This November, a vote by and for working people is vital

As we approach election day, the stakes couldn’t be higher. The MAGA-Republican challenges to the legitimacy of the 2020 elections, January 6 insurrection and the democracy-dismantling revelations of Project 2025 has made it clear. 

Powerful corporate interests have concluded that even a little democracy is too much. They want nothing getting in the way of their ability to wield power and pursue their drive for maximum profits. It has tapped into and cultivated a right-wing populist movement that it hopes will fundamentally eliminate the government's ability to act as a check on its power. 

It seemed, until recently, poised for success. Now with Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic Party ticket, the race has tightened. But Democrats still struggle to get traction among voters in an election that should be a walk. Despite important initiatives from previous Democratic administrations that mitigated some conditions working people have faced. The failure, over the last 30 years, to address the underlying policies that have left approximately 140 million Americans in economic distress and concentrated political and economic power into the hands of a few corporations and individuals has left voters cynical and demoralized. 

As the Economic Policy Institute noted, “When U.S. workers and their families express anxiety about their economic prospects, they are reacting to decades of stagnant wage growth, a lack of workplace representation, underinvestment in public goods and services, and rampant discrimination throughout the economy. These are the chronic conditions that the economy has been living with.” 

A Democratic win this November is a crucial step in keeping the power of Big Business in check and saving democracy from those who would scrap it altogether. Americans intuitively understand that the economic and political system is stacked against them. Without a clear program that addresses the reality that corporate power has become the main obstacle to a fuller democracy and economic well-being for the majority of Americans, Democrats risk squandering the edge they have going into this election's final stretch. 

Defeating the extreme right, curbing corporate power and opening up the possibility for bigger wins in the future depends on social justice movements, in particular the labor movement, using the opportunity of this election to assert the interests and agency of working people. U.S. history has important examples where these movements made significant changes to society by building broad coalitions and utilizing the strategy of ‘fusion-voting’, the practice of candidates being cross-endorsed by different political parties, which was commonplace in American electoral politics.

Outside of the historic resistance of African slaves and a small group of abolitionists the main pushback against the institution of slavery was limited to its expansion, not its abolition. As it became clear the institution of slavery and a united country were incompatible, the abolitionist movement, using fusion-voting, grew in strength. After the Civil War, abolitionists and radical Republicans were able to override President Andrew Johnson’s veto and pass the Reconstruction Act, which set the terms for the South’s readmission into the Union. The Reconstruction period remains one of the most profound expansions of democracy in US history.

In the 1930s, the financial crisis and the subsequent Great Depression left millions of Americans destitute. The Roosevelt administration's initial New Deal response was limited and did little to alleviate their conditions. A right wing populist movement here and a fascist movement on the rise internationally threatened to resolve the global crisis of capitalism by scrapping democracy and establishing authoritarian regimes.

In the face of conservative backlash, it was labor unions and social movements organizing around far-reaching legislation like the Black Thirty-Hour Bill and building electoral coalitions enabled by fusion-voting that kept the Roosevelt administration on the path of social reform and established the social contract of the New Deal era.

These moments, with the tool of fusion-voting, tipped power towards workers, freed slaves and farmers and changed the political landscape of the country for generations. No wonder corporate power did everything it could to eradicate fusion-voting across the country, leaving  it in only a handful of states, New York being one. 

Here in New York we have a unique opportunity, to defeat the MAGA Right and by fusion-voting on the Working Families Party line, demand an end to the death grip oligarchs and corporations hold on our country and our state. It is a vote that can empower the working people of New York and their advocates. Unions, community organizations, faith-based groups and others should use this opportunity to assert their values and their voices by voting on the Working Families Party line this Nov. 5.

David Mirtz is co-chair of the NYC Working Families Party.