Don't co-opt OWS and the case for a Constitutional Convention

from macleod cartoons...



i just came back from a journey of the heart where i visited with a very good friend whom i have not visited for way too many years... he is a man i would unabashedly describe as "great," a man who thinks, reads, comes to his own conclusions, and, now in his early 70s, is always unfailingly out ahead of not only his peers but also those of every age group... while the basis of our friendship is clearly based on our intellectual compatibility, his greatness is considerably enhanced by the fact that he chose to spend his working life as an aircraft mechanic and devoted his spare time to raising children, building houses and collectible race cars, and crafting a relationship with a fine and strong woman which will culminate next month in a 50-year wedding anniversary celebration...

in the extended conversations i was privileged to have with him over the few days we spent together, conversations that, as you might expect, ranged all over the map, we honed in on most of the salient political and social issues of the day... i shared with him my somewhat peripheral involvement with the occupy movement and my experiences working, traveling and living in many foreign countries, and we ended up mutually reaching for some sort of macro solution to the problems that are dogging our country...

interestingly enough, the solution he has in mind and one that i would be at great pains to disagree with, is convening a constitutional convention... he is a student of howard zinn and agrees with zinn that our system has been seriously flawed from the beginning... while my gut reaction was to immediately want to defend the u.s. constitution as the unimpeachable product of the founders, it didn't take me but a few moments of reflection to follow his reasoning...

here's glenn struggling with the current state of the occupy movement and expressing his profound hope that it doesn't get pulled in to the political/electoral morass...

I disagree with the prevailing wisdom that OWS should begin formulating specific legislative demands and working to elect specific candidates. I have no doubt that many OWS protesters will ultimately vote and even work for certain candidates — and that makes sense — but the U.S. desperately needs a citizen movement devoted to working outside of political and legal institutions and that is designed to be a place of dissent against it. Integrating it into that system is a way of narrowing its appeal and, worse, sapping it of its unique attributes and fear-generating potency. Even if you believe the U.S. has some sort of vibrant democracy — rather than a democracy-immune oligarchy — not all change needs to come exclusively from voting and electoral politics. Citizen movements can change the political culture in ways other than working within that pre-established electoral system; indeed, when that system becomes fundamentally corrupted, working outside of it is the only means of effectuating real change.

[...]

I hope OWS, at least for now, remains a movement that refuses to reduce itself into garden-variety electoral politics. What is missing from America is a healthy fear in the hearts and minds of the most powerful political and financial factions of the consequences of their continued pilfering, corporatism, and corrupt crony capitalism, and only this sort of movement — untethered from the pacifying rules of our political and media institutions — can re-impose that healthy fear.

inspiring "a healthy fear in the hearts and minds of the most powerful political and financial factions," as laudable as that goal is at this moment in time, doesn't get us to where we so desperately need to go - a re-imagined, workable, transparent, equitable system that works for all of us... to me, THAT is the desired end state and absolutely nothing else will do... now, how do we get there...?

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Chris Hedges says "this one could take them all down." I sure hope he's right

chris hedges...

What happens is in all of these movements ... the foot soldiers of the elite -- the blue uniformed police, the mechanisms of control -- finally don't want to impede the movement and at that point the power elite is left defenseless ... the only thing I can say having been in the middle of similar movements is that this one is real, and this one could take them all down ... I can guarantee you that huge segments of those blue uniformed police sympathize with everything that you're doing.

well worth watching... the best part is when hedges has to choke back his tears at the end... after being exposed to his tendency to rant - a tendency i tend to indulge in myself - it's heartwarming to see that side of his humanity...

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Scott Horton: The American empire must be stopped

no comments necessary... just watch...

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Citizens assemblies make slow progress in slowing down the mining industry's planned rape of Argentina

the rest of the world really ought to sit up and pay attention to the plethora of popular movements in latin america... they may be struggling against the powerful, monied elites, but at least they're out there DOING something...

Gathering in the Province of San Juan, the heart of the Argentinean mining industry, representatives of the Union of Citizens Assemblies reaffirmed their commitment to fighting an economic model which is plundering natural resources and destroying livelihoods.

[...]

Defined loosely as Citizens Assemblies, these organizations emerged in Argentina during the 1990s in response to the rapid advance of an economic model focused on the extraction or cultivation of primary materials for exportation.

“The neoliberal model pursued in particular by President Menem and which continues to a large extent today is one which values business interests and profit over the environment and the well-being of the population,” says Ramon Gomez of the Citizen’s Assembly of San Juan. “This model was imposed on us–there was no consultation whatsoever despite the fact that the arrival of multinational companies and the plundering of our natural resources, has a massive impact on our lives. It would have been suicide for us not to react–we had to come out and defend our lives and the environment. And so we began to organize and to present alternatives.”

Citizens Assemblies have since become important alternative spaces for involving citizens in local and national politics.

“As these spaces do not exist within institutional politics which in Argentina continue to be anti-democratic, we had to create them ourselves, they have become the only way we can have our voices heard,” says Gomez.

Among the main actions taken by Citizens Assemblies to demand change and express their repudiation of the current economic model are: road blocks, including blocking transportation of machinery or materials to the plants of multinational companies, mass demonstrations, events to humiliate public figures known as “escraches”, and symbolic hunger strikes. They also carry out information and education campaigns and research on an ongoing basis.

According to Gomez, the assemblies evolved naturally, based on a conviction that people power is the only way to bring about change.

they've got a real uphill battle on their hands, now that argentina has been tagged as a very ripe, relatively unexploited mining area...

Hailed as the mining industry’s “rising star,” with 75 per cent of its mining potential still unexplored, companies from countries including the U.S., Canada and South Africa have all expressed an interest in working in Argentina. Eighteen large-scale projects are planned for 2015, including one which would straddle the Andean peaks between Argentina and Chile. Known as the Pascual Lama project, it is lead by the world's largest gold miner, Barrick Gold Corp, of which former president George Bush the senior is amongst its board of directors.

when i taught my course a couple of summers ago in elko, nevada, the students were primarily from the mining industry, not a few of them from barrick... i got to tour a barrick open pit gold mine and was fascinated by the giant machinery and the unbelievable amounts of rock that have to be pulverized in order to obtain the tiniest amount of gold... i was also quite frankly horrified at the use of cyanide... yes, i knew cyanide was used in the process, but to see it up close, dripping into huge vats of mineral slurry is quite another level of reality... the guy who showed me around stressed barrick's mitigation procedures and showed me the extensive protections around their holding ponds... i was just stunned with the scale of the whole thing... also, i was acutely aware that i was seeing an operation that was under u.s. and nevada environmental regulations... god forbid what the same kind of operation would be like here in argentina...

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John Edwards is on the right track - the system is broken and it's up to us to fix it

from his "corporate democrats" speech, via alternet...

Real change starts with being honest -- the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken. It's rigged by greedy corporate powers to protect corporate profits. It's rigged by the very wealthy to ensure they become even wealthier. At the end of the day, it's rigged by all those who benefit from the established order of things. For them, more of the same means more money and more power. They'll do anything they can to keep things just the way they are -- not for the country, but for themselves.

[...]

You cannot deal with them on their terms. You cannot play by their rules, sit at their table, or give them a seat at yours. They will not give up their power -- you have to take it from them.

and there needs to be one HELL of a lot more emphasis on the following...

[I]t's time for the American people to take responsibility for our government -- for in our democracy it is truly ours. If we have come to mistrust and question it, it is because we were not vigilant against the forces that have taken it from us.

i had an online chat yesterday with an old friend... she's a reasonably intelligent person but, for reasons of small kids, a husband that loves football and hates the news, and no strong attraction to news on her part either, she only recently stumbled on all of the doubts and questions floating around out there about 9/11... she was asking me a lot of questions and i pointed her to some of the resources i've perused, and she was asking me whether or not i thought it was a conspiracy or even an inside job... i told her the same thing i say to everybody who asks that kind of question, "i believe everything and i believe nothing..." do i believe a 9/11 inside job is a possibility...? absolutely... do i believe it was...? i simply don't know...

the reason i cite the chat with my friend was my amazement that, in august 2007, someone would not have already been aware of the 9/11 conspiracy theories... but, as i thought about it, i had to admit that there are probably lots of people in her position... they get what information they have from tv news and probably don't pay all that much attention to it even then... mostly, they just go about their daily lives and, as long as their own immediate world isn't disturbed, they don't bestir themselves to become any better informed...

so, what does this have to do with john edwards...? he says that american people need to take more responsibility for our own government, that we have not been vigilant... and, imho, that is a serious understatement... it's easy to play the part of victim... indeed, there's a strong victim mentality that underlies much of our society... but we must also remember, an outlaw presidency like bushco has managed to accrue the power it has because we, the people of the united states, have given it away... it's way past time to take it back...

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To Write is to Act

from Bluepete:

Scribere est agere, fancy Latin words, a legal maxim, 'To write is to act.' '... the author who is bound to write is the man or woman who has acquired, by the continual study of years, exceptional sources of knowledge. If that knowledge is not bequeathed, posterity is a heavy loser.' These are fine words, however, people usually write for lesser reasons. George Orwell in his book, Why I Write (1947) thought there are four great motives for writing: first, sheer egoism, a desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death; second, aesthetic enthusiasm; Third, historical impulse, the desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity; and fourth, for a political purpose, and in the use of the word 'political,' Orwell meant to use the word in its widest possible sense, viz., a desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people's idea of the kind of society that they should strive after."

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Let's celebrate the demise of the "old ways"

- QUOTATION OF THE DAY -

"This is all being made up as we go along. It is difficult to apply the old ways campaigns were run in late 20th century to this new wide-open citizen-led politics."

- SIMON ROSENBERG, of the New Democrat Network, on politicians' use of the Internet.

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