"The American Constitution guarantees the American people pretty much anything that they want. If I have a disappointment it is that they really don't seem to want much of anything at all."
-Eugene Debs
I've loved and hated that quote for years. I love it because it reminds me of an important truth: our country is what we the people make it. The power to build a new world - one that is truly democratic, participatory, and just - is within our grasp.
I hate the quote because it reminds me that the right-wing, representing powerful and traditional interests, seems to have won, whatever the crazed, paranoid whining of people like Glenn Beck might suggest.
Those most resistant to real progressive change - white men terrified of losing their privilege and advantage, and the corporate/financial elite - must be very pleased, it seems to me. They have successfully convinced most Americans that the establishment's preferred world of privatization, manic consumption and materialism, ecological destruction, prison, inequality, and fear - fear of immigrants, people of color, and the poor - is the best world we can hope for. Better just barricade myself in my home, buy as much sh*t as my credit will allow, and to hell with everyone else.
In other words, given what is possible, we don't seem to want very much.
If this were not bad enough, these same forces have both political parties firmly in their pockets. One party is a little less brutal than the other, to be sure. I vote for Democrats (if the margin is too close to call) because I know that a few hundred or few thousand more people won't be quite as hungry as they would under a Republican, and while Democrats will continue to destroy our earth, it will at least be destroyed a little slower. But I know neither will bring about the progressive change we so desperately need.
Why is this? To paraphrase John Dewey, government is the shadow cast by business over society. We can try to make changes to the shadow - like when we vote - but those changes won't affect the substance, which is corporate power. Our targets should be the substance, not the shadow. But for most progressives, our focus is instead almost exclusively on the shadow - government. This is one of the few things we share in common with the Tea Party movement. While we are certainly more aware of the threat of corporate power - particularly here at DailyKos - we focus our energy on government, and on the hope that government will fix this for us. I'm not sure why we expect this, since if anything has been made clear over the past two decades, it is that our government is bought and paid for by business. We need to attack private power, and we need to build our own systems and institutions to sustain us where government has failed.
I need hope. I need to feel like I'm part of something bigger, and a political party just isn't cutting it. I don't want to rally behind a candidate and then watch him/her sweat to get contributions from Chase and Citigroup. I want to rally and organize with people in my community.
Fortunately, something is coming this summer - an opportunity to work with other like-minded people and organizations who want to build a progressive, radical alternative to the economic and political systems currently enriching robber barons and making real change all but impossible.
And it's coming less than a mile from my home.
The United States Social Forum
What is the Social Forum?
The US Social Forum (USSF) is a movement building process. It is a space for people to come together and shape peoples’ solutions to the economic and ecological crises. In 2007, Atlanta was the scene for the first US Social Forum, where over 12,000 people attended and participated in a week filled with educational, artistic, political, and cultural activities united by the slogan "Another World is Possible, Another US is Necessary." In 2010, the Forum will be held in Detroit, from June 22-26, and 20,000 people are expected to attend.
The Forum is not a conference. You don't go to the Forum to sit and listen to some academic or journalist tell you what he thinks the problems are and how to fix them. Boring, uninspiring, and ineffective.
Rather, the Forum is where grassroots organizers and groups come together from across the country and world to work together on common problems, and make commitments to future action.
It is a common space where we can close the distance between our struggles, and exchange ideas and strategies. The Forum will be an important step in our struggle to build a powerful, diverse, inclusive, and international movement that transforms this country and changes history. We must declare what we want our world to look like, and start planning the path to get there. The USSF provides a unique opportunity to meet and work with thousands of people from different movements and social groups, who work daily – just like us – transforming our society.
Why Detroit?
Are you kidding? Detroit in 2010 is the perfect place and time for the Social Forum. We call Detroit "Solution City" – there is so much creative and imaginative activism here. There are over 800 community gardens, incredible activism, as well as a rich history of fighting against slavery, and fighting for civil rights, worker's rights, and human rights. Detroit has incredible, exciting movements focused on education, media, and justice.
At the same time, Detroit is also ground zero for the economic crisis facing millions of people in Michigan and the nation. So Detroit is one of the best examples of the failures of the current system, and also one of the best examples for how we the people can build and create a new, just world.
Here are the principles of the Social Forum:
We, the organizers of the first United States Social Forum:
•Believe that there is a strategic need to unite the struggles of oppressed communities and peoples within the United States (particularly Black, Latino, Asian/ Pacific-Islander and Indigenous communities) to the struggles of oppressed nations in the Third World.
•Believe the USSF should place the highest priority on groups that are actually doing grassroots organizing with working class people of color, who are training organizers, building long-term structures of resistance, and who can work well with other groups, seeing their participation in USSF as building the whole, not just their part of it.
•Believe the USSF must be a place where the voices of those who are most marginalized and oppressed from Indigenous communities can be heard--a place that will recognize Indigenous peoples, their issues and struggles.
•Believe the USSF must create space for the full and equal participation of undocumented migrants and their communities.
•Believe the USSF should link US-based youth organizers, activists, and cultural workers to the struggles of their brothers and sisters abroad, drawing common connections and exploring the deeper meanings of solidarity.
•Believe the USSF is important because we must have a clear and unified approach at dealing with social justice issues, and meaningful positions on global issues.
•Believe that a USSF sends a message to other people’s movements around the world that there is an active movement in the United States opposing U.S. policies at home and abroad.
•Believe that the USSF will help build national networks that will be better able to collaborate with international networks and movements.
•We believe the USSF is more than an event. It is an ongoing process to contribute to strengthening the entire movement, bringing together the various sectors and issues that work for global justice.
This will be a week of action, learning, activism, work, laughter, music, art, culture, resistance, and movement-building.
It would be so much better if you were here!!!
Learn more.
Register.
Donate.
Another World is Possible! Another U.S. is Necessary! Another Detroit is Happening!