Politicians Rehash Economic Cliches as Crisis Spirals Out of Control

By Danny Schechter, AlterNet. Posted January 31, 2009.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's decision to attend the WSF in Belém on Jan. 29 and 30, instead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, reflects a change in the alignment of forces.

So we can expect a growing challenge to the neo-liberal policies that led to the crisis and are now being refashioned to try to get us out of them. Already uprisings are underway in Iceland and Latvia and Greece, just to mention three countries with mounting unrest. This protest wave is expected to spread not only in Europe but across the oceans. As more people become desperate, they will become more open to activism, if not riots, for economic survival.

Look for an upsurge of protest against foreclosures in the USA. ACORN, the community based organization, has announced plans to stop house auctions with civil disobedience in a direct challenge to so-called property rights.

ACORN's strategy has two objectives: help affected families stay in their homes and create the political will necessary to implement a comprehensive solution in the face of the full court press lobbying effort the financial industry is running -- an effort that cuts homeowners out of any recovery package.

Thus ACORN's campaign is working to put the human faces of foreclosure victims front and center while escalating the campaign tactics to include civil disobedience aimed at keeping people from losing their homes. Everything is on the table: disruption of sales, disruption of banking business, even refusing to be evicted or moving families back into their foreclosed homes. The urgency of the crisis demands no less.

At the moment, this type of resistance has been seen as a side show in this circus, but with a few high profile acts -- like that factory takeover by workers in Chicago -- this too might spread just as the sit-ins that spread the civil rights movement in the era of the Kennedy Adminsitation.

Right now the debate about economic recovery seems abstract, revolving around billion dollar plans that sound good but may not work. As the crisis deepens, anger will rise and revolts are likely to follow. The locus of change will move from the suites to the streets.

Change doesn’t only come from above. The Obama Administration will do what it can but it does not have the majority it needs in Congress to impose a solution (if there is one to be imposed!)

As Frederick Douglass understood centuries ago, "power yields nothing without a demand." We may be in a new era but there are some old truths that still must guide us. We need to know what constitutes economic fairness and justice and push to get it.

See more stories tagged with: democrats, republicans, economy, stimulus, financial crisis

Danny Schechter writes the News Dissector blog for MediaChannel.org. His latest book is PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books).

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