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 360ยบ 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
