Once again in the aftermath of the police assassination of Tyre Nichols, we hear from many good people, “This has got to stop.” But we said much the same at the time of the last execution and the execution before that and the execution …

This almost predictable response should tell us that whatever has been done to address this national shame and crisis isn’t enough.

Which begs the question: What would be enough?

I’m not sure, but it seems to me that one beginning would include not simply a disbanding of this or that police unit, but instead a full blown reimagining of policing, along the lines of what activists and academics in this field have been advocating for a while now.

To this end, I would think that President Biden should name, after broad consultation, a representative commission to study and come up with proposals that would do exactly that and then put the full power of the White House and federal government behind its recommendations.

Others, with far more expertise and a far bigger voice than I have, may well have better suggestions as to how to proceed. The main thing here is that the approach be holistic and cut from a new cloth.

The elimination of policies and practices that result in the horrific deaths of young people of color is imperative, but that will only happen with a total reshaping, among other things, of the “culture” of policing – a culture that is racist, misogynist, homo, trans, and xenophobic, anti-working class, and lawless. Bad apples there are, but weeding them out of a culture that routinely breeds bad apples is no solution.

Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition were ostensibly and outspokenly pro-labor and pro-farmer. Rev Jackson’s working class politics, it seems to me were more consistently expressed and more creatively interwoven with the struggles for equality and social justice than the politics of contemporary social movements. Not many have done it – mastered this dialectic – better in my opinion than Jesse in my lifetime.

Moreover, given the movement of a considerable section of high school educated white workers to Trumpian politics and the outsized MAGA constituency in rural America, a serious examination and adaptation of Jesse’s politics and practice to current circumstances would seem to be in order.

The role of left, or the social justice movement, isn’t only to grow and consolidate itself in the course of its organizing efforts. That is too myopic a view. Its mission should also include assisting, uniting, and cooperating with the whole anti-MAGA coalition, not least the Democratic Party. I know this goes against the received wisdom and practice in some of these circles, but it is hard to envision a decisive defeat of MAGA without a strengthening of the whole anti-MAGA coaliton.

Electoral mobilization is an indispensable form of mass action. And for the next two years it should be the primary terrain of political, mass engagement. It is, I would argue, the key link in pushing the whole chain of social struggle forward.