SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Wisconsin: Time to Grow our Souls
The world's eyes are on the escalating struggle to defend the collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin public workers. Some people have even called the growing mobilization a transformational movement,
But transformational organizing takes more than growing numbers.
Revisiting the 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott can help us understand what it takes.
Mar 20, 2011
The world's eyes are on the escalating struggle to defend the collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin public workers. Some people have even called the growing mobilization a transformational movement,
But transformational organizing takes more than growing numbers.
Revisiting the 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott can help us understand what it takes.
In the 1950s humanity was at a watershed. During World War II nearly 50 million people, more than half of them civilians, had been killed, to win the war, we had created and dropped an atom bomb on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Yet Americans were celebrating our winning this "good war" and even proclaiming the American century because our factories were busy producing the goods that the war-devastated factories of Europe and Japan were unable to produce.
As Einstein put it, "the splitting of the atom has changed everything but the human mind and thus we drift towards catastrophe."
It was under these circumstances that the people of Montgomery, Alabama, launched their yearlong boycott to protest the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to go to the back of the bus.
Responding not only to the indignities of segregated busing but to the brutal murder in September 1955 of 14 year old Emmett Till, a people who had been treated as less than human began a struggle against their dehumanization not as angry victims or rebels but as forerunners of a new more human society. Practicing methods of non-violence that transformed themselves and increased the good in the world, creating their own transportation system by walking or car pooling, always bearing in mind that their goal was not only desegregating buses but creating the beloved community, they carried on a struggle that grew their own souls and inspired the civil rights movement and the other humanity-redefining movements of the 1960s.
In 2011 we are again at a watershed that calls for growing our souls. The U.S. empire, which sustained the American Dream of upper mobility and middle class lives for all Americans but also included supporting the world's Mubaraks, is dead.
That means we have to create a New American Dream. To do this we need to look in the mirror and begin making the radical revolution of values that Dr. King called for in his 1967 anti-Vietnam War "Break the Silence" speech. To make this revolution:
We, the American people, must acknowledge that we have reached the end of the empire that has sustained the old American dream. We must not only struggle against the concentration of wealth at the top of American society. We must acknowledge that we have enjoyed many of our middle class comforts and conveniences at the expense of the Earth and of other people here and around the world. We must begin to live more simply and responsibly so that others can simply live.
We need to ask ourselves new questions about how to provide for the general welfare and how to educate our children. We must create ways to meet these basic needs not mainly through a growing number of public workers but through caring for one another in beloved communities.
We must begin reorganizing our local, state and federal budgets so that we spend public monies not for military domination and to support the Mubaraks of the world but for constructive human and domestic needs.
The struggle in Wisconsin and other states can become a transformational movement if those involved in the struggle recognize that our current crises are rooted in the decline of the empire which made possible the welfare state with its thousands of public employees to take care of tasks for which we the people must become increasingly responsible.
With the end of empire, we are coming to an end of the epoch of Rights. We have entered the epoch of Responsibilities, which requires new, more socially minded human beings and new more participatory and place-based concepts of citizenship and democracy.
In cities like Detroit and Milwaukee, abandoned by global corporations, community people are struggling to build more self-reliant, localized economies, growing our own food, restoring the neighbor to the 'hood, and in the process also growing our souls.
The Wisconsin struggle can be deepened by connecting with these community struggles.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Grace Lee Boggs
Grace Lee Boggs (1925-2015) was an activist and community organizer for more than 60 years and is the author of the autobiography "Living for Change: An Autobiography" and, with Scott Kurashige, "The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century."
The world's eyes are on the escalating struggle to defend the collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin public workers. Some people have even called the growing mobilization a transformational movement,
But transformational organizing takes more than growing numbers.
Revisiting the 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott can help us understand what it takes.
In the 1950s humanity was at a watershed. During World War II nearly 50 million people, more than half of them civilians, had been killed, to win the war, we had created and dropped an atom bomb on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Yet Americans were celebrating our winning this "good war" and even proclaiming the American century because our factories were busy producing the goods that the war-devastated factories of Europe and Japan were unable to produce.
As Einstein put it, "the splitting of the atom has changed everything but the human mind and thus we drift towards catastrophe."
It was under these circumstances that the people of Montgomery, Alabama, launched their yearlong boycott to protest the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to go to the back of the bus.
Responding not only to the indignities of segregated busing but to the brutal murder in September 1955 of 14 year old Emmett Till, a people who had been treated as less than human began a struggle against their dehumanization not as angry victims or rebels but as forerunners of a new more human society. Practicing methods of non-violence that transformed themselves and increased the good in the world, creating their own transportation system by walking or car pooling, always bearing in mind that their goal was not only desegregating buses but creating the beloved community, they carried on a struggle that grew their own souls and inspired the civil rights movement and the other humanity-redefining movements of the 1960s.
In 2011 we are again at a watershed that calls for growing our souls. The U.S. empire, which sustained the American Dream of upper mobility and middle class lives for all Americans but also included supporting the world's Mubaraks, is dead.
That means we have to create a New American Dream. To do this we need to look in the mirror and begin making the radical revolution of values that Dr. King called for in his 1967 anti-Vietnam War "Break the Silence" speech. To make this revolution:
We, the American people, must acknowledge that we have reached the end of the empire that has sustained the old American dream. We must not only struggle against the concentration of wealth at the top of American society. We must acknowledge that we have enjoyed many of our middle class comforts and conveniences at the expense of the Earth and of other people here and around the world. We must begin to live more simply and responsibly so that others can simply live.
We need to ask ourselves new questions about how to provide for the general welfare and how to educate our children. We must create ways to meet these basic needs not mainly through a growing number of public workers but through caring for one another in beloved communities.
We must begin reorganizing our local, state and federal budgets so that we spend public monies not for military domination and to support the Mubaraks of the world but for constructive human and domestic needs.
The struggle in Wisconsin and other states can become a transformational movement if those involved in the struggle recognize that our current crises are rooted in the decline of the empire which made possible the welfare state with its thousands of public employees to take care of tasks for which we the people must become increasingly responsible.
With the end of empire, we are coming to an end of the epoch of Rights. We have entered the epoch of Responsibilities, which requires new, more socially minded human beings and new more participatory and place-based concepts of citizenship and democracy.
In cities like Detroit and Milwaukee, abandoned by global corporations, community people are struggling to build more self-reliant, localized economies, growing our own food, restoring the neighbor to the 'hood, and in the process also growing our souls.
The Wisconsin struggle can be deepened by connecting with these community struggles.
Grace Lee Boggs
Grace Lee Boggs (1925-2015) was an activist and community organizer for more than 60 years and is the author of the autobiography "Living for Change: An Autobiography" and, with Scott Kurashige, "The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century."
The world's eyes are on the escalating struggle to defend the collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin public workers. Some people have even called the growing mobilization a transformational movement,
But transformational organizing takes more than growing numbers.
Revisiting the 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott can help us understand what it takes.
In the 1950s humanity was at a watershed. During World War II nearly 50 million people, more than half of them civilians, had been killed, to win the war, we had created and dropped an atom bomb on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Yet Americans were celebrating our winning this "good war" and even proclaiming the American century because our factories were busy producing the goods that the war-devastated factories of Europe and Japan were unable to produce.
As Einstein put it, "the splitting of the atom has changed everything but the human mind and thus we drift towards catastrophe."
It was under these circumstances that the people of Montgomery, Alabama, launched their yearlong boycott to protest the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to go to the back of the bus.
Responding not only to the indignities of segregated busing but to the brutal murder in September 1955 of 14 year old Emmett Till, a people who had been treated as less than human began a struggle against their dehumanization not as angry victims or rebels but as forerunners of a new more human society. Practicing methods of non-violence that transformed themselves and increased the good in the world, creating their own transportation system by walking or car pooling, always bearing in mind that their goal was not only desegregating buses but creating the beloved community, they carried on a struggle that grew their own souls and inspired the civil rights movement and the other humanity-redefining movements of the 1960s.
In 2011 we are again at a watershed that calls for growing our souls. The U.S. empire, which sustained the American Dream of upper mobility and middle class lives for all Americans but also included supporting the world's Mubaraks, is dead.
That means we have to create a New American Dream. To do this we need to look in the mirror and begin making the radical revolution of values that Dr. King called for in his 1967 anti-Vietnam War "Break the Silence" speech. To make this revolution:
We, the American people, must acknowledge that we have reached the end of the empire that has sustained the old American dream. We must not only struggle against the concentration of wealth at the top of American society. We must acknowledge that we have enjoyed many of our middle class comforts and conveniences at the expense of the Earth and of other people here and around the world. We must begin to live more simply and responsibly so that others can simply live.
We need to ask ourselves new questions about how to provide for the general welfare and how to educate our children. We must create ways to meet these basic needs not mainly through a growing number of public workers but through caring for one another in beloved communities.
We must begin reorganizing our local, state and federal budgets so that we spend public monies not for military domination and to support the Mubaraks of the world but for constructive human and domestic needs.
The struggle in Wisconsin and other states can become a transformational movement if those involved in the struggle recognize that our current crises are rooted in the decline of the empire which made possible the welfare state with its thousands of public employees to take care of tasks for which we the people must become increasingly responsible.
With the end of empire, we are coming to an end of the epoch of Rights. We have entered the epoch of Responsibilities, which requires new, more socially minded human beings and new more participatory and place-based concepts of citizenship and democracy.
In cities like Detroit and Milwaukee, abandoned by global corporations, community people are struggling to build more self-reliant, localized economies, growing our own food, restoring the neighbor to the 'hood, and in the process also growing our souls.
The Wisconsin struggle can be deepened by connecting with these community struggles.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.