Neither in community service nor in the arts may one strike the first blow without untoward consequences, even when one's weapons are mere words, unless one speaks with an empowering common vision and powerful allies.
For example, while the Obama administration may have signaled a revival of state support for the arts, Obama appointee Yosi Sergant was blown out of his National Endowment for Arts job when he suggested that artists address health care, education, and the environment, after Fox News mouth Glenn Beck belched.
Similarly, the nonprofit ACORN, which pushed charity too close to empowerment, was entrapped, framed, and slandered by Fox and then unconstitutionally stripped of its funding by the Democratic-controlled Congress. At this writing, the U.S. Eastern New York District Court has just issued an injunction against the funding cut-off.
In both cases, when conservatives led the charge against a civil society of empowerment, liberals led the retreat.
Civil society, according to the London School of Economics refers to the arena of uncoerced collective action, distinct from the state, the family, and the market, but whose relation to state, family, and market remains complex, blurred and negotiated. It is essential to the workings of democracy. Negotiation and uncoercion are key.
The problem is that civil society in the USA is atomized and obsessed with individual victimization, if you will, counseling a foreclosed homeowner here, protesting prison conditions there, advocating for individual identities of race or gender, or writing a pretty lyric about dreams of roses blossoming in the ordure. As we have seen, when civil society challenges power, then state and market will turn from negotiation to coercion, which negates both civil society and democracy.
So how do we revive Hope, now foundered on bank bailouts, militarism, and astroturf tea parties? How do we move to a common vision, a common struggle, and a successful grassroots movement?
One model is what I have observed working and writing in Ecuador, a model adopted in various ways throughout Latin America. Civil society,unions, left parties, NGOs, women, gays, charities, liberation churches, artists have developed a common vision, an alternative to the neoliberal triumphalism of big banks, captive political parties, and free market individualism. In fits and starts, they have made dramatic advances recently across the continent, with the voices of the poor now heard, their needs addressed, and a flowering of people's culture.
It is time for local artists and writers to rebuild their roots in the community and to fulfill their role in civil society. Get your nickels and dimes from Maggie if you can, but unite to demand power to the people.
Originally published at Broken Turtle Blog.
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