is the subtitle of A New Age of Activism, today's New York Times column by the superb Charles M. Blow.
I want tom examine his argument before offering some thoughts and observations of my own.
He begins by placing the responses to the non-indictments in a larger context (and go to the original for the three hyperlinks in this paragraph):
There seems to be a new age of activism rising. From Occupy Wall Street, to the “Stop Watching Us” march against government surveillance, to the Moral Monday protests, to the People’s Climate March, to the recent nationwide protests over the killings of men and boys of color by police, there is obviously a discontent in this country that is pouring into the streets.
He acknowledges that is is more diffuse than what we think movements will look like, not fitting into (nor might I note directly addressing) traditional political structures, in part because
It is, in a way, a social network approach to social justice, not so much captain-orchestrated as crowd-sourced, people sharing, following and liking their way to consensus and collective consciousness.
And yet there is some unity among the diversity of the aforemention movements, because
it is at least in part that more people are frustrated, aching for a better America and a better world, waking to the reality of the incredible fragility of our freedoms, our democracy and our planet.
It addresses issues like political intransigence, corporatism, and economic inequality.
And it is a collective expression of moral outrage over systemic bias.
He argues that the bias evident behind the events leading to the most recent protests leads to a basic question:
If we are all created equal, shouldn’t we all be treated equally? Anything less is an affront to our ideals.
Please keep reading.
By now it should be clear that this column is an attempt by Blow to consider the recent events not just as a matter of police bias towards Black males, but it a much broader context of things undermining the vitality of our democracy,
It is not that he is moving away from deeper consideration of the matter of police violence and brutality. In this superb column you will read expressions such as
There is a thin line between high-pressure policing and oppressive policing. Heavy hands leave bruised spirits, and occasionally buried bodies.
and
This is why the people are in the streets. There are too many nagging questions, not enough satisfying answers. The people want their pain and anger registered.
But he notes that there is a need to move beyond the protests to the kinds of political actions that pressure politicians to making a difference, and uses the example of gay rights and immigration activists who seem to have done so successfully, even as he acknowledges that
maybe in this moment the exhaling of pain must come before the shaping of policy.
He comments on those already making such a transition before offering his own optimism that such a transition will become more widespread as people come to recognize the need for more efforts at working to change the political system than merely to demonstrate against it.
Here is where perhaps because I am significantly older than Blow I offer several observations of how things are different. After all, we saw massive US and international demonstrations against the previous administration waging war in Iraq to no avail, and the failure to stop that war was paralleled by the failure of Occupy to get redress for the economic war that has devastated the lives of so many Americans.
In the 60s there were three main television networks, none of which had news divisions that were heavily controlled by other corporate interests. That meant we were able to see with clarity what was happening in the Civil Rights movement, in Vietnam, in opposition to the continuation of that war. More recent movements have struggled because of the lack of national media coverage that would be unavoidable, by the self-censorship of news divisions sometimes under control of corporate interests, by the sheer political bias of one news outlet, by the lack of access of other points of view to the organs of mass communication. While Blow is right to comment about the use of social media and social networking, even those tools are subject to limitations under corporate influence and especially if we lose net neutrality.
One other thing that is also different has been the implementation of the vision of the memorandum written by Lewis Powell to the Chamber of Commerce. That memorandum was written in 1971, after most of both the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements. The world is a very different place, with mechanisms design to PREVENT the kind of political change sought by the recent movements to which Blow refers.
That there has been some success on gay rights and on immigration actually serve to highlight these points. Neither of these are uniformly opposed by the powers that be as a threat to their continuation of power. Take marriage equality and the ending of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. In both cases, there are increasing numbers of gays visible in American society, some of whom are family members or friends of those in the power structure, some of whom have themselves risen to positions of authority and/or respect/influence in that power structure. That changes the reactions.
As to immigration - some in the corporate sector of the current power structure recognize both the financial benefits to greater inclusion and the probable inevitablity of increasing political influence as a result of the increasing proportion of the population that is Latino, and in being less overtly hostile are trying to dilute what might otherwise be a massive tilt in favor of political candidates who would be hostile to other, more important parts of their interest set.
We also need to look at what has happened with attempting to restrict access to voting, to in some cases roll back the franchise of those who have voted for decades, and to dilute the impact of minority votes at the Presidential level by first extreme gerrymandering and now by moving to use gerrymandered Congressional districts to split electoral votes in states controlled by Republicans but in which they have little change of winning the popular vote statewide in Presidential elections.
The costs of campaigns and the willingness of too many in the Democratic party to kowtow to the desires of Wall Street and Silicon Valley in order to obtain campaign funds also complicates the kinds of changes that half a century ago flowed from social movements to change the politics of this nation.
It is also worth remembering this: much of the social change was as the result of the will of one man, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who has seen poverty and discrimination up close as a young school teacher in Texas before he became a politician, and whose administration did more to advance social and economic equity than any save possibly that of FDR preventing a total collapse with the New Deal.
With the caveats I have offered, let me say that I found Blow's column thoughtful and as powerful as the recent columns about which I have chosen to write.
Which is why I want to offer his own final paragraph:
One of the people’s greatest strengths in a democracy is the flexing of political muscle and the exercising of political power, through ballots and boot leather. This new activism has the potential to create a new political reality. And it will. Eventually. I hope.
I hope, too.
That is why I teach government.
So that my students can understand how things work - internal political efficacy
So that my students can believe that they can make the changes they think this country needs - external political efficacy.
I have said teaching is my most important political activity.
It will be their country.
I want them able not only to own it in name, but to exercise that ownership in a fashion that insures equity and democracy for all.
Peace.