Obama Needs a Protest Movement
EconomicDemocracy Coop
should do ..But if naming our favored policies is the main thing we
do, we are headed for a terrible letdown. Let's face it: Barack Obama
is..a skillful politician. That means he will calculate whom he has to
conciliate and whom he can ignore in realms dominated by big-money
contributors from Wall Street, powerful business lobbyists and a
Congress that includes conservative Blue Dog and Wall Street-oriented
Democrats. I don't say this to disparage Obama. It is simply the way
it is.."
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Obama Needs a Protest Movement
By Frances Fox Piven
The astonishing election of 2008 is over. Whatever else the future
holds, the unchallenged domination of American national government by
big business and the political right has been broken. Even more
amazing, Americans have elected an African-American as president.
These facts alone are rightful cause for jubilation.
Naturally, people are making lists of what the new administration
should do to begin to reverse the decades-long trends toward rising
inequality, unrestrained corporate plunder, ecological disaster,
military adventurism and constricted democracy. But if naming our
favored policies is the main thing we do, we are headed for a terrible
letdown. Let's face it: Barack Obama is not a visionary or even a
movement leader. He became the nominee of the Democratic Party, and
then went on to win the general election, because he is a skillful
politician. That means he will calculate whom he has to conciliate and
whom he can ignore in realms dominated by big-money contributors from
Wall Street, powerful business lobbyists and a Congress that includes
conservative Blue Dog and Wall Street-oriented Democrats. I don't say
this to disparage Obama. It is simply the way it is, and if Obama was
not the centrist and conciliator he is, he would not have come this
far this fast, and he would not be the president-elect.
Still, the conditions that influence politicians can change. The
promises and hopes generated by election campaigns sometimes help to
raise hopes and set democratic forces in motion that break the grip of
politics as usual. I don't mean that the Obama campaign operation is
likely to be transformed into a continuing movement for reform. A
campaign mobilization is almost surely too flimsy and too dependent on
the candidate to generate the weighty pressures that can hold
politicians accountable. Still, the soaring rhetoric of the campaign;
the slogans like "We are the ones we have been waiting for"; the huge,
young and enthusiastic crowds--all this generates hope, and hope fuels
activism among people who otherwise accept politics as usual.
Sometimes, encouraged by electoral shifts and campaign promises, the
ordinary people who are typically given short shrift in political
calculation become volatile and unruly, impatient with the same old
promises and ruses, and they refuse to cooperate in the institutional
routines that depend on their cooperation. When that happens, their
issues acquire a white-hot urgency, and politicians have to respond,
because they are politicians. In other words, the disorder, stoppages
and institutional breakdowns generated by this sort of collective
action threaten politicians. These periods of mass defiance are
unnerving, and many authoritative voices are even now pointing to the
dangers of pushing the Obama administration too hard and too far. Yet
these are also the moments when ordinary people enter into the
political life of the country and authentic bottom-up reform becomes
possible.
The parallels between the election of 2008 and the election of 1932
are often invoked, with good reason. It is not just that Obama's
oratory is reminiscent of FDR's oratory, or that both men were brought
into office as a result of big electoral shifts, or that both took
power at a moment of economic catastrophe. All this is true, of
course. But I want to make a different point: FDR became a great
president because the mass protests among the unemployed, the aged,
farmers and workers forced him to make choices he would otherwise have
avoided. He did not set out to initiate big new policies. The
Democratic platform of 1932 was not much different from that of 1924
or 1928. But the rise of protest movements forced the new president
and the Democratic Congress to become bold reformers.
The movements of the 1930s were often set in motion by radical
agitators--Communists, Socialists, Musteites--but they were fueled by
desperation and economic calamity. Unemployment demonstrations,
usually (and often not without reason) labeled riots by the press,
began in 1929 and 1930, as crowds assembled, raised demands for "bread
or wages," and then marched on City Hall or local relief offices. In
some places, "bread riots" broke out as crowds of the unemployed
marched on storekeepers to demand food, or simply to take it.
In the big cities, mobs used strong-arm tactics to resist the rising
numbers of evictions. In Harlem and on the Lower East Side, crowds
numbering in the thousands gathered to restore evicted families to
their homes. In Chicago, small groups of black activists marched
through the streets of the ghetto to mobilize the large crowds that
would reinstall evicted families. A rent riot there left three people
dead and three policemen injured in August 1931, but Mayor Anton
Cermak ordered a moratorium on evictions, and some of the rioters got
work relief. Later, in the summer of 1932, Cermak told a House
committee that if the federal government didn't send $150 million for
relief immediately, it should be prepared to send troops later. Even
in Mississippi, Governor Theodore Bilbo told an interviewer, "Folks
are restless. Communism is gaining a foothold. Right here in
Mississippi, some people are about ready to lead a mob. In fact, I'm
getting a little pink myself." Meanwhile, also in the summer of 1932,
farmers across the country armed themselves with pitchforks and clubs
to prevent the delivery of farm products to markets where the price
paid frequently did not cover the cost of production.
Notwithstanding the traditional and conservative platform of the
Democratic Party, FDR's campaign in 1932 registered these disturbances
in new promises to "build from the bottom up and not from the top
down, that put...faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of
the economic pyramid." Economic conditions worsened in the interim
between the election and the inauguration, and the clamor for federal
action became more strident. Within weeks, Roosevelt had submitted
legislation to Congress for public works spending, massive emergency
relief to be implemented by states and localities, agricultural
assistance and an (ultimately unsuccessful) scheme for industrial
recovery.
The unruly protests continued, and in many places they were crucial in
pressuring reluctant state and local officials to implement the
federally initiated aid programs. Then, beginning in 1933, industrial
workers inspired by the rhetorical promises of the new administration
began to demand the right to organize. By the mid-1930s, mass strikes
were a threat to economic recovery and to the Democratic voting
majorities that had put FDR in office. A pro-union labor policy was
far from Roosevelt's mind when he took office in 1933. But by 1935,
with strikes escalating and the election of 1936 approaching, he was
ready to sign the National Labor Relations Act.
Obama's campaign speeches emphasized the theme of a unified America
where divisions bred by race or party are no longer important. But
America is, in fact, divided: by race, by party, by class. And these
divisions will matter greatly as we grapple with the whirlwind of
financial and economic crises, of prospective ecological calamity, of
generational and political change, of widening fissures in the
American empire. I, for one, do not have a blueprint for the future.
Maybe we are truly on the cusp of a new world order, and maybe it will
be a better, more humane order.
In the meantime, however, our government will move on particular
policies to confront the immediate crisis. Whether most Americans will
have an effective voice in these policies will depend on whether we
tap our usually hidden source of power, our ability to refuse to
cooperate on the terms imposed from above.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081201/piven
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STILL FEELING LIKE THE MAINSTREAM U.S. CORPORATE MEDIA
IS GIVING A FULL HONEST PICTURE OF WHAT'S GOING ON?
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dan...@rocketmail.com
wrote:
> "Naturally, people are making lists of what the new administration
> should do ..But if naming our favored policies is the main thing we
> do, we are headed for a terrible letdown. Let's face it: Barack Obama
> is..a skillful politician. That means he will calculate whom he has to
> conciliate and whom he can ignore in realms dominated by big-money
> contributors from Wall Street, powerful business lobbyists and a
> Congress that includes conservative Blue Dog and Wall Street-oriented
> Democrats. I don't say this to disparage Obama. It is simply the way
> it is.."
>
> = = =
>
> Obama Needs a Protest Movement
I am the Obama protest movement. Seriously, I protested against Obama
on election night in San Francisco and wound up being all alone. The
Obama cult was too high on crack to even notice, and several obamoids
saw my "Drinking the Obama Kool-Aid" protest and thought I was serious
and asked me for some Kool-Aid. They would have drank it, too, just
because it was Obama flavor.
*Anarcissie*
I doubt if generic disparagement is going to make many
converts. On the other hand, there are issues like the
continued occupation of Iraq which can be very specific
organizing points. They can be presented not as an
attack on Obama but as assistance in helping him
realize his true, inner self -- the hidden leftist within.