We've Got People

Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States delivers as promised. A passionate and compelling account of American history from the point of view of its peoples: the indigenous and not the invaders, the enslaved and not the slavers, the working class and not the governing class, the minorities and not the majorities. Without glossing over the fractures, contradictions, and limitations of mass movements, yet Zinn offers a glimpse of their power and achievements. America has always had its radicals, much as it has always had its oppressors. I will be returning to this book again and again for its understanding, compassion, and outrage.

Ryan Grim's We've Got People is an exciting journalistic account of the rise of the American progressive movement from Jesse Jackson in the 1980's to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the 2010's. In Grim's account, Rahm Emanuel emerges as the arch-villain who led the Democrats astray by taking money from big corporations in order to fight the Reaganites. Not only did this program disconnect Establishment Democrats from the ground, but it also delayed the alignment of the Democrats with their natural constituencies, i.e. the working class and the rainbow coalition of various minorities, thus producing Trumpism. Grim describes his book as a second draft of history, but to my mind it is very close, perhaps too close, to journalism's first draft. It is impossible to tell history's verdict on the current progressive moment. Grim's optimism makes me feel anxious.

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