I came this close to buying a ticket to Chicago today for
the People’s Summit next week, but the I
Ching said “It does not further one to go anywhere.” Only half kidding. Plus
I’ve been facing health issues which stress won’t help. Why did I want go so
much?
Our movement is in a crucial phase, as it always is. Perhaps
Democracy for America is a good model for how to turn Bernie’s campaign into an
ongoing movement. DFA came out of Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004. It’s a
testament to the democracy of that organization that Dean came out for Hillary
early in the game and his brother Jim still heads it, DFA came out strongly for
Bernie and remain an integral part of the movement. Something like this should
come out of the People’s Summit. Something which effectively merges many of the
sponsoring organizations, including DFA and MoveOn, the latter of which is
conspicuously missing from the sponsor list.
The election is behind us. The media circus has the momentum
now. We do need to drop out of the damn horse race, which is mostly an
entertaining diversion from actually dealing with reality. Indeed, the
elections are a reality show, which tells you why Trump is doing so well. One
of the great things about this primary season is that the electoral system was
exposed, the emperor wore no clothes.
Democracy in the USA has always been, from
slavery times on, a cruel joke.
Last night, in honor of the Greatest, we watched a movie
called “Freedom Road” (1979), starring Muhammed Ali, as far as I know his only
movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kgy-m1wors
It’s the story of the bloody aftermath
of another hotly contested presidential election, in 1876. Democracy was for a
brief period flourishing in the former slaveholding South. During
Reconstruction, Union soldiers protected the revolution. Black farmers and
teachers were being elected to Congress, to state assemblies, to local offices.
They were even teaming up with white farmers to buy the foreclosed plantations,
land deals federally monitored. Then we had a close election. The Democrat
Tilden won the popular vote but neither he nor Republican Hayes had a majority
of Electoral College votes. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_election.html
So they made a deal: the remaining three Southern states would throw their
support to Hayes in exchange for his withdrawing federal troops from the former
Confederacy. Ali’s movie shows how Black and virulently racist white farmers worked
together and engaged in serious armed resistance to the klan and its allies as
they viciously reclaimed their supremacy. Needless to say, the ending isn’t
pretty.
The parallel with the current election is that Trump would “withdraw
the troops from the former Confederacy” by unleashing the organized white
supremacist movement that supports him. They are likely to aid in his election
by standing as armed guards at polling places, intimidating non-Trump voters.
If he actually got elected (and, he could, he could), his “militia” supporters,
including the police, would hold target practice at the border, at mosques, and
at Black Lives Matter rallies. Trump will deplore their violence and pay their
legal fees. The question isn’t who to vote for anymore. The question is who
will stand up to the surge of racism that is sweeping the globe.
Bernie has built a beautiful movement. What I hope will come
out of the Summit next week is the foundation of a national organization, led
by the Black and other people of color movements. Its goal should be to
rigorously advocate for Bernie’s four “justices” – economic, racial, social,
environmental – but also to keep the country out of war and to take over the
Democratic Party, the largest organization of any kind in the country. In
retrospect, it is obvious that this was Bernie’s primary objective all along.
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