Remember Michael Moore's call to action last October! (link)

[FailureToCommunicate]

link to Moore's action list and DU discussion thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6831038&mesg_id=6831038

Also, time to view "Capitalism-A Love Story" again.

And "The Corporation" if you can find a copy.


"Don't mourn, Organize!" -Mother Jones

[FailureToCommunicate]

1. Especially action #3 - in light of the Supreme Court ruling disaster...

[Goldstein1984]

2. Good luck with that organizing thing

Have you ever watched a nature program about predators and prey, especially when the prey are herd animal?

It works like this:

1) The herd is busily munching grass. A few might be arguing the grass is greener someplace else, and a few more might even be thinking of ways to make the grass greener someplace else, but the majority just munch the grass that's in front of them.

2) Along comes a pack of predators, and panic ensues. The predators stampede the prey, and they eventually pick the most vulnerable as their victims.

3) The victim, having no other choice, may put up some fight. The rest of the prey, satisfied that it was somebody else this time, leave the victim to fight alone.

4) With the victim being consumed, and the threat to the masses temporarily gone, the prey return to grazing.

[FailureToCommunicate]

4. So... we should all go back to munching grass? Let the most vulnerable get eaten?

[omega minimo]

5. Those who ignored all the warning signs and LIHOP can sort it out... maybe

[Goldstein1984]

6. I'm not saying what "we" should do, I'm just pointing out

what "we" will do.

The Democratic Party that was associated with the New Deal, labor rights, civil rights, and civil disobedience opposing the War in Vietnam is a thing of the past. Today's mainstream Democrat is more concerned about their 401(k) plan. Oh sure, they talk a good "anti-establishment" game, and they have the blogging calluses on their fingertips to prove their "activism," but real activists are instantly condemned, put on ignore lists and eventually TSed for "disrupting poorly." (How does one challenge the status quo without "disrupting" it?)

No solution is going to come from voting, manning phone banks, venting on a discussion board, or going door-to-door for status quo political candidates. Better only waits on the other side of much worse.

I'll change my mind the first time I see a million protesters in Washington, D.C. ignoring instructions from Power, marching anywhere they damn well please, knocking over barricades, shutting down streets, and throwing tear gas canisters back in the direction from whence they came.

There will be no change until the people are angry enough to make Power fear the foundation upon which their power rests is in danger of crumbling. And I don't see anything approaching a threat to Power taking shape.

And before you ask, yes, I'm doing a great deal to push things in that direction. I'm fortunate to be employed, and even more fortunate to have a very good income. Right now, almost a third of my take-home income is going to help support a family member whose job was recently shipped to China (They literally shut down the plant, removed the equipment, shipped it to China, and hired Chinese workers). A healthy chunk of what remains goes to support organizations that are working to challenge Power at every turn. And it appears to be nothing more than a solo stampede, but I'm engaged in a general boycott of durable goods, airlines, entertainment, national franchises. At the risk of alienating friends, relatives and coworkers, I do not sit casually while stupid political platitudes are exchanged. And I'm doing more that I can't put in print, at least on DU.

[FailureToCommunicate]

7. Thoughtful response. But as one who did "throw back the tear gas canisters" in D.C.

- at places like Dupont Circle and the Memorial bridge to the Pentagon- among millions of protesters, I think we need BOTH the ballot and the barricade. Because it was so easy for the media to just not report the mass protests, until the police showed up to crack heads. Neither works all that well alone. But it sounds like you believe the former (the ballot, etc.) is pointless nowadays, with our current spineless, corporate "Democrats"

[Goldstein1984]

8. There are too few willing

Thus, my qualifying the size of the crowd necessary.

I began my activist career at twelve years old, tagging along with my beautiful cousin and her equally attractive friend to Vietnam protests. Granted, my motives at that time were more about my cousin and her friend than the war, but I participated, and my motives became more pure as time passed.

When I was 17, I joined thousands of migrant workers in the fields around Stockton, California, and together we made sure that thousands of acres of lettuce and tomatoes rotted in the fields.

One thing I remember well, and this will probably get this post deleted, was that there were many among those of us carrying picket signs in the fields whose signs were not attached to the flimsy sticked most of us carried, but to axe handles and oak shovel handles. Anyone who tried to use force against our peaceful protests would have been surprised by the response.

I often joke that pacifism is most effective when backed by the threat of violence if pacifism fails. Most of the party faithful have been spayed and neutered, so they will have no idea what I mean.

Congratulations. Throwing tear gas canisters back at the forces of fascism was an act of violence that far too few are willing to support.

[FailureToCommunicate]

9. We were not throwing the canisters back at "forces of fascism" as an act of violence

Those of us who had had prior civil disobedience experience, or had felt the brunt of some civil rights police action in the past were actually throwing the cans back to try to protect fellow, less prepared protesters lying injured on the ground, or running blindly for safety from further quantities of CS gas.
And I would hardly call the mostly reasonable D.C. Police "forces of fascism" They were just sort of over reacting to a perceived threat of lots of "We The People" in the streets.
Interesting detail to your migrant workers protest experience - the axe handles. But wasn't Chavez was a firm believer in non-violent protests? Or was this not a UFW related action?

[Goldstein1984]

10. It was Chavez and the UFW

I never got a chance to meet Chavez, only to see him from a distance.

Chavez did believe in non-violence, and the only violence we ever experienced was on the part of the farmers and the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Department. The axe and shovel handles were there, nonetheless.

It's my personal belief that when peaceful methods succeed it's often, at least in part, because of an unspoken threat of what could follow if peace doesn't work.

This is a silly metaphor, but I believe it applies. I have a working-bred German shepherd that accompanies me everywhere. (He's keeping my feet warm now.) He loves children and other pets, and he makes friends wherever I take him. When he sense danger, he quietly places himself between loved one and the perceived threat. But the truth is, this same dog saved me from an attack by about 700 pounds of brown bear when he was only a 13-month-old pup. His friendliness and confidence are rooted in his ability to answer any threat of violence with great violence of his own. In the four years we have been together, we have never been threatened by another dog--he projects confidence. His pacifism holds the silent and real threat that he will respond with great violence if his pacifism is interrupted.

I think violence, and non-violence, work the same way outside of Dogdom. Those with a religious devotion, rather than an ethical and pragmatic preference, to pacifism will disagree.

When I mentioned "forces of fascism," I was thinking of the police in Pittsburgh who, during the G20 Summit last year, responded to protests with rubber bullets, tear gas, and LRAD weapons. Ironically, a protest coordinator was arrested for using Twitter to help protesters evade police, which the U.S. government supported when it was Iranian protesters using Twitter to evade Iranian police.

[FailureToCommunicate]

13. I'll bet you are not as cynical as you try to sound. Look at your avatar: Don Quixote, the

epitome of optimism and chivalry in the face of an embittered, uncaring world.

Your dog as 'soft power' projector is an interesting metaphor...

I got to spend an hour in a room talking with Chavez when he came to speak to our church about supporting the UFW (The UCC was an early supporter)
He had just finished one of his fasts and was weak and it hard to understand his soft voice. But his presence and authority was powerful and unforgettable!
Maybe that's what you are saying about that kind of pacifism.

[Goldstein1984]

14. It's always a privilege to be around a person who carries

their authority and power lightly, yet still manages to project leadership. And never believe that pacifism does not create intense fear on the part of those whose status quo is being threatened.

I had to sneak out of the house to attend the picketing. My father worked as management in one of the major canning companies in the Central Valley, and his plant was one of those shut down for lack of produce. But it was response to the farm workers that was most telling: He couldn't understand where a bunch on peasants got the idea they had the right to challenge authority. Their place was kneeling in the dirt and picking produce, not dictating terms of employment. If they weren't happy with the pay, I often heard him say, they could find the border in the same place it was when the crossed it. It was these non-persons standing up to people in power that bothered him more than anything--it threatened the order he found comfortable.

I am very cynical. I genuinely see a lack of the kind of spirit I grew up witnessing. The population seems more divided, more pacified, and less informed. Frankly, it seems willfully ignorant in many regards.

What I see in by Canine American buddy is the ability to be both gentle and ferocious when appropriate, and not to let a preference for one interfere with the wisdom to know which is necessary at a particular moment. In the words of the trainer we worked with, he's afraid on nothing, and can go from cuddle to kill and back to cuddle in a matter of seconds. He projects that ability, which, with the exception of the bear, has resulted in a peaceful like for him.

It makes everyone angry when I write or say this, and I have the greatest respect for Martin Luther King (One of his biographies is sitting on my desk as I write this), but I remember the conversations my family had on Sundays after church (one of the reasons I'm agnostic today), and the fact that organizations like the Black Panthers were lurking in the background, as a reminder of the alternative to peaceful change, did make a difference. This is not to take away from nonviolence. It is my preference, but nonviolence works best with a threat of the alternative in the background. As a Marine officer in my counterinsurgency training more than thirty years ago once commented, "Let 'em turn the other cheek. I got enough bullets for all the cheeks they can turn. That same officer took the easy availability of firearms in the U.S. far more seriously."

[FailureToCommunicate]

15. Very very interesting. Did the farm workers know who you were? Or rather your father?

Seems like that took some courage.

[laughingliberal]

11. This is so exactly where we are. Those who have are not being consumed are quietly grazing

Were anyone to ask those quietly grazing why they are not doing anything to help those being consumed we would be told all about how it was their fault they were being consumed and how the way to keep from being consumed is to take personal responsibility. Getting rid of the predators never enters their mind. The predators, in the case of our country, are the wealthy corporate interests that are manipulating the resources and channeling it all to the top.

[eleny]

3. Thanks for the refresher!

[Mira]

12. Recommended!