The Newsworthiness of Collective Truth-Telling
As I mentioned earlier, the Poor People's Campaign has a huge fund of automatic credibility and respectability that renders it bulletproof to the smear campaigns used against Occupy. With black and female leaders in William Barber and Liz Theoharis, it's likewise bulletproof to the "racist" and "sexist" smears Clinton's identity Democrats used against the Sanders campaign.
But respectability poses its own dangers for a political movement, a gargantuan one being that it won't do anything newsworthy. Perhaps in its defense, the PPC can claim that it's just getting organized--and is organizing for the long haul. But as far as creating actions disruptive enough to get news coverage is concerned, the PPC is light-years behind where Occupy was at a similar stage in its existence. The crucial question for the PPC at this point is how to spend some of its respectability capital and make itself so breathtakingly disruptive as to force universal media coverage.
My suggestion is that it collectively tell an outrageous "inconvenient truth": that Donald Trump must be impeached for conspiracy to commit climate genocide. And racist, classist climate genocide to boot. Neither Republicans nor Democrats will be pleased in the least--the smart money says they'll be horrified--and by collectively hammering that outrageous demand, the PPC will make itself an overnight, unavoidable news sensation.
A sensation, moreover, that could gain billionaire support. That any billionaire would think of backing the Poor People's Campaign--except to coopt it--is perhaps the ultimate case of strange bedfellows. But there's clearly one case where the PPC's new, "outrageous" demand could enlist fervent billionaire passion. Democrat billionaire Tom Steyer, founder of NextGen Climate, has long been "hot" on the subject of a dangerously warming climate. Lately, he's become equally fevered on the subject of impeaching Donald Trump.
So fevered, in fact, that he's willing to make himself profoundly inconvenient to Democratic Party bigwigs, who not only show no special passion for impeaching Trump, but would be horrified that he be impeached on climate-related grounds. That might, for example, compel Democrats to end their own climate foot-dragging. It might even force them to give up their widespread, silent support for fracked natural gas--a dirty energy Secretary of State Hillary Clinton worked tirelessly to make global.
Tom Steyer is already making mainstream news by his relentless calls for Trump's impeachment--and he obviously plans to invest his vast resources in making more. Steyer is of course motivated by climate in his demand to impeach Trump, but I don't think he's dared make it the grounds for his impeachment call. And he's certainly not talking about "planned climate genocide against the dark-skinned poor." By collectively proclaiming that outrageous truth, and making it the grounds for impeaching Trump, the PPC could stake out its independence from Steyer in a newsworthy way while supporting a cause extremely dear to his heart. Steyer might find himself forced to support the PPC (which could keep him from taking over by constantly "guilting" him about his hoarded billions). Testing the moral mettle of a self-styled billionaire philanthropist while proclaiming an "outrageous" moral truth Americans desperately need to hear seems a splendid way for the PPC to grab major headlines.
Deep Climate versus Shallow "Russiagate" Grounds for Impeachment
I'd like to conclude with an argument for climate-based impeachment extremely dear to my own heart. Readers will recall (from this article's first section) how my own hesitations about accepting the PPC as the needed climate-justice movement created clumsiness in an article I published. Specifically, an article denouncing Democrats' Russiagate narrative as a giant middle finger to climate justice. I hesitated to embrace the PPC as a climate-justice movement for its failure to denounce that narrative.
With Noam Chomsky, I feel that whatever comparatively insignificant interference Russia may or may not have plotted against our election, it pales in comparison with the nuclear-war risk and wasteful spending of a New Cold War. Especially when unprecedented government and private spending--and equally unprecedented international good will--are essential to addressing humanity's climate emergency. Not only should PPC supporters resent Russiagate for those reasons, but we should also consider how the military spending of a new Cold War robs the domestic anti-poverty and racial justice programs the PPC cherishes. Additionally, we should be furious at how Russiagate has totally crowded the PPC's key issues--and the PPC itself--out of mainstream news coverage and public-policy discussions. Assuming Mueller has any evidence of Trump campaign collusion (a big assumption), the last thing PPC supporters need is such a shallow, war-promoting narrative serving as the chief ground for impeaching Trump. Especially when vastly better grounds are available--like conspiracy to commit (climate) genocide. But in one respect, impeaching Trump for climate genocide is infinitely superior to Russiagate as basis for impeachment: it will deter Pence--or any future president--from the same genocidal policy.
In a future piece, I'll try to discuss the legal aspects of impeachment, such as whether the best motivation for impeaching Trump--planned climate genocide--should also serve as the legal basis. Since the law isn't always about what's morally right (it often isn't), other legal grounds (readily available, even aside from Russiagate) may need to be chosen. But as a movement of moral witness, the PPC shouldn't be concerned with legal niceties, but only with the best moral ground for impeaching Trump: his commitment to climate genocide. If there isn't yet a law against that, there damn well ought to be.
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