A Chaotic 2022 in Review: Part 1
A surprising number of highs — or at least silver linings
Welcome to a Wednesday edition of Progress Report.
I hope you had a relaxing and fun holiday weekend filled with friends, family, and time spent away from the internet. If you’re struggling to get offline, I recommend going to see the new Avatar movie, which kept me off Twitter for eight hours or so on Monday.
We’re now in the midst of my favorite week of the year, a golden seven days during which the government is largely shut down, people with publicists have gone on vacation, and a vast majority of the news that breaks is about stupid people getting caught doing stupid things. Take, for instance, Chaya Raichik, the creator of the depraved hate account LibsOfTikTok, who went on Tucker Carlson’s show and accidentally doxxing herself as being at the January 6th insurrection.
Raichik’s dopey own goal actually serves as an imperfect microcosm of 2022 more generally. This year was a series of tug-of-war battles with three distinct steps: First, mendacious people, propped up by the wealthy and powerful, inflicted pain and suffering on vulnerable Americans; then, the institutions charged with protecting the public did little to stop them; and finally, people used collective action to stand up and push back.
Events didn’t always follow that exact path, but it’s a pretty good approximation. With little breaking news right now (unless you’re a Liverpool supporter!), let’s take a look back on the year in activism, government, and politics, both the good and the bad.
This is the first half our year in review — keep your eyes for the second half a little later this week.
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It feels odd to say, given just how frequently grief and outrage seemed to coil around the calendar and squeeze the life out of weeks at a time, but it would not be so absurd to end this year with a fair amount of cautious optimism about the future. Nearly every tragedy can be paired with a positive development without having to stretch too far for a silver lining, though to be fair, most steps forward were limited by the weight of entrenched power. Here, we’ll look back at the good and the bad, pairing corresponding events with one another for a holistic look at 2022.
Democracy Holds On
The Bad: Senate Democrats failed to pass a new voting rights bill
Democrats had a chance to reinstate the protections that the Supreme Court has spent the past decade torching, but the precedent that bending the filibuster to pass popular policy might create was just too dangerous for Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin to bear. Instead, they were happy to shrug off urgent pleas from their constituents and the GOP gerrymandering that they saw happening in real-time.
The failure will likely go down as the squandering of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to codify the most fundamental right in a democracy. Instead, Republican-run states unleashed slew of voter suppression laws unmatched in obvious intent since the Jim Crow era, with communities of color already bearing the brunt of the reduction in polling places and stricter requirements to cast a vote.
The Good: The election-deniers got pasted
With a base still desperate to somehow overturn the 2020 election, Republicans nominated a slate of lunatics and cynical opportunists who pledged to burn down the remnants of our battered democracy. They had some success in deep red territory, but in the big statewide races, each and every prominent election-denier went down in defeat.
The losers include Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Adam Laxalt in Nevada, and a coterie of far-right kooks in Arizona, including Blake Masters and Kari Lake, whose defeat was made final last week in court.
Elections
The Bad: Republican gerrymanders just got worse in many states
The failure to codify voting rights also led to a new round of shameless Republican gerrymanders. In states such as Texas, Ohio, Georgia, Florida, and Wisconsin, both Congressional and legislative maps were rigged to marginalize communities of color and guarantee large GOP margins.
In four states, the conservative judiciary actually allowed Republicans to install those rigged maps even after they were deemed illegal. For yet another decade, Republicans will feel empowered to ignore public opinion on the most essential issues, including abortion rights and education.
The Good: Democrats flipped several state legislatures
Not every GOP-controlled legislative chamber was a lost cause.
In Michigan, Democrats were able to win back full control over state government for the first time in 40 years thanks to fair new maps drawn by an independent redistricting commission, the popularity of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and the lunacy of GOP gubernatorial challenger Tudor Dixon.
Fair new maps also helped Minnesota Democrats take back the state Senate, completing a new trifecta in a state where progress stalled thanks to a narrow yet disciplined GOP majority.
Democrats also managed to flip the state House in Pennsylvania, though that’s subject to a messy dispute with desperate Republicans; once they’re able to take office, they can push through legislation to the Senate and put heat on a small Republican majority.
Abortion
The Bad: The fall of Roe v. Wade
It felt inevitable once the Supreme Court refused to block Texas’s SB 8, the anti-abortion law that authorized anti-abortion activists to track pregnant women like bounty hunters, and the unprecedented leak a month before the ruling was released put everyone in a defensive crouch. But when the Dobbs finally hit in June, its breadth and severity was still a shock to the system.
Six months later, there are nine states that have banned abortions with no exceptions for rape or incest and another (Mississippi) that has an allowance for rape but not incest. In Georgia, the ban is six weeks, several states have 15-week bans, and in nine states, severe limitations are on pause during litigation.
All told, abortion is severely restricted or banned outright in half of the United States, which has already led to untold damage to women and families across the country. It will only get worse.
The Good: The pro-choice political sea change
There is no silver lining to the fall of Roe v. Wade and the mass loss of abortion rights. It’s too tragic and cruel for any bright side to even shimmer through. But in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, activists got to work, mobilizing the vast majority of Americans who were dismayed by the fall of Roe and the federal intervention into bodily autonomy, producing results in several states and a profound change in our political calculus.
The streets were packed with protestors during the summer months, and tens of millions of dollars were raised for abortion clinics, but it was Kansans’ stunning rejection of a proposed constitutional amendment to ban abortion that first indicated that reproductive rights had support from across the political spectrum. A similar amendment got pummeled in Kentucky, as did a “born alive” amendment in Montana. Abortion rights were codified via ballot in both Michigan and California.
Many Republicans freaked out and tried to soften their stance on abortion bans — Blake Masters’ attempt at erasing his hard-right stance was particularly clumsy — and it became a defining issue in November campaigns. It likely put Democrats over the top in close gubernatorial races in Wisconsin and Arizona, while it helped deliver close Senate races in Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona.
No War But Class War
The Good: New energy fuels a surge for organized labor
This time last year, there was one unionized Starbucks store. Now, there are nearly 270 of them, representing upwards of 7,000 “partners” nationwide. It’s a remarkable achievement in organizing, unparalleled in modern times. More importantly, it represents only a fraction of what workers achieved this year.
In the summer and fall of 2021, workers in legacy factories across the Midwest hit the picket lines for the first time in years to demand fair contracts that put a stop to grinding overtime schedules, offered them equal pay, and ensured their protection from Covid. The sheer number of strikes, and the militancy with which they were pursued, resulted in the four-month period being called Striketober, and had it been for underhanded employer tactics, local chapters of the UAW, BCTGM, and UFCW would have won contracts with even more concessions from the companies they fought.
The growing labor unrest that fall helped light the spark for the explosion in union activity this year. All told, the NLRB received 1250 union election filings this year, an enormous 50% increase from last year’s number, and public approval of labor unions surpassed 70%, a level of acclaim generally reserved for puppies and ice cream.
The success enjoyed by Starbucks organizers, many of whom are in their early 20s or even younger, has inspired workers at a number of other retailers and coffee shops to unionize as well. Workers United is organizing Peet’s Coffee in California, while workers have won elections at Chipotle, Apple, and Trader Joe’s. Tech workers are pursuing unionization, and white collar workers are getting more organized and militant as well. And even those not officially unionized got in on the action, with wildcat strikes and walkouts across fast food restaurants, various Amazon warehouses, retailers, and other major businesses.
Adjunct and graduate workers at colleges and universities across the country won significant raises, especially in California, where 48,000 of them hit the picket line this fall and scored a huge raise last week.
A year after those established locals ran to the picket lines, workers disappointed by the outcomes — and in some cases disappointed by the fact that they never got to the picket line — also moved to take control of their unions from leadership that had in some cases grown out of touch with the rank and file. The Teamsters have fresh leadership, and the UAW is on the verge of a seismic overhaul as well.
This coming year, BCTGM (the union behind many of the factory strikes in 2021) will also likely experience major upheaval, which will be very overdue — based on my experience, the locals are great, but the national leadership is tired and worn out.
After a tumultuous autumn that ended in disappointment, railroad unions are also due for some big changes…
The Bad: The deck is still stacked against workers
With such weak labor laws and a Congress unwilling to lift a finger to fix them, workers are at an inherent structural disadvantage. Winning a union election, or even hundreds of them, does not guarantee success, and, in the case of the railroad workers, neither does threatening to shut down the national economy.
I was at the Amazon vote count in downtown Brooklyn and wound up asking Chris Smalls the question that he turned into the quote of the year. Not much else has gone right for the Amazon Labor Union since that moment; it has struggled to protect pro-union workers from being fired and harassed in Staten Island, lost two elections in a row and, as I’ve been told, been dealing with internal acrimony and dissent as the year comes to a close.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has declared war on Starbucks Workers United, vowing to never negotiate a fair contract, shutting down profitable stores, and accruing a fortune in legal bills from Littler Mendelson, which represents the company against the unprecedented number of official complaints brought by the NLRB. I’ve covered them in depth, and broken the news about a lot of them, and sadly, they’ve always become unremarkable, or at least ho-hum.
The company has now fired more than 130 unionizing workers, and because the PRO Act was DOA in the Senate, they will suffer only minor consequences, even with new compensation rules laid out by the labor board. The pace of Starbucks filings has slowed considerably, as well, because the company illegally offered new benefits and raises to workers in non-union stores. The NLRB nailed them for that, but they don’t seem to care.
At least Starbucks and Amazon workers get their day in court; the situation is even worse for the rail workers, who were railroaded into a contract without sick days by a Biden administration that misread the national mood. Until there is the political bravery to not just speak out but also risk political capital on behalf of workers, only so much can change.
The Good: Elon Musk bought — and quickly started to break — Twitter
I always say that I would not be on Twitter if it wasn’t absolutely necessary for work, but the truth is that for all the platform’s flaws, it became a daily hub for my digital existence. A conveyer belt of windows into rabbit holes and new horizons, a mixer for new collaborators and even friends. Then Elon Musk tripped on his dick and bought Twitter for $44 billion, ushering in a chaos that’s been equal parts obnoxious and dangerous.
Nazis and hate speech have been invited back and tolerated, while reporters have been banished and harassed. Thousands of employees lost their jobs, and the product itself is wheezing and shedding nuts and bolts as it breaks down. In short, it sucks to be on Twitter, and now, I really am there by obligation.
The Good: The great man billionaire myth has finally been obliterated
For about 40 or so years, the media and American culture more generally treated business leaders as the new gods and their personal wealth as proof of their greatness. From Lee Iacocca at GE to the disruptors of Silicon Valley, these billionaire white men — and they were generally all white men — were presented as geniuses, their wisdom and philosophies documented in an entire cottage industry’s worth of conferences and publications, their insights sought by presidents and global leaders.
Skyrocketing economic inequality began to turn public opinion against the ultra-wealthy, and the monster increases to their net worth as their employees dropped dead during pandemic created a moral backlash. But it was this year that people reallly began to see the fallacy behind the belief that great wealth acquired in business is inherently the product of true genius.
Elon Musk has revealed himself to be a thin-skinned simpleton operating on 9th grade logic. Sam Bankman-Fried was a total fraud, and a sloppy one at that. Howard Schultz and Jeff Bezos, who once positioned themselves as benevolent leaders, became best known for trying to crush their employees with flagrantly illegal tactics. Charlie Munger just said some idiotic, tin-eared shit that earned him his public ghoul card.
The list goes on and on, and no matter how much control they still wield over politicians and the economy, the goodwill that allowed them to seize hold of society has evaporated.
Conservative Insanity
The Good: Donald Trump’s stature took a major hit this year
It was not a good year to be former President Donald J. Trump.
His banquet hall home at Mar-a-Lago was stormed by the FBI, which came away with boxes of classified and top-secret documents that he swiped from the White House on his way out.
His hand-picked candidates got blown out during the November elections.
The January 6th committee pulled back the curtain on his involvement in the insurrection and recommended that he face criminal charges.
And worst of all, he still hasn’t been re-installed as President of the United States.
Republican leaders certainly want to see him disappear into the humid Florida night, and maybe the conga line of humiliations will indeed convince the rank-and-file to abandon their big, beautiful president. But I wouldn’t count him out just yet, because Donald Trump has never suffered any consequences in his life filled with grifts and crimes, and at 76 years old, it’s hard to imagine that he’d start now.
The Bad: Ron DeSantis emerges as a GOP favorite
As readers of this newsletter know, there is no person on this earth that I loathe more than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. He’s a deeply corrupt, Nazi-coddling, Covid-weaponizing, child-torturing sleaze bag who has been the beneficiary of an inept Florida Democratic Party and unfathomably kind treatment from a national press desperate to elevate him as the rival and successor to Trump in 2024.
It’s truly remarkable that there’s been virtually zero national coverage of the fact that DeSantis is spending his time right now “investigating” drag shows, stacking the deck against teachers and trans people, and funneling billions of dollars to corporations. With little media pushback, DeSantis has actually surged ahead of Trump in some polls — for now. I suspect that once the country gets to know this deeply unlikable clown, there will be far less enthusiasm for his shadow campaign.
Stay tuned for the second part of the year-end review…
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