Destroying the opposition

[Pushed To The Left]

Let's say you are building a house. You get together with like-minded people and keep toiling and sweating away and putting this beautiful house together. Then a monster comes and destroys the house. Every time this happens, you work harder again, and together you build the house. And again, here comes the monster to destroy everything you worked so hard for. Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't the most effective way to keep that house standing be to KILL THE DAMN MONSTER so it won't come back and won't stand in the way of the progress you're trying to achieve?

I know that it's a strange analogy, but it seemed like a fitting one. We try to get health care for all people..the far right comes in and stops it. We try to achieve marriage equality...and here comes the monster to infect the Constitution with its disease to keep that from happening. Rights for workers, drug reform, a living wage...all destroyed by the right wing smear machine. The monster in my analogy is so intimidating, so influential, that even those who are supposed to be helping you build the house are now tearing parts of it down, either because they've been brainwashed by the monster, or they are afraid of the monster.

We need to keep working for progressive change in a positive way when it comes to trying to win hearts and minds, but I also believe it may be time to take a more aggressive approach against those who want to tear down what we are trying to build. Anything we can do to stop the right wing machine from doing damage is a form of progressive victory in its own right. Our electoral victories in November definitely wounded the monster, but it is still powerful enough to do a lot of damage. The monster is still extremely influential, even with a huge Democratic majority. If we can't completely kill the monster, we can injure the monster. We can break it's leg so it won't be able to move as quickly.

Here's an example: Marriage equality. All LGBT couples in California wanted was to be treated like everybody else and to have the same marriage rights that heterosexual couples enjoyed. They finally won that battle in May of 2008 when they won the right to marry legally in California. The "monster" or "monsters" in this case were the right wing groups and churches who put Prop 8 on the ballot and ripped away what the LGBT couples had been working so hard for. They even contaminated the California Constitution by making it an amendment. The California Supreme Court had a chance to wound the monster by killing Prop 8, but chose not to. One way we supporters of marriage equality are fighting back is by canvassing and getting support for repealing Prop 8 in 2010 via ballot measure. That's the winning hearts and minds part, or "building the house" in my analogy. However, at the same time, the monsters who burned down the house should be held accountable and weakened in whatever way possible. For example, there were some pretty aggressive boycotts against businesses where the owners or higher-ups had donated to Prop 8. There is a movement to hold the Mormon Church accountable for their actions. Other ways to "wound the monster" would be to take away tax exempt status from churches who support discriminatory ballot measures. Reforming the initiative process to make it harder for these types of things to get on the ballot would be another way to wound the beast. For one thing, I would like to see the use of paid petition gatherers outlawed. This way, we would be "building the house" and "wounding the beast" at the same time.