Building a Smarter, Stronger Democratic Movement in the Face of Opposition

Continued from previous page

Manning and Snowden exposed ways that our government’s actions contradict what most people value in the U.S., and call on us to demand different behavior. Their disclosures challenge the security state, the military industrial complex, transnational corporations and an empire-based foreign policy. As a result they are being treated as enemies of the state while those whose crimes they have exposed go uninvestigated and unprosecuted. 

Indeed, the attack on our privacy is the hallmark of an abusive government. As Edward Snowden’s father’s lawyer, Bruce Fein wrote in a letter to President Obama, Justice Robert Jackson of the US Supreme Court, who served as the chief prosecutor in Nuremberg, wrote of the importance of the Fourth Amendment: “Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart. Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government.”

The spirit for change in our nation is very high. This was also a week of growing environmental protests as ecological devastation from extractive energy sources was again highlighted. These images of beautiful beaches in Thailand destroyed by an oil pipeline leak, this mystery in Canada of a nine-week-old tar sands leak that no one can explain or stop, and the report from the Earth Policy Institute that climate change gases are at new highs remind us of the urgency of our struggles.

Environmental activists know that the planet cannot speak for itself, so they must act, resist, trespass and blockade as these activists did at the Brayton Coal Power Plant in Massachusetts. And, there were hundreds who were on the Columbia River, hanging from and standing on a bridge to blockade the transport of carbon energy. There were also these Appalachia Justice protesters who blockaded a road to stop the transport of coal from mountain-top removal who are now facing jail time and fines. And we are seeing Native Indian groups blockading pipelines, others joining together in a 1,000-person Native Healing Walk for the planet; and scores participating in the Two Row Wampum Epic Canoe journey down the Hudson River. There is an escalation of environmental justice activism across the country as people see the corruption of government preventing environmental justice.

Many Americans see their right to protest as essential to change as the electoral system has been too corrupted by money, the media controlled by concentrated corporate interests and no other avenue available. Some of the actions this week to protect our Right to Assemble have been occurring in Madison, WI where scores have been arrested while singing protest songs in the capitol.

The lessons of history apply to the movement for transformation today. We need to develop a mass movement of people committed to ending the rule of money and building power in the people. That requires action. Edmund Burke, a political philosopher of the 18th century spoke a truth that still applies today: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

And, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized the same truth during the Civil Rights Movement when he said: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.”   

Now is the time for action. We will not be deterred, as modeled here by Food Not Bombs, by those who try to stop us. And we will find more effective and strategic ways to create a world based upon our values. We are popular resistance, and we will persevere.