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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 1/30/09

In the Week of the Economic Circus: Which Way Recovery?

By Danny Schechter  Posted by Deborah Emin (about the submitter)       (Page 2 of 2 pages) Become a premium member to see this article and all articles as one long page.   No comments
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“ACORN's strategy has two objectives: help affected families stay in their homes and create the political will necessary to implement a comprehensive solution in the face of the full court press lobbying effort the financial industry is running - an effort that cuts homeowners out of any recovery package.

Thus ACORN's campaign is working to put the human faces of foreclosure victims front and center while escalating the campaign tactics to include civil disobedience aimed at keeping people from losing their homes. Everything is on the table: disruption of sales, disruption of banking business, even refusing to be evicted or moving families back into their foreclosed homes. The urgency of the crisis demands no less.”

At the moment, this type of resistance has been seen as a side show in this circus, but with a few high profile acts—like that factory takeover by workers in Chicago— this too might spread just as the sit-ins that spread the civil rights movement in the era of the Kennedy Adminsitation.

Right now the debate about economic recovery seems abstract,  revolving around billion dollar plans that sound good but may not work.  As the crisis deepens, anger will rise and revolts are likely to follow. The locus of change will move from the suites to the streets.

Change doesn’t only come from above. The Obama Administration will do what it can but it does not have the majority it needs in Congress to impose a solution (if there is one to be imposed!)

As Frederick Douglass understood centuries ago, “power yields nothing without a demand.”  We may be in a new era but there are some old truths that still must guide us. We need to know what constitutes economic fairness and justice and push to get it.

Mediachannel News Dissector Danny Schechter is the author of PLUNDER; Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books at Amazon.com) Comments to dissector@mediachanel.org

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Deborah Emin is the founder of the publishing company, Sullivan Street Press (www.sullivanstreetpress.com). She is also the impressario of the Itinerant Book Show as well as the program director of the REZ Reading Series in Kew Gardens, NY. Her (more...)
 
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