These outright displays of disdain for the plight of hard-working Americans struggling through the pandemic were, frankly, sickening. Any Democratic lawmaker who wants their party to head into 2022 claiming they fought for working Americans better find a way to tame the centrist Democrats doing their damnedest to kill that rallying cry.
But before I launch into an uncertain discussion of what comes next, here’s something to ponder alongside some unfortunate setbacks for progressives in the bill.
”I’m open to counterexamples,” New York Times columnist Ezra Klein tweeted Friday evening, “but this still looks like the most ambitious and progressive economic package Congress has passed in my lifetime. It will do more to cut poverty, and push full employment, than anything else I’ve covered.” In other words, President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package—which finally cleared the Senate on Saturday afternoon—is still a damn good bill, even if it isn’t everything we wanted it to be. It’s a win, we claim it as a win, and we move on.
But once the American Rescue Plan is signed into law, we are immediately into territory where nearly every progressive priority is likely to get jammed by the filibuster—a centuries-old tool of oppression. As I sat watching the maneuverings of Sinema and Manchin, I returned to something that’s been on my mind ever since interviewing former Senate aide and filibuster expert Adam Jentleson in January: Which issue will provide the best leverage point to exert pressure on Senate Democrats to finally ditch the filibuster? Democrats now have less than two years to get meaningful things done to reset the playing field for average Americans and give them a fighting chance. And to the extent that Democrats are successful, it will also give them a fighting chance to retain power in the next several election cycles. Delivering COVID-19 relief is a good start. Not delivering anything else will absolutely hamstring Democrats’ ability to claim they are the party that fights for the American people and gets thing done.
Personally, the only way I can imagine getting any leverage over people like Manchin and Sinema is through a grassroots campaign that dogs them over and over again in their states. So the question is, which Democratic bill provides the best opportunity to mobilize a mass of impassioned people to target Democrats on their home turf and make them respect the issue deeply enough to kill the filibuster? Which movement already has the built-in organizing infrastructure to exert that kind of pressure? Watching the immediate backlash to the minimum-wage vote made me think it just might be Fight for $15 and allied organizations.
Sure, there was a lot of Twitter activity, but that’s not what caught my attention. Check out the passion of West Virginian Pam Garrison from the Poor People’s Campaign.
“People, we have to join,” said Garrison. “We have to be one loud voice and say, enough is enough, and we are tired of putting the filthy rich in silk beds and us sleeping on straw.”
Garrison is pure fire in the video, and she’s itching to go talk to Manchin. “I will meet with him,” she said, “because I don’t know who he’s listening to right now.”
Rev. Dr. William Barber co-chairs the Poor People’s Campaign, and he has wasted no time taking the fight straight to the White House.
“The entire Democratic Party platform says they want to eradicate poverty,” Barber tweeted Friday morning. “@VP Harris and @POTUS Biden ran on raising the federal minimum wage to $15/hr. They never said ‘$15 unless the parliamentarian advises not to.'” On Democracy Now, Barber added, “What we are seeing is a robbing of the rights of the poor … It’s extreme. It’s catering to the corporate bloc in this country.”
Back in Sinema’s home state, Progress Arizona was projecting messages in both English and Spanish on to a building that’s visible from I-10.
“Senator Sinema: End the filibuster,” they read. “Elimina el filibuster. $15 salario mínimo ahora.”
What strikes me about the $15 minimum wage fight is the intersectionality of the movement—it cuts across race, gender, and culture. And it draws energy from other movements, such as those fighting for immigration reforms, voting rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, affordable health care, and more. In other words, it’s the type of movement that already has a ton of activists at the ready, and has been heavily organizing in the states for a solid decade (though clearly the fight for a living wage and workers’ rights has a much longer and deeper history). Already, actions are planned for Monday, International Women’s Day, in Phoenix (outside Kyrsten Sinema’s office) and Charleston, West Virginia (outside Joe Manchin’s office), along with rallies in Chicago, Washington D.C., Detroit, New York, and San Francisco.
On top of that, the issue and the movement have a senator who appears more than ready to go to the mat for it: Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. On Friday, Sanders alerted his eight Democratic caucus colleagues that their vote to kill his amendment isn’t a one and done, in case they harbored any illusions that it was.
“If any Senator believes this is the last time they will cast a vote on whether or not to give a raise to 32 million Americans, they are sorely mistaken,” Sanders tweeted. “We’re going to keep bringing it up, and we’re going to get it done because it is what the American people demand and need.”
In other words, make no mistake, this issue is going to dog you. Also, fun fact, Sanders won every county in West Virginia in the 2016 Democratic primary, and there’s certainly no love lost between Sanders and Manchin, who said in 2019 he wouldn’t vote for Sanders in a head-to-head contest against Donald Trump.
On MSNBC Friday afternoon, Sanders said he was “disappointed” by the minimum wage vote but promised a coast-to-coast effort to pass an increase.
“This is an issue that impacts all working people. It especially impacts women, who are disproportionately working for low wages; it disproportionately impacts the African American and Latino community,” he said. “So we’re going to get the word out, and we’re going to mobilize people from coast to coast. And at the end of the day—here’s my prediction—we will pass that.”
When it comes to eliminating the filibuster, we only need to win on one issue to unlock the potential for all the issues. The fight for a living wage has a lot of the elements already in place that have the makings of a legitimate grassroots uprising. Senate Democrats, and the White House in particular, need grassroots activists to apply pressure and create the space for them to eliminate an accident of history that presently stands in the way of moving the country into a new era of progressivism.