Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.
He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire....
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Tuesday, August 02, 2011
IT'S GOT TO COME FROM YOU
The House voted yesterday 269-161 in favor of the "debt crisis deal". Ninety-five Dems voted against it while the same number of them voted along with Republicans to pass this frontal assault on social progress. See how your member of the House voted here
The Senate voted today and passed it 74-26. See how your senator voted here
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote this morning, "Republicans insisted on budget cuts only, with not a cent of new revenue — and that, ladies and gentlemen, is what they got. There’s no way to spin it: Boehner and the GOP won. Obama and the Democrats lost....Progressives lost this battle. They retain the capacity to win the next one, if they are smarter and tougher. If they fight."
If they fight? Obama and his stable of timid Democrats fight? Never.
One of those Democrats who does, and did, fight against this was Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). He had this to say about the deal: "The Democratic Party is running away from its traditional role of protecting the poor, the elderly, and the working class. To whom do these groups now turn?"
Friend, and fellow activist, David Swanson has an answer for Kucinich (who he used to work for and fully respects). David says, "We turn to ourselves, Congressman. You know that. And you know I love you. But we've got to stop turning to people, much less parties. It's killing us. We can work with you and all of our friends, but we're going to have to do this ourselves. There's nobody so poor, so elderly, so working class, so sick, so weak, or so wounded that they can't help this country a hell of a lot more themselves than can your colleagues, Congressman, the vast majority of whom, politically speaking, aren’t worth a bucket of warm spit."
Here, here!
Another comment on the "deal" comes from outspoken actress Roseanne Barr. “The richest Americans and their corporations have no patriotism,” she wrote. “Like cowards, they chose to take food out of American baby's mouths instead of paying their fair share.”
Here, here!
So as Keith Olbermann says in the video above, and David Swanson wrote, it has to come from you.
By now hopefully you recognize that there is no political party that is going to "fight" for you. There is no president who is going to "fight" for you. As former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura (also former wrestler) often says, the Republicans and Democrats are like professional wrestling. It's all a show. The deals are cut before hand and then they stage the drama for public consumption. And consume it the public does. Snarling and snaring - tea party against the liberals. But those who run the show sit back and laugh and back slap and rake in the bucks.
It's time to get a grip. It's time folks, may I say it once more, to rattle our chains.
Let me hear it now.......
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