That's Howard Zinn speaking in his new documentary, The People Speak, that's going to air on the History Channel and be released on DVD. I've recently been reading Zinn's A People's History of the United States, which forms a basis for the documentary, and it really has been changing the way I see current events (much more so than the way I see history).
Given the discussion this morning about our collective historical amnesia, these kinds of projects are critical. The challenges we face aren't new. Neither are the solutions (hint: Organize! Organize! Organize!). As the trailer below notes sometimes to know where you're going you have to look back at where you've been.
I think it's important that, as far as I can tell, none of these popular protests were aimed at whipping for a bill or electing a particular party. They were aimed at accomplishing something or resisting something and the politics followed. As I've noted before, Martin Luther King didn't march for democrats.
(h/t Tennessee Guerilla Women)
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But, but...
The Obama "movement" grabbed the branding rights to "bottom-up" politics, admittedly an unfortunate image given how they do business.
Sure, the only things the "bottoms" were supposed to do is campaign for one uber-human dude, give him money, and shut down dissent. But, still they named it and claimed it, supported by the "there's no 'i' in Barack Obama" shtick.
People really are going to have to pull the scales off their eyes, and their thumbs off the scales, to realize that they've been going through the motions of populist politics, so they can get to the business of doing it for real.
On Going Through the Motions
That's all some of the "progressives" are interested in doing because what they really want is to be on WH conference calls.
But for the rest of us - and I'd include in "us" some of the "progressives" who are acting in good faith and want the right things even as they screw the pooch on healthcare - we really can learn a lot from studying the past. We're not trying to do anything new, we're doing the same thing people have been doing since before this nation was a Republic, which is to make this a more fair and just society. That's not new because the bastards never die. The first step, of course, is to quit taking your marching orders by people the bastards have bought and paid for.
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt
I think that's a structural problem, so give them their brand!
In other words -- and I know how this will sound to certain, er, communities -- where there's a bottom there's always a top (although the, er, positions might change).
And the problem with the whole "building a movement" concept as concieved of today is that as soon as a new top appears, Versailles
creams all the social capital off that went into building it, at which point it promptly goes sour (case in point).
So we need a different model -- I would argue not a scale-free network (see eg) where linkages follow a power law, but a "random network" with most nodes having approximately the same number of links. The power law makes for a very noticeable top and very long "tail." The problem, eh?
I hate to say poke around a humongous thread, but I hashed some of my thoughts out with seabrook and emocrat here. FWIW. In short form: I think there needs to be a "separation of powers" between party, movement, and media.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Howard Zinn
Offtopic from BD's point (with which I basically agree) but I must note that I'm not a huge fan of Zinn as a historian; a fair amount of what is in the People's History is questionable at best. Not saying Zinn isn't worth reading (he is) just that too many people I've met read him uncritically as if he is THE authority. There is no THE authority on the past. It's okay to start reading history with Zinn, but it isn't okay to stop there.
Tdraicer
Agreed, Ted Raicer
There is no one authority on history.
The interesting thing I've found from reading Zinn, which I noted in the post, was that it's actually having a much greater affect on how I see current events than how I see history. His focus - people movements against inequality - has given me a lot of analytical tools or, perhaps more accurately, strengthened and enhanced ones I already had.
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt