How we choose to recover will set the tone for the next century

What is required is a new foundation, a new American story that redeems everyone who has been forced to accept that their value, the meaning of their lives is defined primarily in economic terms, to survive and to recover into a new future. We have been sold this idea slowly over the course of generations but are now at the peak of the exploitation of humanity as an economic input, as a unit of labor for the purpose of creating wealth at the expense of meaning and our spiritual lives. We don’t want to go back: we want to be free.

The democratic primary is over, and we have selected a nominee who may be exactly the right leader for the moment — steady, known, transitional — but who may also be the least ambitious about our future. Throughout the process I have been frustrated by a specific and consistent deficit of ambition, creativity, and genuine transformation in our Democratic primary. The final debate of the primary featured two septuagenarian white men (after a competition of 20+ potential leaders of greater diversity than we’ve ever seen at this level of American politics) arguing about positions they held in the 1990s. Our arguments are stale. Our ideas are incremental (wealth tax, UBI, higher minimum wage, free college) masquerading as revolutionary — some of them would expand the equity or ameliorate the cruelty of our current…