By ignoring critical social issues mainstream corporate media dismisses
democratic values in the United States.
Since the Fall of 1999 there have been four major political
demonstrations in the United States. The cities of Seattle, Washington
DC, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles each hosted either a major political
party convention or global economic institution meetings where thousands
of activists protested, engaged in non-violent civil disobedience, and
in rare, often provoked cases, caused superficial damaged to public and
private property.
Corporate media has labeled the protesters as unorganized groups of
radical environmentalists, single issues extremists, and directionless
anarchists bent on disrupting social order. The extensive involvement
of unions and labor in Seattle has generally been explained as an one
time aberration and the global trade issues focusing on NAFTA and the
WTO have been mostly forgotten.
The corporate media has been particularly strong in its denigration of
the recent demonstrations at the Democrat and Republican conventions.
Presenting the image of the demonstrators acting out radical fantasies
in a deteriorating attempt to sustain the momentum of Seattle.
While on first glance it may seem that Mumia rallies, anti-water
fluoridation teach-ins, marches against Occidental Oil's threats to the
U'wa tribe, police brutality demonstrations, and black-clad anarchists,
have little in common and no centralized leadership. A deeper analysis
will determine that each of the protesting individuals and social action
groups share a common disdain for institutionalized power structures
that service the corporate elites of the world at the expense of working
people and the environment.
The demonstrators represent millions of us who innately recognize that
the New World Order is one that does not allow for grassroots democratic
processes, but rather pontificates the inevitabilities of globalization,
corporate growth, and individual belt tightening, while proceeding with
building institutions for top-down public-private partnerships to
control and regulate the behaviors of the global masses.
Fifty-five million non-voters in the U.S. already recognize that it
takes money to buy power and access to our two party system and have
opted out of the charade. They recognize that our collective ability to
participate has been structured out of the political decision making
process.
The activists in Philadelphia and Los Angeles speak for the millions of
us who had to stay at work doing the overtime to make ends meet in our
bifurcating economy. We silently cheer the demonstrators and daily
resist bureaucratic rules and top down management in our own ways. Overt
resistance to national and global power structures is a manifestation
of the deep mistrust working people feel towards governments and their
mega-corporation partners.
The activists are the New Progressive Movement, a vanguard of political
actors emerging from the grassroots of hometown USA. They have
successfully used the internet, and satellite links to stream e-mail,
radio and TV images throughout the world, and continue to work towards
building real news systems independent of corporate media.
The anarchists, supposedly encourage by Eugene Oregon author John
Zerzan, are clear on their objectives of building sustainable democratic
grassroots communities that respect the environment and minimized
domination in any form. Certainly many Americans could fine common
ground for such a humanistic goal.
To simply dismiss the recent activism as disgruntled groups of aging
hippies and misguided youth is a grave error. By not addressing the
specific issues corporate media is dismissing democracy itself. We must
examine the specifics of protest, the inequalities of our society and
globe, and improve the ways of building democratic participation for the
betterment of humankind.
Peter Phillips is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State
University and Director of Project Censored a media research group.
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