Portside

After Donald Trump was first elected in 2016, people sprung into action: Membership in existing groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America doubled, while brand-new organizations burst into existence. Eight years later, people are again showing up in massive numbers to protect themselves and their neighbors from a second Trump administration. People’s World reported that more than 140,000 people attended a nationwide online call held recently by the Working Families Party. Many of you reading this have already joined or will join this energetic wave of political organizing, and the decisions you make about where to put your time and effort will be crucial in deciding what is won and lost in the next few years.

Keep in mind, though, that when you are recruited by people and projects to Be a Thing and others that want you to Do a Thing, join the doers. It will not always be easy, at the outset, to tell which team is recruiting you. Most organizations, collectives, and friend groups will at least mention concrete goals, and many groups organized around ideology do important, meaningful political work. But pay attention: If the actions of the people surrounding you are oriented in maintaining a particular political posture, internal standard of correctness, or some other goal rather than a tangible victory, you may have ended up on team Be a Thing.

We have heard much in the past few years about the promise and limitations of identity, of what we can and can’t learn from what it means to be Black or queer or trans or Muslim — or to live at their intersections. It can feel like a step forward to describe our politics in terms of the identities and labels we choose: feminist, progressive, liberal, socialist, or increasingly specific variations or combinations of these. Indeed, it is critically important for each of us to decide where we stand and why, but it’s also important not to confuse the stakes of self-definition with the stakes of political success.

Being “the right kind” of progressive or feminist or socialist can easily become its own goal, rather than winning concrete victories that match the values and goals behind these labels. Unfortunately, this has been a common response in recent decades among those who have long fought against the overwhelmingly powerful, well-funded right wing in the United States. As victories in central fights against well-resourced opponents become more and more remote, focusing on branding or infighting among comrades becomes more and more attractive. Organizers can be content to exist as a subculture — again, “the right kind” of progressive, feminist, or socialist — while being indifferent or even hostile to attempts to move beyond that.

No one at the level of power we aim to contest — those who can wage war from thousands of miles away, hold billions of investment dollars hostage to strong-arm our institutions, or mobilize disinformation on a planetary scale — is worried about what kind of socialist, feminist, or anti-imperialist is holding signs at the protests they encourage police to brutally suppress. As writer and organizer Kelly Hayes has pointed out, the more our political energy goes to the politics of self-expression, the less there is for the fights we really need to win against mass deportation, mass incarceration, the climate crisis. None of the actors who profit from the above care what kind of leftist we are, so long as we fall in line. A better show of our political identity is how we make changes in the world around us, not our slogans and mission statements.

In Faux Feminism, philosopher Serene Khader describes leaving behind “freedom feminism,” which has been preoccupied with describing women and gender-expansive people as having an empowering identity. While it’s important to speak out loudly against a sexist culture’s insistence that women are less than, the emphasis on making the choices of privileged women feel free distracts from the real structures of economic oppression that do the supporting work to make those privileged lives possible. Though essential workers were rightly celebrated as heroes for the crucial role they played in stitching society together during and after the pandemic — including supporting the feeling of freedom for those at the top — that celebration seldom translated into extra pay or physical protection.

Khader’s alternative “feminism for the many,” defined by what it does rather than what it says, means winning concrete political victories for the many working-class women of color and immigrant women who make up the majority of daycare workers, house cleaners, home health aids, and additional essential care work the world can’t do without. These workers fought successfully in New York City to access paid sick and safe leave; in Washington, DC, to overturn exclusions of domestic workers from basic labor protections; and in Philadelphia to establish a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights. The teams of people fighting these fights might not all describe themselves with the same combination of political labels — not even Khader's feminism for the many — and that’s fine. What matters is what they did.

There will be lots of things for doers to accomplish in the coming years. Some of these efforts involve passing laws and challenging regulations, like the care workers whose actions Khader chronicled. Other efforts might stray off the beaten path of formal politics entirely, such as providing mutual aid to communities under assault by climate disasters, xenophobic politicians, or vigilante groups. We are better off doing with people who don’t share our political labels but are nevertheless trying to accomplish the same goals, the kind of organizing built into the culture of workers' unions, tenants' unions, debtors’ unions, and other mission-driven entities.

These are collectives defined not by what their opinions are but by core goals they can objectively achieve or fail to reach. The power these organizations can wield — not just to make demands but to withhold labor, rent, debt payments or otherwise take action if demands are not met — is necessary for having a valid complaint about the world and being able to change it. Our best chance of making it through the next few years together is to join the doers.

[Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of California Los Angeles. He has published in academic journals ranging from Public Affairs Quarterly, One Earth, Philosophical Papers, and the American Philosophical Association newsletter Philosophy and the Black Experience. He is the author of Elite Capture and Reconsidering Reparations.]