How to Build a Progressive Tea Party

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.thenation.com/article/158282/how-build-progressive-tea-party

Imagine a parallel universe where the Great Crash of 2008 was followed by a Tea Party of a very different kind. Enraged citizens gather in every city, week after week—to demand the government finally regulate the behavior of corporations and the superrich, and force them to start paying taxes. The protesters shut down the shops and offices of the companies that have most aggressively ripped off the country. The swelling movement is made up of everyone from teenagers to pensioners. They surround branches of the banks that caused this crash and force them to close, with banners saying, You Caused This Crisis. Now YOU Pay.

As people see their fellow citizens acting in self-defense, these tax-the-rich protests spread to even the most conservative parts of the country. It becomes the most-discussed subject on Twitter. Even right-wing media outlets, sensing a startling effect on the public mood, begin to praise the uprising, and dig up damning facts on the tax dodgers.

Instead of the fake populism of the Tea Party, there is a movement based on real populism. It shows that there is an alternative to making the poor and the middle class pay for a crisis caused by the rich. It shifts the national conversation. Instead of letting the government cut our services and increase our taxes, the people demand that it cut the endless and lavish aid for the rich and make them pay the massive sums they dodge in taxes.

This may sound like a fantasy—but it has all happened. The name of this parallel universe is Britain. As recently as this past fall, people here were asking the same questions liberal Americans have been glumly contemplating: Why is everyone being so passive? Why are we letting ourselves be ripped off? Why are people staying in their homes watching their flat-screens while our politicians strip away services so they can fatten the superrich even more?

More at the link --

[MineralMan]

1. Perhaps you could come up with a better name for your

budding movement. That one has some slimy strings attached to it.

Mar sin leibh an dràsda.

[azul]

4. Corporations Ain't People Party

CAP

[azul]

2. The teaparty was a ruse to deflect and control the anger

away from corporations an toward government. It was partly paid for and organized by Fox News so that it could make the news and not have to report on real demonstrations.

It hogs the limelight and draws in the discontented into a corporate controlled corral.

[Johonny]

7. I agree the problem in the US the teaparty is masked in liberal imagary

Class warfare, inequality, unequal access, unfair tax system, job creation, job protection...

If you hear what people are scared about and want fixed, it isn't different than what liberals want. The problem is the right is very good at labeling conservative ideas in liberal language to make it sound like to be against it is to be against what you are actually for. It works because they use simple language and simple targets that many Americans (particularly if your say a racist, or homophobic, paranoid about the gov'ment to start) can latch onto.

For instance: It's hard to discus an issue like putting Americans back to work, when the person believes destroying unions, will some how create more opportunities for them in the workforce.

[UTUSN]

3. Or how-to-be-a-pain-in-the-neck from the *other* end of the spectrum. n/t

[groundloop]

5. OK, so when do we start?

My grandfather participated in the sit-down strike at GM in the 30's while my grandmother took food to the workers so they could keep going. Maybe it's time to get out from behind my desk and continue a family tradition.

I fear, however, that most Americans are just too damned complacent to do anything like this.

[du_da]

6. I am not sure those on our side are ready for that reality.

Step number one, use tactics that do not disrupt the daily lives of normal people. You don't gain favor by annoying the people you need to convince to support you. You want to be noticed not disruptive.

Step two, the Tea Party grew because the average person could relate to them even if it wasn't enough to actually join them. You have to illustrate how others share your frustration even if they don't yet realize it. I know this is difficult to do while adhering to step one but that is the world we live in. The key is education not enforcement.

Step three, understand your enemy. If you are going to start with terms like fake populism in regards to the Tea Party then you are seeing what you want to be true not what is actually there. It is true that a significant portion of the Tea Party's initial success can be attributed to the advertisement push by those with wealth, however that only enabled the spread of their message capability they wouldn't have had otherwise without which the movement likely would have faded way as a fleeting memory. However, if you think for a moment that once people started receiving the message that they weren't inclined to agree with it but were in some way tricked into doing so then you are dead wrong. Their message and ideals are based around acceptance of and accounting for the worst in human nature and thus embraces it as reality. Like it or not, that is a very difficult message to not finding appealing for humans. Now we can argue all day with the RW how this is inappropriate and we should be striving for something better but don't fool yourself into thinking that it is somehow fake. This is often the problem with our side, we are so convinced in the nobility of our cause that we assume the rest of the world will automatically see the same. Reality however rarely fits our expectations. If you want to change the world you have to start by viewing the world as it is not as you would like it to be.


If you can't start with those three, then any additional steps will get you no where.

[Enthusiast]

12. FAKE, just like your post. nt

[Kurovski]

8. K&R. (nt)

[kctim]

9. Won't work

Americans are not as dependent on their government as those European nations are, which is why we protest when our government takes to much and they protest when their government doesn't give enough.

We will be in their position in 30, maybe 40 years, so maybe such protests will happen for you then.

[WillyT]

10. EVERYBODY NEEDS TO READ THIS ARTICLE, CANNOT RECOMMEND IT ENOUGH !!!

Across Britain, the same thing was happening. Even in Tunbridge Wells—a town synonymous with ultraconservatism—the Vodafone store was blockaded. Again, many people spontaneously joined in. The protests were all over that evening’s TV news. It was the most-read story on the websites of the BBC and the country’s most-read newspaper, the Daily Mail. The prime-time Channel 4 News reported, “A more eloquent and informed group of demonstrators would be hard to come across and one is struck by the wide appeal across ages and incomes, of what they had to say.” The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have shown how social media can be used to conduct the unfocused rage of a scattered population and harden it into a weapon. UK Uncut shows the same tactics can be used in a democracy—and there is the same need. Unemployment in the United States is at the same level as in Egypt before the uprising: 9 percent.

The UK Uncut message was simple: if you want to sell in our country, you pay our taxes. They are the membership fee for a civilized society. Most of the protesters I spoke with had never attended a demonstration before, but were driven to act by the rising unemployment, insecurity and austerity that are being outpaced only by rising rewards for the superrich. Ellie Mae O’Hagan, a 25-year-old office worker in Liverpool, one of the most economically depressed places in the country, said she was “absolutely outraged to discover that I was paying more than Philip Green in taxes.” She added, “I could see what all the cuts were doing. My brother had been made redundant, loads of my friends were unemployed and I could see it all getting worse, while these bankers get even bigger bonuses. And I thought, Right, you’ve got to do something. So I e-mailed UK Uncut to ask if there was a protest happening in Liverpool. They said, Not yet, so you organize one. So I spent forty-eight hours arranging one. And a hundred people turned up—an amazing mixture of people, who I had never met, and who didn’t know each other—and we shut down both Vodafone stores. Suddenly, it felt like we weren’t passive anymore. We were standing up for ourselves.”

At every protest, a clear and direct line was drawn from tax avoidance to real people’s lives. If they pay their bill, you won’t be forced out of your home. If they pay their bill, your grandmother won’t lose her government support. If they pay their bill, our children’s hospitals won’t be slashed.

The protests began to influence the political debate. Public opinion had already been firmly for pursuing tax dodgers, with 77 percent telling YouGov pollsters there should be a crackdown. But by dramatizing and demonstrating this mood, the protesters forced it onto the agenda—and stripped away Cameron’s claims that there was no alternative to his cuts.

Same piece.

:kick: & Rec !!!

[WillyT]

11. Kick !!!

:kick: