Clearly, such actions are fraught with dangers. Jail, violence, and plenty of emotional turmoil might inevitably erupt from such strong, radical actions. But, at least plausibly, the State's minions would have no choice but to suggest to their bankster clientele that they would be better served to bargain with people, letting them stay in their homes, than to dance along the precipice of the social chasm that organized people in such circumstances delineate.
Michael Moore's film, "Capitalism: a Love Story," has scenes that contain tactical activity of this sort in defense of owners. The point is not to say, in advance, that such and such a configuration of effort is the best way to proceed, or the only method to consider. Still, something that brings people together, causes the authorities to confront the human toll and human commitment involved here, and takes a definite, direct stand for letting people keep their homes has to be worth trying.
GATHERING AND FOCUSING FAR-FLUNG BATTALIONS OF THE BESET, #1 by Jack Parrott
GATHERING AND FOCUSING FAR-FLUNG BATTALIONS OF THE BESET, #1
If only twenty per cent of the minimum number of Georgia's residents who have had their homes stripped away, or who are about to suffer that fate, were to gather on the State capitol's steps, then downtown Atlanta would host 100,000 citizens who had decided to exercise their first amendment rights in an expressive manner. Seeking redress of grievances is the promise of the American way; the Founding Fathers did not anticipate courts as being the main mechanism for such demands.
How would the process evolve? What would be the 'order of battle,' the nature of the program, and such as that? Who would be the master of ceremonies? How long would folks stay, what songs would they sing, what prayers would they pray?
The answers to these questions must be part of the process of pulling people together. But the mere fact of 100,000 or more people, of one mind--that homeland security is impossible without homeowner justice--would force a shift in everything that followed.
And if the gathering did not yield tangible benefits, the flock could return. They could keep returning. The First Amendment guarantees it. The power of a united people means that, in the final analysis, such actions will always succeed, unless the people waver in their courage and their solidarity.
GATHERING AND FOCUSING FAR-FLUNG BATTALIONS OF THE by public domain
GATHERING AND FOCUSING FAR-FLUNG BATTALIONS OF THE BESET, #2
The United States has a long legacy--Coxey's Army in 1893; the Bonus Army of veterans in 1932; the 1963 Poor-People's March for Jobs and Freedom--of taking mass popular protest to the nation's capitol. Quite likely, ten million or more cohorts have undergone, or are undergoing, what this humble correspondent is experiencing in the maw of foreclosure and dispossession of a home, purchased in good faith, paid for meticulously, and then lost in a devolutionary spiral of economic decline.
A sizable chunk of that ten-million-strong parade might find a way to make a stand for justice. They would be standing for much more than themselves as individuals. They would be standing for the possibility that communities of working people in this country have to find a way to express their collective strength, or the future for them and their children will be at best a bleak morass of decline and dissolution.
Most importantly of all, on the State level to some extent, but constantly on the Federal stage, working folks would have a chance to learn an invaluable lesson. The same forces that strip homes away from families are the same forces that strip jobs from communities, and these are the same forces that send young people to jail for trivial transgressions, which are in turn the same forces that rip public schools to shreds and leave youngsters unable to fend for themselves in any marketable manner. And these are, in sum, the forces of empire and billion-dollar banking bonuses.
And the extension of this consciousness of class oppression then opens up the chance to extend a vision of class power. The people built the houses, so they will take them for their homes. The people made the factories profitable, so they shall, as a matter of potency and choice, insist that their jobs there continue. The people are the teachers and the students and the authors-of-the-textbooks and the livers-of-the-history and the writers-of-the-poems, so every school could reflect that greatness that is a people united in mutual recognition and linked in purpose.
And the prisons would not house one out of a hundred; not even one out of a thousand would reside there. Too much is available to accomplish, if the working people take charge of getting it done, too many opportunities exist for people to live decently and effectively, to allow such travesties of justice to continue. Americans, in unity with citizens from all over the world, have this capacity: they can choose to live together like the kings of old; or they can decide to slink into darkness, spit at each other and their own children, and let the plutocrats continue to plunder and rule.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
