I became politicized and then radicalized during the 1960’s as a result of two distinct mass movements: the anti-Vietnam war movement and the civil rights/Black Freedom movement. My research while a freshman in college into why the US was in Vietnam and my involvement in a Black history book discussion group eventually led me to leave college after two years to “join the revolution,” and I’ve never regretted it.

As I continued my political activism into the decade of the ‘70s I was exposed to the idea that the struggle for Black Freedom, against racism and white supremacy, was the key to systemic, transformational change in the USA. I was also exposed to the traditional Leftist idea that the working class struggle against capitalist exploitation was the key “contradiction,” as it was called. And then, increasingly, the reborn women’s movement came forward articulating that the struggle of women against sexist patriarchy was the key to such transformation.

Today, decades later, the concept of “intersectionality” seems to be widely accepted among progressives and Leftists as the approach we should be taking. A definition of this term that I like was put forward in the book, “Intersectionality,” by Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge in 2016:

“Intersectionality is a way of understanding and analyzing the complexity of the world, in people and in human experiences. . . When it comes to social inequality, people’s lives and the organization of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and influence each other. Intersectionality as an analytic tool gives people better access to the complexity of the world and themselves.”

However, even if one believes that an intersectional approach is generally the best approach to “understanding and analyzing the complexity of the world,” that should not preclude an objective assessment, based on history and experience, as to which sector or sectors of a country’s population might have the most potential to give the leadership needed for fundamental, revolutionary change.

For many years I have believed that THE sector which fits that description is the African American movement.

It was the civil rights movement in the deep South in the mid-1950’s and into the ‘60s which, via organized campaigns to end brutal Jim Crow segregation, galvanized the country, undercut McCarthyism, kept hope for social change alive and inspired young white and other non-Black students to become dedicated activists. The anti-Vietnam war movement, the second wave women’s movement, the lesbian/gay rights movement, membership-based democratic trade union organizing, the American Indian Movement, the Puerto Rican independence movement, the Chicano movement, the Gray Panthers, environmental activism and more—it is a valid argument that all in part emerged as impactful mass movements as a result of the heroic nonviolent battles for the right to vote and the fight for equality by organized Black people first in the South and then throughout the country.

Other more recent examples would be the Jesse Jackson for President campaigns in 1984 and 1988 and Barack Obama’s successful Presidential campaigns 20 years later.

But the Obama electoral successes did not translate into transformational change. Indeed, an argument could be made that the trajectory of Black-led movements as they entered the electoral arena between the ‘60s and the early 2000’s was more one of cooptation into the two-party, corporate-dominated status quo than a liberatory trajectory.

If Kamala Harris becomes President, which I am working for and which is a clearly realizable goal if enough of us over the next 80 days make this a top priority in our personal lives, will she end up being another Obama: good on a number of things but unwilling to take on the rule of the 1%, of the fossil fuel industry, the war industry, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other billionaire corporatists—the ruling class?

I think it is possible that a Harris/Walz administration could be different than what we experienced with Obama/Biden, and even from Biden/Harris. That is the case because of the massive outpouring of energy, hope and activism that has accompanied Biden’s stepping down and his endorsement of Harris as his replacement as the Democratic Presidential candidate. This historic development on July 21 has led overnight, literally, to the emergence of a massive movement of many hundreds of thousands of people. That is how many have taken part in one of the 20 or so national zoom calls, organized in an intersectional way on the basis of identity or constituency, in support of Harris. And all indications are that for many of those hundreds of thousands it was not a one-off, that they have continued and will continue to work the phones, write the postcards, knock on the doors to bring out what could be an historic turnout of progressive-minded, decent and democracy-loving people by and on November 5^th.

It is an absolute historic truth that, indeed, the masses make history, built upon the dedicated, day-after-day work of those who have the vision and will to keep at it in the down times. Those masses, all of us, need to act right now, and keep acting after November 5th, as if a livable future for our children and grandchildren, for all life forms on the planet, depends on us doing so, because it really does. It really, really does.

This article also appears on Ted Glick’s Future Hope column.