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Dear John,
The results of last week’s election have left many of us shocked and fearful. We face an incoming president who has promised attacks on immigrants and families, communities of color, gender-oppressed people, civic institutions, democratic processes, and anyone who opposes him. A president who will prioritize the interests of a wealthy few, while enacting policies that will hurt everyday, working people and families.
Despite the challenges that lay ahead, we remain rooted in the strength of our communities, our national network, and our broader movement for justice and liberation. The way forward will be difficult, though not impossible, but it does require us to interrogate and understand how we got here.
As we try to make sense of this moment, we cannot fall into the trap of blaming and scapegoating entire communities. That kind of division only benefits those who seek to hold power over us, especially right now.
We must point our anger and action towards the corporations, billionaires, and their political allies who have spent years creating the conditions that have led to this result.
In surveys and exit polls, voters across the country expressed deep frustration with how hard it is to make ends meet right now. While corporate stocks skyrocket, everyday people struggle to pay the inflated costs for essentials, from groceries to rent to healthcare—and they are rightfully angry.
The economic pain voiced by so many this election season is the direct result of years of corporate greed and meddling in our democracy. Corporations pay low wages, stifle worker organizing, and then block minimum wage laws. They buy up housing units, then raise the rent, then block rent control legislation. They price gouge and drive up inflation and then tell us to save money by eating cereal for dinner. This is the classic corporate playbook: buying, bullying, and bamboozling the general public and our elected leaders to get their way — all while growing their own power, lining their pockets, and shaping an economy that has sucked every drop of joy out of people’s lives.
We can’t shy away from acknowledging the fact that too many of our neighbors across the country have endorsed an openly racist, sexist, xenophobic, transphobic, and homophobic President. We must confront the painful truth of deep-seated bigotry that has festered and grown in this country since its founding, and actively work to dismantle it. We also have to expose the way corporations and their political allies have set the stage for widely felt economic distress and how they fan, fuel, and benefit from the fires of hatred and division. Fear-mongering and violent rhetoric—and the actual violence it incites— against immigrants, women, transgender and queer people, and Black and brown folks not only deflects blame away from the corporations plundering our communities; it rallies support for policies that further corporate greed.
And now corporations and billionaires stand to gain even greater power and profit under the incoming Trump administration and their policy agenda. His supporters and allies have spent months attacking the National Labor Relations Board and basic worker protections. Trump has vowed to roll back environmental legislation that protects our planet and keeps corporations in check. He has promised retribution for those who attempted to hold him accountable in the past, while rewarding wealthy allies with tax cuts.
As we plan our path forward, we can’t lose sight of the role that corporations have played in getting us to this point. We must expose them as the real culprits of our economic conditions and intervene in the false narratives and divisions that they try to sow among us. At the same time, we have to offer folks a compelling alternative: a strong, solidaristic, multiracial movement with community-led solutions that actually address our shared problems. We have to raise expectations of what is possible when we organize together, and show what can be won when we wrest power from corporations and put it back in the hands of our communities.
This moment requires conviction that a brighter future—our vision of multiracial feminist democracy—is not only possible, but inevitable, even when the present seems so full of despair. For now we keep putting one foot in front of the other, shift into a forward stance against corporate power, and do the work today that will bring us closer to our collective liberation tomorrow.
In solidarity,
Lauren Jacobs
Executive Director
Lena Pervez Afridi
Chief of Staff
PowerSwitch Action
1305 Franklin St.
Suite 501
Oakland, CA 94612
United States
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