It Is Not Rocket Science (what we have to do)

The country is in the hands of a criminal gang, and no one with the power to do anything about this is doing anything about this. We cannot wait for the "Democratic" "Party" to do something, and we for sure can't wait for the "Republican" "Party".
We have to do it ourselves. And what we have to do is perfectly clear. We have to stop the country. We have to bring it to a halt. We have to do it peacefully, and firmly, and LOUDLY. Loudly as to purpose and clarity. It can be done without amps, as it is not a rock concert. The civil rights movement in this country involved a lot of people walking from here to there. (And one of them reported that while their feets were tired, their souls were rested.) Not many amps, I suspect, but a lot of determination, and heart, and soul, and ingenuity and courage.
Major stoppage of work, major withdrawal of funding from any suspect large corporation, especially if they sell gas. We are probably 70% of the population. We could maybe bring Washington to its knees in four days, as LITTLE as four days. Those doctors and nurses and EMTs and police who have to stay on duty could wear orange and give the peace sign with a big grin.
When the "news" media call this political, we will say loudly: "This is not political. The country is bigger than both Parties put together. America is not a dichotomy between good and evil, it is the UNITED states, and it is bigger than conservatism vs. liberalism, Republican vs. Democrat, gas-guzzling vs green. It's bigger than any artificial set of categories you can throw at us. We're Americans, and We're Not Going To Take It Any More.
None of this Is Rocket Science. We do not need theoreticians, we do not need lawyers, we do not need strategists, although we'd be happy to accept help from any of the above. We simply need to make our elected representatives listen. Democratic lawmakers will listen first. Smart Republican lawmakers will listen second. Stupid Republican lawmakers will listen third, and who cares?
The conspiracy now in charge of the American government cannot run their businesses or their institutions or their armed services or their *anything* without us.
We are probably 70% of the population.
We have all the theory we need on how to do this from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mohandas K. Ghandi. We know enough law to be able to recognize a lawless administration when we see one. The strategy is simple: We tell them we're not going on with their Potemkin Village of a country any longer, not one day longer.
We turn OFF the televisions and MAKE the news. The national media are, at the moment, worse than useless, since they are concealing major truths from the TV-watching public, like that it doesn't matter who either party nominates if the election can be stolen as easily as it was stolen in 2004, and in 2000. The national media are pretending we don't need a serous investigation of the events of 9/11.
I cannot emphasize this point enough: It is useless waiting to see the Second American Revolution on television: We Have To Make It Ourselves.

Our demands are simple:

We want accurate elections. Now.
We want a national election standard. Now.
We want a real investigation of 9/11 started. Now.
We want military logicians to start planning a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. Now.
We want a national commission to develop a strategy to switch from gasoline to renewable energy. Now.
We want national health care covering every citizen. Now.

That should keep them busy through the first week of the New Order.

The second week, we want:

The veterans of the Iraq and every war properly cared for and their families supported. Immediately next week.

We want a decision made on whether it makes sense to rebuild New Orleans where it is, or to move it to high ground. Once that decision is made, we Rebuild New Orleans. Immediately next week. I suggest Bill Clinton be drafted to head FEMA.

We want a national commission to study the question of whether political parties should be outlawed altogether, since they are capable of generating such horrible static and have been used for such despicable purposes as we have recently seen. Immediately, report due next month.

We want legislation passed to remove the money from campaign politics. Free national air time will be given to all serious candidates. Immediately Now.

I intend to return with a few expansions on the major points herein presented. As time permits. I won't bore you with telling you what my daily schedule is, but if I did, you'd understand why time is a bit of a problem.

Cheers,
planetc

is for everyone to realize that it is not just the republican party taking part in the corruptness. Not that all are involved but when everyone realizes that the republicans and democrats alike are playing a game that we continue to lose and they all continue to win. When Americans stop falling for the WWE wrestling style of government where one side acts like it hates the other just to build fan base, we will then be able to make real progress to democracy. If you pay attention to them, they could go from personally attacking the other side and then at the end of their appearance, they walk over, smile and laugh, shake hands with the one they just destroyed and talk about going to have a drink with each other. Ok I added the drink part but they are all on the same team but their objectives are not in favor of the general public, its more like the wealthy and the corporations so they can continue to be in power and pass the torch through their club.I applaud your post and your ideas but if Americans refuse to open their eyes to the game, there will never be enough people to take great ideas in a great direction.

Sorry, just frustrated and ranting.

And I have no doubt that a General Strike could bring this lethal farce that calls itself the American government to its knees. What I'm not so sure of is the ability of activists to get sufficient unity on the tactic, to make it work. And--as with any kind of strike--you have to consider how long it can be maintained, what are the resources to maintain it, and who negotiates with the government to achieve the strike's purposes, who decides on compromises (for negotiation always involves some compromise), and what kinds of weapons will the powers-that-be use to break the strike--for they will surely not sit still and permit the country to be shut down.

If we shut down food transport, how will people eat, over the long haul? How will people pay their rent/mortgage, if they are on strike, and what provision is there for individuals and families who get evicted? Should the organizers of such a strike trust to ad hoc arrangements--spontaneous generosity, community cohesion--or take responsibility to create some infrastructure to deal with the impacts of a strike?

I think that such a strike, to be successful, needs a long lead time, for planning. It needs to involve outreach to all NGOs and community groups and grass roots organizations. A petition/signup process needs to be started, that circulates far and wide, prompts discussion and commitment, gets a process started for decision-making, such as the start date for the strike, which I would suggest be fixed for one year from the start of the signup process. This way you not only give people a chance to achieve unity on the tactic, but you also foster infrastructure. And you simply have to create a representative council of leaders and spokespeople--unless you want to suggest some very new and untried idea, like a "silent strike"--that is, get massive agreement and signatures on a manifesto--preferably a fairly simple one--publish the manifesto, send or deliver it to all of our public officials and other guilty parties, and, after that, there will no negotiation, no spokespeople, no discussion. We will all just go silent--as to talking to media or public officials--except to mention the manifesto--stop working and maybe conduct silent marches, and other silent demonstrations of our withdrawal of consent from our government and its corporate puppetmasters.

If the manifesto is simple and straightforward enough, it will be perfectly obvious whether the government is being responsive. But the question is, how long can we hold out? Will they just wait us out? What tactics will they use, and how do we survive them? And what will employers do--fire all strikers, and replace with scabs? Then what? And what about infrastructure--children in school, paying bills, buying medicines, etc. Our modern lives are very complex, and are dependent on infrastructure. Most of us don't have farms, to feed ourselves. Most of us don't have any idea where our water comes from. What if all the water utility workers strike?

Maybe the strike should be confined to one week--and seek a total shutdown--as a demonstration of our power as a people. THEN you have to have negotiators--leaders chosen by some process, to hammer the points of the manifesto home, to threaten another strike, and to speak for, and report back to, all the rest of us.

Let me give you an example. I work for a small business. The business owners are very good people. If I were to join a General Strike, I would not only be unable to pay my bills, I would be leaving these good people in the lurch. And if they were to join a general strike, they would be unable to pay their bills and the business would soon fail, and they would lose everything. I would have no job to go back to. They employ several people. How can they just stop everything, stop doing business, and join a general strike? And how can I blame them for Corporate Rule, and punish them in any way? I cannot.

Small business is the biggest employer in our country. We wouldn't want to harm THEM. And they are, in many cases, dependent on the services of big corporations--delivery of goods, banking, customers driving oil-fueled vehicles to visit their stores, etc.--or big government/corporate "public" works, such as the telephone and electricity systems. Many small business owners might well be in sympathy with a General Strike, but how could they participate, and wouldn't it hurt or even destroy their often marginal enterprises? I think a lot of planning and infrastructure work would have to be done--and some really creative thinking--to get small business on board. It is very much to their long term benefit to rid our country of these monstrous global corporations, and return to a simpler form of trade and manufacture, but the transition could be difficult, and their fate in a General Strike would concern me.

Think of people in different situations--corporate employees with ruthless employers, people who are clipping coupons and living on dividends and retirement funds (what do they do about bad actor corporate stocks?), the poor and the elderly who are more dependent than anyone on infrastructure (water in the tap, heat, medicine, transportation) and who cannot so easily fend for themselves, or the many people in this country who have dependents--children, parents, grandparents and other members of their extended family--the young, the sick and the frail--who are wholly dependent on them for food and shelter. Can they risk losing their jobs? Can they risk retaliation? Can they risk arrest, in civil disobedience protests?

These issues come up in ANY strike, or social justice movement. They came up all the time in civil rights movement. The situation of black citizens in the South, in the 1950s and 1960s, was so desperate, however, that people were willing to take great risks to change it. Also, they had developed tight-knit, supportive communities, often centered around the local church. There was infrastructure to take care of activists. It already existed, in the various ways that black citizens had had to take care of their own, for several centuries. As a country, we are quite lacking in this kind of community. We have some POTENTIAL infrastructure for a General Strike, but will it hold? Will it work?

The civil rights movement did NOT spring up overnight. It was the work of at least half a century, and the active part of it--the part that ended segregation, and guaranteed black voting rights--stretched over three decades (1950s through the 1970s). How can we hope to gain such momentum, even with a year's preparation?

What I think of a General Strike, as a tactic, is that it will happen when it's time has come--when the American people are totally fed up, and the idea begins to arise, spontaneously, in many places, all at once. You can work towards it--and there are many things that can be done--but it cannot be sparked by just one person--it has to be a collective decision based on a collective realization--and it might be suggested, or tried, but it won't work until people are ready.

You yourself mention your own situation--your lack of time. You can't organize a General Strike, yourself. And it really can't happen that way--as one person's idea, or crusade. Leaders like Martin Luther King and Ghandi were operating in contexts of "ideas whose times had come"--full citizenship for black Americans, or independence for India--based on the work and sacrifice of thousands of people before them, and with massive support in the areas where they were active, and strong support in the general culture (serious and dangerous opposition, but a lot of support as well). Yes, they were inspired men, but they didn't create those movements out of thin air. In many ways, the movements created THEM.

SO, what I would suggest is to take the parts of your list of demands of the government, and join with others to focus on one of them--say, election reform--and work hard on that. The civil rights movement worked this way. It was a SERIES of actions targeting: segregated diners, segregated schools, the segregated bus system, the "poll tax" and other methods of suppressing the black vote. One at a time. They didn't happen all at once. They arose from particular local grievances, and they involved MANY groups--existing organizations, both black and white--who worked together on lawsuits, on particular desegregation campaigns, and in supportive response to local uprisings and concerns.

And THAT was a movement with a strong and singular focus--black civil rights. Taking on "Corporate America" and its political lapdogs is an awfully broad target, and the goal is somewhat vague, despite your list. The goal, really, is restoring democracy. But like black civil rights, it needs to be achieved one situation, one business, one county registrar's office, one school system, at a time. Perhaps Gandhi holds the key. He objected to India providing raw materials for cloth and clothing to England, with England then raking off the value added by spinning the raw materials into cloth, and manufacturing clothing, then selling it BACK to Indians, at a great profit--so he began to spin his own cloth, and sew his own clothes. The British colonialists were also TAXING local people for salt, when they could walk down to their own beach and pick it up for free. So there was a protest about that--very practical issues, local issues, addressing particular grievances.

But these local issues can grow INTO a national independence movement, or a national civil rights movement, when the time is ripe--when the ground work has been done, and the people are ready. What local issue sums up the evil of the Corporate Rulers in your neighborhood? There are, in fact, small local rebellions going on all over the place. There was one in Inglewood (black area of Los Angeles) against Wal-Mart, for instance--a rather amazing and successful effort to keep Wal-Mart out. There have been a couple of rather amazing activists on election reform in Riverside and San Bernardino counties--two of the most corrupt counties in California, on the election system. And in Los Angeles (where the corrupt head of elections just resigned--the work of Progressive Democrats and others). One of these days, one of these movements is going to be THE ONE that breaks through into the national consciousness and starts the snowball that will end Corporate Rule. But it will be because there were many small movements and activist campaigns before it, all over the country, building momentum, educating people, getting people to understand the bigger picture. And THEN we might be ready for a General Strike, to put an end to this tyranny once and for all. But such a big organizing item as a General Strike will likely come towards the END of the struggle, not at the beginning of it.

Thank you for your thoughts. They were obviously stimulating and interesting. They got me going. And these are just some of my thoughts. I'm not criticizing your idea at all--just considering it, and wondering how it could be done. I would love to see it happen--a countrywide peaceful rebellion. I think it needs more prep. But who am I to say? Sometimes people just suddenly...get it. Something MOVES them. "Do what the spirit say do" (as the old civil rights song, and older spiritual, went).

"People get ready/ there's a train a-comin'/ you don't need no ticket / you just get on board."

I DO think the train is a-comin'.

I wish I were able to type out three pages of thought that is put together so effectively
at the drop of a hat.

You are my favorite DU member and one that I would feel honored to meet someday.

it is so clear, so well-thought out, on what the real problems are, what the American peoples' manifesto should be, that I thought it required some serious thinking about the proposal of a General Strike, or what, alternatively, we should all be doing to help restore this democracy. I've been in rebellion, myself, since 11/3/04--what a dark day* that was!--and working pretty much non-stop (aside from my day job) to further the cause of election reform ever since. I've had a feeling all along that something different is going to happen in this country--a different kind of protest than we have ever seen--and I don't even know what I mean, a strong but not specific feeling. I thought it was starting with the huge increase in Absentee Ballot voting in '06--a real voters revolt against the machines. And I still think that was a spontaneous boycott of the voting machines, on a big scale--and a large, new, organizable constituency for election reform. And I've suggested that people start organizing that group, the AB voters, to demand hand-counting of the AB votes (--which election officials often don't do--they just scan them). This could start the handcounting snowball.

Anyway, my feeling is that it won't be street protests. It's got to be more effective than just yelling at the government. They can't hear us. They've deliberately disenfranchised us. And they've gotten very clever as to marginalizing even the biggest protests, and brutally suppressing them, when they get too uppity (like shutting down the WTO). The political establishment has turned street protest into a ritual, and they are completely, totally oblivious to protest messages. It doesn't register in their highly insular world. They don't care what we think!

I think it may be something like a General Strike, but not exactly that, something more innovative. And it will be a collective consciousness thing. Suddenly, people will just start doing it. Maybe it will be boycotts of the worst corporations. I don't know. That's complicated, too. They're all conglomerates now, with their fingers in everything. Why target Exxon and not the Gap, which hauls raw materials and finished goods all over the globe in big polluting tankers, from the poisoned cotton fields of Uzbekistan to their sweatshops in Saipan, to here as finished products, then trucks them all over? Who is most guilty of global warming? Why target Fox News and not NBC (GE-war profiteers)? And some of them are very remote and elusive. How do boycott Blackwater? Or Halliburton? Or the evil financiers and banks who are behind a lot of things? How do you hurt a corporation, and bring them to heel, when our own government is larding it with our own tax dollars? And how do you even find them? I think Halliburton is off to Dubai. (--but I did hear Blackwater is trying to buy land in San Diego for a mercenary training ground--good God!)

It isn't just the things you buy in the mall--that need to be boycotted (if they are corporate-made). It's the fact that there IS a mall--out of town, requiring gas and cars to get to; and the developers who paved over more open space, and ruined the downtown area, and the banks who financed it. Boycotting is a complex tactic, and I think is best used to target specific corporate abuses. (It was very effective on apartheid--the student-led divestment movement got a lot of investors and big institutions to withdraw funding from corps that supported apartheid.)

So what will it be? What will catch fire? What will ignite American imagination with that old revolutionary spirit? My guess: something we haven't thought of yet, after a lot of ground work has been done on identifying the malefactors and educating people. Maybe the voting machines. Maybe some clever economic thing. In Argentina--after the World Bank/IMF turned their economy into a basketcase--an alliance of the poor and middle class went round with tiny hammers and broke every bank ATM display in the country, in protest. It started a big leftist revolution, which has had a very good outcome.

Some kind of 'Boston Tea Party'? Dunno. But I can sure feel it building.

PlanetC's pure, clear spirit heartened me. Yes, that's the kind of thinking we need. And we have to flow with the people, with their spirit, and see what new great inspiration this people is going to produce.