While Marxists and others on the Left are correct to point out that many college-educated progressives are themselves part of the working class — even many lawyers and doctors must work for a paycheck to survive, after all — the key to socialist political strategy is uniting the whole working-class around a majoritarian agenda. For a civilizational challenge like shifting away from fossil fuels, only broad-based working-class power is capable of achieving what planetary systems require. To build that power, we need to understand why we are failing to win many workers to our politics, and how we can change that.
The “punk” part ain’t no joke
Sorry, I didn’t explain the Australian context of Islander - I don’t live on an Island.
I’m a Torres Strait Islander by descent, i.e. an Indigenous Australian so considered “Blak” in Australia. (We use “Blak” sometimes to differentiate from the US usage of “Black”). The term “First Nations” is popular these days but I hate it because it sounds like manager speak.
I consider climate change to be more important than Blak issues (or Black issues for that matter), including ones that specifically affect me like police brutality. I’ve had police ignore people physically assaulting me in public before, was ostracised all through high school and in other situations, etc. I consider all of that not as worrying as climate change.