Woke 1 Was Crazy. I’m Glad We’re Focused On The Real Issues

I think we can all agree that Woke 1 was crazy. People were saying things like “maybe the police shouldn’t have tanks” and “it’s bad to make someone work in a prison for fifteen cents an hour.” You could barely open your phone without being asked to take a position on whether a person should have to earn four dollars to buy a packet of ramen from the institution that had locked them up. It was exhausting.

Thankfully, politics is finally returning to the real issues. What if milk were 3.5% cheaper? What if the identical gallon of milk cost twenty cents less, provided we did not ask why the dairy worker lives in a car? These are the questions that meet people where they are: in the grocery store, facing the shelf, with no obligation to look behind it.

I have heard from many voters who say they want to know what a candidate will do for working families. By “working families” I mean the white family in the grocery commercial, whose cart contains blueberries and whose problems can be solved at checkout. I am willing to include a second family if the first one has left something in the car.

From justice to affordability

During Woke 1, activists wanted to redirect public money away from armored vehicles and toward housing, schools, and health care. The problem with that approach is that it mentions where the money comes from. You can’t build a broad coalition by making anyone picture a budget.

Our new approach is much more practical: promise to lower prices without asking who sets them, who owns the stores, or what their employees earn. We should be able to give people relief without making anyone uncomfortable at a board meeting. A family could save $1.40 on its weekly groceries, and if that doesn’t sound historic, try saying it in a campaign ad while walking slowly through a kitchen.

I used to attend marches where people called prison labor slavery. I am embarrassed now by the certainty of my younger self. There are a lot of complicated views on forcing someone to work for pennies. There are far fewer complicated views on a coupon. That is why coupons bring us together.

Critics will say I have abandoned the people I claimed to fight for. That is unfair. I still believe everybody deserves dignity. I simply want us to begin with the dignity of paying a little less for a name-brand snack, then reassess our capacity for additional dignity after the midterms.

The country is ready to move on from the chaos of asking whether people should have rights. It is ready for treats for white Americans. I know that sounds narrow when stated plainly, so in public I will call it an agenda for everyone.