Mobilization Without Method Is Meaningless

 

Everyone knows this expression:  There was method to his madness.

What does it mean?  It means that regardless of how crazy the person acted, no matter how much he appeared to be nuts, behind that facade there was a solid plan, and that plan presumably resulted in successfully achieving what he set out to achieve.

It is this sense of 'method' I'm referring to in the title of this essay.

If there is any doubt about my message, here it is:  To mobilize people behind any cause, regardless of how worthy that cause is, regardless of how intrinsically appealing it may be to get these folks marching, singing, chanting, shouting for that cause, if there is no clear strategy which targets an equally clear and obvious outcome, with a realistic expectation that the strategy will achieve that outcome, then the mobilization is a waste of time.

I didn't say it wasn't fun or satisfying.  I didn't say it didn't have notable and perhaps positive collateral effects.  But I am saying that anyone who thinks that mobilization is some guarantee of making substantial change and achieving desired reforms is surely kidding themselves.

This is why, despite being the biggest mass movement in recent history, OWS completely failed.  Spokespersons for OWS will say it didn't fail at all, because it had no preconceived agenda or goals.  But that is a frivolous cop out.  By the time OWS went international and 'occupy' was attached to everything from towns to shopping malls, labor unions, and even Facebook, there was certainly a goal.  It may not have appeared on any official documents, but that was because as an experiment in unstructured, horizontal command-and-control, married to spontaneous democratic expression, any attempt at formalizing anything at all was discouraged and successfully thwarted.

Nevertheless, it was evident to everyone who watched the marches, read the protest signs, listened to the speeches, or was constantly bombarded by the most successful, ubiquitous meme to erupt in colloquial English in the last five decades -- the 1% vs the 99% -- exactly what all of the brouhaha was about.

In the broader sense, it was about the ruling class -- the 1% -- forcing its elitist world view and self-serving agenda on everyone else -- the 99% -- using their privilege and raw power to callously and ruthlessly turn everyday people into serfs.

In a more specific sense, it was about overwhelming, abusive, and anti-democratic wealth inequality.  It was hardly random that the movement was started in the heart of America's financial district and the anger and vilification was directed at incomprehensibly wealthy investment bankers and Wall Street high-rollers.

Of course, any thoughtful exploration of these two parallel themes -- monopoly on power and obscene accumulation of wealth -- would naturally conclude that they are inextricably related and mutually reinforcing.  Not that there was much analysis going on.  The OWS protests were pretty much an 'it's-us-against-them' affair, with lots of noise and bluster, but with absolutely nothing remotely resembling a grab for power anywhere in sight.

Thus, in terms of specific demands, it was quite common for news commentators to ask:  What do the protestors want?

This was a legitimate if mostly rhetorical question.  As a matter of record, there were no actual demands aired by the movement, much less tacit undercurrents of a coup d'etat.

There weren't any coherent demands, no specific policy proposals, not even obvious ones.  It wouldn't have been out of place, as an example, to at least talk about GBI -- guaranteed basic income -- as a conspicuous path to begin addressing the grotesque level of wealth inequality.

There were no hard and fast calls for student debt forgiveness, free college education, mortgage default relief, capping credit card interest rates, free access to universal health care, and a host of other palliatives which would have somewhat reduced the wealth gap.

This is not a criticism of OWS or anyone who bobbled up, even if temporarily, from the rank-and-file to take credit -- or blame, depending on where you stand in judgment -- for what happened.  OWS was an intriguing and inspiring new experiment in activism, which attempted to skirt the usual pitfalls of hierarchical, top-down organization.  It was what it was, and I believe should be respected for that.
But that doesn't prevent us from learning from it, and taking every precaution to not make the same mistakes again.

If you're going to assemble a mob, give them something to do.

Give them something which will make a substantial and decisive difference.

Camaraderie is a good thing.  It's a social high.  Feeling like you're part of something offers relief from a sense of isolation and helplessness.

But it's only a feeling.  It's not politics.  Politics is about power.  Only power can confront power.
After the marches are done, after the protest signs are put away, when we're in our cars or on buses headed back home, we always need to ask ourselves:  Do we now have power to implement the changes we want?

If the answer is 'no', then we didn't have an effective plan.

The best time for an effective plan is BEFORE we hit the streets, before we march and sing our songs, before we waste valuable time and energy in a frustrating and fruitless attempt to get those NOW IN POWER to do anything for us.  Asking the the ruling elite and their lapdogs in our governing institutions to listen to our demands and serve our interests is like asking a carjacker to be sure and wash our automobile and return it in the morning with a full tank.

Here comes my plug:  I have an end-to-end plan, a carefully-crafted strategy for engaging a broad base of U.S. citizens, uniting them into an overwhelming voting bloc, directed at stopping America's out-of-control militarism and endless wars of aggression.

You can get a general idea here:  The Peace Dividend

Next time we march for peace, we'll know where we're headed and how to get there.

At least, that's the hope that gets me from day to day in these insane times.

---

 

The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World is now available both as an ebook and deluxe paperback at many of the usual outlets . . .

Amazon (Kindle) / US . . . amzn.to/2cpIRfQ
Amazon (Print) / US . . . amzn.to/2cEhnCb
Amazon (Kindle) / Canada . . . amzn.to/2ciZKdl
Amazon (Kindle) / Japan . . . amzn.to/2cbf3TO
Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/2cWxvzd
Kobo (Indigo) . . . bit.ly/2cI8cB6
Apple iTunes . . . apple.co/2cqw7an
Smashwords . . . bit.ly/2cb6Cse
Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/2c3mJsl


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



Mobilization Without Method Is Meaningless

Take it to the streets!

March on the capitol!

March in front of the White House!

Everyone loves a good rally or demonstration.

It's exciting.  Sometimes we even get to see heads busted!

Yep!  Nothing like a whole bunch of people waving hand-drawn signs.

Except these days . . . no one notices.

It used to be the way the "voice" or the "concern" or even the "rage" of the masses could be heard.  We could make those folks at the top of the power pyramid listen to us . . . or else!  Rallies with hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of chanting, marching, yelling, fired up protestors appeared to portend big changes, or at least the potential for them.  These public events -- some massive like the Million Man March in Washington DC on October 16, 1995 -- represented "people power" and grass-roots democracy in its rawest, perhaps most effective, form.  Or so we believed at the time.

Modern mythology would have it that it was the campus protests of the late 60s and early 70s that stopped the Vietnam War.  That feminists burning their bras ushered in the era of equal rights for women.  That the Civil Rights marches beginning with Martin Luther King Jr. leading historic protest marches in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama created critical momentum for historic changes in civil rights laws and an end to persecution of African-Americans.  Even going back to the 30s, we credit demonstrations coupled with various other forms of political and personal activism, with monumental breakthroughs in the improvement of wages, job security and working conditions.

How important these highly visible street demonstrations were to ultimately changing the landscape of America is debatable.

The durability of their effects is not.  Everything went forward, then went in reverse.

Yes, things changed.  There were positive developments which came out of street protests.

But look at the state of things now!

The labor union movement has been all but destroyed.  Wages have been stagnant now for decades.  Union membership is pathetically low.  Worker benefits are being slashed.  Job security is measured in weeks, not years.

Yes, we're out of Vietnam but we're currently engaged in six other wars, have spread our military footprint to 147 nations with over 900 bases, have specials operations and proxy fighters in Africa, Asia, South America -- everywhere! -- doing under the cloak of secrecy whatever these "invisible" fighters do on behalf of the empire builders, using incidentally your tax dollars to wreak havoc across the globe and increase the threat of terrorism.

The assault on women's rights is a 360º affair, with the juggernaut against choice ramping up, the struggle for equal pay going down the same road as the struggle for livable wages, a President-elect who is more known for articulating the advantages of pussy-grabbing than anything resembling coherent policies, females more and more rendered as sex objects in every form of media and entertainment.  Patriarchy is healthily ensconced in the agencies of government and the power centers of crony capitalism.

Set-backs in eliminating racism are prominent on many fronts these days.  Muslims are openly vilified, blacks marginalized, refugees of all shades of brown bartered as political pawns.  Racist slurs, vulgar stereotypes, xenophobic tirades, ultra-nationalistic and even White supremacist memes appear regularly with less salient blow back than we've seen in sixty years.  With our first African-American president we witnessed the fortunes of the African-American community go backwards.  Obama promised early in his presidency to have an adult conversation on race.  He apparently forgot.  Now we have an openly racist incoming administration, a frightening assembly of socially conservative autocrats, which promises to further divide and polarize a frustrated and angry citizenry.

All of these longstanding challenges and crises certainly were well-represented and each had in some forgotten past their 15 minutes of fame and expression in well-organized and highly visible street protests.  Even more recently, we witnessed the promise of the same in the Ferguson and Black Lives Matter marches.

But let's bravely confront some new realities and draw some honest conclusions. 

Apparently, even the best attempts at facilitating reform by mass demonstrations might in the short run be effective, but whatever good comes of it will through steady attrition and relentless pressure by the rich and powerful eventually be undone, often leaving us worse off than when we started.

Look at our democracy.  Well . . . you can't look at our democracy.  It doesn't exist now.  This is our reward for attempting election cycle after election cycle to make adjustments and incremental improvements in the mechanisms of our electoral process.  We used the accepted, official, approved channels to try to make voter registration more efficient and accessible, make ballot counting more transparent and free of error, allegedly make real choice at the polls pervasive.  What we have is a rigged system where literally millions of citizens are denied their constitutional right to vote, electronic voting machines can be programmed to switch votes and leave no paper trail, and the two major parties taking turns gerrymandering any representative verisimilitude out of our local districts.  

As a result, at least for now, our representative democracy is a representative sham.

What can we do?  Protest?  March on our state capitals and Washington DC?

The evidence is unambiguous.  It has recently become obvious that street demonstrations are pretty much a non-starter.  Any attempts at public assembly are so curtailed by police control, protestors are catalogued for future harassment, many are arrested and booked for no better reason than just being there, attempts to document police malfeasance and excessive brutality illegally but no less finally crushed.

Point in case:  Once the "establishment" realized that Occupy Wall Street was gaining serious momentum, it was just a matter of a couple weeks before it was completely taken apart.  The movement was infiltrated by the FBI and local undercover officers, all sorts of new health and safety regulations suddenly popped up, the protesters were intimidated, cleared out, and/or arrested.  This was coordinated from the top and took place nationally in a remarkably well-organized, perfectly-orchestrated eradication of the movement.

The suppression of free speech -- the constitutionally-guaranteed freedom of expression and dissent -- has been assured by corporate and state control of the media. "Perception management" is the new tool of choice -- which is just a euphemism for creating official narratives which bear no relation to actual events but serve the purposes of the ruling class.  The latest assault has taken the form of a neo-McCarthyism, the heavy-handed maligning of dissenting views as fake news and smearing non-establishment journalists and protestors as anti-American thugs, just tools and agents of foreign governments.

The predictable result is that when people get out in the streets to make their voices heard, either they get no media coverage, or they are vilified as anti-patriotic, stray members of a lunatic fringe, or threats to national security.

Even one of the self-identified founders of Occupy Wall Street, Micah White, in a recent interview characterized the use of mass demonstrations as now being largely ineffective.

So what can we do?

Let me propose something which on the surface sounds ludicrous but I believe holds the key to our success.

We need to hide in plain sight!

No, I'm not joking.  In future articles, I'll explain in detail exactly what I mean.  For now, here's a preview of what I'm suggesting . . .

The corporate state now keeps us in check by perpetuating two illusions:  1) We are free, even encouraged to offer input into the system through a number of established channels; and 2) we ultimately express our will and affect the direction of the country by voting.

Thus, we can organize petitions because the powers will just ignore them.

We can conduct opinion polls because they can just discredit and ignore them.

We can organize community groups because that will keep us busy and distracted.

We can vote because ultimately the elite intend to install their own puppets anyway.

Fine!  If in order to prevent an insurrection and real revolution, the rich and powerful wish to continue promoting the myths that we are self-governing, that we have a voice, that our votes count, I say we call their bluff.  They can't complain if we're just being good citizens.  They can't attack us if we appear to be following the rules.

We work within the official channels because . . .

I believe that all of these approved mechanisms can be used to organize the vast majority of Americans into an enormous voting bloc.  We have much more uniting us than dividing us.  But currently we do not control either the conversation, the narrative, or the agenda.  I believe that if we take control of the conversation and narrative, then create -- or 'discover' might be the operating term -- an agenda which aligns with our priorities and needs, not that of the rich and powerful ruling elite, we can mount a soft revolution in this country.

We can do this in plain sight, apparently just being good, obedient citizens.

This will require some creative thinking, thorough planning, and rigorous discipline.

We will definitely need to think way outside the box.  But trust me . . . it can be done!

What we've been doing thus far, street demonstrations being now high on the list, is not working.  

Time for fresh thinking, exciting new tactics, innovative new strategies.

---

For a preview of where I'm heading with this:

Fighting for the Democracy We Deserve was published in September 2015 and also is available both in every popular ebook format and as a deluxe paperback . . .

 
Amazon (Kindle) . . . amzn.to/1VMf2Ft
Amazon (Print) . . . amzn.to/1L9SdIC
Apple (iTunes) . . . apple.co/1JD1YAg
Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/1ZUJUpn
Kobo (Indigo) . . . bit.ly/1IX6rO4
Smashwords . . . bit.ly/22PXWLf
Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/1i7ISFM


The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World is now available both as an ebook and deluxe paperback at many of the usual outlets . . .

  
Amazon (Kindle) / US . . . amzn.to/2cpIRfQ
Amazon (Print) / US . . . amzn.to/2cEhnCb
Amazon (Kindle) / UK . . . amzn.to/2cKXFsV
Amazon (Kindle) / Canada . . . amzn.to/2ciZKdl
Amazon (Kindle) / Japan . . . amzn.to/2cbf3TO
Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/2cWxvzd
Kobo (Indigo) . . . bit.ly/2cI8cB6
Apple iTunes . . . apple.co/2cqw7an
Smashwords . . . bit.ly/2cb6Cse
Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/2c3mJsl



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



Take it to the streets!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkyRe18ICeA

Billionaire Club

 
Does anybody remember when Ted Turner gave away $1 billion of his vast earnings to the U.N.?

How much is a billion dollars?

If you're like me, all those zeroes start to blur. I have a real problem grasping wealth of such scale.

Maybe this will put it in perspective . . .

If you were to spend $10,000 a day, it would take 274 years to go through a billion dollars.

To spend the Koch brothers incomprehensible fortune at $10,000 per day, it would take almost 28,000 years __ it would be 29,394 C.E. when you finished your shopping spree.

Spending one million dollars a day, it would take 214 years to go through the monumental wealth of Gates, and he ended up asking you to borrow a few bucks for bus fare.

There are 2,325 billionaires in America.

There are more than 43 million people living below the poverty line in America today __ which, by the way, shockingly translates to nearly 1 out of every 5 children.

There are 400 unfathomably wealthy people in America who have more money and property than the 150,000,000 individuals in the bottom half of our population.

The .000133% vs. 50%!

Wealth inequality as a scandal and appalling affront to what America is supposed to stand for, lately appears to be taking a backseat in the national conversation, quickly replaced by
catastrophes du jour in the ever-evolving parade of misery and chaos.

But since it undermines the entire premise of our democracy, and shreds the basic
fabric of a society based on fairness and equal opportunity, we must keep it in the forefront of public debate, particularly with the all-important 2016 presidential election coming up fast.

It doesn't look promising. We have flat-Earth Ted Cruz talking like a Rip Van Winkle who just awoke from a nap he started in the 2nd Century. Everyone's concerned about Hillary's
emails when they should be worried about her warmongering and blind
allegiance to the agenda of multinational corporations. Of course, none
of us can sleep nights until we find out where Jeb Bush gets his news, if it's not the New York Times. 

Elizabeth Warren talks the talk but refuses to run for president. Bernie Sanders is out in front of the wealth inequality debate but he's been marginalized, being a socialist and all.

But I remain optimistic. Miracles are possible. Americans are more frustrated
than ever. They still remember the most famous meme in recent history __
the 1% vs. the 99%.

With wealth inequality accelerating, nothing less than the survival of the nation is at stake, demanding that we address this crisis before America turns into a medieval fiefdom or a 3rd World banana republic.

It's certainly my hope that I won't be writing about this again in five years.

But if I do, it'll be titled . . . Trillionaire Club.


[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

Bye-Bye Miss American Pie

 

I love pie charts!

They are so deliciously informative. A good pie chart makes statistics so digestible!

The short and sweet of it is this:

There are 400 incomprehensibly wealthy people in America which possess more wealth
than the 150,000,000 individuals in the bottom half of our population.

The now infamous 1% controls 43% of America's vast riches. And their share is increasing daily.

By the way, I got the pie chart already baked and ready for consumption from an
article that appears at the website for the Curry County Democrats
based in Brookings, Oregon. You can read the whole article here, and I thank them for their tasty work.

Of course, unlike a lot of the social and political crimes against the average
American by our corporate-government oligarchical junta, income
inequality is no secret.

Elizabeth Warren has railed against it. Obama has thrown his expensive hat into the ring. Even the Chair of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, has expressed alarm, a plea for sanity which was more twerking than real love.

From the people themselves, Occupy Wall Street created the most viral meme
in modern history __ the 1% vs. the 99% __ but we saw how that ended
up. The 1% brought some big guns to the skeet shoot and the clay pigeons
turned to dust.

There is hope. But it's down the road. The house of cards, aka the American economy, will collapse and the people at the top will have the furthest to fall.

In the meantime, we can expect more of the same. Which means more to them and less to the rest of us, the slobbering masses who amble idly like anesthetized sheep outside their gated communities and opulent private estates.
 

I will say this. The well-fed titans of economic tyranny at the top get paid well
to stick it to the rest of us. As this graphic shows (sorry it's not a
pie chart but more of a stale cracker), the income ratios between CEOs
and their worker-slaves in America is way off the charts.

When looking at the obsessive hoarding and soul-numbing, society-gutting greed of our privileged patrons of profligacy, we have to ask ourselves: What is the point?

Yes . . . what is the point?
 


To paraphrase that classic song by Don McLean . . .

I remember when the music died
That was the day that I cried 

R. I. P. . . . the American Dream. 

[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

Revolutions Are Like Orgasms

 

Revolutions are like orgasms.

And except for a very few, very fortunate individuals, no one gets off instantly.

America isa mature country. Like the mature among us, it takes a lot longer to
get it up and achieve that much anticipated, highly welcome happy ending.

So along came Occupy Wall Street. Damn! It felt real good. Everybody 
was getting that great feeling, right there where if counts. But the federal
government, party poopers that they are, came busting the doors down.
Talk about spoiling a good time! OWS went limp, as they were being
handcuffed and carted away.

But that'snot the end of the story. That was just the beginning. We'll get that
warm tingling sensation back again. We'll get it up. Next time we're going to 
. . . who knows?

Mobilize, strike, demonstrate, boycott, banish, chide, challenge, mock, maul, maim,
 contain, deter, defy, disassociate, disconnect, discredit, disturb, disrupt . . . disrobe?

 

Well . . . whatever it takes.

And some day __ the sooner the better __ that long overdue happy ending will be ours.

Yes!



[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]