graduates is at 27% so far in 2014, 14 percentage points lower than among white college graduates. This is the largest yearly gap between these two groups since Obama took office. These data underscore the magnitude of the Democratic Party’s problem with working-class whites, among whom Obama lost in the 2012 presidential election, and among whom Democratic House candidates lost in the 2014 U.S. House voting by 30 points.”

Talarico and all of us who see ourselves as progressives need to be about a different “top vs. bottom” in this third decade of the 21st century. On the one hand, we do need to emphasize this point as we go about our work, actively emphasizing that working people or all colors, cultures and nationalities must consciously join forces against the billionaire class and do so with urgency. At the same time, we need to unite in a way which takes into account the very real issues which have kept us divided and fighting each other.

As I put it in one of my 21st Century Common Sense columns:

 “The major divisions keeping the working class separated are racism, sexism and heterosexism. As a popular alliance emerges that unites the movements of people of color, the women’s movement, the lgbtq+ movement, the climate and environmental movement, young people, and the progressive elements of the labor movement and community-based working-class based movements, there is an arena for popular education on these and other divisive and backwards-looking ideologies. In the process of working together around commonly felt issues of concern, people grow and change. This can only benefit the working class.”

What we need is an alliance where we all do our best to be good listeners, to respect and learn from one another so we can consciously unite “the bottom.”

 Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of two books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, published in 2020 and 2021 and both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.

The Rising of the Women is the Rising of Us All–or, 21st Century Common Sense, Part 8 (of 10)

Future Hope, , , ,

“Women and men all over the world are, for the first time in such large numbers, frontally challenging the male-dominator/female-dominated human relations model that is the foundation of a dominator worldview. At the same time the idea. . . of seeing the ‘the other’ as ‘the enemy’ is also being challenged. There is, most significantly, a growing awareness that the emerging higher consciousness of our global ‘partnership’ is integrally related to a fundamental reexamination and transformation of the roles of both women and men.”

-The Chalice and the Blade, by Riane Eisler, HarperSan Francisco, 1989

It is of vital importance that more and more of us internalize the fact that for 95% or more of the time that the ancestors of today’s homo sapiens, today’s human beings, walked the earth, from about 300,000 years ago until now, archaeological and other research shows that women and men cooperated in the decision-making about how to survive and develop. There are places in the world, particularly among indigenous people who have resisted corporate domination, where this is still the case. In these historical and present day societies, women had power and were/are affirmatively appreciated by men.

We need to understand that the last 6-7,000 years of human history are an aberration. Prior to that time, when women and men generally lived in cooperative ways, human societies were not about oppression, domination, exploitation and murderous wars. And even during this later period, there have been repeated and constant movements and organized efforts for a very different way of human interaction and economic development, for much more just and liberating societies.

My first personal experience with the rising women’s movement of that time was in the late 1960’s, at college. Having dinner with my then-girlfriend, someone who I liked an awful lot, she glared at and walked out on me, never to go out on a date with me again at college, because I made fun of her having joined a women’s consciousness-raising and support group. At the time these forms of organizing were developing around the country, growing in large part out of the experiences and insights of women who had been part of the civil rights/Black Freedom movement of the 1960’s.

My next memorable experience was in 1971 when I was serving out an 18-month prison sentence for anti-Vietnam-war draft resistance actions as part of the Catholic Left. After I was moved from a federal youth prison in Ashland, Kentucky to a medium-security prison in Danbury, Ct., I became part of a twice-weekly book discussion group organized by Fathers Dan and Phil Berrigan. The primary book we read and discussed when I was there was Sisterhood Is Powerful, an anthology of articles edited by Robin Morgan. I have no memory of anything specific that we read and discussed, but there’s no question it had an impact on me.

Ever since I have tried to be an anti-sexist and a woman-supporting man. I have done what I could to point out sexist (and racist and heterosexist) comments and attitudes on the part of men I am talking or working with. I make no claims to have always been the kind of person I would like to be in this respect but I do know that I have grown as a human being and become a more just and loving person because of what I have learned.

Of course, sexism and heterosexism aren’t just something to be changed by individual transformation. These negative ideologies and practices are reflected in government and business laws and customs in societies all over the world, still. This is despite progress that has been made over the last 50 years thanks to the words, actions and organizing of millions upon millions of women, and some men.

The Trumpfascists are very misogynist. They are clearly trying to turn the clock back many decades. “Male-dominated,” as well as white- and very rich-dominated, is synonymous with a big majority of Trump cabinet and top government posts. Forbes Magazine in its August 21, 2025 issue reported that “Federal job cuts [under Trump] are disproportionately impacting women of all ages and career stages. The Trump administration projects a reduction of 300,000 federal jobs this year. . . Women represent roughly half of federal employees and have higher representation in the agencies targeted for cuts. These administrative actions threaten not only women’s jobs but also their career growth, retirement security and financial stability.”

Given the fact that women make up about ½ of the US and world population, on practical grounds alone, it is without a doubt that as more and more women rise up, speak out and get organized in defense of their rights and freedoms and all peoples’ rights and freedoms, organized women willl be an essential component of a successful popular movement for systemic, progressive change.

 Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of two books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, published in 2020 and 2021 and both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.