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TechnoratiThe Silence of MoveOn
The most powerful grassroots organization of the peace movement, MoveOn, remains silent as the American wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan simmer or escalate.
Then he met with Obama in February, Jason Ruben, executive director of MoveOn, told the president it was "the moment to go big," then indicated that MoveOn would not oppose the $94 billion war supplemental request, nor the 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, nor the increased civilian casualties from the mounting number of Predator attacks.What was MoveOn's explanation for abandoning the peace movement in a meeting with a president the peace movement was key to electing? According to Ruben and MoveOn, it was the preference of its millions of members, as ascertained by house meetings and polls.
The evidence, however, is otherwise. Last December 17, 48.3 percent of MoveOn members listed "end the war in Iraq" as a 2009 goal, after healthcare (64.9 percent), economic recovery and job creation (62.1 percent) and building a green economy/stopping climate change (49.6 percent--only 1.5 percent above Iraq.) This was at a moment when most Americans believed the Iraq War was ending. Afghanistan and Pakistan were not listed among top goals which members could vote on.
Then on May 22 MoveOn surveyed its members once again, listing ten possible campaigns for the organization. "Keep up the pressure to the end the war in Iraq" was listed ninth among the options.
Again, Afghanistan and Pakistan were not on the MoveOn list of options.
Nor was Guantánamo nor the administration's torture policies. ("Investigate the Bush Administration" was the first option.)
MoveOn is supposed to be an Internet version of participatory democracy, but the organization's decision-making structure apparently assures that the membership is voiceless on the question of these long wars.
What if they included an option like "demanding a diplomatic settlement and opposing a quagmire in Afghanistan and Pakistan"? Or "shifting from a priority on military spending to civilian spending on food, medicine and schools?"
This is no small matter. MoveOn has collected a privately held list of 5 million names, most of them strong peace advocates. The organization's membership contributed an unprecedented $180 million for the federal election cycle in 2004-2006. Those resources, now squelched or sequestered, mean that the most vital organization in the American peace movement is missing in action.
What to do? There is no point raving and ranting against MoveOn. The only path is in organizing a dialogue with the membership, over the Internet, and having faith that their voices will turn the organization to oppose these escalating occupations. The same approach is necessary towards other vital organs of the peace movement including rank-and-file Democrat activists and the post-election Obama organization (Organizing for America) through a persistent, bottom-up campaign to renew the peace movement as a powerful force in civil society.
This is not a simple matter of an organizational oligarchy manipulating its membership, although the avoidance by MoveOn's leadership is a troubling sign. There is genuine confusion over Afghanistan and Pakistan among the rank and file. The economic crisis has averted attention away from the battlefront. Many who voted for Obama understandably will give him the benefit of the doubt, for now.
Silence sends a message. The de facto MoveOn support for the $94 billion war supplemental reverberates up the ladder of power. Feeling no pressure, Congressional leadership has abdicated its critical oversight function over the expanding wars, not even allowing members to vote for a December report on possible exit strategies. In the end, a gutsy sixty voted against HR 2346 on May 14, but many defected to vote for the war spending, including Neil Abercrombie, Jerry Nadler, David Obey, Xavier Becerra, Lois Capps, Maurice Hinchey, Jesse Jackson, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Patrick Kennedy, Charles Rangel, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Loretta Sanchez, Rosa De Lauro, Bennie Thompson, Jerry McNerney, Robert Wexler and Henry Waxman. (Bill Delahunt, Linda Sanchez and Pete Stark were not recorded.)
If there were significant pressures from networks like MoveOn in their Congressional districts, the opposition vote might have approached 85.
Appropriations chair David Obey in essence granted Obama a one-year pass to show results in Afghanistan. If the war appears to be a quagmire by then, he claimed, the Democrats will become more critical. Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered the same message; according to the Washington Examiner, May 6: "There won't be any more war supplementals, so my message to my members is, this is it." Pelosi's words were carefully parsed, saying that the White House would not be allowed another supplemental form of appropriation, which is different from an actual pledge to oppose war funding.
This one-year pass means that the grassroots peace movement has a few months to light a fire and reawaken pressure from below on the Congress and president. In the meantime, here are some predictions for the coming year:
• Iraq: Will Obama keep his pledge to withdraw combat forces from Iraq on a sixteen-month timetable, and all forces by 2011? At this point, the pace is slowing, and the deadline being somewhat extended, under pressure from US commanders on the ground. Sunnis are threatening to resume their insurgency if the al-Maliki regime fails to incorporate them into the political and security structures. The president insists however, that he is only making adjustments to a timetable that is on track. Prognosis: Precarious.
• Afghanistan: Will the Obama troop escalation deepen the quagmire or become a successful surge against the Taliban by next year? Another 21,000 troops and advisers are on their way to the battlefield. Civilian casualties are mounting, causing the besieged Karzai government to complain. Preventive detention of Afghans will only expand. US deaths, now over 600, are sure to increase this summer. Taliban may hold out and redeploy in order to stretch US forces thin. Prognosis: Escalation into quagmire.
• Pakistan: US policies have driven Al Qaeda from Afghanistan into Pakistan's tribal areas, where the United States is attacking with Predators and turning Pakistan's US-funded armed forces towards counterinsurgency. Public opinion is being inflamed against the US intervention. Prognosis: An expanding American war in Pakistan with greater threats to American security.
• Iran: With or without US complicity, Israel may attack Iran early next year, with unforeseeable consequences in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prognosis: Crisis will intensify.
• Global: The United States will fail to attract more combat troops to fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan from Europe or elsewhere, causing pressure to increase for a non-military negotiated solution. Prognosis: Obama still popular, US still isolated.
• Budget priorities: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan will deeply threaten the administration's ability to succeed on the domestic front with stimulus spending, healthcare, education and alternative energy. Prognosis: false hope for "guns and butter" all over again.
132 Comments so far
Show AllMoveOn has proved very disappointing in a lot of ways. If people out there really want an end to these futile wars, work with CodePink, whose sole objective is opposing those wars. I get a lot of email newsletters every day urging that I sign petitions and contribute. I'm selective about the petitions and don't contribute where I feel they're really not about progressive causes or working in the public interest. I think a lot of them have an ulterior agenda.
MoveOn.org was founded as a reaction to the impeachment witch hunt directed against Clinton in the late 90's. It sought to censure him and move on. (from the MoveOn website.) As such MoveOn was and is essentially an organization of liberals.
Liberalism was a movement that arose, with the Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment, in support of the newly moneyed capitalist class in opposition to feudalism, nobility, and monarchy. Once achieving power, many became conservatives, as they were now the new rulers. The rest continued to seek 'progress' by tinkering with social institutions.
By definition liberals and conservatives belong to the same upper class. A lower class person will find it hard to be a liberal, although he may vote with liberals. He can be a populist, anarchist, socialist, or just confused, but a true liberal belongs to a discriminating class. A lower class person is more likely to identify with conservatives for several reasons The first is that he works for conservatives and identifies his interests with their interests and may even hope that a considerable amount of their money will rub off on them. Remember the old saw, “you're a Republican, are you rich or want to be rich..” The second is that conservatives have long perfected the tactic of populist demagoguery to fool the masses into believing that conservatives represent their interests. This is best exemplified by the wealthy and corporatists in Weimar Germany inventing Hitler and the National (so-called) Socialists and backing their scapegoating of Jews and other 'undesirables'. It is exemplified in the US by McCarthy and, recently, the likes of Lou Dobbs. .
“Liberalism has been pictured by its critics as infected with bourgeois values, those appropriate to the position of the emerging class of capitalists in present industrial society.” Quotes from Answers.com on definition of liberalism. Trotsky described liberals as akin to a man riding on another man's back while telling him how sorry he is for his situation. Stan Goff described a liberal as a conservative trying to say he is sorry. Indeed by the 1930's this view of liberalism was widely acknowledged, although it is forgotten today. Mussolini described liberalism as “a mask behind which there is no face.” What he meant was that once its class was threatened, the liberals would fall in behind the conservatives.
War by nature is a class issue. The lower class disproportionately suffers and the upper class disproportionately profits. If short, it can be a triumphal distraction for the lower class. If prolonged, it can be a conscious raising issue that risks spilling out into other areas.
In the US, liberalism has been the fall back position of the ruling class once its favored conservative position has been threatened.
An examples of how liberals bow to conservatives if ruling elite requires them to can be seen in how when Karl Rove stole two Presidential elections from the Democrats, they emitted nary a whimper. Indeed Al Gore, as Vice President presided over the certification of the 2000 election result in the the Senate and would not yield the floor to critics of the results, although after becoming a private citizen he very publicly criticized the results. These, and other elections, were not stolen from these Democratic politicians, they were stoled from “We the People.”
Did MoveOn protest Clinton's war in Kosovo? I googled it and did not find anything on the first couple of pages. Kosovo was a war based on lies just as blatantly false as Bush's in Iraq. In his book, The New Blue Media, Theodore Hamm argues that,
MoveOn.org was formed in direct response to the more radical anti-war group, Answer, and that its campaigning "helped placate the large anti-war constituency in the Democrats' activist base". This was done at the same time as providing much of the finance and legwork for the campaigns of people like John Kerry who never meaningfully opposed the war.
The current crop of Democratic politicians do not collectively represent us. They are placeholders for a corrupt and parasitic ruling class of which MoveOn.org is associated. We need to move on from MoveOn.org. .
I have also come to the realization (prior to the 2008 election) that commondreams.org does not represent my dream. In my dream we support a candidate who is not beholden to corporate interests, who puts public good ahead of corporate profit, and works to protect basic human rights first and foremost.
The "left" is challenged by a lack of focus these days -- that will bring people in. We're not in the sixties anymore when people turned out massively against the war in Vietnam, or when a cultural revolution was taking place.
IMO, the major facing Americans today is our need to band together on behalf of causes directly affecting our lives: single payer health care, jobs, social security, universal pre-k, affordable college educations. If our representatives were called upon, not to end the various far away wars, but to deliver at home on issues that matter to many Americans -- but not so much anymore to the sixties left -- (many of whom are, themselves, now comfortably encounced in university positions, or retirement and health plans, and good homes in good neighborhoods with good schools) -- then our leadership would be forced to reexamine the feasibility of our very costly military priorities and miscellaneous overseas adventures.
It's not only that our leadership has a failure to get their priorities straight. The people themselves do, as well.
Did you notice how people turned out in the hundreds of thousands in France, virtually OVERNIGHT, to protest the slightest threat to their social benefits -- and to drag caricatures of Sarcozy through the streets?
They possess two things that we need to get a grip on this country --
(1) An unabashed and unapologetic willingness to advocate for themselves
(2) A social connectedness that makes it possible for people to come together very rapidly as a group towards those non-guilt ridden self-interested ends
They and the English (don't know about the others) also possess something sadly lacking in the US. Class consciousness. Back in the 70's an Englishman would gladly tell you he was 'workingclass' or even 'lower class'.
In France they have had a better understanding of their own economic self-interest because they recognize class and are not ashamed to identify with it. They have built structures to support those interests. Their Parliamentary system gives them a better opportunity for minority parties to get a foothold.
For a long time here there was the notion that we are all "middle class", from the pizza delivery person to Bernie Madoff. From what I hear on the street, the recent economic developments have increased class awareness and class anger. We lack active unions and other organizations to harnass that power. We almost totally lack electoral alternatives.
There is a danger that as anger increases, jobs fail to materialize, people lose homes, young people turn to the military for jobs, that frustration will turn rightward or to unfocused rebellion. Preventive detention stands at the ready.
I don't know the answers.
Joe
Americans are the protagonists of malaise, if you are wondering why they don't turn out: they don't give a shit.
MoveOn doesn't oppose the wars because it's taking orders from the Democratic Party leadership that it funds, particularly the Obama administration. Why is Tom Hayden pretending that MoveOn is some sort of instrument for positive change that has just gone temporarily tone deaf?
It's really a stretch to be a former Sixties radical and erstwhile progressive (as Hayden points out in his bio) while slavishly making excuses about the Dem Party leadership, pretending that they just don't get lobbied enough about ending the wars. Tom Hayden really doesn't have the street creds to try to rally the troops when he ignores the fact that the Dems willfully support the wars.
And by the way, why is Hayden's article appearing here instead of Democrats.com, or something like that? If you're a progressive still in the Dem Party, then you aren't really progressive.
MoveOn is just a top-down Dem Party funding machine. And that would even be excusable if the Dem Party were reversing the policies of the Bush administration. But no, far from it, sad to say.
-TIA
Hayden asks "Why rant and rave" but what exactly is he doing to change the party from within his pet project for the last thirty years? Can he name a single significant issue since he embarked on this journey to nowhere?
Any authentic progressive knows that MoveOn is owned by the status quo, is pro war (as long as a Democrat propagates it), anti environmental (i.e., "clean coal" marketing schema), engaged in back door torture while publicly proclaiming something else, advocating for silencing, crushing, and render obsolete investigations into high crimes of Bush and company most likely to shield other Democrats who were culpable for those crimes by their participation, avoidance, and silence, huge corporate giveaways, building the wealthy while throwing crumbs to the poor and disenfranchised, to name a few.
Really Hayden, don't you tire of lecturing us while offering nothing more than sound bites, empty rhetoric, and impotence in your efforts to change the party? Why not offer a solution sometime or organize a nation protest to ignite the anti war movement against Obama? Anything else is nothing more than lip service.
Perfect name
'MoveOn' is a perfect name for this organization, because when I think of them it reminds me to move on to something serious in the principled left and progressive movement, instead of their pimping of the Democratic Party --- of which Christopher Hitchens famously and accurately said, " the democratic party is not so much dead, as actually, visibly, palpably rotting on the slab" --- and then I do move on.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Cassandra vs. the prophets of self-fulfillment
I am a member of MoveOn, but a reluctant one, a member with reservations who has hedged his bets by also being a member of organizations that will go where MoveOn won’t. MoveOn is a group firmly embedded with the center-right elements of the Democratic party (what some strangely call the liberal part, but which is still significantly to the right of what was center for most of my life). They organize some worthwhile local actions, so I stay on their list, but I agree with the article that the decision-making in MoveOn is democratic the way a family with young children is democratic. The parents ask if the child wants to wear blue socks or brown, and the child gets to make a choice. The parent doesn’t mention, and if asked will refuse, the choice to wear red socks, or no socks, or not go to the place for which the socks are being worn…
MoveOn waited until, for example, Dennis Kucinich was out of the presidential race before they asked who the members wanted to support. Starved for funds, media attention, and awareness of his platform even by most liberals, Kucinich agrees on most issues with most MoveOn members, but the members weren’t given a chance to say that. Torture, war, climate, universal health care…all have been shortchanged as issues by MoveOn.
Many people make “perfect as enemy of the good” arguments for not supporting the causes they really cherish, but ignore the “mediocre as enemy of the excellent” results they get time after time after time after time after time by voting for candidates they think can win and ignoring candidates they agree with on issue after issue. When I was campaigning for Kucinich in New Hampshire I heard this literally hundreds of time a day.* “I like your guy, but he can’t win. I’m voting for….” If everyone who said that in the districts I canvassed had voted for him, he would have won those districts, and I’m sure the same is true of most districts, and most states, and the country.
Self-fulfilling prophecies. Maddening for those who can step back and see the huge gap between what is and what could be (so easily!—rotten old ideas are ripe figs!) and can also see the numbers of people whose lives have convinced them not to ask for what they most desire. And even more important, to work for what they most desire, to take action with or without others—in the finest form of Buddha and Gandhi, letting go of the expectation of results, acting wholeheartedly and without reservations in all realms of their lives to get what they and we want, need, and know is best.
Organizations you could join who don’t pull their punches: 350.org, Greenpeace, Earth First!, and many others.
Please help me out here and suggest more.
If there’s not an organization that does what you want an organization to do, start one. Carpenters for Global Responsibility? Food Stylists’ Progressive Caucus? Househusbands for Home Husbandry?)
Things you could do without joining any organization at all:
Reduce your need for (and payment to) corporations who use the money you give them to fight against your interests. Stop driving. Stop eating meat. Conserve energy. Install solar and wind power on your home and business. (You do work for yourself, right? Make your own decisions about how to spend 1/3 of your life?) Sing. Learn an instrument. Take up spinning and knitting. Raise the largest, most useful crops and animals you can on your property, someone else’s, or a community garden. (I once raised quail for eggs on the back “porch” of my urban apartment.) Since you’ve now got endless entertainment, you can take a sledge hammer to your television. (Or OK, sell it or give it to someone not as advanced as you, to recycle it and save us all the trouble of remanufacture.) Whatever you think should be done, start doing it.
*see: www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2008-01-18/article/28969?headline=My-Diary-of-the-New-Hampshire-Prim...
Like many of us, MoveOn pinned its hopes on Obama, believing he would work for real change. We are only 4 months into his administration, but he has clearly shown that he doesn't represent or want real change in substance, only in style and gestures of cooperation. Meanwhile we have the largest corporate subsidies in history going to the same financial companies that caused the problems, continuation of the Bush war policies, no real attempt to fix the broken health care, education, infrastructure, or much of anything. Obama is riding on a wave of public approval of his personna, without offering us anything but same old, same old pro-corporation government.
Trick me once, shame on you. Trick me twice, time to look for a real progressive candidate next time, and go back to work in the trenches. Hope MoveOn gets the message - apparently it hasn't to date.
By the way, DAILYKOS is no better.
I have moved on from Moveon during the 2004 election, and have stopped supporting Commondreams before the 2008 election. WHY?
They both support the corporate Democratic Party Leadership candidates- the candidate who never said that they would stop the war in the middle east; never said that they would decrease the military; never said they would investigate war crimes; never said they would support single payer health care.
Both Moveon and Commondreams worked to effectively silence any voice that spoke out against the Democratic Party Leadership positions on these important issues.
Continuous war under a democrat should be just as unacceptable as under a republican.
In fact, Mr. Hayden's endorsement of Obama seemed contrary (and irrational) to his positions prior to the election, and contrary to this article. He had an opportunity to not endorse the democratic party corporate candidate (and maybe even endorse a third party candidate). He didn't, as many people who posted comments on this website failed to support a candidate who may have actually represented their values.
I guess they wanted someone 'winnable' but what did they win?
There are not always do-overs, and sometimes you run out of time. The nature of society it not to stand up for truth, but to lie down for easy, but false, marketing slogans.
If there weren't enough reasons to not vote for the democratic corporate candidate this past year, there never will be enough reason.
I see a few posters who gave their uncritical support to Obama, and who put down anyone who challenged their point of view. Now they realize that they may have been wrong in their opinion. But it is too late. So sorry. Hope is the opiate of the masses.
"... Commondreams worked to effectively silence any voice that spoke out against the Democratic Party Leadership positions on these important issues. "
There was plenty of criticism of Obama and Pelosi's policies, for instance, and support for Nader and McKinney on Common Dreams. I don't think anyone was "effectively" silenced.
Maybe I didn't understand this statement, since later you say there were "a few posters who gave their uncritical support to Obama".
Joe
Evidence of 'effectively silence any voice that spoke out against the Democratic Party Leadership' is the vast majority of articles published by Commondreams that supported Obama and Hillary, when neither supported real progressive change (stopping the war, decreasing the military, universal health care etc).
There were very few articles (in comparison) that discussed in a serious manner the candidacy and positions of Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and Nader. By limiting these candidates, commondreams effectively silenced not only the messenger but the message.
Otherwise, why are so many people surprised that Obama is not stopping the war, giving corporate bailouts, and not supporting single payer health care? Those were his stated positions (and voting record) prior to the election. His current behavior should come as no surprise.
Moveon.org started out in 1998 as simply an organization to oppose impeaching Bill Clinton over a lousy sex scandal and tell the Republicans to move on. After that, they never said anything about their positions on important issues such as healthcare, economy, environment, or even the wars themselves except for maybe Iraq and even that only so far. There's nothing to be surprised about moveon.org. As long as they get their bucks from partisan party members, they're rolling in the dough.
What is it with this preoccupation with causes? Straighten your own lives out and stop pretending like you give a shit about anyone else.You don't,and if you do it's because it pleases you to do so ,its subsequent benefit to others is as well meaning as a bee to a flower.It goes for honey but in the greater scheme of things pollinates the flowers neither aware of its "good deeds" or giving a shit about it.Move On??? move on my ass,if standing still is moving on then this outfit's all over it (like most others). The notion that some organization is going to do the heavy lifting for you is a crock of horseshit, you know perfectly well how to counter the lies that pass for truth on any given day you just have to decide you've had enough and walk the other way,the crowd if its a good one, will be with you ,made up of others that have made up their own minds irregardless of whether or not its supported by some popular group.Find your deep feelings and follow.
MoveIn: A movement that promises to move the people's agenda into the oval orifice/congress.
I didn't even know MoveOn was still around. They have co-opted themselves into irrelevancy.
MoveOn responds to how its members vote. It does not attempt to guide or influence them, for better or for worse. It provides them with strategic actions based on the priorities they have voted on.
The problem is not that MoveOn's leadership is too conservative -- many of them have put in time in the trenches over the years in ways that might surprise you.
The problem is that our movement has not done a good job of bringing the American people the message that Obama's policies are more of the same. If we were doing that job well, MoveOn's members would be pushing for action, and MoveOn's leadership would be more than happy to oblige.
The anti-war/anti-imperialist/peace movement is desperately in need of a coherent strategy to educate, organize, and mobilize against these wars.
Trying to shame MoveOn's leaders into ignoring the way their members vote does not bring us any closer to bringing all our troops home.
______________________________________________________
http://www.seandonahue.org
http://greenmanramblings.blogspot.com/
What about criticism of Tom Hayden. As I recall he bashed progressives who refused to jump on the OBAMA BS PROPAGANDA WAGON.
Now I know that Hayden has down a lot over the years in active resistance unfortunately he shot us down the ones who were resisting the BS. Move-On has always been a front for HedgeFund Democracts, so what I am shocked is that Hayden would have fallen for the BS in the first place.
Have been wondering why Move-on has been so quiet on the
Bush-Cheney wars...and the no stand on a Single Payer System.
From reading the comments it sounds to me that Ruben must be
contolled by AIPAC and an Israel Sympathizer.
Tom Hayden should start another movement real quick and call
it Move-out....out of the Democratic party if necessary.
Bill Clinton sold us out with Nafta, and the outsourcing of
our industrial base to China. France, another country that
bought into Free Trade, is now telling it's people that more
jobs will be available in the Farmers Markets..
We are in a major depression and it's time for the higher
echelons in the country to admit it.
MoveOn helped the "Yes we can hopefuls" get sucker punched. Maybe everyone (not all) was just naive, but naivete is no longer tolerable, it's dangerous.
For sure some of us got sucker punched. Fortunately, as per Aslan the lion king, we don't have to talk about the past, being that it's up to us, the what sort of world and time is running out.
MoveDown...Down to the Ground...dig your fingers and toes into the earth, your body-donor...make love in a big bed of clover...let the Silence of MoveOn lead the way toward a quieter world, in general...let it all go silent...turn off your tv, radio, stereo...watch a spider spin a web...not to kill it, but to actually understand what it is to be another living creature...the thinking and effort involved, the choice of web location, the patient waiting for a catch, the constant need to rebuild the web following continual damage...listen to the birds converse across neighborhoods, treetop to treetop...watch raccoons come home in the wee morning hours, disappearing, gray and black as the shadows, into backyards that frequently don't even know they live there...
Awwwe..dubet I did not know. Now I'll have to read your every post as I listen to the spiders weaving their webs, whispering as they watch and wait. dubetdubet, the feline has escaped her confines now!
That was beautiful, dubet. Thanks for posting. If everyone heeded those wise words we'd make a lot less noise.
And speaking of silence, I wanted to share this. It's from Keith Hammer, a friend of mine at http://swanview.org/
The Code of Quiet
We find that:
The most rapidly vanishing resources on Earth are Peace and Quiet.
Our creation of noise deprives ourselves and others of Peace and Quiet.
We pledge to whenever possible:
* Speak calmly rather than shout.
* Use a lawn rake rather than a leaf blower.
* Use a push mower rather than a power lawn mower.
* Shoot a camera rather than a gun.
* Walk or bike rather than drive a motor vehicle.
* Ski or snowshoe rather than ride a snowmobile.
* Sail rather than use a power boat
* Paddle rather than use a jet-ski.
* Observe and experience Earth's wonders firsthand
rather than from an airplane or helicopter.
We pledge to support decisions that:
Favor nonmotorized uses of public lands, skies and waters.
Provide safe, nonmotorized alternative routes to public highways.
Favor public transportation over the proliferation of automobiles and asphalt
Yes - Here are some more of mine:
* Use a broom on bare floors rather than a vacuum cleaner.
* Take off the ipod or cell phone when pushing your child in a stroller. Hear what he or she hears.
* Stay out of stores with canned music.
(I asked my dentist to turn off his so-called music too. It was more painful than the root canal. Not only ugly, but lyrics like "Come on baby, shut your lips. Make like Helen Keller and talk with your hips")
Joe
Sioux Rose
MOONDOGGY: Your observation here is SO important. When I lived in the college town of Gainesville I can't tell you how many nights my sleep was interrupted by some idiot with a blasting boom box, or how when stuck at a traffic light, invariably one of those monstrous machines would come along side me. I met a music instructor from the University of Florida and told him to me the boombox = Hiroshima's revenge and he totally got it!
I read that one kid in Lake City, Florida was taken to court for his loud after-hours boom box and the judge had him listen to classical music as his punishment, shades of "Clockwork Orange" behavior modification.
As a writer I live inside my thought process and sounds like the leaf blower (possibly THE stupidist invention of all times) or a garbage truck, or some other low-decibel motor just going... completely interferes with the mind's receptive, creative state and in my view is a RAPE.
I used to spend a lot of time at a gorgeous botanical garden in Gainesville. It's called Kanapaha. I would purposely find the most remote spots to work on my notes or review my journal materials as preparation for a book project. This couple just HAD to come to my little remote spot, HUNDREDS of acres but they have to come into my little "sacred space." The woman said, "I see you found a quiet spot," and I answered, "Not any more." People find that rude, but what IS rude is that there are so few places where as you said, one can merely COMMUNE with their thoughts.
I hate it when people bring radios to places like campgrounds or the beach. They can't live without the noise of the world; but then why enter into a sacred retreat zone? I suppose I seem anti-social but so many human behaviors insult our senses and as I have often shared, reflect a cultural ethos where Mars rules, and that means selfish disregard for anything outside of the ego's infantile "I want it now" noise mechanisms. I am glad someone else noticed, although I also recall a cover photo of someone covering their ears and the title was "Noise!" on the New Yorker magazine a few years ago. People purchasing expensive condos in Soho couldn't sleep as the clubs nearby closed at 4 AM and out came the rabble rousers onto the street. America has become a callous care-less society.
One more anecdote. When I had the opportunity to stay in Singapore my roommate, a professor, didn't seem to notice the noise over her apartment. On two occasions I actually went upstairs to knock to ask why they were moving furniture past 11 PM. My professor friend and I hosted a major meditation and it was a really wonderful event as every religious denomination was present. Afterwards the guy leading it asked HER about the noise upstairs. I loved that. She always made it seem that I was over-sensitive, that she barely noticed it. (I swear she could sleep through a trainwreck.) He referred to it as the rhinocerous upstairs!
Most people shut down their senses because we are constantly being attacked by so many sound signals, many of them noxious. A very well-respected astrologer, Buzz Meyers came to an untimely death but he spoke of this era as owning a new kind of air pollution. I think he was referring to what's in the air, as per NOISE pollution. It makes meditation and the Biblical call to get thee "by the still waters" all the more challenging. All this bombardment interferes with true thought, and I believe it is intended to. Just as faux food filler interferes with sound nourishment and makes for weaker beings and bodies. Empowering persons is not on the elite's menu.
There is a great inherent power to sound, and that is why religions use incantations and Hindu mystics practice Mantras. It is utterly corrupted in modern consumer-driven society.
That was a wonderful post Sioux Rose, I just now came across it. Glad I checked. I'm so honored that you took the time to share this. Very validating and so true.
I guess I should count my blessings and feel eternally grateful that I live by a free flowing river at the end of a dirt road a half mile off the only 2-lane paved road in a sparsely populated forested valley deep in the heart of the northern Rocky Mountains in one of the largest, yet least populated states. I know that was a run-on sentence, but it served to illustrate how remote we are living.
When I was a student at the University of Montana living in the city of Missoula, I lived on a busy street with a bus route. It was very handy for getting to campus and getting out of town, which was nice. But the constant noise and light was hard to take. It constantly assaulted my senses.
I was always out in the mountains whenever I could get away, and would go to sweats put on by the Missoula Indian Center or Native American studies professor. Eventually I left town and now live 100 miles out. The quiet here is healing. The constant song of the river, loudest in spring, quietest in winter, song birds, coyotes, squirrels, ravens, hawks, eagles, cranes, geese, owls...
I could get much more poetic describing all that, but it's past my bedtime. But before I go, I want to share something that helped me sleep in Missoula. I had a tape player at the time that would play both sides of a tape continuously. I collected tapes of nature sounds, waterfalls, ocean beaches, tropical rainforest sounds, bird songs, thunderstorms, etc.
Nowadays you can get a little gadget that plays "white noise" when you turn it on. You can select from a menu of several soundscapes like the ones I mentioned above. When all else fails, I break out my didgeridoo or djimbe and join in the cacophony. But for sleeping, or just calming down the mantra works beautifully.
Come stay with us and experience the peace if you're ever out this way.
Namaste, shanti om, peace...
Gosh, I'm really shocked, astounded, utterly mortified...I may never recover, I think I just felt my last hope, like a spiritual Larsen C Ice Shelf break off and melt into the Weddell Sea. Funny, I didn't think that was supposed to happen for a few years yet. Feels like Freedom...
Sioux Rose
DUBET: I am heading out into the forest now for a bike ride. I will tell the deer I pass that you said "high." Cool post, shaman.
Beautiful post...
As a former MoveOn member frustrated by the truth of what everyone, including Tom hayden, has pointed out about it, I recommend the following:
Peace Action
Code Pink
Veterans for Peace
United for Peace and Justice
Physicians for a National Health Plan
Most of what Ralph Nader is still writing, especially about the Wall Street banksters in charge of our economy, is worth paying attention to.
MoveOn helped elect Big Brother's other sock puppet.
Changing sox was not the sort of 'change' most people were expecting.
If Nuremberg set a valid precedent for trials of war-crime suspects in Iraq's destruction (Bush administration) then it can also be used on the Obama administration.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/rss/eo20090526cc.html
"The most powerful grassroots organization of the peace movement, MoveOn, remains silent as the American wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan simmer or escalate."
Tom, gee, thanks for being so ...observant. You're really...on it.
Never could understand the appeal MoveOn had on people except to the most emotional, innocent and/or naive. Kinda like a Twitter, Facebook, etc. I guess. A "fashionable" thing of sorts.
Clue: Whenever the MSM picks up on something, its best to eject ones self from it immediately.
With nominally progressive organizations such as MoveOn tied to the status quo, and given that we're running out of time (what with perpetual war + global warming + economic collapse = doomsday), as to the changes we can believe in, sure looks like it'll up to us. How? Mass uprisings based on one equals one, with everyone a leader and where there's liberty and justice for all.
I have long felt that the underlying purpose and function of MoveOn is to corral the growing sentiment of leftists that were opposed to war & empire, to diffuse any true populist movement from emerging from the left... In the same way that the faux-populist teabagger movement was manufactured to cull and co-opt any genuine threat of mass revolt from the right... They use different strategies and media outlets depending on their target demographic... And it has worked...
How many folks fell for the cult of personality, and voted based on the color of the man's skin, rather than the content of his character...? Move on was also vital in creating a false sense of confidence in voters that the Obama campaign war chest was only small contributions from everyday people, which hid the fact that he was the Goldman Sachs candidate from day one, and drained the population of expendable income that would have filled the sails of a third party candidate to make them viable...
I was sneered at for being a purist and idealist by my highly "educated" leftist friends who viewed Owebama as a Trojan Horse candidate, who was playing the game long enough to get into power, then he will bring about true progressive change... Well, he sure played them...
That is the thing about integrity... If you have to compromise it on an "ends justifying the means" scenario, then you have already lost your integrity...
You can't call yourself an environmentalist or a peace advocate and vote for a candidate who supports war and clean coal... But hey, at least their Blue Team won... And they can pat themselves on the back for "making history"...
Hello GM, having voted for BO, and feeling like someone who warns people away from fires (politicians, voting) that got burned, I am thinking of 2012 now and trying to visualize how things could become better that fall....
With time moving at light-speed it will be here in a few moments...
But I hear of no organizing or activism on behalf of a viable alternative.
Nor, do I recall hearing of any organizing for a viable alternative in '04, '05 or '06, not until '07 did much organizing by any potentially viable options begin, far too late.
And I'm betting history repeats itself.
No notable activism on behalf of any 3rd party candidate until '11. If this proves to be the case, of course, a repub or dem will be elected again.
We got one foot on the platform, the other foot on the train.
GM, what the flying heck might you suggest? Darn, I am clueless about how true change might be achieved. Although Chris Hedges' "Resist or become serfs," rings true.
Cheers
Get a boat... Travel... Or build a homestead... Grow food... Cottage industries... Community cooperatives... Worker collectives... Credit unions... Micro lending... Appropriate technology... Support the Green Party, even if they may be imperfect or ineffective... Water your dreams...
I hope you are aware that many of your prescriptions are not available to the urban poor. They require some capital. But they are fine to counter the showy over-consumption of the prosperous.
Joe
Sioux Rose
GOLDEN MEAN: Very well and wisely stated! Thank you for your insights.
As articles like this one on the continuing irrelevance of MoveOn appear, I am happy if not smugly self-congratulatory that I had the good fortune to have captured the atmosphere of what MoveOn was up to shortly before and shortly after last November's election. As one who (somehow) had his name on MoveOn's vast mailing list, I got the same frantic appeals to vote for Obama before the election and to "celebrate" his victory afterwards that millions of others received. I don't know how many of these millions "captured" some of these e-mail transmissions and wrote commentaries on them while they were "hot" but the following may be of interest to others who must have some memories of "the way we were" in the heady days of October and November 2008---as recorded on my newly-minted weblog.
1. Oct 22: I get a mocked-up video commentary on a supposed post-election TV news report that John McCain had just been elected by one vote and that I (using my own name multiple times) was the criminal miscreant being sought in places as far away as the hills of Afghanistan because in my laziness and indifference I had failed to vote. http://sunstateactivist.org/ssablog/?p=41
2. Nov 8: I am offered a "free" commemorative "Yes We Did" stamp and the opportunity to contribute funds so that MoveOn could help Obama enact his "agenda." http://sunstateactivist.org/ssablog/?p=71
3. Nov 10: I receive a follow-up to the above with an escalated offer of a poster size version of the stamp previously offered, with now a "contribution" of $25 being expected in order to receive this celebratory item. http://sunstateactivist.org/ssablog/?p=74
MoveOn's fund-raising scam revealed in the November 8 and 10 mailings has not stopped. Jason Rubin, as Hayden shows, has met with Obama to announce it's the moment to "go big" while having forces at his disposal (e.g., staff for lobbying) with little more than pop-gun firepower. Enjoy your victory poster, folks, that's about all you got for your 25 bucks.
Someone sent me the Oct 22 one. Admit it. It was funny. It is evidence that some top level publicists worked for the Obama campaign. I want those guys on our side, working for love only, of course.
Joe
Yeah Joe, I thought the video was "funny" too and tried to take it as the intended joke. But even then, and certainly more today, the "peer pressure" for conformity to "do right thing to do" (vote for Obama and support his proposals) sits so heavily in poisoning my every personal relation with Obama supporters that, as I said in the post, it's hard to laugh at something that hurts you so much; but I guess you'd best be thick-skinned if you want to be a non-conformists\; or at least find some other "deviants" like some posters on these CD articles to give you some "group support" for your "deviance" (yeah, yeah, I'm sociologist).
Did they send you the secret Decoder Ring, too?
Please check the envelope again carefully!
The eleventeen-dimensional chess strategies may be sitting in the palm of your hand!
· Yr Obd't Servant
Dammit, YOS, I forgot to look for the Decoder Ring in the envelope and, wouldn't you know, I've thrown the envelope away! Betcha the DR would have solved all my puzzlement on how so many of my highly intelligent friends could so far take leave of their good senses as to drink the Obama Kool-aid and start twisting their hips and singing "I'm an Obama girl." (Even the guys). Jerry
Oh this was a fun string, lol.
Move-on (along with people like Sirota) was instrumental in defusing the anti-war push after the Democrats won in 06. They're playing you, just like Obama.
I was never in MoveOn, but I am getting a sense of it from the articles and comments. Maybe I am still paranoid from Cointelpro, but it seems to me that certain organizations are set up to siphon off, channel and set limits on discontent. MoveOn might be in that category especially targeting white left-leaning Democrats or independents.
It does not mean that the leaders are consciously part of such a conspiracy, but folks step in and guarantee that result.
Joe
I agree that the proof is in the pudding.
Everyone is getting gamed by these opinion makers of the internet. These Move on folks are just too much like Israelis for my liking...but then maybe you and I are plants...
Speak for yourself.
Joe
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I voted for Obama and supported MoveOn out of fear of allowing the Republicans another term in the Oval Office to consolidate their neo-con regime, and also because I wanted to see what the Dimocrats would do with a once in 40 year solid majority. Well, the Dims' and MoveOn's leadership have both clearly blown their opportunity. The Dims are unable to reform themselves, and their lukewarm support groups will not pressure them enough to reform and are only weakening as Team Obama and the craven Dims in Congress continue to weaken and flail.
Folks, it's time to organize a United Progressive Party to start arguing the issues from the grass roots up from an evolved liberal progressive/Democratic Socialist point of view: One that consistently resists being re-framed by the "mainstream" and far-Right media establishment. We need a third party to organize to co-opt all the Democratic support groups who keep getting betrayed and sold down the river after shoring up DLC corporatist Dimocrats. MoveOn's mailing list is a good place to start.
There has never been a former president or vice president given such a prominent media platform for months on end to bash a sitting president's foreign policy the way Big Media has lovingly tongue-bathed Dick Cheney. Team Obama will not fight back against this and are only caving into it. But a truly United Progressive Party would be properly designed in large part specifically to fight against these Mussolini media tactics.
The way I see it what is left of the Constitutional tatters of this country has two slim chances: (1) An even harsher economic crash forces Obama to start acting like a Green New Dealer, or (2) A United Progressive Party guts the DLC of its support groups and compels reform of the entire system chunk by chunk. Option one relies on trusting Obama's and Rahm Emanuel's instincts: Two classic Chicago pols on the make who will, once they leave office, most likely become well-paid lobbyists for spectacularly failing the public interest while pretending to be agents of progressive change. Option two relies on doing the hard but real work ourselves of organizing a true grassroots rebellion against our fascist exploitation masters. I prefer option two because the Dimocratic Party has proven itself untrustworthy even when handed the easiest, fattest opportunity to politically behead an extremist GOP since the 1930s.
We tried that in San Francisco when we backed Cindy Sheehan for Congress against Nancy Piglosi, but the liberal voters in SF voted the war criminal back to Washington. You need about 3 million dollars to run a winning campaign, and it helps if the MSM isn't in the pocket of the zionists and special interests.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I'm talking about a much larger national Party organization, not the smaller local effort made in SF: One that can pool resources and effectively target MIC Stepford wives like Pelosi with sufficient grass roots campaign funds. This level of progressive push would require 3.5 to 5 million members as a good trigger point to go national especially during primaries at first.
And by the way, just because Pelosi won this time doesn't mean you folks in SF should give up. She's a lot less popular since her last election.
Metal, I'm liking what you say about a United Progressive Party and I think now, if ever, is the "moment to go big" on such a project, as we're far enough into domestic and international disaster to start to build a base of those seeking "something better" and (maybe just barely) time enough to get serious organizational work underway before the next major round of elections. Having the MoveOn mailing list? Great idea, if you could do it; but I suspect that is protected more zealously than the recipe for Brown's Baked Beans, and, short of a "Duke" spy in their camp, how could you possibly get it? Not cold water, just some chilling realism. Jerry
Why the peace activists supported Obama in the first place just baffles me. Obama openly stated he was going to escalate the war in Afghanistan during his campaign - I believe he called it the 'good war.' How is it possible to call yourself a peace activist and then vote for a president-elect who openly states he is going to escalate the war in Afghanistan?
I long ago sensed that MoveOn wasn't moving on . . .
but I am shocked to think that they were passing money
on to the poisonous DLC--!!!
Does Tom Hayden have a group?
Who can we count on to not betray us?
I'd certainly recommend to all internet users that they
NOT send money off to people they have no leverage over.
And that includes Obama and the Democratic Party!
We need a liberal/progressive PAC -- probably with someone
like Erin Brockovich in charge of it -- and probably a large
team of lobbyists.
We have to use capitalism/corporatism for our own aims/goals.
Hang onto your money -- give only support and only when you see
things keep moving in the right direction --
and remember that "co-option" of organizations is common --
look at the Democratic Party!
PS: One benefit of the internet is that we can look around and
see that most of us are saying the same things -- that's important
to know. That's information that has always been kept from us.
We need to get Democrats competiting in a move to the LEFT -- and
that includes the organizations we support. When you have no where
to go -- no third party option, no IRV voting -- you have no options.
Support Campaign Fund Bribery REFORM -- public financing.
FAIR ELECTIONS NOW ACT -- HR1826 is in the works -
They need more Senators/Representatives to pledge support and
more as sponsors.
Obviously, liberals/progressives aren't raising as much hell as we
need to -- make it an everyday thing.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
"Who can we count on to not betray us?" Great question. So here is a thought.
It has to include ourselves, our work and our good judgement. On the local level, find that woman who has been working on the public school issues without pay for the last decade. And who is not in it just to get privileges for her own child. Find that woman or be that woman. Find that stand up shop steward. Or be that shop steward. Find that volunteer or activist who does things because they are right. Find the man or woman in the neighborhood who people go to for advice and help. The kind ones, the knowing ones, the honest and strong ones.
Finding those will not betray us is a huge task. But how do you eat an elephant (or a donkey)? One bite at a time. So here is a first bite:
GET OUT THERE AND IDENTIFY THE TRUSTWORTHY.
Joe
"'According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life'"
Obviously, you've never seen a Pedro Almodovar film.
How can any new "liberal/progressive PAC" avoid the pitfalls that have destroyed the leadership of MoveOn? Any large, national organization must have a leadership structure and the folks in those positions can always be bought off or become enamored of their own success.
q
excellent! yes, corruption is built in...individual philsophical growth is our only hope...keeping the planet's health front and center is key...small footprints, small appetites...
If everyone is so concerned about health care, and health care is so deeply embedded with our business climate, and our business climate is so detrimental to our world, it would seem healthcare would be a logical place to begin (at least, until water and homelessness supersede it in importance)...what options exist for medicinal knowledge and treatment outside the traditional, American model?
Obviously, one reason the powers that be don't like single-payer is that much of their workforce is motivated solely by access to healthcare...hard to make people do what you tell them if they don't have to, which will bring us, one day, to housing...
The emphasis should be on issues like health care, education and the environment, not military, gay marriage and abortion.
I agree that health care, education and the environment are the issues that are closest to people's everyday lives, but how can you address them without reference to the war economy?
Joe
Like the Democratic Party itself, MoveOn is a self-serving, corrupt enterprise.
The Democrats now have all the power, the White House and the entire filibuster-proof congress. Instead of adopting the agenda that they promised voters, they're not only continuing but also furthering Bush's.
The blame ultimately lies with the blind, tragic people who keep voting Democratic and giving money to MoveOn, despite being warned (by me) and many others for years.
We only get the president that those who fix our elections have chosen. No surprise then that the current one got lots of campaign $$ from Wall Street, coal & nuke interests, etc. All during the last campaign, most of the people who were aware of ballot fraud both at the polls and in the counting software in 2000 & 2004 assumed that Obama won because he was very popular. They evidently didn't notice who he was serving, including his public appearances with H. Clinton at AIPAC promiising support to Israel. It was worth noticing during the primaries that the Republican Party knew that a Democrat was to be president (in order to dump the house-of-cards economy on a Democrat,) because they neither ran a credible person nor spent their usual amount of money to support any of the clowns that ran.
The Democratic Party is run not by its elected legislators but by paid advisors. These advisors take polls and tell the legislators what the "people" want, never mind that when polled on individual issues like single-payer health care we actually want something different (i.e. HR 676 or peace) than what will be imposed on us. Pelosi and Reid do not lead the party, they are told what to do by these advisors.
Post Vietnam War whatever left existed dissolved. By 2008, the supposedly left Nation Magazine refused to consider endorsing the only true progressive in the race, Kucinich. MoveOn.org did the same. I quit MoveOn and stopped subscribing to the Nation then. They have the same thinking as the Democratic Party advisors, and nothing will change until the advisors are opposed massively. Not advocating violence here but advocating serious monkey wrenching.
Obama never promised most of what people said he did. He had a lot of abstract feel-good rhetoric during the campaign, but his platform issues were the same as WJClinton & HClinton's. His Change.org or .gov or WhiteHouse.gov are a sham. Notice his snide comment about the kind of people posting on them, when the most popular issue of his "public" questions forum turned out to be legalizing marijuana and taxing its sale. Same old bread & circuses, these days with the bread going to the banks not the jobless.
So wake up CDers. If we don't make sure that every election is run fairly, local, state and national, and also have publicly funded campaigns, we will continue to have the same old boss, whether Democrat or Republican, white, black or Latino. We will have to get off the computers and take actual action to stop this military-industrial-CIA juggernaut that has ruled us overtly since they killed JFK.
Where do I sign?
If MoveOn is going to sell out which it obviously has, it deserves to loose its base of supporters and any donations to its cause. It is time to boycott MoveOn until they regain their roots.
MoveOver MoveOn!
You don't represent progressives very well. I stopped supporting MoveOn back in about 2005 when they did not strongly oppose the U.S. occupation of Iraq. MoveOn appears to be a corporate-Democrat avenue.
Prognosis:
a) Moveon is no Peace Action
b) Moveon generates capital and shuffles it to DLC
c) Hayden should use his national influence and secure access to Moveon's database to send out mass emails.
Action:
Coop Moveon members who are dissatisfied and willing to move on to better facilities. Email must offer list of independent progressive resources, action committees and/or action groups for the dissatisfied to migrate to for restructure.
Restructure and reinvest time and resources into more noble, long-term activist causes that are also represented in one's immediate vicinity and/or State. Resources should focus on reinforcing new local teams and membership numbers rather than send resources off to "national ad campaigns". Restructure, rebuild, reinvest
Synopsis:
Too many superior activist groups exist to ever justify staying with Moveon. Moveon's network strengths are less relevant today as more and more social search networks are created ---many of which now link together to form a network of networks.
Unlike Big Tent Democrats, the Progressive doesn't have its "big tent". That's what far too many people assumed they had with Moveon. It was a false assumption. Moveon's silence is apathy.
Although I have NEVER been a fan of Moveon.
As far as coining a Liar-N-Chief, well that phrase has and is already been taken!
The Rightwing Puppy Kickers haven't got a clue, if the Commander-N-Thief that reign over the last eight years didn't take us into a war on lies, maybe, just maybe the war in Afghanistan wouldn't be were it is today! Because of the war of lies, the Taliban now have a strong hold in Pakistan which by the way has Nuclear Technology....to that I say bravo, touche' you people did a good job at phucking it up!
-- There is genuine confusion over Afghanistan and Pakistan among the rank and file. --
Of course there is. Ya think maybe some people want it that way, to split anti-war opposition?
MoveOn has joined with those who blow smoke to keep up the 'fog of wars' so that America does not see the path to peace.
"• Global: The United States will fail to attract more combat troops to fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan from Europe or elsewhere, causing pressure to increase for a non-military negotiated solution. Prognosis: Obama still popular, US still isolated."
OR (a more likely scenario)...the draft will be brought back to America to fill the Army's trucks with cannon fodder.
Excellent article. This is just more confirmation that the current wall street lackey in the White House should be called, what I have coined, the "Liar-in-Chief!"
What was MoveOn's explanation for abandoning the peace movement in a meeting with a president the peace movement was key to electing? According to Ruben and MoveOn, it was the preference of its millions of members, as ascertained by house meetings and polls.
This is a giant, bleeping LIE if there ever was one. What did Obysmal stuff into this MoFo's pockets before he left the White House?
I certainly don't remember getting my survey and stamped envelope, does anyone else? MoveOn has MovedPast caring about opinions of the antiwar MoveMent.
There are a number of techniques (including lying, but some a bit more subtle) that allow leadership to control apparent outcomes of policy discussions that members might not even be aware are being used on them...when it comes to politics, movements and government, bigger is not necessarily better, or representative...hold onto your wallets and start eyeing your locally growing vegetation...much of it may be edible, which may not be important to you today, but may be tomorrow...
I never liked MoveOn (they always struck me as very oppportunistic), so don't have much to say on their behalf...
Well then, it's time to move on.
"Got to put aside them segregation
Got to put aside them organization
Got to put aside them denomination
Or there will never be no love at all"
-Peter Tosh, One Foundation
MoveOn's move to tame, safe 'actions' is disappointing, as is the unwillingness of its members to insist on more. But I suppose this is the same complacency seen in so many liberals' continuing to be satisfied, or even pleased (!) with Obama. But MoveOn's self-serving structure makes it difficult to even be heard, much less nudge them toward really using the power they have amassed to effect change.
Oh well.
Move on helped elect Obama. Without Move On McCain -Palin would be running the country with all its consequences. But as a supporter of Move-On I urge that it end its silence re Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel. Move-On should nudge Obama from the left. Otherwise his Wall Street and Pentagon advisers will push him to the right. Obama needs our help. I believe his heart is in the South Chicago projects but his political pragmatism can lead him astray. I'm rooting for Obama to do the right (viz.left) thing.
Obama needs our help? A backstabbing liar needs our help? When are you apologists going to stop?
Palin might not be running the country with all its consequences, but Obama is, and the consequences are just as dreadful.
Obama was elected by the Independents and moderates, mostly white. You may condfirm this by looking at the Primary and the voter tallies.
He won't get their votes again so he is a one term President. He has wasted our opportunity...AGAIN the Democrats are handed a victory and they reject it by their intolerance, stupidity and greed.
MoveOn doesn't help anyone but themselves.
Very seldom I do Thomas ..but..I disagree...Unless the republicans can pull of a miracle...but who knows....
"MoveOn doesn't help anyone but themselves.'
I certainly agree with that Thomas....
BTW..I am not really a fan of Tom Hayden......but.......
The real winner of the 2008 Presidential election was John McCain...He won by losing....I know if I were Obama I would have sat that one out........
The frustrations expressed here have nothing to with Democrats or Republicans and everything to with a system totally dominated by very powerful interest groups. One man or woman cannot change this system.(Republican, Democrat, or Independent.) Throw out the current administration in 2012 and what you will end up with is the same system. Any reformation will take years. Certainly not days or months...
You have a President in the White House but remember that somewhere out there sits an unknown and very powerful board of directors.(Metaphorically speaking) The real powers behind this illusion of democratically elected self government...Reform must come from the bottom up. The top is just too corrupted.
But..I am still an optimist..Or Perhaps just too stupid to give up....
Dante,
You've triggered a deeply buried persistent fear of mine which I've never before spoken: that Obama was elected to take the fall for the collapse of the economy, and that's why he got so much Wall Street money. Roosevelt didn't take power until the bottom of the depression, so Hoover took the blame. Obama may preside over four years of continuing collapse into a deeper abyss, and the sprawling shanty-towns on the edge of our cities with their thousands of starving children will be remembered as Obamavilles. Under a barrage of media propaganda people are already starting to forget that this began on Bush's watch.
I just hope we can find some way to give him a backbone; if his administration is a dirty trick, I still believe he's the patsy, not one of the villains. But he's surrounded himself with villains, and so that is what he will become if he's just an ordinary mortal like the rest of us. The only thing we can do is organize and step up the pressure, and keep hoping that at some point he'll face the writing on the wall and jump to our side of the fence he's trying to straddle.
Chris Horton
Chris I share that "deeply persistent" fear you so described in your response to my comment to Thomas...But then anything can happen in the glorious city of Dis between now and 2012....
". But he's surrounded himself with villains"
I am at the point now where I am not sure if he surrounded himself with the villains or if the villains surrounded him. We all know how it(The selection process) is supposed to work but exactly how it actually works.......(???).. that is another question...
Great hearing from you Chris.
Obama was elected to prop up the system by any means necessary, and sugarcoat it as "change." It worked. It doesn't matter to Wall Street if it's a Democrat or Republican as long as they tow the corporate line.
blessthebeasts,
you are right about them towing the corporate line, and if the don't they find themselves in a convertable heading for Dealey Plaza.
Sioux Rose
BLESS: Good point, however, as David Michael Green explains, this SHOULD be the end of the Republican party, and by using Obama as the smokescreen upon which to project all that's gone wrong, too many voters will presume that the "other" team provides for better management. Thus a path is being paved to resuscitate the beast. RICH M often relates (in his own wise & skillful way) how the two parties function as a good cop/bad cop ensemble, so that the net effect over the past 35 years has been to push all political decisions, policies, and priorites further to the right.
A problem with the short attention span of most Americans, added to the lack of truth and accuracy in media, is that many will take the cause for all that's gone wrong as the path to positive change, thus endowing villains with the power to do yet more harm. It reminds me of the theme of Shakespeare's "Richard III," My 11th grade English teacher's favorite tragedy.
The one thing that will act to break up this monopoly will be climate events, added to the bottom dropping out on our economy that's leveraged very real assets against a gigantic pile of illusory capital. These twin factors will face the ever- increasing inevitability of violent blowback, the karmic return on our "investments" afar.
Last night I finally got to see "Charlie Wilson's War" and one message the "good Americans" gave to the Afghanis was that they would protect them from all the violent harm perpetrated by the Soviets. The U.S. portrayed itself as the savior. Now with the U.S. being the perpetrators of so much violence, its own mantra, "that the wicked be PUNISHED" will return to haunt U.S. No nation is above Universal law, nor can it afford the hubristic, "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword." This truth made all the worse that our nation, bankrupt morally and fiscally, chooses war and armanents over the ways and means to feed, clothe, and heal its citizens. A tragedy of epoch, global proportions is unfolding in our midst.
Excellent post Sioux Rose...
I agree, excellent post.
Sioux Rose
Thank you both, Dante & Leea.
Move on helped elect Obama. Without Move On McCain -Palin would be running the country with all its consequences. But as a supporter of Move-On I urge that it end its silence re Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel. Move-On should nudge Obama from the left. Otherwise his Wall Street and Pentagon advisers will push him to the right. Obama needs our help. I believe his heart is in the South Chicago projects but his political pragmatism can lead him astray. I'm rooting for Obama to do the right (viz.left) thing.
"LET'S RULE" instead of move on--total sell-out to system--we will not make any head way with the same crappy people that gave us what? Bubba, Dubba,
R=REVOLT
U=UNITE
L=Liberty
E=END THE WARS
"Let's Rule" needs to start with YOU--Will you help us Really make some drastic changes--that you would die for if necessary...?(you are already dying in a world not of your making)
THE CODE TO RULE IS THIS: UNITE, REVOLT, END THE WARS, LIBERTY
Why is everyone so shocked? Move On are Democrats.
Exactly. The only difference between Democrats and Republicans are the names they go by.
Right and left pockets of the same pair of pants.
Bring America Back !!!!.........Let me commend both baruchzed and quickstepper on their very astute and accurate response to Hayden's piece!
***Tom Hayden invites us to prove a negative when he analyzes the silence of Move-on.Org. I think he knows the answer but==like many former activists he gets beaten down to political correctness, or producing the written word which will bring in some bucks, despite missing he head of the nail completely .
***Move-on is soft on Zion !! Former CEO Eli Pariser, if I'm not mistaken was a card carrier of AIPAC; then just before leaving he joined a more moderate group known as JStreetPac.org==favoring the two-state solution in Israel.
***Not sure if the new guy Jason Ruben, is an AIPAC member or a JStreet member, but even the moderate group did a study indicating the Jews of America preponderantly favored Israel's attacks on GAZA! Not a whisper of protest then from MOveon about the Genocide at Gaza ! 15oo dead, including 300 to 400 innocent children !
***Not a whimper from MOveon regarding 9/11 Truth ! They just cannot cope with the fact that 9/11 was a false flag attack blamed on a Patsy boogieman cave-dweller and his merry band of 19 airline pilot flunkouts .
***Having seen Prez Obama back off, cave in, and totally reverse every campaign pledge, promise & inspirational speech he gave us, that leaves Moveon wondering where to go from here ???? Moveon was highly effective gaining votes for our new Prez and the hope, change, promise fairytale.
***MOveon has done some projects on the healthcare issue now facing our leaders, but instead of the Single Payer Plan promised us, Moveon has caved into the "Affordable for All'
alternative now being professed by Obama. In the New Age of the $100 hospital band-aid, and the practice of patient-dumping the uninsured==US Healthcare will Never again be "AFFORDABLE" !!! Please refer to the DVD titled "SICKO" by Michael Moore which is the true state of US Med Care !
Again, the truth on an issue is not a motivator to Moveon.
**Without over=proving my point that Moveon is really on the right side with Israel, not progressive lefties, I refer Tom Hayden back to his roots--he needs to get to the Library and obtain the book "They Dare To Speak Out" by former US Congressman Paul Findley===People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby.
**Again, both my buddy posters quickstepper and baruchzed know the score on MOveon, I know it, and Tom Hayden needs to come out of that protective shell, and admit he knows the why of Silence of MOveon. Remember, we all placed big bets on Prez Saviour Obama==now we are all losing BIg==including MOveon.
**Eli Pariser took some major rightwing heat from the full page add decrying General Betrayus==shortly prior to Pariser's departure==Now, Obama has adopted Betrayus as his feet on the War Ground also !! NOt a whisper of protest by Obama on the Gaza Genocide. Look for lots of Silence from Moveon on the Iran and North Korea issues, and they will encourage Obama to get his flight suit and his mission accomplished banner. So far he has fooled most of us Progressives, and is handing us "W"s Third Term in Office.
Truthknoller,
I always like all of your posts, but I am shocked to find that you ACTUALLY voted for Obama. Surely, you're smarter than that! All true progressives should have voted third party - I don't care which - but remaining inside of the illusion that the two-party duopoly is anything other than separate sides of the same coin is keeeping people out of the white house that could really make change - like Mckinney, Nader, those from the Peace and Freedom party and more. I should hope that you didn't fall for the silly idea that because Obama is rather, er, rich in melanin, that that would be enough to put someone in the white house who would actually make any change that could actually be tangible or at least some change the anti-war and anti-chaos progressive could be proud of.
TK thanks for shining light on the unmentionable wandering troublemakers from Khazar.
It is no secret that MoveOn does not accurately represent the wishes of its membership, which is why it has such a large x-membership.
What is "x-membership"?
I think it refers to former members.
Oh ok, Thx
Boycott and divest from MoveOn until they regain their moral bearings!
I remember in the 60's, along with their John Birch Society's "Get US out of the UN" stickers on every parking meter, they used to pass out little comic books about how the Red Menance was corrupting our youth. One of the key story lines in the bookets was that after the revolution, the new masters would be just as bad as the old ones (and maybe worse).
Well, we have had our so-called "revolution" with the Obama election, and the comic books were right. As someone has posted before:
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
Once it got a power base, Move On abandoned it principles and has done next to nothing to address the issues that brought it power. Everyone I know is disappointed in Move On.
"Save our Republic! Impeach Earl Warren!"
Another thing that I remember from the '60's (when I was in school) is reading Orwell's "Animal Farm," an allegory whose message is even more frighteningly applicable to current day America than it was to the Soviet Union, its original target.
q
Thanks for the reminder about the "Impeach Earl Warren" stickers. I had forgotten how prevalent those were as well.
It does go to show how persistent the right wing is.
Oh.....lol. MoveOn is a product folks. Someone is making big money off of a bunch of peoples desire to be able to buy their good character rather than build it.
Got them to a T!
One of the things Democrats do best is co-opting the opposition. It seems this is what is taking place with Moveon.org, so obviously, it's time to start a new effort to stop the wars. MoveOn has become an effete organization, unwilling to keep the pressure on, same for the post-election organization.
PST777
Excellent points. MoveOn has about as much chance of opposing Obama's occupations and military aggression as they have in urging Obama and Congress to call for an honest, open and independent investigation of what actually happened on Sept. 11, 2001. Perhaps MoveOn, along with Obama and the rest of the Democrats, agree with the incredibly apathetic left gatekeeper and alleged truthteller Noam Chomsky who claimed in an interview that was conducted at MIT in 2001 that "it doesn't matter" who carried out 9/11 and that he's not interested. Likewise, it appears that MoveOn does not care that innocent Afghans and Pakistanis are being slaughtered by America's bombs and drone missiles.
Professor Chomsky makes his case from within the confines of the MSM and from published accepted history. He uses their own words against them. Occasionally the MSM will let slip the truth slip. Chomsky also uses credible sources from within the alternate media. He usually footnotes what he says. Chomsky cannot afford to be associated with viewpoints that have been painted as 'looney." I know they aren't looney, but his critics would be salivating at the opportunity to paint him as a nut and derail him from other issues where he can make a difference.
Chomsky was one of the first intellectuals to openly describe what the Israeli's were doing to the Palestinians, at least as far back as the mid=70's. That took guts and if they could the Establishment would have gutted him for it. Notice what happedned with Dr. Fincklestein at DePaul. However, Chomsky's professional stature was so great that they could not. If he were to get involved in so-called conspiracy theories his usefulness would be much less diminished.
I believe the government killed JFK, RFK, and King. I believe the government was an active conspirator in 9/11. Chomsky, generally will not comment on these. So What?
We are all adults here in what generally passes for a democracy. Take what you want from the excellent, volumnious information Professor Chomsky has given and from other sources, as you please. However, there is no need to savagely attack this great man who has done so much for the understanding of how the US government really works.
That's a sharp misreading of Chomsky. Go back and check the transcript and look for context.
Bardamu
Chomsky is hoisted on his own petard in his own book entitled 9-11 when, as Barrie Zwicker notes in his book Towers of Deception, Chomsky accepts the government's story that the "likely perpetrators" of 9/11 are from the Middle East. Later on in his book Chomsky says that "it was assumed, plausibly, that the guilty parties were bin Laden and his al Qaeda network." As Barrie Zwicker observes, "Plausibly and yet, he [Chomsky] admits, contradictorily, 'the evidence is surprisingly thin' ". Also Zwicker points out that "surprisingly this evidence he finds plausible". Further: Chomsky writes "it was assumed, plausibly, that the guilty parties were bin Laden and his al Qaeda network." As Zwicker says He [Chomsky] loves this word, plausibly, which usually he ascribes to no one."
Zwicker correctly tells the reader the word plausible, which Chomsky loves to use, is the equivalent of the phrase "everyone knows" which does not make for a very authoritarian source of information. Regarding the context and the transcript of what Chomsky said in that interview in October of 2001, Chomsky says off handedly: "Whether [Islamic terrorists] were involved or not nobody knows. It doesn't really matter much." By saying this, Chomsky is hoping that no further discussion will take place regarding the events of 9/11/01. Again, not exactly what one would expect from such a truth teller and questioner of authority as Noam Chomsky.
I think that you are both right...
On one level... Chomsky is stating a truth...
That the perpetrators were from the middle east...
They were from Israel & Saudi Arabia ( & Pakistan)...
On another level... Errol is stating the truth...
that there were domestic operatives that carried out 9-11...
elements of the CIA, the FBI, the MIC, and the Banksters were all involved...
I believe that Chomsky & Zinn & Hersh & Goodman & others are brilliant and serve different, yet invaluable functions for bringing the public consciousness of politics to where it is now...
And there are numerous luminary minds who are speaking out about the things that they dare not mention...
And I also believe that other writers have built upon a solid foundation for others to frame the structure of our collective paradigm...
Perhaps it is not their function to connect certain dots... I am okay with them not needing to be the ones to voice a master narrative...
I can connect my own dots, by researching other voices that have taken the analysis even further... We need to be our own media...
And I respect for folks who can see beyond the limitations of our own heroes... So we can get closer to the brutal truth of reality...
I would caution against holding anyone up to too high of a standard of perfection... For each of us have our own flaws in our character...
Otherwise we wouldn't be here... We are here to take it to the next level... For there is no consensus of truth, and peoples personal opinions always tint their lenses in one way or another... It takes a clear vision to see through the filters that can fog up even the brightest of minds among us...
Sioux Rose
GOLDEN MEAN: You have very advanced reasoning powers, and seem like a 21st century "King Solomon" to me. Thank you for adding so much to the CD forum.
To call Noam Chomsky "the incredibly apathetic left gatekeeper and alleged truthteller" is very unfair treatment. Whether you agree with his stance re: 911 or not, you can't deny his consistent efforts on behalf of those without a voice in this culture and others all around the world. Chomsky was making public statements about Obama's continuation of the bombing in Pakistan shortly after the death of his wife, whom he'd known since they were children. He deserves respect for his efforts, even if you don't agree with everything (or anything) he does.
Sadly enough, I parted with Chomsky from the left when he made the statement that Palestinians should not ask for the right of return because they should only negotiate for what they could get.
http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20040823.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky
Look, Chomsky has been great, but it's time to move past him and recognize he just isn't as progressive as we might wish.
Paulsprawl
There is the rub, is it not? Chomsky will come out against American imperialism but will deride those who dare to question the events of Sept. 11, 2001 claiming that it is "totally insane" to, in effect, question the government's explanation of what took place on that particular day. I believe, that far from being unfair, it is quite valid to note that what Chomsky, of all people, is doing is basically attempting to discourage any type of dissent regarding the official version of what allegedly happened on 9/11/01. As I believe I stated earlier, in an interview that he gave in October of 2001, Chomsky stated that "it doesn't matter" who carried out 9/11 and that he is not interested in pursuing the matter. Not exactly stirring words from a person lauded from those on the left as being a seeker of truth.
I strongly suggest that you pick up a copy of Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11 and turn to Ch. 5-The Shame of Noam Chomsky and the Gatekeepers of the Left. If you do, you would discover how the author {Barrie Zwicker] explains how he was fooled by Chomsky for so many years [just as I have been] and effectively and persuasively takes him to the woodshed for his casual approach toward 9/11 and Chomsky's dismissive attitude toward the damning evidence that has accumulated regarding the lies and falsehoods that the Bush administration has told regarding that fateful day in September of 2001 when supposedly 19 crazed Arab hijackers from the Middle East were able to overpower the passengers and flight crew, not with Uzi sub machine guns or with pistols or with machetes, but with box cutters. We are then supposed to believe that these [alleged] terrorists from the Middle East were able to outwit NORAD, the FAA and the United States Air Force in a country with the most sophisticated defense systems on this planet. Yet according to that revered leftist icon and critic of American imperialism Noam Chomsky, it is "totally insane" to even question the official government story as to what transpired on Sept. 11, 2001. I will take my chances on being labeled "totally insane" if that means, unlike Chomsky, that I and millions of others will have the temerity of questioning our less than truthful government.
NC's denial re 9-11, his flat scoffing at the notion, made my respect for him fall at free-fall speed into it's own footprint.
The Laws of Physics.
Silly me, I still believe in them!
Brilliant imagery & analogy...!
I love the way you worded that!
I gave moral support to MoveOn, and happy to do so, signing online petitions and what not.
I'm sure glad I did not contribute any dinero.
MoveOn has been conspicuously silent regarding Israeli aggression, not just since the election but consistently. I stopped supporting MoveOn due to that a couple of years ago. This is basically another "I want to feel good about myself" liberal organization that doesn't really stand for anything.
I stopped supporting MoveOn when they "asked" the membership who they should support, and Kucinich & Nader weren't on the ballot
Got it in one.
Many of us have noticed MoveOn's reticence after the inauguration. I suppose that the leadership is worn out from patting themselves on the back after Obama's successful campaign. They have a big victory under their belts and they apparently feel that raising issues with the new administration would diminish their glory.
Unfortunately, MoveOn's leadership has been co-opted. The lesson here is that Progressives cannot simply diddle about on the Internet and send money to some group to do our work for us. We can't abandon the blogosphere but we must be even more active on the streets.
q
I didn't belong to MoveOn because from the start I knew it is just a partisan
organization for the Democratic party which is no different from the Republican party.
Are there any REAL differences between Bush's policies and Obama's policies??!! The answer is flat NO. The differences are in style and minor cosmetics on the fringes coupled by skilled oratory and toothpaste smile.
I guess for now we have to forget about the CHANGE and may be keep the HOPE!!.
That was the whole point of electing Obama! He stopped all the anti-everything movement. Dead in it's tracks. You can't get more than a hundred poeple to protest anything now! Why? Because Obama is President.
nicholas101,
You got it perfectly right. I 100% agree with you.
I noticed and commented on MoveOn's refusal to condemn the build up (and relentless propaganda) to the Iran war-which was derailed by forces we don't even know about. Otherwise Bush and Co. would have been in Iran. Ir you ever saw the Born Again preachers talk on the need to invade Iran you would think you were watching a madhouse. "He speaks simultaneously to two audiences about Iran's nuclear capabilities: one that fears a terrorist attack by Iran and another that embraces a biblically mandated apocalypse. To impress the fearful, he mimics Bush's deceptions about Iraq's capacity to attack the United States with weapons of mass destruction, Condoleezza Rice's warnings of mushroom clouds, and Dick Cheney's dissembling about an alliance between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Comparing Ahmadinejad to Hitler, "-SARAH POSNER. I was amazed that MoveOn was not out front on this issue. I think it has to do with a believe that many have that these wars somehow make Israel more secure when in fact the opposite is clearly true.
Anybody who hasn't been locked in a closet for the past 40 years knows that in the US military spending has evolved from the default economic stimulus to the economic stimulus of choice.
What politician is going to question any kind of economic stimulus in today's economic environment?