Why it's right for us to be militant

[dcsmart]

IN THE January 28 University of Washington Daily, Rebecca Kuensting attacks the International Socialist Organization for proposing "militant struggle" to oppose budget cuts and tuition increases. She feels that militant struggle must mean violence, or at least unproductive "stubborn displays of anger."
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The priorities of the system from top to bottom favor the rich over the poor, business over labor, top paid administrators over students. While ordinary people suffer, the rich get bailed out and laugh all the way to the bank.

If this situation doesn't make you angry, where is your compassion or sense of justice? The excuse that there is no money for education or social programs because of the recession does not fly. The money is there--it just goes to the wrong people for the wrong purposes.
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The need for militant struggle (disruptive, confrontational actions: sit-ins, strikes, and occupations such as the recent ones in California) is not just theoretical. As the great abolitionist and ex-slave Frederick Douglass put it,

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will. Find out just what a people will quietly submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.
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http://socialistworker.org/2010/02/04/right-for-us-to-be-militant

[Goldstein1984]

1. The Fredrick Douglass quote is going to become a battle cry

Militant struggle is what is required.

Anything less is a vote for the status quo.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. K&R for the Douglass quote. nt

[BrklynLiberal]

3. Torches and pitchforks for all!! They are not just for oldtime villagers!!

[bvar22]

4. "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible,

...will make violent revolution inevitable."---JFK, 1962

Voting for "CHANGE" is apparently not enough.

LESS than 35% of the American People support Mandates without a Public Option.



"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans. I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."---Paul Wellstone

[Tutankhamun]

5. Outstanding quotation.