Fifty-three years ago from Saturday, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm announced her presidential candidacy. Her vision of economic, social, environmental, racial, and democratic justice can be summed up in one sentence from her announcement speech:

“The will of each of us is as precious as the most powerful general or corporate millionaire.”

This January, the 45th and 47th president (flanked by billionaire media, big tech, and space colonization executives) offered a starkly different vision. In his inaugural address glorifying “businessmen,” wealth,” “money,” and “power,” he promised to seize land, restrict the rights of millions of marginalized people, and “pursue our manifest destiny into the stars.” We must not forget that the term “manifest destiny” was used in early American history to justify violent US territorial and industrial expansion that was fueled by chattel slavery, the genocide of Indigenous people, and the exploitation of the natural environment.

The anniversary of Shirley Chisholm’s presidential campaign announcement illuminates two very different visions of the world. It has never been clearer which one we should be fighting for.

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