Chris Hedges: This Is What Resistance Looks Like

[marmar]

from truthdig:




This Is What Resistance Looks Like

Posted on Apr 3, 2011
By Chris Hedges



AP / Reed Saxon
A woman who sympathizes with people who have been foreclosed on is arrested outside a Chase bank in Los Angeles, where she and other protesters gathered to express themselves.


The phrase consent of the governed has been turned into a cruel joke. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs. Civil Disobedience is the only tool we have left.

We will not halt the laying off of teachers and other public employees, the slashing of unemployment benefits, the closing of public libraries, the reduction of student loans, the foreclosures, the gutting of public education and early childhood programs or the dismantling of basic social services such as heating assistance for the elderly until we start to carry out sustained acts of civil disobedience against the financial institutions responsible for our debacle. The banks and Wall Street, which have erected the corporate state to serve their interests at our expense, caused the financial crisis. The bankers and their lobbyists crafted tax havens that account for up to $1 trillion in tax revenue lost every decade. They rewrote tax laws so the nation’s most profitable corporations, including Bank of America, could avoid paying any federal taxes. They engaged in massive fraud and deception that wiped out an estimated $40 trillion in global wealth. The banks are the ones that should be made to pay for the financial collapse. Not us. And for this reason at 11 a.m. April 15 I will join protesters in Union Square in New York City in front of the Bank of America.

“The political process no longer works,” Kevin Zeese, the director of Prosperity Agenda and one of the organizers of the April 15 event, told me. “The economy is controlled by a handful of economic elites. The necessities of most Americans are no longer being met. The only way to change this is to shift the power to a culture of resistance. This will be the first in a series of events we will organize to help give people control of their economic and political life.”

If you are among the one in six workers in this country who does not have a job, if you are among the some 6 million people who have lost their homes to repossessions, if you are among the many hundreds of thousands of people who went bankrupt last year because they could not pay their medical bills or if you have simply had enough of the current kleptocracy, join us in Union Square Park for the “Sounds of Resistance Concert,” which will feature political hip-hop/rock powerhouse Junkyard Empire with Broadcast Live and Sketch the Cataclysm. The organizers have set up a website, and there’s more information on their Facebook page. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/this_is_what_resistance_looks_like_20110403/

[Doctor_J]

1. Can I get an Amen?

To those DUers who think that the president is doing just fine, or that more tax cuts are needed (that one appeared on Saturday), or that the Libyan adventure is a winner, or that the current set of Repukes and Dems in Congress can somehow work together to get us out of this mess, I would say you are worse than useless at this time.

Edit: Ii am not sure that Hedges is correct. He seems to believe that sustained peaceful resistance will take the country back. I tend to think it will take more than that.

[Demeter]

8. Peaceful Will Take 30 Years, As It Did in Egypt

I don't think we have that long.

[Doctor_J]

12. Well, I'll be looking up at the sod long before that

so that's not good news. Too bad we let it go for 20 years before even starting to fight back.

My worst nightmare is that there's really a hell, and I'll have to share a room with Ronald Reagan.

[raouldukelives]

2. K&R

[LuckyLib]

3. At the same time we're taking to the streets, we need to encourage folks to

refuse working with these banks -- join a credit union!

[pscot]

5. +1

[freshwest]

4. More!

[bertman]

6. REC with a caveat. It will take MILLIONS of people like her to change this. nt

[DeSwiss]

7. K&R

"Civil Disobedience is the only *non-violent* tool we have left."

/fixed

[Overseas]

9. recommended. //nt

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[russspeakeasy]

11. Thanks for the post and the link.

[socialist_n_TN]

13. I got this emailed to me this morning. I think that........

a group of us from Nashville are going to try and go to this. BoA also has a corporate office here in town that we're going to go to on Tax Day and present them with a bill for unpaid taxes too.

I HATE these capitalist motherfuckers. I'm ready for some civil disobedience. Until we show up at their work AND their houses, they're not scared of us. And there's no concessions UNLESS they're scared of us.