17. The Streets and New Leadership The internet and iPhone may have distracted the younger generations into thinking that tweets and virtual realities can quicken the pulse of democratic moments. Good luck. The evidence of history requires reality and interpersonal galvanizing in ways that the worlds of Google and Facebook cannot provide. The accumulation of anti-Trump social media cannot compare with relentless encircling of the White House by relays from 250,000 people committed early to demanding, with the rigor of evidence, rhetoric, artistry and media savvy, that this multiple Moloch must resign.
Amidst the daily provocations of hate, incompetence, corruption, and serial violations of the Constitution and statutes, Trump bludgeons workers, consumers, environment, patients, pensioners and most cruelly children. The invisible so-called "kitchen table" issues of increasing poverty, in attention to climate chaos while the budget busting American Empire is provoking new arms races at the expense of grave domestic necessities must dominate political debate and civic education.
Yet, until the Minneapolis police officers provoked recent recurring demonstrations everywhere, including in front of the White House, the streets have been far too quiet given the most accelerating disabling of our institutions, democratic standards of justice, and taking our nation into reverse toward a dark age that the Trumpsters are institutionalizing.
Mass movements usually arise from massing in the streets around a series of felt injustices and reforms. These arousals are followed up by less than one percent of the citizenry committed to continual engagement and focus on the officials in legislatures and other decisional forums indentured to the corrupt status quo. It is noteworthy that all non-war justice movements in the U.S. were driven by just that small number of civic activists one percent or much less backed by a growing, more aware public opinion. As I wrote in my little book Breaking Through Power: It's Easier Than We Think this small number of people did it again and again throughout American history from the abolitionists to women suffrage to the 19th century farmer, labor populist/progressive drives often associated with third parties; right down to the civil rights, environmental, and consumer accomplishments of recent decades.
This "other" one percent can jumpstart itself. However injections of funds from a few progressive super-rich, to hire 2,000 to 3,000 full time, linked organizers spread through 435 congressional districts can sharply shorten the time span needed to take control of Congress and most of its 535 members who have to heed focused voters far more than campaign money.
Such civic energies in the past prodded the institutions noted above out of their inaction, intimidation, and excuse making into the civic arena. Good forces for a just society can be contagious.
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