For OpEdNews: Bernard Weiner - Writer
By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers
Often in our busy daily lives, we miss the significance of a piece of news. Sometimes it's not until years later that we realize how very important that news event was in shifting the paradigm.
For example: In 1981, President Reagan fired all 11,000 striking air-traffic controllers, and the liberal left didn't really organize itself to respond forcefully. That breaking of a labor union was the linchpin for much more anti-liberal mischief at the hands of the Reaganite conservatives for the next eight years -- and beyond. And the liberal left, as personified by the Democratic Party, remained confused and toothless in its opposition.
But that was then, when the rightwing was in flower. Now we supposedly have a liberal in the White House and the Democrats control both houses of Congress. So surely there aren't such tipping-point events happening now.
Not so fast. Let's take a look at a few candidates and see the possible ramifications for the body politic.
THE DESTRUCTION OF ACORN
Highly analogous to the Reagan-era attack on the air-traffic controllers was what happened to one of this country's most effective community-aiding organizations, ACORN. For more than four decades, ACORN had been highly effective in helping low-income citizens register to vote. Those poor and minorities tended to vote Democratic. As a result, Karl Rove and his acolytes made ACORN their number one target. Indeed, the firing of all those U.S. attorneys around the country derived from the unwillingness of a number of U.S. attorneys to go after ACORN right before an election on phony accusations of voting fraud.
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http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-Happens-When-We-Don-t-by-Bernard-Weiner-100407-307.html