How To Light a Prairie Fire Here in the USA, millions of people are continuously
losing their jobs and not finding new ones, millions more are losing
their homes, still more millions are in prison for nothing more than
self-medicating with drugs that arbitrarily happen to be illegal and
will be discriminated against as Those of us who have woken up from our Obama-induced
trance state or never got hypnotized in the first place (because we're
too busy being bombed by drones, for example) are feeling frustrated.
Some of us, certainly, are Backing up a moment, the fact that people are asking
the question where are my fellow outraged citizens tells
me that one important thing is This is, of course, one of those perennial questions
that everyone who yearns for a sane society is trying to answer. If
there were a clear It seems especially worth noting given that in hindsight
everything is a bit less volatile what's happened has happened.
When you're there, You can't organize workers to go out on strike if they
think they'll inevitably lose their jobs and get blacklisted
people are generally willing to strike if they think there's at least
a decent chance that some of their grievances will be redressed. During
the first two decades of the The many thousands of people who were participating
in the movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989 were not planning on being
massacred, they were planning on bringing lasting change in China.
The millions who poured into the streets of Caracas after the coup
against Chavez in Venezuela in 2002 were not planning on being massacred,
either. They were planning on bringing about the return of their president
this way and they were successful. A year later millions of
people pouring into the streets of every city and many small towns
in the US and around the world hoped Of course there are innumerable other factors involved
with movement-building especially successful movement-building
-- aside from It seems to me the first thing people need is a sense
of who is out there. A heck of a lot of people in this country live
in suburbs where they don't know their neighbors and their main contact
with the world is what they see on TV, what they see out the window
of their cars, and what they experience at either of their two jobs.
These people and people around the country need to know that most
of their fellow citizens are also unhappy with the status quo
according to mainstream poll after poll it is clear that First and foremost it is a battle for the hearts and
minds of the people. The ruling elite knows it, that's why they've
bought up most of the The movements that tend to succeed are also broad-based,
inclusive, and more or less democratically organized. There are commonly-held
ideas about Naturally, the ruling elite, their lackeys in Congress and the White House, bought and sold by the Fortune 500, will try to convince us that raising money for political campaigns and then voting in rigged elections is the way forward. (Either that or smashing the windows of your local Starbucks.) They won't tell you that democracy doesn't happen that way. Naturally, the ruling elite will have their own, much better-funded and far more ubiquitous institutions of learning, their media, their outlets of propaganda in Hollywood or Nashville. But when people ask me whether I am hopeful in these dark times, my answer, unequivocally, is yes. Perhaps partially because I take a long view of history. But also because I am privy to a secret that is known well to the powers-that-be: for all the wealth and power of the corporate clique who are ruining the world for their private gain, they still require the consent of the governed. They will throw us crumbs while they rip us off and they will try to give us a false sense of security as we race headlong towards the proverbial wall. But, to use a dangerous word, there are basic truths on our side, and as someone said, ten minutes of truth can counteract 24 hours of lies. We live in a corporate-run empire, not a democratic
republic, and there is a mysterious thing that can happen when enough
people who are being adversely affected by this fact understand it
and realize that they're not alone. I was interviewing veteran organizer
Leslie Cagan for my internet radio show the other day, asking her
about the police infiltrators constantly trying to create divisions
within activist groups. They're What I'm trying to say is, sure, always question tactics,
strategies and visions. But whatever you do, ye fellow members of
the choir, know your That another such moment is coming is certain. What we and our neighbors will do with it is the question. David Rovics David Rovics plays with Attila the Stockbroker
for Love Music Hate Racism in Cambridge CB2 on 29.4.10 |