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NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , JULY 2003
TO ALL THE PEOPLE
As the importance of wealth, no matter how acquired,
assumes greater influence, the social inequities between the
wealthy and the less wealthy are accentuated. Usually, except
under remarkable circumstances the disadvantaged seek
protection and become clients of the wealthy and place
themselves under their authority, surrendering in the process
their personal and political liberties along with their economic
rights. At the preset time the wealthiest 10% of the population
owns or controls at least 70% of the nation’s net worth while the
bottom half has only a mere 4%. In the meantime legalized
deceptions allow wealthy individuals and the richest corporations
to escape with little or no tax payments (and are as well reim
bursed for taxes they did not pay) while the middle class and
the poor pay punitive taxes to make up the deficit. The rich
keep power by purchasing candidates and elections and by
voting. The poor drop out but they don’t disappear. They lead
ruined lives, increasingly deprived and violent, and their
hopeless depravity requires more police and prisons.
It is time for a revolution. The nation’s political/ econo
mic structure needs massive and real change to transfer money
and power to the dispossessed millions of citizens. The large
and growing underclass must be organized to capture power
instead of subsisting on charity or dying from neglect. It is time
to realize that the heart of our liberty is disappearing in the
despair of the deprived and disenfranchised. Minorities have
little chance in the existing status quo, yet the potential of real
power lies within these disillusioned masses. They can affect a
revolution as inspiring and sweeping as the original revolt
against Mother England and they don't have to go armed into
the bush or mountains or build bombs in tenement basements.
This revolution is underwritten in the fundamentals of
the nation itself, which are more binding than the right to remove
emperors in old China. This revolution is within the law, it is
supported by the law, in essence at least though seldom in
practice and despite the mockery that has been made of it by
the wealthy who purchase it at whim; and the law not only
provides its mechanics, the law in a sense depends on popular
uprisings to maintain its legitimacy.
The imperative to uphold and reinvigorate the only
practical method short of civil war to wrest power from the
adherents of plutocracy and preserve our failing democracy
is critical. We must reopen the system to the other half of
America by registering them for the vote and organizing them
into a politically independent party as the vehicle for revolution.
It might seem early to think about next year's election
but the two parties are already staking out their ground. Learning
from previous elections can cut two ways — adopt the low-blow
strategies of meanness or go for the other lesson: that a vast,
discontented mass has been cheated of its heritage and wishes
it be returned. There are more grassroots organizations than at
any time in the nation's history, all waiting for a real voice to
coalesce their concerns, issues and visions, but only the wealthy
or those who serve them can afford to campaign for national
public office. Yet all politics is,local; while the trend seems to
favor high-pressure political professionals backed by large
amounts of money who increasingly fragment the electorate with
nasty advertising and PAC-backed candidates bought and sold,
they are vulnerable to the populism of grassroots organizing and
campaigning that must be organized at the community level in
every community in the USA.
Another sector of discontent revealed in the last few
elections are liberal/centrist Republicans who distrust the right
wing tilt of the party and of liberal and leftist Democrats who are
disaffected that their party has abandoned them and followed
the GOP topdogs to the right. Traditionally the party of working
people and minorities, the Democrats' mainline managers have
moved it to the right and left behind a large number of bitter
party members who are turning against it.
With only two parties through which to realize their
ambitions mainstream politicians show little interest in respond
ing to minority interests or, in fact, to registering into the parties
the millions of blacks, Hispanics or Caucasian poor who seldom
participate in political activity. Although their involvement would
SONS
RAYBARTKUS
swell party ranks, it would also broaden the base of each party
and threaten the status quo. Entrenched incumbents count on
fewer people voting to maintain power and on ever larger contri
butions from wealthy and corporate sponsors who use their
money to turn campaigns into public trials of fear and loathing.
On average, less than 50% of eligible voters in this
country vote (the ominous consequence of such low turnout in
2000 is an unelected President who has literally usurped power).
The nonvoters are generally economically handicapped and
suffer most from inequities and corruption. Disgust and power
lessness, not apathy, alienates citizens from the polls and are
a major source of a great public discontent expressed in the
movement to limit terms of political office at all levels, a sign
that even those who do vote are discouraged and fed up.
That discontent might be tapped more pertinently by
concentrating on registering to vote the many millions who have
either dropped out of the political process or have never been
given the chance to be involved in it. If these millions were to
rise from their bitter cynicism and lethargy and use nothing more
than their constitutional right to register and vote they could
begin a revolution as sweeping in its effects and change as the
original revolt against English rule, which was as corrupt and
shortsighted as the current American government. This revol
ution is underwritten in the nation's basic principles and is more
binding than the ancient right to remove emperors in old China
or revolt against kings in medieval Europe.This revolution is
within the law, it is supported by the law, in design if seldom
in practice; and the law not only provides its mechanics, the law
in a vital sense depends upon electoral uprisings to maintain its
legitimacy.
The word revolution causes tremors through the political
culture (except when it is used to huckster a new commercial
product). !c was through revolution that the nation came into
being — actually a painful splitting off of a colony from its
mother government. The reason was an angry response to the
same kind of repressive impotence that is present today.
Change disrupts and the changes necessary to redistribute the
power and control of the nation's wealth to a majority of the
people will be dramatic and unsettling. There will not be an
instant transfer of power nor will it ever be complete.
We have allowed the vote to be trivialized and made
much less than its real potency. Money has been substituted —
the cash candidates receive supersedes the vote (and insures
their continuance in power), which is itself a commodity to be
purchased. Paradoxically, almost as direct cause and effect,
fewer and fewer Americans vote which ultimately cheapens the
vote as well as makes it cheaper. (In a sense it is cheaper to
DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY
"I have blamed the German people for Hitler and the
Second World War until now. I didn't realize how helpless they
could be to stop Hitler until Bush became President."
-J osephine M c C usker ( age 90)
The USA Patriot Act represents nothing less than an
arrogant attempt to take over the U.S government by a very
ambitious cabal who wish supreme power domestically and
globally.
To do this they intend to abrogate the very Constitution
and Bill of Rights that are the foundation of this nation's demo
cracy and which gave them the power to be the threat they are.
They are the very people our ancestors warned us about
when they conceived the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and
made the people supreme rather than the government.
There can be no better way to commemorate the mean
ing of July 4th, our celebration of liberty and independence, than
by refusing to acquiesce to the treachery against democracy the
so-called Patriot Act represents.
Our ancestors had the courage to create this nation. It
is up to its citizens to preserve it.Throughout the country nearly
150 cities and counties have acted to do just that, successfully
petitioning their local governments to defy the harshly undemo
cratic implications of the Patriot Act. Unfortunately other cities
have rejected their citizens' call to oppose the current attempt
to annul the Bill of Rights — Astoria is among them.
By what might charitably be called a flagrant act of
legerdemain, the Astoria City Council trivialized the concerns
of at least 400 of its local citizens who beseeched the council
to certify the Patriot Act as unconstitutional. Instead the Council
crafted its own proposal to defer the local Bill of Rights Commit
tee to Oregon's federal representatives, a shabbily patronizing
gesture at the very least, certainly a craven method of ducking
a fundamental issue at the very core of the rights and liberties
guaranteed by the Constitution as well as a condescending
display of disrespect for their constituents.
The cop-out among the council was that as elected
officials they had “sworn an oath to the Constitution” and there
fore could not vote in favor of the resolution which called upon
city staff to refuse cooperation with federal application of the
Patriot Act within city boundaries. The irony is that if they really
had respect for their oath they would have stood up for the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights, says Lee Miller who attended
the council meeting June 23.
“If you list the grievances our ancestors had against
the British crown, you will see that the Patriot Act enables our
government to do those things on that list,” Miller says. “Our last
refuge is local government which affects 90% of our lives. Where
do we go from there — violence and revolution? I would prefer
my revolutions to be peaceful but what are the alternatives?"
One Councilman suggested that the passionate hostility
to the Patriot Act by the assemblage in the council chambers
was based on fear He was right — aside from the council’s own
dread it might actually have to do something, the real fear
among the 200 persons at the meeting was that they are going
to lose what is left of our democracy without having any mean
ingful opportunity to defend their basic Constitutional rights
After all, the Patriot Act purports to amend the Constitution
without having gone through the amending process prescribed
by the Constitution, and also obstructs the customary method
of revision or repeal acted against it.
The Astoria City Council will not get off as easy as it
might hope The Bill of Rights Committee intends to return with
the resolution, perhaps modified to address some of the criti
cisms by the council, but it will definitely be on the docket again
soon And the council chambers will once again be packed to
overflowing
- michael M c C usker
(with thanks to LEE MILLER)
purchase apathy than to buy votes — corrupting politicians acts
as a disillusioning factor that causes voters to drop out of the
electoral process, eliminating the need to buy them out.)
The creation of a new political party or a spawn of
parties might have disruptive effects, a worst case scenario
being a civil war such as occurred when the Republicans
replaced the moribund Whig Party and happened in Russia's
'New Republics' whose multiple births ripped apart the Soviet
womb. The risks here at home are tremendous, yet the Ameri
can political apparatus needs real change which is not being
provided by an antiquated two party system that represents
only a privileged minority.
It has generally been common knowledge that Big
Business corrupts politicians in order to grasp the resources and
process of government for its own ends; that Big Business
combines and illegally conspires to wipe out competition; that
industries establish monopolies to control supply, service,
quality, price; yet the great majority of the people only mildly
condemn these practices, considering them manifestations of
the great American genius for capitalism that made America
“number one," and for all the gross inequities these practices
have made people seem somewhat perversely proud
The ambivalence of the USA, as well as most other
societies, is that it preaches one ideology but actually practices
various others, no few at odds with the official piety
It is a sad fact that many people in this country would
like to see it become a complete police state. It is even more
unfortunate that the greater population would accommodate
itself to one, if reluctantly. A great public pride among the bulk
of our citizenry is that they are “law abiding” — hardly
questioning whom or for what reasons those laws generated
from.
The Bushies are instructive in that they are showing us
the weaknesses of democracy. We are being confronted with
the paradoxes of freedom and power. The most persistent
political question is the accommodation of liberty to order, which
has vexed American civilization since its beginning.
The nature of authority demands that no one grow up.
Governments encourage an immature citizenry which must be
told what to do and whose only freedom is the freedom to obey.
Freedom implies a mature citizenry. To be free and
remain that way is a large responsibility and many people don't
want it. Freedom is an abstract. We are never far from fear or
the possibility of death or injury. We must work to feed, clothe
and shelter ourselves and our families, and always there is the
dread that it will all be taken away. Freedom insists upon the
value of the individual but the ever increasing complexity of our
society is constructed upon aggregates and masses and makes
less valuable the usefulness and contributions of each of us.
Our thinking and self-worth are negatively affected; an individual
and ultimately aggregate sense of personal and political helples
sness sets in.
We are still emerging from the half century Cold War
with the Soviet Union and the chaos and fissures resulting from
the collapse of communism are taking off in at least one
extreme direction, the growth of an overweeningly ambitious
capitalism exemplified by the Bush administration which is as
reckless, arrogant and corrupt as the old robber barons that rose
in the North after the Civil War and created the “Gilded Age’ of
the late 19th century.
It might be useful to think of the Bush administration as
a “criminal conspiracy to take over and use the federal govern
ment fortheir own conspirational purposes," as Clarence Darrow
once said of a group of railroad CEOs that implanted stooges
into the U.S. Attorney General's office to make and enforce laws
(such as no strike orders) for their benefit and profit.
“From top to bottom the whole system is a fraud and all
of us know it, laborers and capitalists alike, and all of us are
consenting parties to it,” Henry Adams wrote.
The essential issue is whether we are going to uphold
what our ancestors started or if we are going to undo two and a
half centuries of hardwon and often bloody struggles for liberty
and give it all away to a small clique of frantically ambitious
imperialists who manipulate our history as well as our passions
and fears fortheir own aggrandizement. The paradox is that our
Bill of Rights are not for us alone, nor is the manifest destiny our
leaders wish to export in a rather twisted and malevolent form.
Perhaps the seminal question of American democracy
at the beginning of the 21st century is this: Should anyone be
arrested or quarantined for speaking, writing or for some other
expression of opinion about democracy? If the answer is yes,
obviously democracy has deteriorated to a point where there
can be no discussion If the answer is no, a more troubling
prospect yet exists that the 'no' answer is not a guarantee that
democracy remains in a recognizable form
And what is freedom? The answer has appeared in this
space before. It is the right to not be recognized by gender, race
or class but by the simple fact of a person’s existence. It is the
right to be counted on and respected for personal and indepen
dent expression of belief and opinion. It is the right to be the
only person on the planet who believes in something no one else
does.