A recent article by Melissa Hillman for Quartz created a stir among loyalists in Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton's camp. Hillman insisted that "privilege is what allows Sanders supporters to say they'll 'never' vote for Clinton under any circumstance."
That is inaccurate. There are those who are well outside the ranks of privilege who will not vote for Clinton. Period.
Quartz, a digital global business news publication culls its 150 writers from conservative business journals including Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, and The Economist, as well as the New York Times. Its core market is global business people who want international markets. In other words, they are among the market oriented neoliberals where Clinton finds many of her supporters.
The truth is that there are those who will not vote for Clinton precisely because of their lack of privilege or because of their work among those who lack the kind of extraordinary privilege Quartz readers have or aspire to have.
One is Luis Efrain Serrano, an illegal (the term he prefers) Latino and an activist with ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] Out Of LA in Los Angeles. The organization exists to end deportations and the criminalization of illegal immigrants. He believes the privilege argument is backwards.
People are voting for Clinton, Serrano believes, "because of their privilege. Wealthy or middle class white folks would not be as negatively affected by her as those of us who are less privileged." The Democrats "give us weird little reforms like DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] which help us out a bit. We are ok with them only because things are so bad."
Ultimately, Serrano wants systemic change. Although he does not support Donald Trump, the Republican presidential frontrunner, Serrano believes a Trump election could aid in forcing the collapse of the establishment. He believes Trump has shaken "the neoliberal establishment which Clinton represents because he exposes an economic system that they have kept hidden." Reality is that the Clinton establishment, in Serrano's opinion, has "perfected keeping people oppressed and distracted." Trump has brought that into the open.
Serrano concludes, "for those without privilege, there is no strategy in electing Clinton."
Zac Henson is a self-proclaimed "mad redneck" with a Ph. D. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management but who makes his living delivering papers for Weld and driving for Uber in East Lake, Alabama.
Henson, too, is concerned about the political system. He also wants to challenge individualized ideas of what constitutes oppression or privilege. No one, is all oppressor or all oppressed," he thinks. Instead, he believes, we need to talk more about "multiple overarching systems of power." For instance, he says, "I'm white and male, so there are certainly advantages that I have in certain situations. But, I'm also mentally ill, working class, and Southern, so there are disadvantages that I have to deal with too."
As for the election, Henson's identities and philosophies slide between Clinton and Trump. Like Clinton, he believes in multiculturalism and diversity. But like Trump, he opposes economic globalization. He believes each has been engaged in an all-out war on the working class from both the left and the right. Partly because of Clinton's neoliberalism, and the neoliberalism of the Democratic establishment, the white working class "literally has no place else to go but to Trump, which is both worrisome and sad." Trump, however,
"is a monster arising in a cauldron of white working class rage and a generation of abandonment of the white working class by the left." Because of the war on the working class, "people are frustrated, mad, and confused. It seems as if the American Dream is a distant memory."
Even someone like me, he says, "who is a community organizer, an antiracist, a feminist, and a communist can see Trump's appeal to people who are just desperate. So, I'll probably just vote for Jill Stein, even though I know that it's a throw away vote. Not much of a choice, if you ask me."
Jorge Mújica Murias is the Strategic Campaigns Organizer at Arise Chicago, an organization devoted to combatting worker injustice. A Latino, he ran for Congress as a candidate for Illinois's 3rd Congressional District in 2009 and for Alderman for the City of Chicago in 2015. A socialist, he supports Jill Stein of the Green Party.
"My reason for not supporting Clinton is simple," Mújica says. "I want to do away with the two-party system."
He wants to see the Democratic Party split. "I want to help give a solid third party status to the Green Party. I don't want people re-electing Hillary in 2020 because Ted Cruz runs against her nor do I want to see Chelsea Clinton running against Trump. Giving a solid third party status to the Green Party might open up the system." Just as he would like to see the Democratic Party split, Mújica continues, "I would have hoped to see the Republicans splitting and founding a third party, the Tea Party. That is not going to happen apparently. But we can make it happen in the Democratic party if people will not cave in and vote for Clinton."
Pippa Abston is a pediatrician in Huntsville, Alabama. She counts herself among the privileged in no small measure because she has health insurance. She tends daily to people, however, who do not - and she cares about them.
Based in large part on what she has seen in her practice, she believes that those who already lack political and socioeconomic privilege would be placed at higher risk in a Clinton presidency.
Clinton, she believes, "has ignored the need to insure every single person in the US for healthcare and has accepted President Obama's incremental approach with the Affordable Care Act [ACA]." The ACA, according to Abston, is unethical because it leaves out some already marginalized groups. Those groups include poor adults in those states like Alabama which does not allow them access to Medicaid, undocumented immigrants, documented immigrants because of a five year waiting period, and those who live just above the poverty line but cannot afford insurance even with the ACA.
An ethical person, Abston says, "would not find it acceptable to leave anyone out." Clinton, on the other hand, is "a utilitarian who is able to abstract human beings into numbers and treat them interchangeably, trading out some lives for others. This is not ethically acceptable to me." Because she sees children and their parents every day in her office, she says, "I can't possibly forget what they need and I can't possibly vote for Clinton who could put them at risk."
As are Serrano, Henson, and Mújica, Abston is concerned about the entire political system. Clinton, she says, represents a political philosophy, neoliberalism, which she finds "abhorrent."
It is an "imposter on the left" but it is not truly leftist, because it "transfers power and representation even further away from the public sphere into the oligarchy, and then tells the powerless that they can lift themselves up if they try harder."
By occupying the left as an imposter, Abston says, the neoliberal wing prevents the development of a true left, a true democratic movement "by convincing supporters it is the left they are seeking, that it cares about them, but it does not. I find this even more repugnant than the right wing, which is at least moderately honest about its nefarious intentions."
Like Abston, I, too am a person of multiple privileges. I am white, upper middle class, and enjoy a high social status. I am a Ph. D. historian, liberation theologian, ordained Baptist minister, and film maker. Much of my professional life consists of advocacy for illegal immigrants, domestic labor, and guest workers in the US legally with an H2 visa.
Free trade agreements are closely associated with the displacement of the millions of Latinos who are in the US illegally as well as with the creation of a billionaire class in Mexico and elsewhere. Free trade agreements and neoliberal economic policies generally are a priority issue for me.
Although Clinton has recently distanced herself from the looming Trans Pacific Partnership, in the past she has applauded it as the "gold standard" of trade agreements.
Trade agreements favor the well being of corporations over that of human beings. They are in large part about the creation of "investor states" which legally transfer local, state, and national sovereignty to corporations which may sue governments which act to adversely affect, or threaten to adversely affect, corporations' profits. This includes such things as labor regulations, environmental efforts, and regulations over pharmaceutical businesses.
Clinton has waffled on free trade agreements. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Dr. Jill Stein, on the other hand, consistently have opposed them.
Each seems to understand that the agreements are not really about trade -- they certainly are not about the creation of a multicultural "global village" -- they are about the offshoring of national sovereignty and the creation of a new legal framework to create and protect new, sinister investor states. They are about displacing more and more vulnerable peoples around the world and making it next to impossible for the rest of us to do anything about it. I have written more on the sovereignty problems with free trade agreements here.
This article is based on anecdotal evidence, of course, as was Melissa Hillman's. But it should go some distance in demonstrating that she is wrong about privilege being the reason for people on the left opposing Clinton. Instead, the reasons for many of us include deep concerns about America's working class, the current failure of the two-party system to address systemic economic problems, and neoliberal economic policies. Many of us have concluded that Clinton is not only a poor choice to lead America, she is downright dangerous for all of us.