Seven years ago, we owned General Motors (GM). With 49,000 autoworkers walking pickets to finally end the concessions, two-tier, and plant closings train of the last three decades, it’s mind-boggling to remember that the US Treasury owned GM for three years — and managed to do virtually nothing to benefit the working class with it.

We’re in a new period in which, thanks to the efforts of tens of thousands of socialists and Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, we are actively debating nationalizing the energy grid, a massive federal jobs guarantee, an even more massive retooling and public ownership of new green industries, and more. It feels like a political act in itself to remember the lost opportunities for leverage for struggles today.

It’s also a political act to remember just how massive of a giveaway both in money and power the Obama administration and the centrists of the Democratic Party participated in while controlling all three branches of the government from 2009 to 2012.