Reply #88: Coalitions need to be built to organize protests

[clear eye]

Our last major era of political protests took coalitions of organizations to mobilize their memberships into a unified concerted action. Is it possible that the constant surveillance of telephone, email, and online activists has inhibited this? Is essential political protest the first casualty of disabling FISA? Or are the natural constituent NGO's still too optimistic about mere political negotiating, to get together and bring their membership out to the streets.

I would encourage everyone who belongs to economic justice and/or single-payer healthcare organizations to encourage coalition-building and national protest. Younger people are more likely to be open than older, since many older leaders of organizations have spent years in turf and position wars and gotten habitually wary of other activists. "Break on through to the other side."

For the most part Americans want a wholesale redirection of public revenue to rescue it from the looters, saving life on earth through serious environmental programs, remaking our country as a world advocate for peace, and restoration of election integrity. Many groups have responded by working for little bits and pieces that fall under those general categories.

The question for the leadership of these seed groups is,"Wouldn't you be more effective as a small group, if rather than trying to tackle such an ambitious agenda as one group, even with the help of other local NGO's, you reinvented yourselves specifically as an umbrella organization whose main job would be defining a unifying set of priorities from within your main issues, and getting large organizations to sign on for mass actions demanding action on those priorities?" The coalition could be called something like United for Democracy (UFD?). It would probably help if the intiators sent a survey to a slew of NGOs and better labor unions w/ 3 - 5 possible priorities listed under each general area and asked which they see as coming first. That way groups would feel that they had input in the agenda for the first mass action. For example, under the heading "Getting our Voice Back" which could be defined as removing the de facto amendments that the Bush administration made to the constitution with their "signing statements", their corporatization of elections, and their institutionalization of domestic spying, you could list (1)a law specifiying open source code for all election machines and tabulators to be made available to qualified representatives of each candidate in real time and a prohibition against sending results to county boards over any sort of lines--a la Minnesota, (2) a memorandum of understanding that when an administration stonewalls reasonable subpoenas from Congress, that Congress is obligated by the Constitution to defend the rights of the people by acknowledging this violation of Constitutional powers and appointing a special prosecutor to investigate whether an impeachable offense is being committed, and (3)undoing some of the Patriot Act provisions that make it possible to arrest leaders of legitimate political dissension as "terrorists". The same sorts of lists could be made for the economic "Just Use of Public Revenue" (health care, and reregulation of the banks, mortgage rescue fall within this area), environmental "Saving Our Planet", and world peace "Peace in Our Time" issue areas.

Once the groups were on board, this could be started as a petition campaign including deadlines with the understanding that when Obama, following the advice of his reactionary advisors, inevitably ignored the demands except rhetorically, the coalition would progress to the weekend mass demonstration, and then, as outrage over inaction built, toward a one-day General Strike. The time is overdue for the federal government to be made to remember that this is a representative democracy, and that we, the people, can hold their feet to the fire.

While of course the interactions among the principals has to be more extensive than the survey I suggested, that was the beginning, for example, of the People's Party platform in 1971-2. While the group was a dismal failure as a political party (3rd parties have an almost unsurmontable challenge under our system), the platform did affect how the political debate was framed that year and the positions taken by Congressional Democrats on a number of issues. Just as our recent political history was derailed by the theft of the Presidential election in 2000, politics in 1972 was trying to recover from the deformation caused by the assassination of then-Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. I believe that Nixon's unconstitutional behavior was seen against the backdrop of the populist goals of the People's Party platform by many politically active people, and the contrast helped fuel the call for impeachment. Of course it didn't hurt that the Fairness Doctrine was in force then and TV news was forced to air pro-impeachment opinions even if only in 90 second or less slots at the end of the program.

The bottom line for me is that I don't see real political recovery for democracy from the damaging effects of the Bush administration without such a coalition and explicit agenda. Nothing worth doing in this enormous country of ours is ever quick and easy. Some group will, eventually, get the ball rolling.