This is like going into a fight with another boxer and saying ahead of time, “I will not use my best punch against you. I will not try to knock you out. Now let’s fight and see who ends up winning!” Which fighter would you put your money on?
When the people confine themselves to lobbying and threatening to not vote for someone as their sole bargaining chip, they are likewise saying that they will not do the one thing that public officials do actually fear and will actually respond to: when the people go beyond politics (and business) as usual, embracing and gladly expressing their independent power to create a political atmosphere and dynamic in the society where their sentiments and demands are something to be reckoned with!
As long as the relationship between public officials and the people remains one in which the people restrict their actions to that of appealing to public officials, the people will be relinquishing the heart and soul of their real power.
In Michael Moore’s film “Sicko,” an expatriate American living in Paris, trying to explain why social programs and job benefits are so superior in France to that of the U.S., says: “In France, the government fears the people. In America the people fear the government.”
Governments in France fear the people because the people are willing, seemingly at the drop of a hat (or beret in their case), to take to the streets and demonstrate.
The people of this country will forever be held in the thrall of the powers-that-be unless and until we free ourselves of the mistaken belief that our only role is to vote every four to six years for our representatives. As our earlier quoted impeachment activist interprets it, the people’s power “drops to zero” after an election.
Demonstrating at the DNC
In response to World Can’t Wait’s statement that demonstrating in Denver at the August 2008 Democratic National Convention would not principally be to “pressure Congress,” this same impeachment activist said: “If our purpose is not to be ‘pressuring congress,’ what on earth could it be? Demonstrating for the sake of demonstrating?”
Demonstrating isn’t merely an expressive exercise – although what would be wrong with that? What could be wrong with the people showing how they feel and voicing their minds? How could that be a waste of time? Isn’t this the people’s right?
The people acting as an independent political force on the scene, the popular will being exercised and expressed in material and symbolic form - these are extraordinarily powerful and all too infrequent events. In the 1960s, the ubiquitous peace symbol, long hair and protest music were signs of a society-wide repudiation of the policies and practices of those in power.
When President Nixon began withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam in 1969, he didn’t do it because he wanted to - precisely the opposite. He wanted desperately to continue to prosecute that war. He had had, in fact, plans to use nukes on Vietnam, plans that he quashed when he saw the size of the anti-war demonstrations on October 5, 1969, the Vietnam Moratorium, when two million people around the country - on a weekday - walked out.
Nixon was forced to withdraw from Vietnam by the fact that the Vietnamese people were winning the war, U.S. troops were increasingly refusing to fight and even killing their own officers, the anti-war movement in the U.S. and abroad was determined, powerful and massive, and the credibility of the government was perilously low, with people more likely to believe the anti-war movement than their own government. (At one point in the Sixties, a national survey of college students found 80% thought some kind of revolution was needed.)
Civil rights for blacks were not won through the election of compassionate and liberal politicians. Civil rights were paid for by sweat and blood in the face of insults, rocks, police dogs and billy clubs, fire hoses, tear gas, fists, bullets and bombs. They were won through the powerful grassroots struggle of blacks and their allies in the streets, at the lunch counters, in the buses, in the schools, in Church, and everywhere, demanding change and refusing to accept anything less. They were won in the songs of the times, the attitudes of people in everyday life, folks raising their chins and steeling their nerves: the brave actions of those who risked their lives – with some losing their lives - to fight for change. They were won in spite of those in the White House and Congress who didn’t want to make concessions, but who were forced to do so lest much greater upheaval and even revolution ensued instead.
Greater equality for women was won not through saviors on high in the Democratic or Republican Parties. It was won through the mass struggle of women and their male allies who refused to allow the oppression of women to continue on the level of everyday life and due to their willingness and daring to breach conventions and insist on radical change. Women said: "No, I will not be Harriet to your Ozzie!"
The Eight Hour Day, unions and work safety laws weren’t secured through the sympathy of liberal politicians. They were secured through the determined and heroic struggle of workers and their allies striking, picketing, sitting in, a willingness to stand up in the face of intimidation, beatings and even murder, in the face of machine guns and 2 x 4's, demanding recognition, the right to organize, and the right to a safe working place.
Social security, welfare, unemployment compensation and other New Deal measures didn’t come into being because FDR was such a grand fellow. (Indeed, he did what he did because the very system of capitalism was in danger of being toppled: “I wish that capitalists would see that what I am advocating is … really in the interest of property, for it will save it from revolution.” (The American presidency by Alan Brinkley, Davis Dyer, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994 at p. 277).)
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