Everyone involved in this debate is opposed to Donald Trump and the Republican Party; everyone favors far more progressive policies than this administration's. One question is whether leftist critiques of black politicians like Kamala Harris and Cory Booker are a cover for prejudice—or at least disregard for people of color.

The centrist c ritiques of the left as white- and male-dominated stretch back years ; today, leftist arguments against prominent Democrats of color are often painted as thinly veiled bigotry . The central charge is that socialism reflects the worldviews of white men at the expense of women, people of color, immigrants, and queer communities: hence pejoratives like "Bernie Bro" and " alt-left ."

That argument turned especially bitter last week , with major Democratic figures accusing the left of singling out Harris in particular because of her race and leftists arguing that their concerns were about policy . Writ large, this can be seen as a struggle between the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton wings of the Democratic Party: the former emphasizing economic redistribution, the latter speaking more specifically to injustices faced by black people, women, immigrants, and others marginalized under Trump, without emphasizing the basic distribution of wealth.

It's not surprising to me that when people talk about the left, they're talking about white men who are straight. And I don't see myself as someone who feels like they need to argue that in any sort of way. My energy is better spent doing organizing that I think matters.

But I think it matters that we are radically inclusive in how we think about the left in this country. We have to include race and gender and sexuality and class as markers that facilitate or impede your participation in anything. If you are a poor, black, a lesbian or trans mother, it would be very, very hard for you to spend a whole lot of your time doing organizing. And that is why a lot of people who can afford to spend a lot of their time organizing are people who have more advantages. That's a big thing that we have to get real about. And if we want people to organize and have the ability to organize, we have to shift a lot of things in order to be able to meet people's needs in a way that allows them to do so.

White folks have been organizing forever in this country. White men have been organizing. I don't see this as a new wave in the least. It may be something that some people are talking about in a different way, or more. It's going to take time to see how that plays out and whether there's anything to it. I'm not sure what I think about the way that that's framed—these folks who are very loud on social media, what are they organizing for?