Are You a Civil Society Activist?
by Hooman Askary
Arseh Sevom
...
What is Civil Society
Before trying to delve deep into a practical definition of a “civil society activist” let us see what is exactly meant by a “civil society”.
According to Jeffrey C. Alexander – one of the thinkers who has helped us understand this rather abstract idea – civil society was conceived in the 18th century in a positive way. It was in the words of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, “a burgher, city dweller’s society.” Later, more complex ideas were annexed to the endless definitions and as per a recent version, civil society is “a basic configuration in which society stands apart from the state, develops autonomously and becomes increasingly conscious of such autonomy at both the individual and the collective levels.” All that would translate into an active society wherein citizens take matters related to their community, neighborhood, rights and etc. into their own hands – “civilly”. These activities might include forming associations, clubs, organizations, developing networks and raising awareness on their issues of concern.
Civil Action Takes Patience
In recent decades the concept of civil society has been revived in connection with democratization. In this way of thinking, civil society activism and democratization are strongly correlated. Recent case studies (especially in the Arab world) however, demonstrate that there is more to the establishment of democracies than civil society activism. The two main factors in addition to an active civil society are legislative and administrative elements. These elements in more closed environments, with strong patronage mechanisms, are usually restrictive obstacles thus limiting or, at best, slowing down the process of democratization. Therefore, here is your first lesson: do not expect your efforts, as important as they may be, to yield your desired results over night – learn to be patient.
With this brief introduction to “civil society”, we can now discuss who makes a civil society activist.
Here is our recipe for making one:
1. Do your homework: Activism does not mean much if you don’t have basic awareness of the various aspects/dimensions of your goals. Read your local news, try to familiarize yourself with the history of your cause, speak to people and listen to them, see if anyone has already done anything in this regard or not.
2. Find others: Once you are done with the first step, try to find people who have done similar things in the past. In an environmental example, if your goal is to collect garbage along the riverside, for example, try finding people with similar concerns on social media, in your neighborhood, or by means of searching for them elsewhere. Tip: sometimes finding one link connects you to a whole network. This might further motivate you to do your “homework” thoroughly in the initial step.
3. Expand: We tend to think that activism can start out and go on with only one person; however, it should be remembered that civil society activists must deliberate in what they do; they must take it upon themselves to expand their network whenever they can. The more successful you are in expanding your initial network the more “socially-civil” your activities will be.
4. Raise awareness: As a civil society activist, this should be your main objective. The methods for carrying out such a task vary from place to place and time to time but it is basically upon you to choose ways that are agreed by the public as “civil behavior” that, according to the scholar on Neil L. Whitehead, do not diminish anyone’s power of choice or violate their freedom.
...
To Read the Rest
Showing posts with label Society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Society. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Rebecca Solnit: You Can Crush the Flowers, But You Can’t Stop the Spring
You Can Crush the Flowers, But You Can’t Stop the Spring
By Rebecca Solnit
ZNET
Last Tuesday, I awoke in lower Manhattan to the whirring of helicopters overhead, a war-zone sound that persisted all day and then started up again that Thursday morning, the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and a big day of demonstrations in New York City. It was one of the dozens of ways you could tell that the authorities take Occupy Wall Street seriously, even if they profoundly mistake what kind of danger it poses. If you ever doubted whether you were powerful or you mattered, just look at the reaction to people like you (or your children) camped out in parks from Oakland to Portland, Tucson to Manhattan.
Of course, “camped out” doesn’t quite catch the spirit of the moment, because those campsites are the way people have come together to bear witness to their hopes and fears, to begin to gather their power and discuss what is possible in our disturbingly unhinged world, to make clear how wrong our economic system is, how corrupt the powers that support it are, and to begin the search for a better way. Consider it an irony that the campsites are partly for sleeping, but symbols of the way we have awoken.
When civil society sleeps, we’re just a bunch of individuals absorbed in our private lives. When we awaken, on campgrounds or elsewhere, when we come together in public and find our power, the authorities are terrified. They often reveal their ugly side, their penchant for violence and for hypocrisy.
Consider the liberal mayor of Oakland, who speaks with outrage of people camping without a permit but has nothing to say about the police she dispatched to tear-gas a woman in a wheelchair, shoot a young Iraq war veteran in the head, and assault people while they slept. Consider the billionaire mayor of New York who dispatched the NYPD on a similar middle-of-the-night raid on November 15th. Recall this item included in a bald list of events that night: “tear-gassing the kitchen tent.” Ask yourself when did kitchens really need to be attacked with chemical weapons?
Does an 84-year-old woman need to be tear-gassed in Seattle? Does a three-tours-of-duty veteran need to be beaten until his spleen ruptures in Oakland? Does our former poet laureate need to be bashed in the ribs after his poet wife is thrown to the ground at UC Berkeley? Admittedly, this is a system that regards people as disposable, but not usually so literally.
Two months ago, the latest protests against that system began. The response only confirms our vision of how it all works. They are fighting fire with gasoline. Perhaps being frightened makes them foolish. After all, once civil society rouses itself from slumber, it can be all but unstoppable. (If they were smart they’d try to soothe it back to sleep.) “Arrest one of us; two more appear. You can’t arrest an idea!” said the sign held by a man in a Guy Fawkes mask in reoccupied Zuccotti Park last Thursday.
Last Wednesday in San Francisco, 100 activists occupied the Bank of America, even erecting a symbolic tent inside it in which a dozen activists immediately took refuge. At the Berkeley campus of the University of California, setting up tents on any grounds was forbidden, so the brilliant young occupiers used clusters of helium balloons to float tents overhead, a smart image of defiance and sky-high ambition. And the valiant UC Davis students, after several of them were pepper-sprayed in the face while sitting peacefully on the ground, evicted the police, chanting, “You can go! You can go!” They went.
Occupy Oakland has been busted up three times and still it thrives. To say nothing of the other 1,600 occupations in the growing movement.
Alexander Dubcek, the government official turned hero of the Prague Spring uprising of 1968, once said, “You can crush the flowers, but you can’t stop the spring.”
The busting of Zuccotti Park and the effervescent, ingenious demonstrations elsewhere are a reminder that, despite the literal “occupations” on which this protean movement has been built, it can soar as high as those Berkeley balloons and take many unexpected forms. Another OWS sign, “The beginning is near,” caught the mood of the moment. Flowers seem like the right image for this uprising led by the young, those who have been most crushed by the new economic order, and who bloom by rebelling and rebel by blooming.
The Best and the Worst
Now world-famous Zuccotti Park is just a small concrete and brown marble-paved scrap of land surrounded by tall buildings. Despite the “Occupy Wall Street” label, it’s actually two blocks north of that iconic place. It’s rarely noted that the park is within sight of, and kitty-corner to, Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center towers crumbled.
What was born and what died that day a decade ago has everything to do with what’s going on in and around the park, the country, and the world now. For this, al-Qaeda is remarkably irrelevant, except as the outfit that long ago triggered an incident that instantly released both the best and the worst in our society.
The best was civil society. As I wandered in the Zuccotti Park area last week, I was struck again by how much what really happened on the morning of September 11th has been willfully misremembered. It can be found nowhere in the plaques and monuments. Firemen more than deserve their commemorations, but mostly they acted in vain, on bad orders from above, and with fatally flawed communications equipment. The fact is: the people in the towers and the neighborhood -- think of them as civil society coming together in crisis -- largely rescued themselves, and some of them told the firefighters to head down, not up.
We need memorials to the coworkers who carried their paraplegic accountant colleague down 69 flights of stairs while in peril themselves; to Ada Rosario-Dolch, the principal who got all of the High School for Leadership, a block away, safely evacuated, while knowing her sister had probably been killed in one of those towers; to the female executives who walked the blind newspaper seller to safety in Greenwich Village; to the unarmed passengers of United Flight 93, who were the only ones to combat terrorism effectively that day; and to countless, nameless others. We need monuments to ourselves, to civil society.
Ordinary people shone that morning. They were not terrorized; they were galvanized into action, and they were heroic. And it didn’t stop with that morning either. That day, that week they began to talk about what the events of 9/11 actually meant for them, and they acted to put their world back together, practically and philosophically. All of which terrified the Bush administration, which soon launched not only its “global war on terror” and its invasion of Afghanistan, but a campaign against civil society. It was aimed at convincing each of us that we should stay home, go shopping, fear everything except the government, and spy on each other.
The only monument civil society ever gets is itself, and the satisfaction of continuing to do the work that matters, the work that has no bosses and no paychecks, the work of connecting, caring, understanding, exploring, and transforming. So much about Occupy Wall Street resonates with what came in that brief moment a decade before and then was shut down for years.
That little park that became “occupied” territory brought to mind the way New York’s Union Square became a great public forum in the weeks after 9/11, where everyone could gather to mourn, connect, discuss, debate, bear witness, share food, donate or raise money, write on banners, and simply live in public. (Until the city shut that beautiful forum down in the name of sanitation -- that sacred cow which by now must be mating with the Wall Street Bull somewhere in the vicinity of Zuccotti Park.)
It was remarkable how many New Yorkers lived in public in those weeks after 9/11. Numerous people have since told me nostalgically of how the normal boundaries came down, how everyone made eye contact, how almost anyone could talk to almost anyone else. Zuccotti Park and the other Occupies I’ve visited -- Oakland, San Francisco, Tucson, New Orleans -- have been like that, too. You can talk to strangers. In fact, it’s almost impossible not to, so much do people want to talk, to tell their stories, to hear yours, to discuss our mutual plight and what solutions to it might look like.
It’s as though the great New York-centric moment of openness after 9/11, when we were ready to reexamine our basic assumptions and look each other in the eye, has returned, and this time it’s not confined to New York City, and we’re not ready to let anyone shut it down with rubbish about patriotism and peril, safety and sanitation.
It’s as if the best of the spirit of the Obama presidential campaign of 2008 was back -- without the foolish belief that one man could do it all for civil society. In other words, this is a revolt, among other things, against the confinement of decision-making to a thoroughly corrupted and corporate-money-laced electoral sphere and against the pitfalls of leaders. And it represents the return in a new form of the best of the post-9/11 moment.
As for the worst after 9/11 -- you already know the worst. You’ve lived it. The worst was two treasury-draining wars that helped cave in the American dream, a loss of civil liberties, privacy, and governmental accountability. The worst was the rise of a national security state to almost unimaginable proportions, a rogue state that is our own government, and that doesn’t hesitate to violate with impunity the Geneva Convention, the Bill of Rights, and anything else it cares to trash in the name of American "safety" and "security." The worst was blind fealty to an administration that finished off making this into a country that serves the 1% at the expense, or even the survival, of significant parts of the 99%. More recently, it has returned as another kind of worst: police brutality (speaking of blind fealty to the 1%).
To Read the Rest of the Essay
By Rebecca Solnit
ZNET
Last Tuesday, I awoke in lower Manhattan to the whirring of helicopters overhead, a war-zone sound that persisted all day and then started up again that Thursday morning, the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and a big day of demonstrations in New York City. It was one of the dozens of ways you could tell that the authorities take Occupy Wall Street seriously, even if they profoundly mistake what kind of danger it poses. If you ever doubted whether you were powerful or you mattered, just look at the reaction to people like you (or your children) camped out in parks from Oakland to Portland, Tucson to Manhattan.
Of course, “camped out” doesn’t quite catch the spirit of the moment, because those campsites are the way people have come together to bear witness to their hopes and fears, to begin to gather their power and discuss what is possible in our disturbingly unhinged world, to make clear how wrong our economic system is, how corrupt the powers that support it are, and to begin the search for a better way. Consider it an irony that the campsites are partly for sleeping, but symbols of the way we have awoken.
When civil society sleeps, we’re just a bunch of individuals absorbed in our private lives. When we awaken, on campgrounds or elsewhere, when we come together in public and find our power, the authorities are terrified. They often reveal their ugly side, their penchant for violence and for hypocrisy.
Consider the liberal mayor of Oakland, who speaks with outrage of people camping without a permit but has nothing to say about the police she dispatched to tear-gas a woman in a wheelchair, shoot a young Iraq war veteran in the head, and assault people while they slept. Consider the billionaire mayor of New York who dispatched the NYPD on a similar middle-of-the-night raid on November 15th. Recall this item included in a bald list of events that night: “tear-gassing the kitchen tent.” Ask yourself when did kitchens really need to be attacked with chemical weapons?
Does an 84-year-old woman need to be tear-gassed in Seattle? Does a three-tours-of-duty veteran need to be beaten until his spleen ruptures in Oakland? Does our former poet laureate need to be bashed in the ribs after his poet wife is thrown to the ground at UC Berkeley? Admittedly, this is a system that regards people as disposable, but not usually so literally.
Two months ago, the latest protests against that system began. The response only confirms our vision of how it all works. They are fighting fire with gasoline. Perhaps being frightened makes them foolish. After all, once civil society rouses itself from slumber, it can be all but unstoppable. (If they were smart they’d try to soothe it back to sleep.) “Arrest one of us; two more appear. You can’t arrest an idea!” said the sign held by a man in a Guy Fawkes mask in reoccupied Zuccotti Park last Thursday.
Last Wednesday in San Francisco, 100 activists occupied the Bank of America, even erecting a symbolic tent inside it in which a dozen activists immediately took refuge. At the Berkeley campus of the University of California, setting up tents on any grounds was forbidden, so the brilliant young occupiers used clusters of helium balloons to float tents overhead, a smart image of defiance and sky-high ambition. And the valiant UC Davis students, after several of them were pepper-sprayed in the face while sitting peacefully on the ground, evicted the police, chanting, “You can go! You can go!” They went.
Occupy Oakland has been busted up three times and still it thrives. To say nothing of the other 1,600 occupations in the growing movement.
Alexander Dubcek, the government official turned hero of the Prague Spring uprising of 1968, once said, “You can crush the flowers, but you can’t stop the spring.”
The busting of Zuccotti Park and the effervescent, ingenious demonstrations elsewhere are a reminder that, despite the literal “occupations” on which this protean movement has been built, it can soar as high as those Berkeley balloons and take many unexpected forms. Another OWS sign, “The beginning is near,” caught the mood of the moment. Flowers seem like the right image for this uprising led by the young, those who have been most crushed by the new economic order, and who bloom by rebelling and rebel by blooming.
The Best and the Worst
Now world-famous Zuccotti Park is just a small concrete and brown marble-paved scrap of land surrounded by tall buildings. Despite the “Occupy Wall Street” label, it’s actually two blocks north of that iconic place. It’s rarely noted that the park is within sight of, and kitty-corner to, Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center towers crumbled.
What was born and what died that day a decade ago has everything to do with what’s going on in and around the park, the country, and the world now. For this, al-Qaeda is remarkably irrelevant, except as the outfit that long ago triggered an incident that instantly released both the best and the worst in our society.
The best was civil society. As I wandered in the Zuccotti Park area last week, I was struck again by how much what really happened on the morning of September 11th has been willfully misremembered. It can be found nowhere in the plaques and monuments. Firemen more than deserve their commemorations, but mostly they acted in vain, on bad orders from above, and with fatally flawed communications equipment. The fact is: the people in the towers and the neighborhood -- think of them as civil society coming together in crisis -- largely rescued themselves, and some of them told the firefighters to head down, not up.
We need memorials to the coworkers who carried their paraplegic accountant colleague down 69 flights of stairs while in peril themselves; to Ada Rosario-Dolch, the principal who got all of the High School for Leadership, a block away, safely evacuated, while knowing her sister had probably been killed in one of those towers; to the female executives who walked the blind newspaper seller to safety in Greenwich Village; to the unarmed passengers of United Flight 93, who were the only ones to combat terrorism effectively that day; and to countless, nameless others. We need monuments to ourselves, to civil society.
Ordinary people shone that morning. They were not terrorized; they were galvanized into action, and they were heroic. And it didn’t stop with that morning either. That day, that week they began to talk about what the events of 9/11 actually meant for them, and they acted to put their world back together, practically and philosophically. All of which terrified the Bush administration, which soon launched not only its “global war on terror” and its invasion of Afghanistan, but a campaign against civil society. It was aimed at convincing each of us that we should stay home, go shopping, fear everything except the government, and spy on each other.
The only monument civil society ever gets is itself, and the satisfaction of continuing to do the work that matters, the work that has no bosses and no paychecks, the work of connecting, caring, understanding, exploring, and transforming. So much about Occupy Wall Street resonates with what came in that brief moment a decade before and then was shut down for years.
That little park that became “occupied” territory brought to mind the way New York’s Union Square became a great public forum in the weeks after 9/11, where everyone could gather to mourn, connect, discuss, debate, bear witness, share food, donate or raise money, write on banners, and simply live in public. (Until the city shut that beautiful forum down in the name of sanitation -- that sacred cow which by now must be mating with the Wall Street Bull somewhere in the vicinity of Zuccotti Park.)
It was remarkable how many New Yorkers lived in public in those weeks after 9/11. Numerous people have since told me nostalgically of how the normal boundaries came down, how everyone made eye contact, how almost anyone could talk to almost anyone else. Zuccotti Park and the other Occupies I’ve visited -- Oakland, San Francisco, Tucson, New Orleans -- have been like that, too. You can talk to strangers. In fact, it’s almost impossible not to, so much do people want to talk, to tell their stories, to hear yours, to discuss our mutual plight and what solutions to it might look like.
It’s as though the great New York-centric moment of openness after 9/11, when we were ready to reexamine our basic assumptions and look each other in the eye, has returned, and this time it’s not confined to New York City, and we’re not ready to let anyone shut it down with rubbish about patriotism and peril, safety and sanitation.
It’s as if the best of the spirit of the Obama presidential campaign of 2008 was back -- without the foolish belief that one man could do it all for civil society. In other words, this is a revolt, among other things, against the confinement of decision-making to a thoroughly corrupted and corporate-money-laced electoral sphere and against the pitfalls of leaders. And it represents the return in a new form of the best of the post-9/11 moment.
As for the worst after 9/11 -- you already know the worst. You’ve lived it. The worst was two treasury-draining wars that helped cave in the American dream, a loss of civil liberties, privacy, and governmental accountability. The worst was the rise of a national security state to almost unimaginable proportions, a rogue state that is our own government, and that doesn’t hesitate to violate with impunity the Geneva Convention, the Bill of Rights, and anything else it cares to trash in the name of American "safety" and "security." The worst was blind fealty to an administration that finished off making this into a country that serves the 1% at the expense, or even the survival, of significant parts of the 99%. More recently, it has returned as another kind of worst: police brutality (speaking of blind fealty to the 1%).
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Best of the Left: Compilations of Reports on the Occupy Movement, Pts. 1-7 (September - November)
[A great collection of reports on the Occupy Movement -- thanks Jay Tomlinson! Check back at Best of the Left for future reports and for compilations on other subjects/themes]
#538 The 99 Percent Wakes Up (Occupy Wall St Part 1)
Act 1: Congrats to Wall St. Protesters – The Progressive Air Date: 9-27-11 Song 1: Hi – The Only Thing I Ever Wanted
Act 2: Irony of Police Attacks on Protestors – Jimmy Dore Air Date: 9-27-11
Song 2: Pumped Up Kicks – Torches
Act 3: World Economy Going to Hell – Dan Carlin Air Date: 9-28-11
Song 3: Eleanor Rigby (Strings Only) – Anthology 2
Act 4: Fox News Gives Wall Street Protesters the “Fair & Balanced” Treatment – Media Matters Air Date: 10-3-11
Act 5: Keith Olbermann reads first collective statement of Occupy Wall Street – Countdown
Song 5: The Times They Are A-Changin’ – The Essential Bob Dylan
Act 6: Protesting is a Priviledge? – Majority Report Air Date: 9-28-11
Song 6: Turtle (Bonobo Mix) – One Offs… Remixes & B Sides
Act 7: Fox Host says Tea Party was Organic, Occupy Wall Street is Not – Media Matters Air Date: 10-5-11
Act 8: Michael Moore says We oppose the way our economy is structured – Countdown
#539 We are the other 99 percent (Occupy Wall St Part 2)
Act 1: Police Are On The Wrong Side At The Occupy Wall Street Protests – Lee Camp Air Date: 9-25-11
Song 1: All These Things That I’ve Done – Hot Fuss
Act 2: Romney Would Complain About Class Warfare – The Progressive Air Date: 10-5-11
Song 2: Revolution – I Am Sam (Music from and Inspired By the Motion Picture)
Act 3: The Screaming Majority song on Occupy Wall St – Majority Report Air Date: 10-7-11
Song 3: Up nights – Amsterband
Act 4: The TRUTH About The Occupy Wall Street Protests – Lee Camp Air Date: 9-27-11
Song 4: Free to Decide – Stars – The Best of 1992-2002
Act 5: Panic of the plutocrats – Green News Report Air Date: 10-11-11
Song 5: Take ‘Em Down – Going Out In Style
Act 6: CNNs Erin Burnett informs viewers about protesters – Counterspin Air Date: 10-06-11
Song 6: I’m a Worried Man – Countryman
Act 7: Erin Burnett’s horrible Occupy Wall St report – Majority Report Air Date: 10-7-11
Song 7: We’re Simple Minds – Spring Came, Rain Fell
Act 8: Occupy DC Event Infiltrated By Conservative from American Spectator –Young Turks Air Date: 10-10-11
Song 8: Solidarity Forever – If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope and Struggle
Act 9: Purge the agitators at Occupy Wall St – David Feldman Show Air Date: 10-9-11
Song 9: The World Has Turned and Left Me Here – Weezer
Act 10: How staying peaceful means we will win – Citizen Radio Air Date: 10-11-11
#541 Unite like an Egyptian (Occupy Wall St Part 3)
Act 1: A Detailed Plan On How To Decrease Corporate Power – Lee Camp Air Date: 9-21-11
Song 1: What we’ve got (Live) – Emilyn Brodsky & Anthony da Costa
Act 2: News Coverage Numbers of the Occupy Protests vs Tea Party protests – On the Media
Song 2: Fake Plastic Trees – The Best of Radiohead
Act 3: Bill O’Reilly Rips Occupy Wall Street Protesters – Young Turks
Song 3: You Can’t Always Get What You Want (Glee Cast Version) – Glee: The Music, Vol. 2
Act 4: What the Occupy Wall St movement wants Part 1 – Planet Money
Song 4: Union strike song – Lisa Simpson
Act 5: What the Occupy Wall St movement wants Part 2 – Planet Money
Song 5: Rinse Me Down – Flaws
Act 6: President’s Approval Rating Soars After Punching Wall Street Banker in Face – The Onion
Song 6: Fighting Song (feat. Tom Morello) – Eyes On Fire – EP
Act 7: Chris Hedges speech at Occupy DC – Chris Hedges
Song 7: You’re The Best (Theme From The Karate Kid) [Originally Performed by Joe Esposito] – You’re The Best
Act 8: Are We The Modern Day Pompeii – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-02-11
Song 8: Golden Slumbers – I Am Sam (Music from and Inspired By the Motion Picture)
Act 9: Then Meets Now – Mark Fiore Air Date 10-19-11
#542 Greed is no longer good (Occupy Wall St Part 4)
Act 1: Occupy Wall Street Is A Thought Revolution – And It Won’t Be Minimized – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-10-11
Song 1: Bathroom Girl – Virgin Suicides (Original Motion Picture Score)
Act 2: The Occupation – Mumia Abu-Jamal Air Date: 10-10-11
Song 2: Late Afternoon (Live) – Theo Bard
Act 3: False reporting about Soros connection to Occupy Wall St – Counterspin
Song 3: Run Screaming (Live) – Stockdale and Shapiro
Act 4: Round-table discussion of Occupy Wall St. – Jimmy Dore Air Date: 10-13-11
Song 4: The Walls Are Coming Down – Reservoir
Act 5: Tom Hayden offers extraordinary insight into evolution of Occupy Wall Street movement – Countdown Air Date: 10-13-11
Song 5: Cat Faces – Sharpen Your Teeth
Act 6: The Numbers Behind Occupy Wall Street – Lee Camp Air Date 10-20-11
Song 6: Take Me Out – Franz Ferdinand
Act 7: This Is the Movement We’ve Been Waiting For – The Progressive Air Date: 10-14-11
Song 7: I Shall Not Be Moved – The Gospel Album
Act 8: Round up of Sunday morning news on Occupy Wall St – Counterspin Air Date: 10-13-11
Song 8: Serre-moi – Tryö
Act 9: Obama, Occupy Wall Street, 2012 Campaign – Young Turks Air Date: 10-17-11
Song 9: Never Again – Fourth Circle
Act 10: Knee jerks defend Wall Street – Jim Hightower Air Date: 10-17-11
Song 10: United We Stand – Sing the 70′s
Act 11: Tonight at Liberty Plaza ‘The American People Agree with Us’ – Michael Moore Air Date: 10-20-11
Song 11: Stand by me – Playing For Change
Act 12: Wall Street Is Dirtier Than Occupy Wall Street – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-17-11
Song 12: Clean Up – Clean Up EP
Act 13: OWS-Hating CBC Anchor Destroyed By Chris Hedges – Young Turks Air Date 10-17-11
#546 The whole world is, in fact, watching and taking part (Occupy Wall St Part 5)
Act 1: Thanks for Nothin’ – Mark Fiore Air Date 10-27-11
Song 1: I’m Looking Through You – I Am Sam (Music from and Inspired By the Motion Picture)
Act 2: Erroneous reporting on the Occupation – Counterspin Air Date: 10-27-11
Song 2: Down the Line – Down the Line – Single
Act 3: Prophetic article calling for the occupation Part 1 – Majority Report 10-25-11
Song 3: Generation – Emerson Hart
Act 4: Why Don’t The Occupy Protesters Stop Whining, Just Work Hard – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-28-11
Song 4: Have you had enough? – Rickie Lee Jones & The Squirrel Nut Zippers
Act 5: Prophetic article calling for the occupation Part 2 – Majority Report 10-25-11
Song 5: I Can Help – The Best of Billy Swan
Act 6: Comparing the Occupation to the Bonus Army encampment – Rachel Maddow Air Date: 10-26-11
Song 6: Down the Drain – Torrent, Vol. 1 & 2: Will Dailey
Act 7: Protest update and thoughts on tear gas – The Bugle Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 7: Touch of Grey – The Very Best of Grateful Dead
Act 8: Poll Americans Distrust Government – Young Turks Air Date: 10-26-11
Song 8: I didn’t fuck it up – Katie Goodman
Act 9: Missing Howard Zinn, Oracle of OWS – The Progressive Air Date: 10-31-11
Song 9: Back to Life – Keep On Movin’
Act 10: Shockupy Wall Street Fad – Colbert Report Air Date: 10-27-11
Song 10: Ave Maria (Pavarotti / O’Riordan) – To the Faithful Departed (The Complete Sessions 1996-1997)
Act 11: The world is, in fact, watching the Oakland Occupation – Matthew Filipowicz Air Date: 10-27-11
#547 Then they fight you (Occupy Wall St Part 6)
Act 1: The Top 1 percent Vs YOU – Young Turks Air Date 10-31-11
Song 1: Give a Damn – Greatest Hits
Act 2: Occupy Wall Street Says “Stop, Thief!” – The Progressive Air Date: 10-28-11
Song 2: Stop Thief – Fabian’s 16 Fabulous Hits
Act 3: What’s in a name at Occupy Wall St? – Jim Hightower Air Date: 10-31-11
Song 3: Liberty Square – Liberty Square
Act 4: NYPD Reportedly Sending Drunks Criminals to Occupy Wall Street – Majority Report Air Date: 11-2-11
Song 4: Out of My Mind – Back to Bedlam
Act 5: The general strike in Oakland – Rachel Maddow Air Date: 11-2-11
Song 5: If it weren’t for the union – Robin Roberts
Act 6: Occupy Wall Street and Amend the Constitution to Overturn Citizens United – The Progressive Air Date: 11-2-11
Song 6: Ride of the Valkyries – Classical For The New Age
Act 7: The dignity of the Occupation and the coverage of it – Matthew Filipowicz Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 7: Dignified and Old – The Modern Lovers
Act 8: Occupation teach-ins on environmental issues – Green News Report Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 8: Return to Sender – The Essential Elvis Presley (Remastered)
Act 9: Giant Protest Puppet Kills Dozens Of Peace Drummers – The Onion
Song 9: Night of the Dancing Flame – Ruby Blue
Act 10: Who Are The 1 Percent? – Young Turks Air Date: 11-9-11
Song 10: What Are Their Names – If I Could Only Remember My Name
Act 11: Economics inequality and journalism ethics called into question – Counterspin Air Date: 11-4-11
Song 11: The Sound of Silence – Sounds of Silence
Act 12: What Do They Want? – Mumia Abu-Jamal Air Date: 11-6-11
Song 12: Too Much Information – The Singles Box 1986-1995
Act 13: Occupy Oakland Protester Shot With Rubber Bullet – Young Turks Air Date: 11-9-11
Song 13: Still Fighting It – Rockin’ the Suburbs
Act 14: Adam Gabbatt on second U.S. veteran injured by Oakland police – Countdown Air Date: 11-8-11
Song 14: Sorrow – The Process of Belief
Act 15: Occupy Wall Street Has Proven We Don’t Have Free Speech – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-31-11
#551 The police are the 99 percent too (Occupy Wall St Part 7)
Act 1: Police Let Vehicular Assault Slide at Occupy Oakland General Strike –Majority Report Air Date: 11-4-11
Song 1: Go Your Own Way (Box Set Bonus Track) – The Treasure Box for Boys and Girls
Act 2: Who are the one percent – Robert Greenwald – Thom Hartmann Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 2: We are the many – Makana
Act 3: Don’t just salute veterans, rally with them – Jim Hightower Air Date: 11-14-11
Song 3: Veterans – The Clips
Act 4: Kim Kardashian, Occupy Wall Street, Credit Default Swaps – Lee Camp Air Date 11-14-11
Song 4: Clowns (Can You See Me Now?) – 200 KM/H in the Wrong Lane
Act 5: Police Need to Back Off on Occupy Wall Street – The Progressive Air Date: 11-14-11
Song 5: Stop the Madness – Versatile Roots
Act 6: Protesting at Berkley, past and present – Rachel Maddow Air Date: 11-15-11
Song 6: This fickle world – Theo Bard
Act 7: Shooting and clubbing veterans is not a solution – Jim Hightower Air Date: 11-15-11
Song 7: Shake It Out – Ceremonials (Deluxe Version)
Act 8: Workers Protest Over-Ventilation Of U.S. Factories – The Onion
Song 8: Seasons In the Sun – Have a Ball
Act 9: Occupy Wall Street Brings on a “Which Side Are You On” Moment – The Progressive Air Date: 11-15-11
Song 9: All You Fascists – Mermaid Avenue, Vol. II
Act 10: Keith’s Special Comment: Why OWS needs Michael Bloomberg – Countdown Air Date: 11-16-11
Song 10: So I Need You – The Better Life
Act 11: Occupy Wall St protest has been hosed – The Bugle Air Date: 11-17-11
Song 11: A Change Is Gonna Come – Learning to Bend
Act 12: Occupy Wall Street Media Blackout, Police State – Young Turks Air Date: 11-15-11
#538 The 99 Percent Wakes Up (Occupy Wall St Part 1)
Act 1: Congrats to Wall St. Protesters – The Progressive Air Date: 9-27-11 Song 1: Hi – The Only Thing I Ever Wanted
Act 2: Irony of Police Attacks on Protestors – Jimmy Dore Air Date: 9-27-11
Song 2: Pumped Up Kicks – Torches
Act 3: World Economy Going to Hell – Dan Carlin Air Date: 9-28-11
Song 3: Eleanor Rigby (Strings Only) – Anthology 2
Act 4: Fox News Gives Wall Street Protesters the “Fair & Balanced” Treatment – Media Matters Air Date: 10-3-11
Act 5: Keith Olbermann reads first collective statement of Occupy Wall Street – Countdown
Song 5: The Times They Are A-Changin’ – The Essential Bob Dylan
Act 6: Protesting is a Priviledge? – Majority Report Air Date: 9-28-11
Song 6: Turtle (Bonobo Mix) – One Offs… Remixes & B Sides
Act 7: Fox Host says Tea Party was Organic, Occupy Wall Street is Not – Media Matters Air Date: 10-5-11
Act 8: Michael Moore says We oppose the way our economy is structured – Countdown
#539 We are the other 99 percent (Occupy Wall St Part 2)
Act 1: Police Are On The Wrong Side At The Occupy Wall Street Protests – Lee Camp Air Date: 9-25-11
Song 1: All These Things That I’ve Done – Hot Fuss
Act 2: Romney Would Complain About Class Warfare – The Progressive Air Date: 10-5-11
Song 2: Revolution – I Am Sam (Music from and Inspired By the Motion Picture)
Act 3: The Screaming Majority song on Occupy Wall St – Majority Report Air Date: 10-7-11
Song 3: Up nights – Amsterband
Act 4: The TRUTH About The Occupy Wall Street Protests – Lee Camp Air Date: 9-27-11
Song 4: Free to Decide – Stars – The Best of 1992-2002
Act 5: Panic of the plutocrats – Green News Report Air Date: 10-11-11
Song 5: Take ‘Em Down – Going Out In Style
Act 6: CNNs Erin Burnett informs viewers about protesters – Counterspin Air Date: 10-06-11
Song 6: I’m a Worried Man – Countryman
Act 7: Erin Burnett’s horrible Occupy Wall St report – Majority Report Air Date: 10-7-11
Song 7: We’re Simple Minds – Spring Came, Rain Fell
Act 8: Occupy DC Event Infiltrated By Conservative from American Spectator –Young Turks Air Date: 10-10-11
Song 8: Solidarity Forever – If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope and Struggle
Act 9: Purge the agitators at Occupy Wall St – David Feldman Show Air Date: 10-9-11
Song 9: The World Has Turned and Left Me Here – Weezer
Act 10: How staying peaceful means we will win – Citizen Radio Air Date: 10-11-11
#541 Unite like an Egyptian (Occupy Wall St Part 3)
Act 1: A Detailed Plan On How To Decrease Corporate Power – Lee Camp Air Date: 9-21-11
Song 1: What we’ve got (Live) – Emilyn Brodsky & Anthony da Costa
Act 2: News Coverage Numbers of the Occupy Protests vs Tea Party protests – On the Media
Song 2: Fake Plastic Trees – The Best of Radiohead
Act 3: Bill O’Reilly Rips Occupy Wall Street Protesters – Young Turks
Song 3: You Can’t Always Get What You Want (Glee Cast Version) – Glee: The Music, Vol. 2
Act 4: What the Occupy Wall St movement wants Part 1 – Planet Money
Song 4: Union strike song – Lisa Simpson
Act 5: What the Occupy Wall St movement wants Part 2 – Planet Money
Song 5: Rinse Me Down – Flaws
Act 6: President’s Approval Rating Soars After Punching Wall Street Banker in Face – The Onion
Song 6: Fighting Song (feat. Tom Morello) – Eyes On Fire – EP
Act 7: Chris Hedges speech at Occupy DC – Chris Hedges
Song 7: You’re The Best (Theme From The Karate Kid) [Originally Performed by Joe Esposito] – You’re The Best
Act 8: Are We The Modern Day Pompeii – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-02-11
Song 8: Golden Slumbers – I Am Sam (Music from and Inspired By the Motion Picture)
Act 9: Then Meets Now – Mark Fiore Air Date 10-19-11
#542 Greed is no longer good (Occupy Wall St Part 4)
Act 1: Occupy Wall Street Is A Thought Revolution – And It Won’t Be Minimized – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-10-11
Song 1: Bathroom Girl – Virgin Suicides (Original Motion Picture Score)
Act 2: The Occupation – Mumia Abu-Jamal Air Date: 10-10-11
Song 2: Late Afternoon (Live) – Theo Bard
Act 3: False reporting about Soros connection to Occupy Wall St – Counterspin
Song 3: Run Screaming (Live) – Stockdale and Shapiro
Act 4: Round-table discussion of Occupy Wall St. – Jimmy Dore Air Date: 10-13-11
Song 4: The Walls Are Coming Down – Reservoir
Act 5: Tom Hayden offers extraordinary insight into evolution of Occupy Wall Street movement – Countdown Air Date: 10-13-11
Song 5: Cat Faces – Sharpen Your Teeth
Act 6: The Numbers Behind Occupy Wall Street – Lee Camp Air Date 10-20-11
Song 6: Take Me Out – Franz Ferdinand
Act 7: This Is the Movement We’ve Been Waiting For – The Progressive Air Date: 10-14-11
Song 7: I Shall Not Be Moved – The Gospel Album
Act 8: Round up of Sunday morning news on Occupy Wall St – Counterspin Air Date: 10-13-11
Song 8: Serre-moi – Tryö
Act 9: Obama, Occupy Wall Street, 2012 Campaign – Young Turks Air Date: 10-17-11
Song 9: Never Again – Fourth Circle
Act 10: Knee jerks defend Wall Street – Jim Hightower Air Date: 10-17-11
Song 10: United We Stand – Sing the 70′s
Act 11: Tonight at Liberty Plaza ‘The American People Agree with Us’ – Michael Moore Air Date: 10-20-11
Song 11: Stand by me – Playing For Change
Act 12: Wall Street Is Dirtier Than Occupy Wall Street – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-17-11
Song 12: Clean Up – Clean Up EP
Act 13: OWS-Hating CBC Anchor Destroyed By Chris Hedges – Young Turks Air Date 10-17-11
#546 The whole world is, in fact, watching and taking part (Occupy Wall St Part 5)
Act 1: Thanks for Nothin’ – Mark Fiore Air Date 10-27-11
Song 1: I’m Looking Through You – I Am Sam (Music from and Inspired By the Motion Picture)
Act 2: Erroneous reporting on the Occupation – Counterspin Air Date: 10-27-11
Song 2: Down the Line – Down the Line – Single
Act 3: Prophetic article calling for the occupation Part 1 – Majority Report 10-25-11
Song 3: Generation – Emerson Hart
Act 4: Why Don’t The Occupy Protesters Stop Whining, Just Work Hard – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-28-11
Song 4: Have you had enough? – Rickie Lee Jones & The Squirrel Nut Zippers
Act 5: Prophetic article calling for the occupation Part 2 – Majority Report 10-25-11
Song 5: I Can Help – The Best of Billy Swan
Act 6: Comparing the Occupation to the Bonus Army encampment – Rachel Maddow Air Date: 10-26-11
Song 6: Down the Drain – Torrent, Vol. 1 & 2: Will Dailey
Act 7: Protest update and thoughts on tear gas – The Bugle Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 7: Touch of Grey – The Very Best of Grateful Dead
Act 8: Poll Americans Distrust Government – Young Turks Air Date: 10-26-11
Song 8: I didn’t fuck it up – Katie Goodman
Act 9: Missing Howard Zinn, Oracle of OWS – The Progressive Air Date: 10-31-11
Song 9: Back to Life – Keep On Movin’
Act 10: Shockupy Wall Street Fad – Colbert Report Air Date: 10-27-11
Song 10: Ave Maria (Pavarotti / O’Riordan) – To the Faithful Departed (The Complete Sessions 1996-1997)
Act 11: The world is, in fact, watching the Oakland Occupation – Matthew Filipowicz Air Date: 10-27-11
#547 Then they fight you (Occupy Wall St Part 6)
Act 1: The Top 1 percent Vs YOU – Young Turks Air Date 10-31-11
Song 1: Give a Damn – Greatest Hits
Act 2: Occupy Wall Street Says “Stop, Thief!” – The Progressive Air Date: 10-28-11
Song 2: Stop Thief – Fabian’s 16 Fabulous Hits
Act 3: What’s in a name at Occupy Wall St? – Jim Hightower Air Date: 10-31-11
Song 3: Liberty Square – Liberty Square
Act 4: NYPD Reportedly Sending Drunks Criminals to Occupy Wall Street – Majority Report Air Date: 11-2-11
Song 4: Out of My Mind – Back to Bedlam
Act 5: The general strike in Oakland – Rachel Maddow Air Date: 11-2-11
Song 5: If it weren’t for the union – Robin Roberts
Act 6: Occupy Wall Street and Amend the Constitution to Overturn Citizens United – The Progressive Air Date: 11-2-11
Song 6: Ride of the Valkyries – Classical For The New Age
Act 7: The dignity of the Occupation and the coverage of it – Matthew Filipowicz Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 7: Dignified and Old – The Modern Lovers
Act 8: Occupation teach-ins on environmental issues – Green News Report Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 8: Return to Sender – The Essential Elvis Presley (Remastered)
Act 9: Giant Protest Puppet Kills Dozens Of Peace Drummers – The Onion
Song 9: Night of the Dancing Flame – Ruby Blue
Act 10: Who Are The 1 Percent? – Young Turks Air Date: 11-9-11
Song 10: What Are Their Names – If I Could Only Remember My Name
Act 11: Economics inequality and journalism ethics called into question – Counterspin Air Date: 11-4-11
Song 11: The Sound of Silence – Sounds of Silence
Act 12: What Do They Want? – Mumia Abu-Jamal Air Date: 11-6-11
Song 12: Too Much Information – The Singles Box 1986-1995
Act 13: Occupy Oakland Protester Shot With Rubber Bullet – Young Turks Air Date: 11-9-11
Song 13: Still Fighting It – Rockin’ the Suburbs
Act 14: Adam Gabbatt on second U.S. veteran injured by Oakland police – Countdown Air Date: 11-8-11
Song 14: Sorrow – The Process of Belief
Act 15: Occupy Wall Street Has Proven We Don’t Have Free Speech – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-31-11
#551 The police are the 99 percent too (Occupy Wall St Part 7)
Act 1: Police Let Vehicular Assault Slide at Occupy Oakland General Strike –Majority Report Air Date: 11-4-11
Song 1: Go Your Own Way (Box Set Bonus Track) – The Treasure Box for Boys and Girls
Act 2: Who are the one percent – Robert Greenwald – Thom Hartmann Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 2: We are the many – Makana
Act 3: Don’t just salute veterans, rally with them – Jim Hightower Air Date: 11-14-11
Song 3: Veterans – The Clips
Act 4: Kim Kardashian, Occupy Wall Street, Credit Default Swaps – Lee Camp Air Date 11-14-11
Song 4: Clowns (Can You See Me Now?) – 200 KM/H in the Wrong Lane
Act 5: Police Need to Back Off on Occupy Wall Street – The Progressive Air Date: 11-14-11
Song 5: Stop the Madness – Versatile Roots
Act 6: Protesting at Berkley, past and present – Rachel Maddow Air Date: 11-15-11
Song 6: This fickle world – Theo Bard
Act 7: Shooting and clubbing veterans is not a solution – Jim Hightower Air Date: 11-15-11
Song 7: Shake It Out – Ceremonials (Deluxe Version)
Act 8: Workers Protest Over-Ventilation Of U.S. Factories – The Onion
Song 8: Seasons In the Sun – Have a Ball
Act 9: Occupy Wall Street Brings on a “Which Side Are You On” Moment – The Progressive Air Date: 11-15-11
Song 9: All You Fascists – Mermaid Avenue, Vol. II
Act 10: Keith’s Special Comment: Why OWS needs Michael Bloomberg – Countdown Air Date: 11-16-11
Song 10: So I Need You – The Better Life
Act 11: Occupy Wall St protest has been hosed – The Bugle Air Date: 11-17-11
Song 11: A Change Is Gonna Come – Learning to Bend
Act 12: Occupy Wall Street Media Blackout, Police State – Young Turks Air Date: 11-15-11
Friday, November 4, 2011
Jeffrey Kaplan and Jeff Milchen: A Citizens' Independence Movement
(via Herb Reid)
A Citizens' Independence Movement
By Jeffrey Kaplan and Jeff Milchen
Tom Paine
The power and influence that corporations enjoy today—indeed, the fact that corporations have the same rights as individuals—are not what our country's founders intended. But progressive activists are working mostly on damage control, rather than making genuine, lasting progress. Here, two veteran activists explain how to bring our single-issue energies together to tear down corporate rule and restore accountability.
Jeff Milchen directs ReclaimDemocracy.org, a nonprofit organization devoted to restoring citizen authority over corporations. Jeffrey Kaplan is a writer and researcher active in the group’s San Francisco Bay area chapter.
In an era when even Business Week runs cover stories about runaway corporate power, few Americans today doubt that corporations wield immense power over our laws, governments, and almost every realm of civic society. Every day, thousands of organizations work to resist harmful actions by corporations and their myriad front groups, but how will citizens move beyond reactive struggles to enable genuine progress?
Today’s challenge for those who seek to revitalize democracy and free our country from control by corporate interests is to show others a clear vision of an America where corporations serve a narrow role—doing business and nothing more.
The trend, of course, is in the opposite direction. There have been 150 years of legal decisions favoring big business, granting corporations legal rights that our founders intended solely for individual human beings. And while human liberty is on the defensive against authoritarianism, corporations are seizing power as aggressively as ever.
For example, courts recently have ruled that municipalities attempting to control the placement of cell phone towers are violating corporate “civil rights.” Corporations selling computerized voting machines claim the 4th Amendment prevents citizens from ensuring that proprietary software isn't used to manipulate elections.
Of course it isn't just Americans’ rights threatened. Perhaps the most significant U.S. export isn't grain or pharmaceuticals, but the legal and institutional structure of corporate control. U.S. authorities declared in July 2003 that Iraq must accept foreign investment and corporatization of its (previously national) oil industry before enjoying their recently granted “sovereignty.” In other words, democracy is permissible only after the most important economic decisions for the future of Iraqis have been decided for them and transnational corporations control their economic lifeblood.
The Rise of Corporate Power
In the early decades of our nation, corporations were tightly controlled entities that enjoyed severely limited privileges and no inherent “rights.” But during the Industrial Revolution, wealthy businessmen, especially railroad executives, succeeded in winning dramatic expansions of corporate privileges. By 1890, most long-standing restrictions had been removed, and the U.S. Supreme Court had granted corporations the legal standing of natural persons—i.e. “corporate personhood.”
Soon the Court bestowed Bill of Rights protections upon them, but with virtually none of the responsibilities borne by human beings. The Supreme Court effectively had subordinated the rights of citizens to institutions with the power to undermine our personal liberties and democracy.
A powerful resistance movement arose, which culminated in the Populist Party, the last third party in American politics to dramatically influence national debate. Although the Populists were defeated in the presidential elections of 1896, populist sentiment remained strong and corporate leaders felt the need to redirect this insurrection against corporate power.
The regulatory system installed during the early 1900s was their solution to this problem. Initiated largely by big business, the regulatory system succeeded overwhelmingly in channeling Populist rebellion against the corporate power structure back into protest against separate “abuses.” The regulatory reforms placed the adjudication of these individual grievances in the hands of agencies dominated by the business entities they purported to control.
The regulatory system remains today what a U.S. attorney general reassured corporate leaders it would be at the turn of the century—“a barrier between corporations and the people.”
Rethinking Activism
Perhaps we should tear down that barrier, rather than repeatedly entangle ourselves within it. Pursuing bureaucratic remedies such as environmental impact reports and e-mailing regulatory officials who came straight from the industry may be necessary tactics, but they fail utterly as an ongoing strategy. So long as we permit wealth—both corporate and private—to dominate political life, “democracy” will be a platitude from the mouths of demagogues rather than a reality.
So what can we do if traditional means of protest won't work? In simple terms, we need to build a political movement to reclaim democracy, starting where democracy begins—at the community level. Citizens can press local and state governments to pass laws challenging corporate personhood. Such ordinances and resolutions could be much like the ones more than 330 communities have passed in opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act—and for a similar reason: our rights as citizens are in grave danger.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
A Citizens' Independence Movement
By Jeffrey Kaplan and Jeff Milchen
Tom Paine
The power and influence that corporations enjoy today—indeed, the fact that corporations have the same rights as individuals—are not what our country's founders intended. But progressive activists are working mostly on damage control, rather than making genuine, lasting progress. Here, two veteran activists explain how to bring our single-issue energies together to tear down corporate rule and restore accountability.
Jeff Milchen directs ReclaimDemocracy.org, a nonprofit organization devoted to restoring citizen authority over corporations. Jeffrey Kaplan is a writer and researcher active in the group’s San Francisco Bay area chapter.
In an era when even Business Week runs cover stories about runaway corporate power, few Americans today doubt that corporations wield immense power over our laws, governments, and almost every realm of civic society. Every day, thousands of organizations work to resist harmful actions by corporations and their myriad front groups, but how will citizens move beyond reactive struggles to enable genuine progress?
Today’s challenge for those who seek to revitalize democracy and free our country from control by corporate interests is to show others a clear vision of an America where corporations serve a narrow role—doing business and nothing more.
The trend, of course, is in the opposite direction. There have been 150 years of legal decisions favoring big business, granting corporations legal rights that our founders intended solely for individual human beings. And while human liberty is on the defensive against authoritarianism, corporations are seizing power as aggressively as ever.
For example, courts recently have ruled that municipalities attempting to control the placement of cell phone towers are violating corporate “civil rights.” Corporations selling computerized voting machines claim the 4th Amendment prevents citizens from ensuring that proprietary software isn't used to manipulate elections.
Of course it isn't just Americans’ rights threatened. Perhaps the most significant U.S. export isn't grain or pharmaceuticals, but the legal and institutional structure of corporate control. U.S. authorities declared in July 2003 that Iraq must accept foreign investment and corporatization of its (previously national) oil industry before enjoying their recently granted “sovereignty.” In other words, democracy is permissible only after the most important economic decisions for the future of Iraqis have been decided for them and transnational corporations control their economic lifeblood.
The Rise of Corporate Power
In the early decades of our nation, corporations were tightly controlled entities that enjoyed severely limited privileges and no inherent “rights.” But during the Industrial Revolution, wealthy businessmen, especially railroad executives, succeeded in winning dramatic expansions of corporate privileges. By 1890, most long-standing restrictions had been removed, and the U.S. Supreme Court had granted corporations the legal standing of natural persons—i.e. “corporate personhood.”
Soon the Court bestowed Bill of Rights protections upon them, but with virtually none of the responsibilities borne by human beings. The Supreme Court effectively had subordinated the rights of citizens to institutions with the power to undermine our personal liberties and democracy.
A powerful resistance movement arose, which culminated in the Populist Party, the last third party in American politics to dramatically influence national debate. Although the Populists were defeated in the presidential elections of 1896, populist sentiment remained strong and corporate leaders felt the need to redirect this insurrection against corporate power.
The regulatory system installed during the early 1900s was their solution to this problem. Initiated largely by big business, the regulatory system succeeded overwhelmingly in channeling Populist rebellion against the corporate power structure back into protest against separate “abuses.” The regulatory reforms placed the adjudication of these individual grievances in the hands of agencies dominated by the business entities they purported to control.
The regulatory system remains today what a U.S. attorney general reassured corporate leaders it would be at the turn of the century—“a barrier between corporations and the people.”
Rethinking Activism
Perhaps we should tear down that barrier, rather than repeatedly entangle ourselves within it. Pursuing bureaucratic remedies such as environmental impact reports and e-mailing regulatory officials who came straight from the industry may be necessary tactics, but they fail utterly as an ongoing strategy. So long as we permit wealth—both corporate and private—to dominate political life, “democracy” will be a platitude from the mouths of demagogues rather than a reality.
So what can we do if traditional means of protest won't work? In simple terms, we need to build a political movement to reclaim democracy, starting where democracy begins—at the community level. Citizens can press local and state governments to pass laws challenging corporate personhood. Such ordinances and resolutions could be much like the ones more than 330 communities have passed in opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act—and for a similar reason: our rights as citizens are in grave danger.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Richard Wilkinson: How Economic Inequality Harms Societies
(via Rebecca Glasscock, a TED talk, posted on Common Dreams)
Richard Wilkinson: How Economic Inequality Harms Societies
We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.
Richard Wilkinson: How Economic Inequality Harms Societies
We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.
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