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Labour must embrace radical political reform including a proportional voting system and ditch party tribalism to take on the Conservatives, leadership contender Clive Lewis argues.

The Norwich South MP is pitching himself as the candidate to tackle what he calls the crisis of democracy.

If the rules of the system are rigged, dont fight by them, he said. So lets talk about having a constitutional convention, lets talk about PR [proportional representation], lets talk about reform of the Lords. Lets talk about devolving, and moving power-structures out of London.

I think now, being on this political precipice as we are after that result, the worst since 1935 now is the time for telling the truth.

He said Labour must overcome the internal divisions that have riven the party during Jeremy Corbyns leadership, and reach out beyond party boundaries to other progressive campaigners.

Do I think we can go on another five years divided as we are? I dont. I really dont. Not just as a Labour party. Divided parties fall. But its also as a progressive movement in this country. How can we stop trying to dictate to what you would call progressives in the UK?

He decried what he called Labourism: the mentality that Labour is the leading leftwing force in British politics, and that those outside it, in other parties and beyond, are viewed with suspicion.

We can actually begin to build the cement of those alliances that are actually going to be needed to take on the Tories: on climate, on racism, on democracy in our society. That can be by working together with others who want the same thing, he said.

And he warned against the leadership race being used as an opportunity for a different section of the party to take control.

I think most people, including MPs, are tired of the swing thats gone on, in the postwar period, between left and right where one faction takes over, and sees it as its almost God-given right to suppress the other side, he said. What we had under the New Labour years wasnt unity, it was hegemony. The left did exist, but it existed in a tomb.

Jess Phillips

The MP for Birmingham Yardley is a strong media performer who has built up a significant public profile from the backbenches. Her fiery speeches and witty barbs aimed at the Conservatives frequently go viral online.

PitchPrepared to argue for Britain to re-enter the European Union and address challenge of bringing back working-class voters.

Keir Starmer

Ambitious former director of public prosecutions has led the charge for remain in the shadow cabinet. He was instrumental in shifting Labours position towards backing a second referendum

PitchLaunched his campaign by highlighting how he has stood up for leftwing causes as a campaigning lawyer, and unveiled the slogan Another Future is Possible.

He called for a thorough review of Labours internal democratic processes, to be overseen by a deliberative convention of party members. Corbyns leadership pitch included a pledge to democratise the party; but Lewis said that had been lost along the way.

Giving examples of reforms he would like to see, he cited giving constituency branches the power to decide whether they would stand candidates aside for other likeminded parties such as the Greens.

And after Labour was reduced to a single MP in Scotland at the general election, he said Scottish Labour must be able to decide what its policy should be on independence.

In Wales and Scotland, its about saying that the December result was more than just a devastating election defeat; more than just a Brexit outcome; it was also about, I think, the ability for the union to survive in its current configuration, he said.

Now what form that takes I dont know; but the change is coming. And I think what we now have to do for our Scottish and Welsh colleagues is to say to them, we want to give you full autonomy, to decide the best way forward now. Is that for some kind of devo-max federal structure? Or is it for you to campaign for an independent Scotland, independent Wales? That should be their choice.

Unlike most of his rivals, Lewis is cautious about criticising last months manifesto but says the party had failed to prepare the ground adequately for such a radical set of policies.

I loved that manifesto, he said. In many ways, it was almost like a fantasy football manifesto. It was a brilliant manifesto and if you take each individual idea, I think most people who are left of centre in our party would have said: I love this. But the trouble was, we tried to drop one of the most radical manifestos of the 21st century in a six-week campaign, and I dont think you can do that.

He says if he was Labour leader, the partys manifesto would be developed from the bottom up.

Lewis has only been an MP since 2015, but was quickly earmarked for promotion to the frontbench as a staunch supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. He resigned rather than obey the three-line whip to trigger article 50, the formal Brexit process but had been back on the frontbench, in John McDonnells Treasury team, since 2018.

He helped form the campaign group Love Socialism Hate Brexit, with colleagues including the York MP Rachael Maskell, to call for his party to embrace a second referendum.

That policy was blamed by many Labour candidates for the loss of their seats in the Midlands and north last month. But Lewis claims the party would have suffered at the hands of the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats, if they hadnt supported a peoples vote. If we had had a more overtly Brexit position, arguably we would have haemorrhaged more votes.

And he says the Brexit vote was a symptom of longstanding problems in many of the red wall constituencies that fell to the Tories last month.

What happened in those seats, yes its about Brexit, but if you understand it in the context of the crisis in democracy, if you understand in the context that people wanted a sense of agency over their lives, of control over their lives, and they dont have that, then you understand that this has been 40 years in the making, he said.

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Clive Lewis: to beat Tories, Labour has to work with other progressives - The Guardian

A sharp spike in anti-Semitic attacks marked the end of 2019, causing alarm for Jews on the East Coast and across the United States. Three people and a police officer were murdered at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, and days later, on the seventh night of Hanukkah, five Orthodox men in Monsey, New York, were stabbed.

Just over a year since 11 Jews were killed at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and amid an increase in the number of incidents of vandalism in Jewish cemeteries and synagogues, there is an urgent need to confront anti-Semitism.

But the current solutions being offered by political leaders, law enforcement, and some Jewish communal leaders that prioritize increased police presence and armed security are likely only to make conditions more difficult for other minorities and marginalized communities. In particular, a strictly security-focused approach has the possibility of alienating neighbors and by extension exacerbating existing tensions among them. (This is especially because Orthodox Jews often live alongside communities of color, as both groups are more likely to be lower-income or poor.)

Like all minorities, Americas Jews deserve to be protected from violence and free to practice religious observance in peace. But Jews, and allies who wish to stand with us, should see the proposed cosmetic solutions for what they are: an attempt to enhance feelings of safety at the expense of certain individuals or groups that ultimately fails to address the core issues at the heart of rising anti-Semitism.

For progressives asking what they can do to fight anti-Semitism, or if they have a role to play in this moment, the answer can be found by looking squarely at the conditions that have led here, conditions defined by economic inequality, fueled by right-wing populism, and stoked by conspiracy and scapegoating. Hopefully the answer is clear: Not only do progressives have a role to play, but doing so is core to the progressive political project.

WE CANNOT KNOW what drives each and every act of violent anti-Semitism. But we do know that since 2013, and more so since Trump became president, the number of hate crimes against Jews and all minority groupsAfrican Americans, Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim, immigrants, Latinos, and LGBT peopleand the number of hate groups in the U.S. have both risen precipitously. The rise in anti-Semitic attacks cannot be separated from this wider context.

This increase comes at a time when the president of the United States, aided and abetted by conservative and alt-right media, and a Republican Party so committed to white supremacy and tax cuts for the wealthy that it has been fully ceded to extremists and fundamentalists, traffics heavily in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories as a way of furthering his anti-immigrant, anti-poor, white supremacist agenda.

A person in search of an explanation for why their lives are so difficult, their wages have stagnated, their childrens schools are underfunded and under-resourced, decent jobs are hard to come by, or housing costs keep skyrocketing need only look to the president or Fox News, or tumble down a YouTube rabbit hole for an answer: George Soros is paying for hoards of immigrants who are invading your towns and taking your jobs; the globalists control the money; Jews and the brown and black people they support are coming to replace you.

There is, of course, a small group of people who are responsible for the inequality that people experience and feel in their daily lives, todays beneficiaries of the mutually reinforcing systems of capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. They are the one percent and they sit at the head of the major pharmaceutical, tech, energy, financial, and real-estate companies that spend billions of dollars lobbying and bribing politicians each year to deregulate industry, erode workers rights, and rig the system in their favor. (The top one percent of America, incidentally, is only 1.7 percent Jewish.) Mutual interest has brought these corporate interests into alignment with the right and far right, just as it did in Nazi Germany.

But the conspiracy theories once reserved for the margins, now mainstreamed and promulgated by Donald Trump, are designed to deflect blame away from the rigged systemand the group of political bedfellows doing the riggingand place it instead on an abstracted idea of the Jews. Its a trick as old as, well, St. Paul (and older), but as we see again today, it works.

ANTI-SEMITISM IS NOT RANDOM, even when it is being perpetrated seemingly at random by random individuals. It is a phenomenon that points to a wider political problem in need of a political solution.

The British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn regrettably missed this point. For two years, investigations into anti-Semitism among party members were presented as a matter of weeding out bad apples. They focused on individuals and social media posts, when they should have turned the crisis into an opportunity to lean in and make fighting anti-Semitism a natural, proud, and obvious part of their political projectincluding when it appears on the left.

Solidarity cannot be confined to acts of symbolism or words on a poster.

Here in the U.S., we can learn from that mistake. Progressives need not hesitate or question if or how fighting anti-Semitism is part of their work, or seek to downplay it when they see it in their ranks. By connecting the dots between neoliberal political and economic interests and the far rights nationalist agenda and conspiratorializing, we see that explaining and taking on the real causes of inequality and cultural alienation is part of fighting anti-Semitism.

The progressive agendabreaking up monopolies, taxing the rich, organizing workers, providing free health care and education, and ending the criminalization and detention of black and brown Americans and immigrantsis the answer. As Dania Rajendra, the head of Athena, a new campaign taking on Amazon, reminds us, We know the best way to push back against fascism is by expanding our democracy and redistributing wealth.

This is true today internationally, not just in the United States.

In the days following the stabbing in Monsey, there was a viral post on social media that linked that event with other anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. and U.K., and compared them as a whole to Kristallnacht. But the comparison is preposterous fearmongering, and frankly untrue. Neither American nor British Jews are being targeted, dragged out of their homes, or attacked by any arm of the state.

There are, however, groups of minorities being torn from their homes and families, placed in detention centers and concentration camps, and targeted across the worldMuslims in China, Myanmar, and India; undocumented immigrants within the U.S., Central American migrants and refugees at the border. Ethno-nationalism and nativist populism is a global issue, not a Jewish one; combating it aprogressive political project, not a project of law enforcement.

On Sunday, a group of Jewish institutions organized a solidarity march against anti-Semitism. Many thousands of Jews and their allies crossed the Brooklyn Bridge in a rare display of unity across Jewish denominations and political affiliations. It was an important moment to make the issue of anti-Semitism visible and urgent to a wider, non-Jewish audience. But solidarity cannot be confined to acts of symbolism or words on a poster.

Ahead of the march, Senator Charles Schumer announced he will introduce a new bill to add $250 million for houses of worship to beef up security. But just as progressives (including Schumer) know the answer to gun violence is not more guns, so too do we know that anti-Semitism cannot be addressed simply by adding more surveillance at the local Jewish Community Center.

Sundays march organizers demanded a stop to hate and fear. As progressives, we of course agree. And at the same time, our goal must be more systemic and more specific: to be unequivocal in naming how hate and fear turn into violence, identifying the bad actors and systems that benefit, and building a multiracial, multiclass coalition to bring about a world in which all are free to thrive. In New York, many of the groups who came together in recent years to defeat Amazons HQ2 and pass sweeping tenant protection laws are showing us how this might look by organizing community-based responses to hate violence that explicitly reduce reliance on the NYPD. The fight for Jews to live and practice proudly, comfortably, and visibly in America must be a bigger fight for the safety, dignity, and freedom of all of us.

See the rest here:
Combating Anti-Semitism Is Core to the Progressive Project - The American Prospect

The pool of potential candidates to take on President Trump in the 2020 election is split between two types of Democrats.

Progressives like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren tout plans that a few years ago were outside the U.S. political mainstream like Medicare for All, while moderate candidates like Joe Biden and Peter Buttigieg favor more middle-leaning stances like Buttigiegs Medicare for All Who Want It plan.

The last time a candidate won the presidency by playing to the progressive part of the Democratic base was former President Lyndon B. Johnsons reelection in 1964, says Michael Kazin, professor of history at Georgetown University.

Democrats win by coming up with policies and a message which is popular among not just the base, he says, but among independent voters, swing voters as well.

When it comes to the question of whether moderate or progressive candidates have a better shot at winning the presidency, Kazin says context matters.

One important race that Democrats still refer to is when Democratic Sen. George McGovern lost to incumbent President Richard Nixon in 1972.

The Vietnam War was the major issue of the time and McGovern supported pulling out of the country as soon as possible. Activists who supported booming social movements surrounding the rights of the LGBTQ community, women and black Americans supported McGovern, Kazin says.

But McGoverns platform did not resonate with the majority of the country, he says. Its always difficult to beat a popular incumbent like Nixon, he says, but McGoverns problem was he only appealed to the activists in the party and not moderate voters.

But Kazin thinks the Democratic party is less divided today than in 1972.

Most Democrats agree on some basic domestic issues like that everyone should have public or private health insurance, abortion rights, low-income housing and combating climate change, he says.

After McGovern lost in 1972 and Nixon resigned, Democrats nominated Jimmy Carter, an evangelical Christian who won a lot of states Democrats can't imagine winning today, including Texas, Mississippi and Alabama, he says.

White voters in the South were the Democratic partys base throughout the 19th century and for much of the 20th century, he says. When the Democratic party moved toward supporting the rights of racial minorities, especially black people, the South became Republican, he says.

Voters viewed Carter as more of a moderate, even conservative figure, he says, and Carter won in part because of Nixons resignation and economic trouble like stagflation.

Without the southern states, he would have lost to Gerald Ford, he says. Ford won states now that Republicans can't imagine winning like California.

In the 1980s, Democratic nominees like Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis saw little success. The party attempted to reach both the center and left of the party with these campaigns, he says.

Jesse Jackson, a prominent black activist who worked with Martin Luther King Jr., ran for the Democratic nomination in 1984 and 1988. Jackson did well, though he didnt come close to winning the nomination. Kazin says many aspects of his campaign mirror Sanders 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

Jackson really was read as an insurgent, as an outsider, as somebody who really wanted to shake up not just the elites in the country, he says, but also to transform the party itself into a much more sort of grassroots party, a party that was going to serve people who he thought their concerns not been in the center of party debate.

Moderate Democrat Bill Clinton won the next election in 1992. Many people thought incumbent George H.W. Bush was unbeatable, and by the time he started slipping in the polls, Clinton was the strongest candidate, he says.

Clinton showed he could win over black and white voters in the South, but his status as a moderate was less important than the lack of other liberal competitors, he says.

After Clintons two terms, moderate Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 but lost the election to George W. Bush.

Gore ran to continue the ideas of Clintons moderate presidency, he says, while former Sen. Bill Bradley was a more liberal candidate who wasnt able to mobilize forces on the left the way Sanders and Warren are trying to do today, he says.

Barack Obama appealed to liberals and moderates in 2008 because his rhetoric sounded progressive and voters perceived him as someone who could lead a movement, he says.

I knew lifelong Republicans who voted for him because they liked his style, he says. And also, again, don't forget that he ran during the beginning of the Great Recession when arguably any Democrat could have won.

In 2020, Kazin says any Democrat who wins the nomination needs to reach the 8% to 10% of swing voters.

The nominee can try to reach these voters by adopting an effective message criticizing how Trump has not helped Americans and a unifying message that tells people their interests will be served, he says.

I'm not quite sure what message is going to be the most effective one, but I am sure that a Democrat who wins the nomination will not just be able to talk to their base because their base isn't large enough to win the Electoral College, he says. Might be large enough to win the popular vote but probably not large enough to win the Electoral College.

Francesca Parisproduced and edited this interview for broadcast withKathleen McKenna. Allison Hagan adapted it for the web.

Read the rest here:
A Historical Look At Whether A Democrat Can Win By Playing To The Progressive Base - WBUR

Whos Progressive Renters Insurance for?

There are 4 main types of renters insurance products that Progressive offers:

Progressives renters insurance also offers optional riders that can be added to your basic coverage. These riders include:

When you enter your information and receive a renters insurance quote from Progressive, it provides you with its suggested coverages. These coverages are based on where you live and any other information that may suggest you need a certain level of coverage.

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When you receive your renters insurance quote, Progressive will likely suggest the most common coverage amounts. According to Progressive, these are:

You will have the option to add extra computer coverage. The coverage amounts shown above include $2,500 in computer coverage. To decide whether you should add extra computer coverage, consider how much your electronics are worth. Computer coverage extends to computers, tablets, computer software, printers and other related items. If the combined total of your computer systems is more than $2,500, you may want to add this extra coverage.

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Progressive also offers:

If you buy a home while your renters insurance policy is active, a Progressive agent may be able to help you convert your policy to the appropriate property insurance. Dont forget, you can also bundle your auto and property insurance policies to receive a 5% discount.

Progressive offers a number of ways to receive customer service. You can explore the Progressive website to find answers to frequently asked questions. If you need further assistance, you can get it with one of the following options:

Progressive offers a robust customer claims center to help you through the claims process. It can help connect you to the appropriate company to address questions about your claim.

You can report a claim or view your claim status by logging into your Progressive account.

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The pricing and value of your Progressive renters insurance policy will depend on factors including where you live, your coverage amounts and any discounts you receive. To find the best renters insurance for you, you should be sure to answer all of Progressives questions as accurately as possible.

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For the common coverage amounts listed above with no additional discounts, Progressive offers the following pricing options:

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In a word, yes.

If you rent your home, you should know that your personal belongings are not protected by your landlords insurance policy. This is why renters insurance is crucial to protect you in case you suffer a loss. In fact, many landlords and rental companies require their tenants to carry renters insurance policies.Compare your quotes to find cheap renters insurance that will meet your needs.

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Progressive Renters Insurance Review 2020 Benzinga - Benzinga

The progressive concept of cultural appropriation has become an increasingly mainstream idea. Do a Google search on, say, yoga is cultural appropriation, and youll see for yourself. What does cultural appropriation mean, though? According to law professor Susan Scafidi, author of Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law, cultural appropriation consists of taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone elses culture without permission. This can include unauthorized use of another cultures dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc. Its most likely to be harmful when the source community is a minority group that has been oppressed or exploited in other ways.

Even if one takes this dubious definition seriously, thoughwhat would constitute unauthorized use?policing cultural appropriation quickly falls apart when applied to actual human behavior. A group of students at Pitzer College, for example, declared that hoop earrings should be off-limits to white women. But how can any culture lay claim to determining the size and shape of acceptable jewelry for individuals to wear?

Critics should never assume, though, that bad ideas will die a natural death. In 1991, Antioch College gained national fameand ridiculeby mandating that each step of a sexual encounter receive express permission from the participants. Lawyerly protocol replaced spontaneity, and process replaced passion. Saturday Night Live mocked the school, showing hormonal undergraduates uttering stilted authorizations. But what was once fodder for comedy is now law, at least in California and New York. Progressive goals have a way of becoming mainstream edicts.

In Salem, Massachusetts, the Peabody Essex Museum offers a case study in the mainstreaming of cultural appropriation. Cross-cultural appreciation has sustained the museum for centuries. Americas oldest continuously operating museum, PEM has long displayed exotic artifacts associated with the maritime tradebut patrons must now read a guilt-ridden disclaimer when visiting the museums exhibits. Cultural appreciation and exchange are vital parts of any society, but appropriation is complicated and tied up with complex power dynamics and histories of oppression, the message reads. Cultural appropriation occurs when appreciation becomes theft, when exchange is one-sided, or when marginalized cultures are reduced to stereotypes.

As with other definitions of cultural appropriation, the PEM statement does not offer any guidelines on how to know when appreciation becomes theft or when exchange is one-sided. The best it can offer is a statement from Jezebel founder Anna Holmes: You cant always prove appropriation. But you usually know it when you see it.

No well-intentioned person favors marginalized cultures being reduced to stereotypes, but cultural-appropriation watchdogs see these offenses everywhere, even in instances where harm was clearly not intended. Consider the case of high school senior Keziah Daum, who wore a cheongsam to her prom, setting off a Twitterstorm of condemnation. Daum chose the dress because she thought that it was beautiful and would set her apart on a special night. But activists admonished Daum, who is white, for wearing a traditional Chinese garment. Her defenders, including some Chinese-Americans and native Chinese, argued that her selection complimented Chinese culture. Critics attacked them in turn as inauthentic, orin the case of Chinese nationalslacking the social authority to speak about American minorities. To Daums woke critics, every ethnic group must stay in its own lane.

Another puzzling aspect of the cultural-appropriation focus is that it seems clearly to clash with another progressive imperative: the need to nurture multicultural appreciation. Multiculturalism has been a prominent cause among progressives for more than a generation, but today, admiration for other cultures apparently comes with a warning sign: look, but dont adopt, lest you face accusations of theft or insensitivity.

Most reasonable people have no trouble understanding that to adopt an artifact or practice doesnt diminish the culture from which it originates. You cant steal a culture, as Columbia University linguist John McWhorter has observed. Cultural exchange is enriching, not impoverishing, and imitation remains, as in the old formulation, the sincerest form of flattery. Its time for progressives to decide between embracing multiculturalism or policing cultural appropriation. They cant have it both ways.

Matthew Stewart is associate professor of humanities and rhetoric at Boston University and the author of Modernism and Tradition in Ernest Hemingways In Our Time.

Photo: monkeybusinessimages/iStock

See the rest here:
Multiculturalism, or Cultural Appropriation? Progressives Can't Have It Both Ways. - City Journal