Eddie C posted a diary on Sunday asking Kossacks if they planned to watch The People Speak, which ran on the History Channel on Sunday night. I caught the diary too late, but I scrolled through my digital listings and set it up to record to my DVR when it re-ran at midnight EST.
I only just secured enough time to watch last night. I have to say - I was mesmerized. What I took away from The People Speak (and please note - this diary is NOT about that show - it's about general laziness of the American people, many of us included, in the context of current events) was nothing short of revelatory for me. It's like that thing you know intrinsically but don't really KNOW until someone hits you over the head with it.
I plan to hit you over the head over the fold.
The Backdrop
The People Speak was a program that, in an over-simplified explanation, told Howard Zinn's history of the United States in an abbreviated fashion. From Howard Zinn's website:
Using dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries and speeches of everyday Americans, the documentary feature film THE PEOPLE SPEAK gives voice to those who spoke up for social change throughout U.S. history, forging a nation from the bottom up with their insistence on equality and justice.
Some of the historical voices that were "performed" (for lack of a better word) in their own words included Langston Hughes, Woody Guthrie (performed by Bob Dylan), Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Malcolm X and a host of others. It took us through a musical and verbal history - in their own words - of the people who are often NOT highlighted in history. Women. Minorities. The poor. Immigrants. The working class. It told their tales of struggle in a uniquely personal way and transported you - the viewer - in context back to the real issues of the day that are never covered in traditional historical texts.
The Revelation
The first thing that utterly struck me was the ebb and flow of history as it relates to policy. The Declaration of Independence says:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
This, of course, was penned on July 4, 1776. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it said. But in 1787 - more than a decade later - the US Constitution fails to mention the pursuit of happiness. The ratified US Bill of Rights, which came along a full four years after the US Constitution, also fails to mention the pursuite of happiness. In fact, neither the word "happy" nor "happiness" appears in either the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Even more interesting - the Declaration of Independence itself makes no mention of property. Yet both the Constitution and Bill of Rights address issues related to property. It makes you wonder what did - or did not - occur in the intervening decade that saw happiness disappear from the dialogue and property get introduced to the dialogue.
History books - the kind we read in school and the kind our children (if we have children) are reading today in school tends to gloss over the uglier details as well as a whole bunch of nuance. That fact hardly constitutes breaking news. But as a person who considers herself fairly well-informed, I was humbled by the things I didn't know. For example - while Roosavelt is held up as an iconic leader of the poor and the downtrodden, I had no idea that he literally had to be forced to make the moves that are now identified with his essential and exceptional humanity. Indeed - The Nation has an outstanding article outlining just how often and to what degree and on how many fronts Roosavelt had to a) be pushed to implement policy; b) have an urgent impetus at which to point to implement policy; or c) a combination of both a & b. A few interesting snippets:
[Roosavelt] promised Americans a "New Deal," but he had very few specifics. In fact, FDR was in many ways a cautious, even conservative, politician. The one clear idea he had in mind when he took office was to cut the federal budget, and the person he hired to do that job was his budget director, a conservative Congressman from Arizona named Lewis Douglas. He was also initially reluctant to use the power of government to regulate business practices, create jobs or to support union organizing or struggling farmers. He was clear from the beginning, however, that core values were at stake--articulated in his first Inaugural Address. That is what created the ground--and support--for his pragmatic experimentation.
A little bit of dejavu all over again, no? The article goes on to highlight:
- Targeted Farmers Strikes
- WWI Veterans' Protests
- Targeted Tenats' Protests
- Jobless Protests
- Workers Strikes & Protests
To wit:
Across the Farm Belt, hundreds of farmers would show up and stop a foreclosure sale by the force of numbers. Some farmers threatened to call a national strike if Congress didn't act.
::snip::
In the spring and summer of 1932, protest erupted among veterans of World War I, many of whom were out of work and hungry. More than 20,000 of them from across the country joined a Bonus Army march on Washington.
::snip::
In many cities, when word spread that a family was being evicted, a crowd would gather--sometimes ten people, sometimes a few hundred. The police would remove the furniture from the house and put it out in the street, and the crowd would bring the furniture back. This happened so often that some police officers would refuse to evict or arrest people.
::snip::
In January 1933, several hundred jobless Americans surrounded a restaurant just off Union Square in New York City, demanding that they be fed without charge. In Seattle in February 1933, about 5,000 unemployed people occupied the County-City Building demanding jobs or relief. These and similar protests around the country set the stage for the nation's first cash assistance program for struggling families.
Through the 1930s, workers engaged in massive and illegal strikes and sit-down protests in factories and retail stores throughout the country. In 1934, 1.5 million workers--including longshoremen, teamsters, factory workers and retail clerks--went on strike. In San Francisco, 130,000 workers joined a general strike.
The examples go on and on. The entire article is a must-read as far as I'm concerned - because it will dispel the rosy picture painted by mainstream historians who write mainstream history texts that Roosavelt came to office and magically conceived and implemented policies due to personal convictions. Quite the contrary - many meaningful, landmark, laudatory and historic reforms came about because Roosavelt was forced.
History is rife with these tales. The US Labor movement - strikes, protests, abuses, murders of workers - drove the Wagner Act of 1935 and subsequent labor and anti-trust legislation. The long, painful, and often abusive and dealy history of women securing the right to vote in the 1920s was marked by protest. The Civil Rights movement - ongoing throughout history but prominently highlighted in the 1950s and 1960s - was marked by protest. The end to the Vietnam War was arguably only brought about by large-scale and persistent protests.
The Crux
I'm not going to get into the specifics of the disagreements that are raging here at Daily Kos. We seem, lately, to have been divided into two distinct camps as diaries and comments would define us:
- The Apologists
- The Naysayers
It's been ugly. Frankly, I've really stayed away because of the ugliness, which depresses me even more when I consider that THIS community is comprised or people with whom I agree WAY MORE than with whom I disagree. It makes the idea of even taking on those with whom I am ideologically opposed nauseating.
But seriously - my beef IS with each and every one of you, myself included. We pride ourselves - hold it up as a great stamp of superiority at times, even - on being "reality based". We decry the mythical. We read, and are (in my opinion) much better informed than average, Oprah-watching America (no offense to Oprah, of course - she's probably somewhere just trying to each her lunch).
If EVER there was a community that would embrace the truth that those who are ignorant of history are doomed to relive it, it's this one.
History is telling us that nothing - NOT ONE SINGLE THING - that is difficult or worthwhile happens without the Governed getting righteously pissed off. History tells us further that pissed off isn't enough. We have to be willing to get out from behind our computers and our desks and off of our living room sofa. Complaining about the lack of mortgage remediation is all well and good. I applaud it, in fact, because the complaint itself is the starting point of awareness. But it's NOT enough. Imagine if small but well-organized groups of people did what was done in the 1930s - surrounded a home and REFUSED to allow authorities to take possession. Imagine if the unemployed converged - either in one place, or at places around the country in a coordinated fashion - and demanded that our government address outsourcing and unfair competition. Imagine if the uninsured surrounded private hospitals in protest. Imagine if every person who has been jacked around by a bank or who is pissed off because banks are so utterly, appallingly tone deaf went to those banks and picketed.
I can imagine it. I don't realistically know how to bring it all about, but I can imagine it - and the seed is, therefore, planted.
The Rub
Look. I am sick to death of reading all the criticisms of the current administration. Because - and this is key - history is telling us that not even Barack Obama is going to make bold moves unless he's forced to do so. The idea that Barack Obama, or anyone else, is going to come in and be able to simply impose and enforce change on a population that is largely unwilling to seize that change themselves. I'm at fault in this as much as the majority of everyone else is at fault in this. I've attended healthcare events - a local town hall (as an anti-teabagger) - as well as some OFA-organized healthcare canvassing events in my area. But you know what? We weren't pissed off enough at those events to even begin to nurture a fraction of the righteous outrage we're going to need to foment any kind of meaningful change. Not even close. We're pissed - no doubt - but it's in so many directions and in the totally useless and counter-productive direction of finger-pointing that we may as well spare ourselves the agita.
And really - don't you think Barack Obama would WELCOME the cover that popular uprising would give him??
We can keep focusing on Lieberman - and yeah, he's a scummy little self-serving douchebag. We can bemoan the day we didn't defeat him and demonize him (and he deserves it). But if Lieberman disappeared - became a vapor - there'd be someone else playing his oppositional, power-grabbing role. Our electeds play by the rules that we (I'm talking about the collective, ubiquitous "we") lay out for them. "We" don't elect people who have no money to make us aware of who they are. "We" set up the playing field to be infested with special interests and then "we" allow the fox to guard the henhouse. We (progressives generally, and whole lot of other folks as well) are all smart enough to know that the deck is more stacked than not and adjust accordingly.
But it's difficult to ignore a series of protests and strikes that capture the national imagination and consume its news cycles. They would bend under the force of our outrage. There are 535 of them - Congress + the Presidewnt - how many of us are there? That's an open question. I'd wager that there are a lot more of "us" than we might imagine - and "us" would likely transcend ideological lines on core issues like employment, healthcare, and housing.
The Conclusion
I can't begin to imagine how this rage - not just progressive rage, but generalized rage - could be effectively harnassed and organized. But I do know - if ever there was a time to harass it, it's now. We've just come off the most organized election in history. We know who grassroots folks are. We know how to reach people. We have the internet and twitter and blogs and social media. And I'm quite sure that there are absolute organizational, grass-roots geniuses within our midst who could lay the foundation.
But they've have to answer the question - are we pissed off enough?
Update [2009-12-15 14:22:48 by RenaRF]: And since I've posted this... eight diaries have literally been posted about what an asshat Lieberman is. Well duh. But imagine the power of that time directed towards something - you know - effective. Sigh.