The American #neoliberal malaise - celebrated in by "centrists" who insisted that everything was fine and nothing could be changed - didn't just lead to a sense of helplessness, but also *hopelessness*. #Denialism and #nihilism are Siamese twins, and the YOLO approach to the #ClimateEmergency, #covid mitigation, the housing crisis and other pressing issues can't be disentangled from the Thatcherite maxim that #ThereIsNoAlternative.

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If there's no alternative, then we're doomed. Dig a hole, climb inside, pull the dirt down on top of yourself.

But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. For decades, leftists have taken a back seat to liberals in the progressive coalition, allowing "unionize!" to be drowned out by "learn to code!" The liberal-led coalition ceded the mantle of radical change to fake populist demagogues on the right.

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This opened a space for a mirror-world politics that insisted that "conservatives" were the true defenders of women (because they were transphobes), of bodily autonomy (because they were vaccine deniers), of the environment (because they opposed wind-farms) and of workers (because they opposed immigration):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

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Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. A new coalition dedicated to fighting corporate power has emerged, tackling capitalism's #monopoly power, and the #corruption and abuse of workers it enables. That coalition is global, it's growing, and it's kicking ass.

Case in point: California just passed a law that will give every fast-food worker in the state a 30% raise.

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This law represents a profound improvement to the lives of the state's poorest workers - workers who spend long hours feeding their neighbors, but often can't afford to feed *themselves* at the end of a shift.

But just as remarkable as the *substance* of this new law is the *path* it took - a path that runs through a new sensibility, a new *vibe*, that is more powerful than mere political or legal procedure.

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The story is masterfully told in #TheAmericanProspect by veteran labor writer #HaroldMeyerson:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-13-half-million-california-workers-get-raise/

The story starts with Governor Newsom signing a bill to create a new statewide labor-business board to mediate between workers and bosses, with the goal of elevating the working conditions of the state's large, minimum-wage workforce.

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The passage of this law triggered howls of outrage from the state's fast-food industry, who pledged to spend $200m to put forward a ballot initiative to permanently kill the labor-business board.

This is a familiar story. In 2019, California's state legislature passed #AB5, a bill designed to end the gig-work fiction that people whose boss is an algorithm are actually "independent businesses," rather than employees.

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AB5 wasn't perfect - it swept up all kinds of genuine freelancers, like writers who contributed articles to many publications - but the response wasn't aimed at fixing the bad parts. It was designed to destroy the good parts.

After #AB5, #Uber and #Lyft poured more than $200m into #Prop22, a ballot initiative designed to permanently bar the California legislature from passing any law to protect "gig workers."

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Prop 22's corporate backers flooded the state with disinformation, and procured a victory in 2020. The aftermath was swift and vicious, with Prop 22 used as cover in mass-firings of unionized workers across the state's workforce:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/05/manorialism-feudalism-cycle/#prop22

Workers and the politicians who defend them were supposed to be crushed by Prop 22. Its message was "there is no alternative." "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." "Resistance is futile."

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