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In various comments I have posted recently I have suggested a summit meeting of a broad range of progressive leaders to decide on points of agreement and action, a sort of counter-Tea Party, if you will. Of course such a coalition will be opposed tooth and nail by the Establishment, including all the major parties and the mass media. This is because it would represent, if it could be brought into being, a much larger portion of the population than the Tea Party. Just look at the Fan pages on Facebook of the people I list below. This is just a beginning. Please add to the list. There are many more.Of course I am for Rob Kall's Bottom Up or grass roots philosophy, but I think our "leaders," meaning the various people we support, have a duty to DEMONSTRATE to us how it is possible to get together and agree on specific political goals despite their differences, and act accordingly. The Bottom Up part would consist of us putting enough pressure on whichever of these leaders we support to do this.
The goal that I would suggest as a beginning is the immediate and total withdrawal of all troops from the Middle East. Once even one major goal like this has become clarified, it will snowball and other common goals will appear. Call it a "Progressive Coalition" or something like that. If this cannot be done, I see no way out of what Paul Craig Roberts and others are predicting, which is either economic chaos and devastation due to collapse of the dollar, or the continuation of US imperial militarism, war with Iran, and very likely nuclear war following that.
Here is the beginning of the list of people I am thinking about, in random order (as they come to my mind): Noam Chomsky, Paul Craig Roberts, Michael Moore, Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, Cynthia McKinney, Alex Jones, Gerald Celente, David Ray Griffin, Cindy Sheehan, Ramsey Clark, Alex Cockburn ... There are many, many more, and I am purposely including people here (e.g., Alex Cockburn, Chomsky) that I have attacked in the past (mainly for their antipathy to what they call "conspiracy theory") to demonstrate the principle.
I don't want to call it the principle of "compromise" because that has negative connotations. "Coalition" or "alliance" would be better because the principle means in fact that we do NOT "compromise" our principles or our other beliefs in our willingness to band together with others for specific political purposes. This should be elementary in democratic politics, but the idea seems to get lost easily -- not the least because, as I said, the Establishment will do EVERYTHING in their power to prevent it from happening. This will be the peaceful revolution we all want.
