I question whether the outcome of the last election might have been different if more attention had been paid to those who are experiencing the impact of global capitalism the poor white families who now recognize that their children are not going to be better-off than they were. The outcome might have been different if we had developed strategies permitting us to recognize that so many of the existing problems in this country are directly related to the rise and spread of global capitalism.

As a matter of fact, we used to have more economic democracy than we do today. Once, people could expect to be treated at any hospital if they were ill. Hospitals and the whole health care system had not been privatized, as they are now, which is one of the reasons why the COVID-19 pandemic has created such a state of emergency particularly with respect to hospital beds, because empty hospital beds are not profitable.

If one looks at the impact of global capitalism, it is very much an explanation for the rise of the prison industrial complex, as well as the disestablishment of so many institutions that used to serve as an economic safety net for people. The failure to develop more institutions devoted to the public good has created a terrain in which poverty has expanded, not only among communities of color, but also among white people.

The current occupant of the White House called upon those who were suffering, providing false solutions, such as a return to an era in which the industrialized economy in this country responded to peoples needs. And thats not going to happen. The jobs that have gone all over the world, particularly to the Global South, are not going to return to the United States. It is important to consider the ways in which economic transformations have a direct impact on democracy.

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Angela Davis on the Struggle for Socialist Internationalism and a Real Democracy - Jacobin magazine