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WillyT Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:01 PM
Original message
Some Thoughts On 'Agitators'
Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all absorbing, and for the time being putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blow, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

Frederick Douglass, 1849
Letter to an abolitionist friend



Dear friends, what are your limits?

:shrug:


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Forkboy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:04 PM
Response to Original message
1. Well if that doesn't deserve a recommendation I don't know what does.
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JackRiddler Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:09 PM
Response to Original message
2. A number-five rec and a kick for this always-timely observation by Douglass. n/t
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JeffR Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:12 PM
Response to Original message
3. Dammit. I'll kick this!
:kick:

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libnnc Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:13 PM
Response to Original message
4. Amen
:kick:
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Dr.Phool Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:15 PM
Response to Original message
5. Powerful, true words.
K&R!
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Solly Mack Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:18 PM
Response to Original message
6. One of my favorites
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mmonk Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:19 PM
Response to Original message
7. Good question. I've reached mine but on the flip side
Edited on Fri Mar-23-07 11:19 PM by mmonk
I'm tired. I never envisioned a struggle like this in my country which ironically, is in a sea of blissful ignorance by so many that there is a struggle for the very supposed democracy they live in. It's like screaming in a wind tunnel. The sound rarely reaches the other side of the tunnel.
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LoZoccolo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:26 PM
Response to Original message
8. Just so you know...
...agitation is stirring up interest in the people. Which requires more work than publicity stunts at the offices of politicians.
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WillyT Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:31 PM
Response to Reply #8
10. Really... That's What You Think Douglas Meant By That Quote ???
:banghead:
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LoZoccolo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:39 PM
Response to Reply #10
11. It really doesn't matter what Douglass meant.
Edited on Fri Mar-23-07 11:39 PM by LoZoccolo
What matters is what works and what does not work. And taking a group of ten people and trying to grow it to sixty million will always be more effective than sending in those ten people to shout at a person elected by a group much larger than ten. No matter who says it.
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Morgana LaFey Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-24-07 01:51 PM
Response to Reply #11
24. Ahhh, there. You see? Wrong goal. Totally.
What matters is what works and what does not work. And taking a group of ten people and trying to grow it to sixty million ...

I feel safe in insisting that this is NOT Code Pink's goal. Not at all. Never will be.

For one thing, that battle is already won. The vast majority of Americans are already against the war. They're already on Code Pink's side on that.

But let's say that weren't the case, that we still needed 60 million convinced. In that case, it STILL wouldn't be Code Pink's goal to bring them along. Here, I'll put it this way for you:

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong." -- Eugene V. Debs

That means that if we still needed to attract sixty million, no matter HOW we or they dressed or behaved, it would still be attacked as (surprise) out of the mainstream, goofy, wrong-headed, sick, etc., etc., etc. Code Pink's goal is to get attention and probably to slightly intimidate decision-makers enough so they wake the fuck up. They know there are plenty of others in the country who are willing and able to work with the 60 million.

So they're after the decision-makers AND the thought-leaders, who typically ARE influenced by Code Pink behavior.

I'll never understand why you anti-Code-Pinkies just don't get it that it's NOT an either/or proposition: that ALL kinds of activism are needed, and Code Pink's is extraordinarily valuable if for no other reason than that it gets press. Press is crucial. Think of all the "nice" protests prior to the war that didn't get ANY press, and so no one thought they happened, and no one had their own pet theories and fears and concerns validated. And no one who wasn't already connected to the anti-war movement was able to hook up to one nor even thought about looking for one because it wasn't covered.

Code Pink is just "look at me! there's something important going on here and I'm trying to get your attention on the matter" and then research it on your own.
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LoZoccolo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-24-07 02:06 PM
Response to Reply #24
25. Allow me at first to make a correction.
I meant to say sixty-two million.

That means that if we still needed to attract sixty million, no matter HOW we or they dressed or behaved, it would still be attacked as (surprise) out of the mainstream, goofy, wrong-headed, sick, etc., etc., etc.

That would not matter, as the last Presidential election was won by a group of less than sixty-two million voters. I always prefer taking power to expressing myself.
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TahitiNut Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:27 PM
Response to Original message
9. But we must dress properly, obtain permits, and never piss off those sitting at home.
:evilgrin:


Rule of Thumb: Non-violent civil disobedience doesn't meen we won't get clubbed, shot, and jailed. In fact, unless we are, it's not working.

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cgrindley Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:42 PM
Response to Original message
12. If this is a half-baked defence of codepink
it's more than a little insulting to FD.
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WillyT Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:49 PM
Response to Reply #12
14. Although I Don't Have My Panties In A Wad Over Code Pink, As Some Here Do...
I was, in this case, just talking about the struggle for liberty, progress, and human rights in general.

Hope that helps.
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cgrindley Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:53 PM
Response to Reply #14
16. But we're always doing that
The goal here is simple... if we enter enough keystrokes, the Bush Whitehouse will just vanish into the matrix. Direct action, baby.
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kdpeters Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-24-07 01:52 AM
Response to Reply #12
17. Dude, the world does not revolve around your pet, petty issues
Take it for what it's worth or move on. Just move on. Why the need to make something out of it?
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Morgana LaFey Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-24-07 01:32 PM
Response to Reply #12
23. FD? Who or what is FD? nt
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cgrindley Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-24-07 03:56 PM
Response to Reply #23
28. WTF?
Frederick Douglass, the topic of the OP.
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Morgana LaFey Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-25-07 01:44 PM
Response to Reply #28
32. WTF yourself, junior
what's insulting to Douglass (and one reason I didn't tumble to your reference) is people like you who don't get it.
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Gregorian Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:42 PM
Response to Original message
13. Our limits are like the rainbow.
We vary from hair trigger to doormat.

I continue to be amazed at the level of high thinking that has gone long before us. As though we were so advanced here, now, only to discover that perhaps not so.

I was the child whose father had no father, and who was never a child. A serious upbringing did I have. I was also the 80 pound 18 year old. Pushed around and shunned by my own peers. I was aware of the pending global warming decades before it was announced. I was the young adult who hid in the shadows of the drug war. I hated Reagan. And his conservative successors. I saw the results of the repealing of the Fairness Doctrine almost immediately. I am patient for society to wake up. Perhaps too patient.

And then there are those who are lulled into apathy through comfort. Most, I would say. The automobile has done much to retard society. Much to advance it, as well. But not in humane ways. Cultural ways.

I've been told that slower is faster. But I've also seen that tomorrow is today.

What limits are we talking about? I think collective limits. Society's limits. As impatient a society as this is, it is painfully slow to react to it's own oppressors. But perhaps it doesn't require the whole society to react in order to throw off the oppression. But it does take a whole society to follow the few who do. Change only occurs in concert.

When we think for ourselves, we will know our limit. Right now I don't see real thinking. But how could we think without correct information. The conservative agenda broke the machine that operates this society. A multifaceted attack that severed the feedback to and from the governed and those who govern.

The time and place is getting nearer whereby we will begin to see limits being reached. They can't be forced. But they can be ignored. There isn't patience left in this collective society for ignorance.

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Jcrowley Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-23-07 11:52 PM
Response to Original message
15. Later
than we think. If we even think about it.

K&R
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nadinbrzezinski Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-24-07 02:03 AM
Response to Original message
18. Hit the streets
agitated,

Taken real risks

Even paid a price for some of it

and will gladly continue to do it

My limits, I will not participate with those who approve of racism... but that is my personal pet peeve

:-)

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loudsue Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-24-07 03:04 AM
Response to Original message
19. Wow!
Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blow, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.


Yep. Impeachment time!! That, or rebellion! :applause:

Great post!! K & R for you and the Honorable Mr. Douglas


:kick::kick::kick:
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formercia Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-24-07 07:15 AM
Response to Original message
20. Adding the last line to my sig.
thanks
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WillyT Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-24-07 12:17 PM
Response to Original message
21. Morning Kick !!!
:kick:
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Madspirit Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-24-07 12:21 PM
Response to Original message
22. "Power concedes nothing without a demand."
Bravo!! k&r Every time someone criticizes Code Pink or Cindy or Tina or....they should have to recite this. The Democrats are NOT above sinking into complacency and it's OUR job to remind them why they were elected.
Thank-you for this.
Lee
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Tierra_y_Libertad Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-24-07 02:27 PM
Response to Original message
26. From another agitator.
"If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that's something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can't live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organizations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time." - Noam Chomsky

"There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws. These are simply decisions made within institutions that are subject to human will and that must face the test of legitimacy. And if they do not meet the test, they can be replaced by other institutions that are more free and more just, as has happened often in the past." - Noam Chomsky
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WillyT Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-24-07 02:30 PM
Response to Reply #26
27. Also Wonderful, Thank You For Those !!!
:bounce::hi::bounce:
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WillyT Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-24-07 08:23 PM
Response to Original message
29. Last Kick...
:kick:
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mopinko Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-24-07 08:36 PM
Response to Original message
30. limits of my sanity are nearing
sometimes i just scream. i can't really run down the whole list anymore. i can't stomach it. but what now willy?
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Danascot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-24-07 09:49 PM
Response to Original message
31. May they soon be up to their asses in agitators
nt
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