It's Time to Join the Resistance

"What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?"-- Thomas Jefferson

Over the past few months, I've heard from many Americans who feel they've lost the power to be heard by their government. From the repeated assaults on our civil liberties to the financial ruin brought about by irresponsible corporations and government officials, Americans feel helpless and beaten down.

Faced with a government that is not heeding their demands, many are simply giving up. But we are far from helpless, and this is not the time to surrender our rights.

Too often, we forget that America began with a revolution. America was born out of the sheer grit and determination of a rebellious group of colonists. These freedom fighters stood their ground. They knew they had rights. And when those rights were systematically violated, they resisted.

Thankfully, there are a growing number of Americans--what I like to refer to as "teaspoons of resistance"--who have not given up the fight and are choosing to exercise their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and "petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

There are many examples. Let me cite a few. In more than 40 cities across the country, growing numbers of Americans have been taking to the streets and staging "tea party protests" to voice their objections to the government's out-of-control spending and its bailout of mega-corporations and bad mortgages. Although no tea is being tossed at these protests, they are gaining in popularity as a way for citizens to express their discontent with government spending gone haywire. In fact, organizers are planning a nationwide Tax-Day Tea Party protest.

Mindy McAlindon of Franklin, Tennessee, is taking a slightly different approach in voicing her discontent about the economy. She plans to bombard the White House with actual tea bags and protest notes. Protesters in other cities are planning to do the same for members of Congress.

More than 10,000 demonstrators in 100 locations across the country recently gathered at the offices of major banks whose behavior both before and since the government bailout "epitomize an era of CEO and corporate excess at the expense of broader prosperity that has weakened the economy."

Thousands will soon travel to Washington, DC, to protest the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The rally, which will take place the day after the sixth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, will reportedly be the first national antiwar demonstration in the United States since President Barack Obama took office.

And then there is Concepcion Picciotto, a small woman in her late 60s who has carried on the longest continuous act of protest in the United States. Since 1981, Picciotto has staged a round-the-clock peace vigil across from the White House in Lafayette Park in the hopes of ending U.S. interventionist wars and banning nuclear weapons. She has thus far managed to outlast four presidents--Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush--and she's planning to outlast Barack Obama.

To fellow activists, Picciotto is a living symbol of resistance and an amazing example of grassroots democracy who understands that power is with the people. Unfortunately, her vigil has not been without its trials. Over the course of the past 28 years, Picciotto says she has been cursed at, spat on and beaten up, arrested and issued $50 citations for illegal "camping" in the park. Nevertheless, she persists in her solitary vigil.

We could use more tireless freedom fighters such as Concepcion Picciotto today. Yet she is merely one of a long and historic line of Americans to stage populist protests in the form of sleep-ins, sit-ins and marches to oppose government policies, counter injustice and bring about change.

For example, in May of 1932, more than 43,000 people--World War I veterans and their families-- marched on Washington. Out of work, destitute and with families to feed, the veterans set up tent cities in the nation's capital and refused to leave until the government agreed to pay the bonuses they had been promised as a reward for their services. The Senate voted against paying them immediately, but the protesters didn't budge. Congress adjourned for the summer, and still the protesters remained encamped. Finally, on July 28, under orders from President Herbert Hoover, the Army descended with tanks and cavalry and drove them out, setting their makeshift camps on fire. Still, the protesters returned the following year, and eventually their efforts not only succeeded in securing payment of the bonuses but contributed to the passage of the G.I. Bill of Rights.

Thus, while protests and acts of resistance may not always achieve immediate results, they're a good place to start. Time and again throughout our nation's history, real change has come at the urging of the people. After all, governments aren't proactive, they're reactive. They only move when you urge them to move. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s is a perfect example. Just imagine how much longer it would have taken to gain equality for African-Americans without the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and so many other fearless black Americans.

Clearly, this is no time to stand silently on the sidelines. It's a time for anger and reform. Most importantly, it's a time for making ourselves heard. And there is no better time to act than the present. As Robert F. Kennedy reminded his listeners in a speech delivered at the University of Cape Town in 1966, "Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard, to share in the decisions of government which shape men's lives. Everything that makes man's life worthwhile--family, work, education, a place to rear one's children and a place to rest one's head--all this depends on decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which does not heed the demands of its people."

What can ordinary citizens do? Instead of sitting around and waiting for someone else to change things, take charge. Never discount the part that everyday citizens play in our nation's future. You can change things, but there can be no action without education. Get educated about your rights and exercise them. Start by reading the Bill of Rights. You can do so online at www.rutherford.org. Or, if you want a copy to keep with you, email me at johnw@rutherford.org and I'll send you a free one.

Most important of all, just get out there and do your part to make sure that your government officials hear you. The best way to ensure that happens is by never giving up, never backing down, and never remaining silent. To quote Dr. King, "If you can't fly, run; if you can't run, walk; if you can't walk, crawl, but by all means keep moving."

It doesn't matter whether you're protesting the economy, the war, the environment or something else altogether. What matters is that you do your part. As that great revolutionary firebrand Samuel Adams pointed out, "It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires in people's minds."

Take some time right now and start your own brushfire for freedom. In the words of one Tea Party organizer, become "10-minute citizens. Take 10 minutes, six days a week and learn about the issues, and then call politicians, or email them, or call talk radio, or write letters to the editor and make your voice heard."

It's midnight in America right now. But the real question is, will there be a dawn? That's up to you and me. The future is in our hands.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/its-time-to-join-the-resi_b_176270.html

The Whole World Is Rioting as the Economic Crisis Worsens -- Why Aren't We?

"The "slave mentality" is stronger in the U.S. than elsewhere, "in part because no other country on earth has so successfully crushed every internal rebellion."

Slaves in the Caribbean for example rebelled a lot more because their oppressors weren't as good at oppressing as Americans were. America has put down every rebellion, brutally, from the Whiskey Rebellion to the Confederate rebellion to the proletarian rebellions, Black Panthers, white militias ... you name it. This creates a powerful slave mentality, a sense that it's pointless to rebel.

Anyone who has witnessed the brutal police riots that have become so common since the infamous "Battle in Seattle" protests against the World Trade Organization in 1999 can tell you there's some merit to the argument."

One must also take into consideration that the U.S. is the most drugged population in the world, drugged by the medical and pharmaceutical industry that most of the population blindly trusts, drugged/poisoned per our water with toxic mind numbing fluorides first used on humans in Nazi, Germany to keep the prisoners docile, poisons in the air we breathe and the food we eat...forced vaccinations. One can't honestly believe that all of those poisons are actually given to us for our protection/health do you??

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted February 3, 2009.

Americans are rightfully angry about the economic decline, but with a few small exceptions, quietly so. Why? It depends on whom you ask.

Explosive anger is spilling out onto the streets of Europe. The meltdown of the global economy is igniting massive social unrest in a region that has long been a symbol of political stability and social cohesion. 

It's not a new trend: A wave of upheaval is spreading from the poorer countries on the periphery of the global economy to the prosperous core.

Over the past few years, a series of riots spread across what is patronizingly known as the Third World. Furious mobs have raged against skyrocketing food and energy prices, stagnating wages and unemployment in India, Senegal, Yemen, Indonesia, Morocco, Cameroon, Brazil, Panama, the Philippines, Egypt, Mexico and elsewhere.  

For the most part, those living in wealthier countries took little notice. But now, with the global economy crashing down around us, people in even the wealthiest nations are mad as hell and reacting violently to what they view as an inadequate response to their tumbling economies.

The Telegraph (UK) warned last month that protests over governments' handling of the crisis "are widespread and gathering pace," and "may spark a new revolution": 

A depression triggered in America is being played out in Europe with increasing violence, and other forms of social unrest are spreading. In Iceland, a government has fallen. Workers have marched in Zaragoza, as Spanish unemployment heads towards 20 percent. There have been riots and bloodshed in Greece, protests in Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary and Bulgaria. The police have suppressed public discontent in Russia and will be challenged again at large gatherings this weekend.  

Consider a snapshot of a single week of unrest, courtesy of the Guardian: 

Greece: "There are many wellsprings of the serial protests rolling across Europe. In Athens, it was students and young people who suddenly mobilized to turn parts of the city into no-go areas. They were sick of the lack of jobs and prospects, the failings of the education system and seized with pessimism over their future.

"This week it was the farmers' turn, rolling their tractors out to block the motorways, main road and border crossings across the Balkans to try to obtain better procurement prices for their produce." 

Latvia: "The old Baltic trading city had seen nothing like it since the happy days of kicking out the Russians and overthrowing communism two decades ago. More than 10,000 people converged on the 13th century cathedral to show the Latvian government what they thought of its efforts at containing the economic crisis. The peaceful protest morphed into a late-night rampage as a minority headed for the parliament, battled with riot police and trashed parts of the old city. The following day, there were similar scenes in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital next door."

France: "Burned-out cars, masked youths, smashed shop windows and more than a million striking workers. The scenes from France are familiar, but not so familiar to President Nicolas Sarkozy, confronting the first big wave of industrial unrest of his time in the Elysée Palace.

"France, meanwhile, is moving into recession, and unemployment is going up. The latest jobless figures were to have been released yesterday, but were held back, apparently for fear of inflaming the protests." 

Explosive anger is spilling out onto the streets of Europe. The meltdown of the global economy is igniting massive social unrest in a region that has long been a symbol of political stability and social cohesion. 

It's not a new trend: A wave of upheaval is spreading from the poorer countries on the periphery of the global economy to the prosperous core.

Over the past few years, a series of riots spread across what is patronizingly known as the Third World. Furious mobs have raged against skyrocketing food and energy prices, stagnating wages and unemployment in India, Senegal, Yemen, Indonesia, Morocco, Cameroon, Brazil, Panama, the Philippines, Egypt, Mexico and elsewhere.  

For the most part, those living in wealthier countries took little notice. But now, with the global economy crashing down around us, people in even the wealthiest nations are mad as hell and reacting violently to what they view as an inadequate response to their tumbling economies.

The Telegraph (UK) warned last month that protests over governments' handling of the crisis "are widespread and gathering pace," and "may spark a new revolution": 

A depression triggered in America is being played out in Europe with increasing violence, and other forms of social unrest are spreading. In Iceland, a government has fallen. Workers have marched in Zaragoza, as Spanish unemployment heads towards 20 percent. There have been riots and bloodshed in Greece, protests in Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary and Bulgaria. The police have suppressed public discontent in Russia and will be challenged again at large gatherings this weekend.  

Consider a snapshot of a single week of unrest, courtesy of the Guardian: 

Greece: "There are many wellsprings of the serial protests rolling across Europe. In Athens, it was students and young people who suddenly mobilized to turn parts of the city into no-go areas. They were sick of the lack of jobs and prospects, the failings of the education system and seized with pessimism over their future.

"This week it was the farmers' turn, rolling their tractors out to block the motorways, main road and border crossings across the Balkans to try to obtain better procurement prices for their produce." 

Latvia: "The old Baltic trading city had seen nothing like it since the happy days of kicking out the Russians and overthrowing communism two decades ago. More than 10,000 people converged on the 13th century cathedral to show the Latvian government what they thought of its efforts at containing the economic crisis. The peaceful protest morphed into a late-night rampage as a minority headed for the parliament, battled with riot police and trashed parts of the old city. The following day, there were similar scenes in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital nextdoor."

France: "Burned-out cars, masked youths, smashed shop windows and more than a million striking workers. The scenes from France are familiar, but not so familiar to President Nicolas Sarkozy, confronting the first big wave of industrial unrest of his time in the Elysée Palace.

"France, meanwhile, is moving into recession, and unemployment is going up. The latest jobless figures were to have been released yesterday, but were held back, apparently for fear of inflaming the protests."

Iceland: "Proud of its status as one of the world's most developed, most productive and most equal societies, Iceland is in the throes of what is, by its staid standards, a revolution.

"Riot police in Reykjavik, the coolest of capitals. Building bonfires in front of the world's oldest parliament. The yogurt flying at the free market men who have run the country for decades and brought it to its knees." 

Britain (via the Times of London): "Wildcat strikes flared at more than 19 sites across the country in response to claims that British tradesmen were being barred from construction jobs by contractors using cheaper foreign workers." 

Russia (via Al-Jazeera): "Thousands of protesters have rallied across Russia to criticize the government's economic policies and its response to the global financial crisis.

"Russian police forcefully broke up many of the anti-government protests on Saturday, arresting dozens of demonstrators."

At least in Western Europe, cries of "burn the shit down!" are being heard in countries with some of the highest standards of living in the world -- states with adequate social safety nets; countries where all citizens have access to decent health care and heavily subsidized educations. Places where minimum wages are also living wages, and a dignified retirement is in large part guaranteed.  

The far ends of the ideological spectrum appear to be gaining currency as the crisis develops, and people grow increasingly hostile toward the politics of the status quo.

The Financial Times quotes Olivier Besancenot, a young leader of "France's extreme left," promising "to reinvent and re-establish the anti-capitalist project." "We want the established powers to be blown apart," Besancenot said. Europe's far right is gaining momentum, too, using the economy and populist outrage over immigration to gain a legitimacy it hasn't enjoyed in some time. 

Notably absent from the list of countries where the economic crunch is rending the social fabric is the good ole US of A, a state with the greatest level of economic inequality in the wealthy world.

Outside of a few scattered and quickly contained protests, the citizens of the U.S. -- a country born of revolution, but with an elite that's been terrified of that legacy since immediately after its founding -- have been calm, despite opinion polls showing that Americans are more dissatisfied with the direction in which the country has been headed since they began measuring such things.  

It's a baffling disconnect, considering that real wages for all but the top 10 percent of the economic pile haven't increased in 35 years.

It's more bizarre still when you consider that while European governments have handled their own bailouts relatively transparently, the U.S. government has doled out close to $10 trillion in bailouts, loan guarantees and fiscal stimulus -- if there were a million-dollar bill, that would be a stack of 10 million of them -- with a stunning lack of oversight or accountability.

Even the congressional commission charged with overseeing key parts of the banking bailout can't get answers to basic questions like "who's getting what?"

Americans are rightfully angry about that state of affairs, but with a few small exceptions, quietly so. Why? It depends on whom you ask. 

In a 2006 interview with Harper's, Barack Obama shared a subtle, but rather fundamental observation about America's political culture: "Since the founding," he said, "the American political tradition has been reformist, not revolutionary."  If there is to be positive change, Obama has argued, it must be gradual; "brick by brick," as he put it in one of his final campaign speeches.

Mark Ames, author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion -- From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond, argues that Americans have been beaten down to a degree that they're now a pacified population, largely willing to accept any economic outrage its elites impose on them.

In a 2005 interview with AlterNet, Ames said the "slave mentality" is stronger in the U.S. than elsewhere, "in part because no other country on earth has so successfully crushed every internal rebellion."  

Slaves in the Caribbean for example rebelled a lot more because their oppressors weren't as good at oppressing as Americans were. America has put down every rebellion, brutally, from the Whiskey Rebellion to the Confederate rebellion to the proletarian rebellions, Black Panthers, white militias ... you name it. This creates a powerful slave mentality, a sense that it's pointless to rebel. 

Anyone who has witnessed the brutal police riots that have become so common since the infamous "Battle in Seattle" protests against the World Trade Organization in 1999 can tell you there's some merit to the argument. 

It's also the case that European societies tend to be more homogenous than the mishmash of tribes we call the United States. Whereas Americans are divided by religion, region, ethnicity, urban-rural tensions and all the other trappings of the "culture wars," the primary split in most European countries is class.

Thomas Frank argued eloquently in What's the Matter With Kansas that those wedge social issues that the American right nurtures with such care obscure the fundamental differences between the rich and poor, the powerful and the disenfranchised.

Indeed, any hint of discussion of economic inequality in the U.S. is shot down with cries of "class warfare" -- exactly what is playing out in the streets of much of the world today. 

As the crisis deepens, as virtually every analyst predicts it will, that may well change. As The Nation's Bill Greider told Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, "you can't do this to people year after year -- that is, upturn their lives, take away what they thought they had earned, and so forth and so on, without provoking rather intense political reactions. ... We're just, just beginning to see a few bubbles like that around this country. I don't say we're going to have riots, but I think ... people, out of their own distress and anger, will organize their own politics, and they will make themselves seen and heard around this country."

Stay tuned.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/124836?page=3