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Progressives Must Start Agitating
Norman Solomon on getting out there and doing something
"We need to become agitators," says Norman Solomon, Marin County activist and co-creator of the Green New Deal for the North Bay.
(Image: Flickr Rockwellmedia)
"It's the agitator that gets the dirt out in the washing machine," he
explains, borrowing an analogy from Jim Hightower. Solomon sees the wash
cycle as a good behavior model for those of us who avoid political
activism in favor of safe and lazy pondering over how much trouble the
world is in right now. It's such a hassle to get involved with strangers
and go to meetings. Can't we just whine to our friends about corporate
greed and corruption in the comfort of our own homes?
We can, at high cost.
"So much is at stake for future generations and for the planet," declares Solomon, "that we need to be willing to organize as if our lives and the lives of those close to us depended on it." For Solomon, this means that as individuals and as communities we need to get more serious about our involvement with one another and with things we care about. "Getting involved is essential," says Solomon. "There's that saying, 'I'm not into politics.' I say, 'But politics is into you.' When you turn on the tap for a drink of water, that's politics."
For those who turn off like a faucet at the mention of political activism, Solomon's approach may inspire willingness to open up and flow. The secret seems to be finding out how "agitating" looks for each individual. (I can just hear Garrison Keillor asking, "What are the shy folks supposed to do?") Agitating can be direct or it can be as uncomplicated as pursuing something we love with greater gusto than we ever have before.
"One simple step," Solomon explains, "is to learn and to agitate." This means choosing something close to your heart, learning everything you possibly can about it and then becoming a source of information for others, the go-to font of knowledge in your neighborhood or community.
"People get afraid that they will have to do something they don't want to do. Everyone is different, and it's important that everybody engage at their level of passion and interest and capacity."
Can political involvement be something more uplifting than a dose of corporate-sponsored news each night? "People look at the news and are depressed, but activists tend to be less depressed," Solomon says. "There's something so enlivening that happens when you share your thoughts and feelings and ideas with others—people inspiring because of who they are."
A critical byproduct of all this social agitation is a changed relationship with power. "'Power' is a word that causes a lot of ambivalence," says Solomon. "For progressives, we need power to shape the future instead of just having it created for us. I know we will not like it if it is created by the most powerful forces that exist right now."
Referencing what one beloved agitator, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., called the paralysis of analysis, Solomon says we need to stop pondering and get out and do something, and as a consequence, we "get to find out what we are capable of." He believes that sinking roots more deeply into the communities where we live is part of a broad social movement that can take on corporate power. "These roots already exist," says Solomon. And because these roots feed the community in various ways, as we learn to become agitators, we allow ourselves to be more extensively nurtured by roots that already exist.
"Everyone cares about something," Solomon says. "Learn about it and agitate about it. If you care about it and you want things to get better, then you get with your friends and your neighbors, and together you say we can get this done, yes we can turn this around. Si, se puede. There are reasons to be engaged, because it's about the future. It's a cliché, but it's true, that if the people will lead, the leaders will follow."
Find Norman Solomon at www.greennewdeal.info.
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136 Comments so far
Show AllThank you NAO,
You have said it beautifully.
A few comments for new organizers. It is better to go to OUR OWN churches, OUR block parties. Go to OUR union meetings. Canvas in OUR neighborhoods. In other words. if possible, go to the people we know or live near, and pick up experience, before we go to strangers.
Also, at meetings, unless there are more than 20 people, arrange the chairs in a circle so that people will be looking at and talking to each other, rather than at a single speaker. In a circle, even if you do have speakers, everyone is equally encouraged to speak to all, and people will make friends faster, so that they will be more likely to come back.
"Bowling Alone" is about how Americans have become more socially isolated in the last 50 years. (4 1/2 hours of TV a day) If we can provide the good social experience which people now crave, but can't easily achieve, then we will be able to build a powerful movement.
Deer Lawrenceofberc,
Hey brother thanks for all the guidance and suggestions for initiating discussion on the street. You do us a great service. I thank you from the heart. Too tired to say much else tonight. Peace
Thank you R. Wulf.
Have a good rest.
Bricks, bottles and barricades.
"where are they from where are they from...they're from the barricades"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trFiL3L0WKE
This is a very thoughtful compilation, jareilly. It's a much needed tonic for the DO SOMETHING advocates, who tend not to be specific. And that includes Norman Solomon, who lately has been advocating door-to-door campaigning for Dem Party candidates. I actually think we should push for the Green Party or the Peace and Freedom Party, not the Dems. Pushing for Dems is contrary to our interests, as Solomon's push for Obama aptly showed.
-TIA
It's difficult to stand up when we are all suffering from collective PTSD. But do it anyway. Do it in any way you can. Agitate your parents, siblings, extented family, neighbors, coworkers, one person at a time. Shake them out of their stupor, inform them, confront them, show them.
Quite frankly, opting out, cutting any unneeded spending that might boost the Man's economy, while stocking up and preparing for the worst, is about all you can do right now. Participating politically in anything larger than your own circle of freinds is a waste of time.
Unless we wake-up to find there is a revolution...otherwise, its pointless. And people have to "shake" themselves. You can't do it for them.
Prepare yourself and your family for some strange times. Stock your pantry. Stash some gold or silver coinage and essentials if you can. Take care of your own world for now. If and when an opportunity presents itself to you that you can toss a stick into the cogs of the Empires machine, do it.
Hopefully Nader will do something in 2012 that might be worth getting excited and mobilized over.
"...you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop."
I love ya Jill, baby, but somehow I don't think clinging to a White House fence only to be hauled away is what Savio had in mind. Its been proven over and over again this doesn't work. Now if you have enough people to bring it down and to go inside for a chat with Nr. Obama, now that's an entirely different animal. That's clearly not what the 16th will be about.
But, godspeed to you and the folks on the 16th. If I were close enough to go without major expense, I'd be there. But the payoff just isn't there.
Hello Moonpie and Jill,
Right after Mario made that speech in December of '64, he and a few thousand other members of the Free Speech Movement (FSM) entered Sproul Hall, the administration building of UC Berkeley. Their intention was to get arrested, and the 800 who stayed achieved that.
No, the University was not "brought down," but all of the main demands were met, and for several years afterwards, the power of students in the University and in the Bay Area was huge. The same people started the mass anti-war movement with a 36 hour teach-in in May of '65. Even now, hundreds of people show up for FSM reunions.
But you are probably right about the efficacy of hanging to a fence, although I would rather have it happen than not. The key to the FSM was the magnificent support it had, in the school and in the community. (All built, by the way, without computers.) I've never understood why people who pour into a city for a protest don't also go to the neighborhoods to build local support.
You are so right, Laurenceofberk. Nonviolence can work and can be successful. You just have to be willing to scale the fence and then go beyond that. I dare say it might still work. What are they going to do? Shoot and kill several hundred people? Perhaps. But being the cowards they really are, I'd suspect they'd back down. They'd probably be stunned that someone actually challenged them. :)
I could get behind that kind of action.
RE: You are so right, Laurenceofberk.
You seem to contradicting your earlier posts:
RE: Quite frankly, opting out, cutting any unneeded spending that might boost the Man's economy, while stocking up and preparing for the worst, is about all you can do right now.
“Opting out”, yeah, that’ll have the ruling class pissing their pants.
RE: Participating politically in anything larger than your own circle of friends is a waste of time.
The times of progressive change in US history always occurred when massive, militant social movements were driving those changes (e.g. 1930’s, late 1960’s), but according to you, building and participating in that mass movement "is a waste of time.”
RE: Hopefully Nader will do something in 2012 that might be worth getting excited and mobilized over.
Great example of political passivity: waiting for a leader to vote for and solve your problems?
First, both parties of the duopoly serve ruling class interests. Second, the electoral system is rigged in favor of the duopoly, third parties don't stand a chance (except for registering a protest vote, which is worth doing BTW). Third, the earlier mass movements that brought about reforms (like child labor laws, the 8 hour day, civil rights, anti-war, etc.) were not, in the main, connected to electoral politics. Reforms don't come via voting for a candidate. You change the political zeitgeist by the actions of a mass movement, then you create the conditions where reforms are possible. Real reform means that the ruling class has to make concessions, they don't want to do that; mass movements can raise the social cost to the ruling class high enough where they will. This is a war; you don't win by running away or voting for one of the ruling class representatives. But we should be careful of just seeking reforms (like Norman Solomon). Achieving reforms is like winning a battle, to win the war requires revolution. And, neither reform nor revolution is possible without a militant mass movement. It's way past time to start building it.
"Power lies in unity, and hope lies in defiance."
(The closing remarks on a Chinese workers petition.)
It's too late for agitating, protesting or striking. Voting, writing letters to your congressmen or editors are a waste of time.
Only 3 things work, all non-violent: 1-don't pay taxes & work off the books; 2-take your money out of the banking system; 3-consume the minimum necessary, food, clothing and medicine.
Stop feeding the beast.
Nothing else will work.
What is Solomon's Green New Deal? No doubt just another initiative of the Progressive Democrats of America. Solomon isn't going to abandon the Democratic Party, he's just preaching to leftists and progressives that they too must join in his PDA efforts, or slide down the futility hole of working to get third parties started that will make the Democrats obsolete, which they already are anyway.
If all we're ever going to have is the Dem Party, we have literally nothing. There is no medium in which to "agitate," there is only the same failed corporate-friendly party that poses no threat whatsoever to the status quo, however much Solomon keeps insisting that progressives have nowhere else to go and shouldn't waste time looking. If the Democrats are all we have, then it's time to admit we've already surrendered.
No shit! Democrats, Republicans, Left, Right... it's all been bought by corporate american (sic). Welcome to the united states of corporate america (sic). We have yet to see an individual or movement strong enough and powerful enough with sufficient financing to fight this monster that is killing the globe. I wait with a sense of doom at the impotence the corporate monster has created with the help of both parties as they accept the spoils from the monster that has bought the government with money stolen from the citizens and the country that helped make them so wealthy.
Trust that any individual with the charisma or potential to fight the creature will be assassinated under the parameters of "national interest" of the monster.
You are correct, basically - one correction - it will be under the aegis of the manufactured meme "the war on terror" not "the national interest."
Lately, Norman Solomon has been talking about spurring movements without extolling specific Dem Party adherents, such as the Progressive Democrats of America. He even dispenses with mentioning the capital "D" Democrats at all in recent editorials.
I actually think this new approach, if it is that, is not honest. We all know that Solomon caucused for Obama and poured his heart into Dem Party support in the 2008 election (and in past ones). If he thinks getting involved in the Democratic Party would work, why not just state that? Maybe it's because few progressives or those on the left think it will work. And it didn't work in his case. Solomon needs to face up to that fact.
-TIA
"Progressives Must Start Agitating"
This is a long time lament of CLUELESS "progressives" that has gone on for YEARS. I have stopped supporting and even listening to Pacifica KPFK in LA because of this unchanging self-induced, ignorance and increasingly reactionary stupidity.
Every day programs like "Democracy Now" provide "progressives" with their daily dose of impotence rendering "the sky is falling" indoctrination. (I won't go through the litany of multiple economic, social, political, ecological, human crises that are impoverishing and killing millions of people around the world, and now here in the U.S.)
The capitalist economic system is intrinsically corrupt. The multiple crises of induced by run-amok, gangster capitalism cannot be "bailed out", reformed, or coming up with a new strategy to make capitalist wars for profit more "democratic".
The vast social and economic inequalities within the U.S. and globally are INTRINSIC to capitalism. "Progressive" agitation to influence "con-man" Obama or reform the corporate controlled Democratic Party must be considered, after two years in power, completely anti-progressive and reactionary babble.
The common root cause of many crises, foreign and domestic, are to be found in the 30 year decline of U.S. capitalism and now collapse of global capitalism.
GLOBAL WARMING continues and will not end until profitable polluters are put out of business or nationalized.
WARS FOR PROFIT (oil profits, war industry profit, looting of foreign economies, looting of U.S. economy for war., etc.
GLOBALIZATION is CAPITALIST GLOBALIZATION as millions of jobs are outsourced for maximum profit, as workers in U.S. see wages and living standards plummet.
HEALTH CARE REFORM is only about enforcing the profits of the health care "industry", not about universal affordable health care.
MASS MEDIA INDOCTRINATION is profitable indoctrination of the people to support ideologies against their own economic interest. NPR and PBS speak with the same pro-business, pro-corporate indoctrination, but indoctrinate college educated "progressives" to stay within the capitalist "frame" and "mental box".
Without a transition away from capitalism to a socialist commonwealth economy that works to meet the economic needs of the vast majority, will any of the crises facing humanity ever be solved.
Read daily the World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org
The "Professional Left" must sit back and laugh their asses off as they plot new and improved angles to keep liberals pacified & interested enough keep them coming back for more.
What a sad charade.
I have said the same thing. We need a national movement that can really agitate and organize for a Liberal Agenda. I have begun to advocate for something I call the May Day Movement. May Day is first of all a distress call and all of us in the Middle Class are distressed. It is also totally American starting in Chicago in 1886 over workers demanding an 8 hour work day. The symbolism alone because of what is happeneing to the American work force today plus the fact the Right wingers can howl Socialist and be completely wrong as usual makes the title appealing to me. Because I just joined the ranks of the unemployed I haven't been able to get an independant website up but I have been posting my ideas on my blog site Philadelphia Progressive Examiner and everything on it begins with May Day Movement. Global Capitalism is clinically dead and we need to propose more humane economic models and hold Dems who chose to be moderate Republicans responsible by refusing to vote for them and working to defeat them. We could let them know with a petition that puts them on notice. Let me know what you think or if someone has a better idea tell me how to get there,
Sort of a TEA-Patry for the LEFT?
>^^<
The left needs to mimic the right's tactics here. Just as the Tea Party forced lazy GOP incumbents to pay at least lip service to the TP's agenda or face stiff challenges in their primaries, we need to threaten our lazy shiftless sac-less spineless Dem incumbents with a similar left-of-left uprising.
Put up hard-core progressive candidates who are not afraid to push a truly progressive agenda. Screw the Pelosi/Reid wussies.
Dems've controlled both houses since 2006 with a Dem prez for 2 years and where are we? Look at what GW Bush "accomplished" in two years with no clear majority!
Waste of freaking time sticking with these wusses.
Completely agree. A link to a petition to challenge the DC Duopoly is above, in this thread. I am the author, and first signatory.
Bullshit!!!
Everyone loves to quote the civil rights movement without actually understanding the dynamics. Martin Luther King Jr. has become this puppet for justifying cowardice, instead of ultimate sacrifice and courage against all odds. People were being burned alive, mauled, imprisoned for life as well as being killed! Protest and you die, or worse. And yet they still did it.
White folk progressives now adays want to agitate and still go to the trendy after party later tonight. They want to demonstrate, protest, even civil disobedience but still get out of jail in time for school or job the next day.
As long as this is the standard to what you call civil disobedience than the state has you and your goddamn organization by the balls. You'll never be a threat to them! Turning up the heat means taking chances. It means someone's got to volunteer to die, it means somebody else is going to prison for life and proud of it! Stop quoting the damn civil rights movement like it was a bunch of tie dyed hippie fucks occasionally sobering up for some type of political statement in between concerts and mushrooms. It was a mass movement of people ready to take whatever the consequence for standing up for dignity and justice, and knowing full well many of them would be punished for that stance.
It was a dedicated group of people who often displayed the moral courage to stand shoulder to shoulder with their brothas and sistas knowing incarceration and death were a highly probabilistic out come, and yet still stand strong, and eventually win!
Climate Change justice will take nothing less world wide!
Thank you for cutting to the meat of the matter, Lemmonmc.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I generally agree with most of what Lemmonmc says, but I would caution that as bad as the police and FBI were in the era of Martin Luther King, Jr., the press was not as consolidated in its ownership as it is today, and the Police State was not as streamlined from top to bottom in its computerized, high-tech weapon-equipped, full spectrum warrantless surveillance-informed, command & control chain. Habeas corpus was still in operation. Presidents had not yet publicly claimed a fictitious "right" to assassinate American citizens without due process using secret Executive Branch criterion.
Local TV stations and the Big Three networks in the 1960s were still unhardened enough to carry images of southern pigs turning police dogs and firehoses on innocent young black high school students marching for Civil Rights. That embarrassed and shamed much of white America (to itself and internationally when those images were picked up by foreign TV networks) back when it still had enough minimal moral fiber to be capable of being shamed.
To carry out the scale of organized resistance that is needed now, a true progressive populist national movement in this era would need to be able to put a minimum of 1 to 2 million people in the streets over and over again on a regular basis. It would need its own media and informational/educational sources to inform the public on its issues from its perspective, unfiltered by the corporatist media. It would need a small army of pro-bono attorneys defending it from the legal onslaughts of the fascist State and billionaire-sponsored right-wing groups of various kinds. And it would need a sizable "bailout" fund to pay for the bailout fees and legal defenses of member protesters assaulted by the State and private mercenary companies working for the State.
I don't think anyone said it would be easy, and I don't think playing the game by their rules would be the right way to go. If you go to jail, then stay in jail. 10, then 100, a 1000, 100,000 or more people incarcerated would place a heavy burden on municipalities everywhere.
Easy? Convenient? No. Effective? Yes.
Small, nimble groups can also be as effective as large, obvious ones. In many cases more so.
What should progressives do? They should do what works. The long-standing campaigns by the secular regressives and the Christian theocrats to take over the US government[1] show how it can be done. In essence, the successful strategy consists of the following tactics:
• Develop a theory or model of how the world should be. Start from first principles; don't assume the perpetuation of any currently existing social, economic, or political phenomena, and make no concessions to the people who defend or are invested in these phenomena. Commit yourself (not necessarily in public) to a lifelong fight to implement this model.
• Become involved in local politics. Two of the principles that have made the theocrats successful are "The world is run by the people who show up", and "No public office, no matter how humble, is not worth taking over". This does not prevent them from aiming for the top as well, as can be seen by the campaign to infiltrate theocratic aides and interns into the offices of federal-level politicians. The operative term here is "as well": taking over the top of the power pyramid is much less effective if the bottom is not already occupied.
• Join the Democratic Party. I know that this recommendation will make many CD readers gag, but be realistic: Third parties don't win as such.[2] As a registered Democrat you will have admission to occasions of influence within the party. Remember, you need not believe in the Democratic Party (see my first point). Nothing prevents you from providing "material support" for a third party at the same time. Your commitment to the Democratic Party can be like the theocrats' commitment to freedom of religion—a tool to be used on the way to power and then discarded when power is achieved. Remember that it's much easier to destroy a political institution if you can disguise its destruction by keeping its name in use.
The tragedy of politics is that this prescription is much easier to follow for our enemies than for us. The regressives and theocrats are driven by basic, reptile-level desires: for security, for ego-affirmation, for access to mates.[3] This gives them two advantages. First, they begin with a de facto agreement on what they want to achieve. Second, because their desires are primeval and insatiable, they are capable of constant, relentless exertion in defiance of reason and circumstance. Thoughtful people with higher moral purposes are much more susceptible to distractions, divisions, and scruples. I don't like to say that this means that the sociopaths will always win in the end, although that looks like the logical conclusion to my argument. I suppose that is a different way of saying what Jesus meant when He said that the world is under the rule of the devil.
[1] And the Canadian government, as detailed in Marci McDonald's book "The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada".
[2] Third parties can achieve partial temporary indirect victories by pulling one of the two dominant parties toward themselves. Such victories are (a) not good enough, and (b) dependent on the willingness of people within the targeted dominant party to move in that direction.
[3] You will notice that money and power are not on this list. That is deliberate, because these fundamentally are instruments: Money is for gaining power, and power is for building up a fortress against the uncertainties of life. Also, notice that "mates" are promised in the form of trophy wives and mistresses (secular version) or "happy God-centered families" (theocratic version).
"Join the Democratic Party"
Gulp.
AK, is it not fair to ask, in the context of this article, what Norman Solomon got out of his Presidential caucusing for Barack Obama? You say, "join the Democratic Party," but even Norman Solomon's efforts in this regard were a large step backward. Obama and the Dem Congress are anathema to progessives and the left, and even to good public policy.
I want to be convinced, but you've failed to provide even an anecdote to explain why joining a party that gets the bulk of its funds from corporations will help advance the public's cause. Yes, I know that we have a winner-take-all electoral system in the United States, but how do you change that by voting for the same two parties over and over again?
No thanks to that part of your proposal. By the way, third parties win by people simply deciding to vote for them. Why tear yourself up in contortions by arguing otherwise? My prescription would be for you and others to change your minds about what is possible. And maybe think a little more long term. Winning elections in which elected Dem reps enact laws on behalf of corporate interests does not give me a comfortable sense that things will change for the better. Winning elections, in that regard, is meaningless.
-TIA
genaman
Yes poor poor pitiful us!
Excuse me Us there is no us at most there might be a I or me.
Okay, you want to stay at home with your head under the covers.
Guess what you still can do something to hurt the powers that be and get the satisfaction of uniting in something worth wild.
What? come on BOYCOTT!most anything.
Get rid of your cell phones. your TV dish or cable.
How about car pooling The oil company wouldn't like that.
How about shopping local at small mom and pop businesses?
Stick it to WALMART.
Find small local banks and deal with them.
and let you not forget your insurances.
see if you can do away with some .
cut back with others
deal with smaller local insurance companies
Stay away from huge chain gas stations support the little ones
buy as much local foods as you can. stay away from those chain supermarkets.
Brother and sister if you do not believe that will get their attention . Then there is no hope for you.
You are taking political action money right out of their greasy grimy hands ,and never left your house.
Hey ,or you could just go out and pay 12 more cents a gallon for regular gas, and you get to even pump it yourself.
How about those new cereal boxes ? about half the size they were a few years ago but cost much more. Cann.t you live without your corn flakes?
How about your sodas? didn't you notice the 20 0unce soda is gone? but the price is up?
Candy bars? now you are lucky to find even a regular one for less then a dollar.
Agitate?or just bend over and keep saying Thank you Can I please have another.
"...get the satisfaction of uniting in something worth wild."
"worth wild" - I like that! Malaprop that it is. And I like your suggestions. Are we too spoiled to deny ourselves these "luxuries?" Sometimes asceticism is good for the "spirit," especially when it's for a good cause - like saving the planet and human life.
COMMENTARY BY JIM MILLER
We need the tools and resources to reshape the economic underpinnings of our democratic society. The Corporatists have their goal of a Corporatist State which follows dictatorial examples of Chile, Argentine, Brazil, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Uraguay, and other "third world countries". They have been gathering-in the wealth of nations (ala Adam Smith) for a couple of hundred years. They have "hollowed out" the U. S. military and are well on their way to hollowing out the Federal government and some state governments.
The Corporatist no longer need individual consumers since they co-opted the Federal government as its customer with unlimited funds, with little or no oversight, and no remorse for causing repeated depressions and recessions. The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld gang practiced "Capone Capitalism" for eight years and moved billions from the government to the corporate players.
We must turn the tide by refusing to purchase any goods or services from the Corporatists and their front organizations. We must become self-sufficient as local communities and trade only with local vendors and only with cooperative worker companies which are more distant. To do this we need to build a vast number of small entrepreneurial business enterprises, each of which as four bottom lines: People, Planet, Profit and Principles. We will need to raise among ourselves, a vast amount of capital without dealing with the banks or the Wall Street money moguls. How?
The only solution I've found is to raise small amounts from millions of investors, much along lines of KIVA, but with about half being equity and half being loans to the start-up and grow-up worker cooperatives. To that end, I have begun researching ways of raising money – not the casino exchanges – but more the to the point, the “Mondragon” method. Eventually, we will need a virtual, ethical, highly transparent way of evaluating both the investor as well as the investee – the small business entrepreneurial enterprise (SBEE). To that end, I've begun organizing the proposed Small Business Investment Exchange (SBIE), using mind-mapping software from TheBrain.com. Take a look at some basic information using a more traditional wikiwebsite: http://sbic.wetpaint.com. Let me hear from you.
Jim Miller
jimmiller5417@yahoo.com
Posted at: http://smallfarmersbigchange.coop/2010/10/01/join-the-movement/#comment-2888, on December 4, 2010
I must have read the wrong article along with the wrong comments. This isn't about creating a better world, this is about you! your fame, your resemblance to someone famous, your fun, your wanderings ... which is all fine, you fit right into this "insane world" of ours. I like your wise advice that it's best to forgive.
You know, many of us have ancestors who were beaten down brutally - the Jewish people, for example, Armenians, American blacks, Haitians, Greeks, S.Africans, Palestinians, on and on. Humans have the potential to be very cruel, indeed. I think this article gives us some good input as to how to use our actions to counter humanities worst tendencies, so that those who come after us can live in a better world. That too, my friend, is also part of our nature and is certainly a heck of a lot of fun!
Speaking of George Harrison:
All through the day: I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.
All through the night: I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.
Now they're frightened of leaving it
Everyone's weaving it,
Coming on strong all the time,
All through the day: I - me - mine.
I-I-me-me mine,
I-I-me-me mine,
I-I-me-me mine,
I-I-me-me mine.
All I can hear: I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.
Even those tears: I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.
No-one's frightened of playing it
Everyone's saying it,
Flowing more freely than wine,
All through Your life: I - me - mine.
Who knows what "your people" would have done. I know that natives fought each other for resources. They stole from one another, and pillaged. They were human, all living on a fragile planet, trying to find their way in the darkness, shedding some light when they could, just like you and me.
We are all living in the same world. It isn't my world as opposed to yours.
I do agree with you about forgiveness but not forgetfulness. Thank you for the complement that I'm clever. I normally think of myself as a social retard.
If you're not political, why do you comment on this site? Is to "enlighten" in the same way I am attempting. We do enlighten one another, you know. I've learned a great deal from comments here.
This thread is really off-topic. Shadow-dancer is great entertainment, mostly for him- or herself, but, like a lot of older Amurkans these daze, he or she doesn't seem to give a shit about younger generations, including First Nations people, who are going to suffer intensely if American progressives and other Left-of-DLC folks don't start ORGANIZING to effectively resist the super-fascists. Smug moral condescension isn't going to protect these younger generations from the evil combination of cultural, economic and environmental catastrophes that are almost upon us all.
Offer some positive ideas to inspire people to move in a better direction, if you can.
Who knows? Lot of people know, 300 broken treaties and yes they still keep track of that stuff.
What fun, ShadowDancer! Especially in downtown Memphis, maybe at the Kudzu?
Everyone bless you for your strong joyfulness! I am grateful for your forgiveness.
I've been getting informed and agitating for 30 years and people don't want to hear it anymore. The mainstream media has them so befuddled they don't know what to think. And if they have jobs and families they don't want to be told they have to rebel against their support system.
Norman would do better to DO SOMETHING like he says and see if it makes a noise. The media won't report what he does, I do, or for that matter the news of the day. It's a TV and radio mindwipe.
Not until people start loosing their homes, their jobs, their retirements, their savings and see the elites doing it to them will they get off their arses and ACT!
They could have been voting Green Party for 10 years and we wouldn't be in this mess. But they don't see it. They don't connect the dots.
And neither does Norman.
Yes, it's not just "messy," as Solomon says, to talk with one's neighbors. I've done it and my efforts have convinced no one. It's not so much a failure of activism as it is that the U.S. public is highly unmotivated - even though that would seem hard to believe, given present circumstances.
Fealty to Dem/Repug voting patterns is just inexplicable. Yes, Norm is another fearful clinger to the Dems, I'm afraid, and that's always been a long-term losing proposition.
-TIA
[What the Captain meant to say...:]
The politicians will only follow people who get off their asses in great numbers....Or who give them the mean$ to stay in their positions of concentrated power.
Each of us, we the ppl, are in a position of diffuse power. So just as a practical matter of communication mechanics, we have to act noisily, and together in great numbers. That's, if not the only way, the surest way to communicate to the top of the oligarchy. That's what scares them into action. They are driven by fear, just as we are.
Paul Hawken wrote a book describing in clear terms what many are doing quietly, in great numbers, "Blessed Unrest".
A good move now ("MoveNow"?) would be for all our progressive groups to join under one banner, so that they all would not just be covering the first mile of a 10 mile race, so-to-speak, and actually make some PROGRESS.
Anybody heard much from the Green Party lately? The Lame stream media is working overtime to inculcate the idea that we have only 2 parties. Rove and the Chamber don't give too much to the Greens....
Citizens United gives UNIONS the same rights of money-speech as corporations....
The Greens already have a skeleton organization. Are they ready for prime time?
Nader gives us stealth step-by-step instructions in the paradoxical "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us".
So we have the motivation, the means, and for a while anyway, the opportunity to DO IT.
Oh. And, (for the 'over-the-top' portion of this presentation) we need a symbol...from the Great Seal:
.............._______
............./-------------\
............/----------------\
.........../-------------------\
........../----------------------\
........./-------------------------\
......../----------------------------\
......./-------------------------------\
OUR pyramid, less the oligarchy.
Regards,
snydly
True, for the educated middle-class do not fully realize the power they police, supervise and hold over society.
For since the beginning of civilization, all rebellions and overthrows of government have been lead by the gods of society, the men of the educated middle-class, the lower level military officers, cops on the beat, supervisors, union organizers, degreed professionals, small business owners, farmers, etc;.
John Ellis, I applaud you for this comment! I agree that this gets to the heart of the matter.
The most repected German General in WWII was Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, 'The Desert Fox'. Yet, he joined in the plot to assassinate Hitler.
The ones who control the 'news', are damn good at what they do - granted.
But, I agree with John. Their control is an illusion.
rare and constructive line of thought
you always get attention when asking, not telling what to do - once you have political hopefuls talking of people's rights to impact legislation (that means having rights to ratify it) than you unleash unstoppable forces of democratization
edweg
ONLY BURDEN
Root cause of all the greed in our Empire, surely it is the illusion that we deserve to be all we can be, to own all we can own and to be a dictator over all who are on land that we own.
For what a man feels he deserves, this is his highest priority in life to achieve, his high watermark to battle for, and it controls every aspect of his mind, character and personality.
And so, as this illusion has 90% of America locked in a fake morality, our first goal actually, our only burden really, is to teach people that this day of life is more then anyone deserves. For then it will give them a grateful mind, a conscience that feels most guilty if ever it misses an opportunity to give all it can give.
I live well off-the-grid, collecting my rain water, using solar lamps, recycling and/or composting EVERYTHING, using wireless available in every coffee shop and library. I have no utility bills, no health care bills (my lifestyle is healthy, almost vegan, using bike instead of driving), my dentists are in Delhi, India, whom I see every 2 years for check up. Therefore, I do not support ANY corporations that are dependent of burining fossil fuels to provide energy, or products.
If everybody satisfied their needs by collecting gifts from the sky (solar, both thermal and photo, water, wind) and ground (geothermal), then those multinational corporations with their CEOs and banking system will become irrelevant and go out of business...the workers in those corporations will not need much money to live on and can concentrate on becoming better human beings rather then serving their corporate bosses, who do not care about the rest of us.
The solution is simple: Simplify your life by learning to live in harmony with nature and using free gifts from the skies and mother earth.
Gea
Where do you obtain the strength to carry a labtop on bike? You should also know that not everyone lives in open land so collecting rain water won't happen for most everyone and solar lamps aren't cheap either. And seeing your dentists in Delhi requires you to fly and that's using fossil fuels unless you live there. We could all go solar, tidal, wind, and geothermal and the CEOs and banking system would still be thriving. Your "simple" solution isn't for everyone or even most people. Get it?
you don't want to sacrifice anything personally but you want everyone else to change so that you can continue your lifestyle.
did i get it right?
how would corporates and banks prosper if they had no customers?
No, you got it all wrong. You can't tell people to sacrifice just like that until you make it affordable or convenient for them to do so. Our ancestors were as green as could be before the Age of Oil and banks and corporations still existed. You can't go simplistic on this. Not everyone will have it as easy as Gea when you look at how things vary from place to place and situation to situation. We could all be using fossil fuels but if we used far less on them, then it would also be a good thing. By the way, you and Gea forgot to mention credit unions as alternatives to banks. I wonder why.
Who made the laptop?, who manufactured the solar cells?, what do you use for water filters? drinking rain water straight is not advisable.
Living off the grid still seems to rewuire a lot of manufactured goods, that would not exist without the rest of us working to make them. I find your post specious.
>^^<
"I find your post specious."
Since I agree with the rest of what you said, how can you find my post specious?