All posts in category Community

An urgent message for the global elites: change is coming, like it or not!

America’s ‘Primal Scream’ – NYTimes.com.

It’s always nice to wake up and see the very thoughts I was writing last night trumpeted in the Sunday Review of the NY Times.  Nick Kristof cites many of the same statistics I did to make his case that income inequality is not only real, but “a cancer on our national well-being.”  

But where he ends his column wondering whether the movement will persist “once Zuccotti Park fills with snow and the novelty wears off,” I believe things are only going to get more intense as we move into this winter of discontent.

For one thing, there’s climate change looming over us.  Check out today’s big story on the fact that this imperative issue has lost traction in the U.S., even as most of the rest of the world is moving aggressively to regulate carbon emissions and develop more sustainable technologies.

It seems that the elites driving our economy believe that we can continue our comfortable insulated ride in the plush American Caddy, and let the plebes outside the walls of our national gated community deal with the unpleasantness.

How quickly we forget the major blizzard in New York City last year, or Hurricane Irene bearing down on the whole East Coast.  Climate change is only going to intensify in the coming years unless we get serious about it fast.  The natural disasters it will cause will cost far more than action to curb emissions proactively.

Unlike Nick Kristof, I don’t believe our society has a choice about whether or not to change.  We will be changing, like it or not.  The question is, will we change in an orderly fashion, through regulation and innovation that puts the common good ahead of the greedy goals of the men behind the tinted windows of those chauffeured limousines?

To me, this is what the Occupy protests are about.  The 99% are sick and tired of shouldering all the costs of our industrial capitalist way of life–the debt bondage, the toxic chemicals making us sick, the decimation of our environment wreaking havoc with our climate, the fading of the American dream–while a few fat cats sit pretty on top of the heap and enjoy the spoils.

I have news for you, global elites.  You can’t escape the impartial justice of climate change.  You should have realized by now that you will reap what you sow: if you seed our agriculture, air and water with toxic chemicals, you and your children will get cancer just like the rest of us.  If you continue to deforest the Earth at the current rate, you too will be gasping for oxygen along with the poorest inhabitants of what used to be a boreal forest.


Hiding behind police barricades in your plate-glass towers will only get you so far.  In the long run, it’s no way to live.

Come on out into Liberty Plaza with the rest of us, and let’s work together for a better life for all–while there’s still time.

Leave a comment
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 16, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Climate Change, Community, Energy Sustainability, Environment, Health, Human Rights, New stories, Politics, privilege
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 16, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/10/16/an-urgent-message-for-the-global-elites-change-is-coming-like-it-or-not/

Much to protest…and much work to be done to make it right

Riots in Rome, a huge protest in Times Square, New York, and rolling protests from New Zealand to London to L.A. Things haven’t been this globally lively since the 2003 protests against the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq.  Where is it all leading?

None of us know.  But the police are getting out their riot gear, and it is very possible that there are going to be more violent clashes, as there were in Rome today.

As the protests gain momentum, it’s important to keep our eye on just what all the anger is about.

Business Insider, of all sites, published a very interesting set of charts and commentary last week promising to explain just what all the fuss was about down in Liberty Plaza.  Check it out, you won’t be disappointed.

Here are a few of the most damning charts:

The U.S. ranks below China, Iran and India in terms of income INEQUALITY.

Five percent of Americans own 69% of financial wealth.  The top 1% own 42% of this country’s financial wealth.

And the tax rate of these fabulously wealthy people is about the same as everyone else’s. That’s why they continue to get richer and richer, and everyone else slides inexorably downward.

While CEO pay is up nearly 300% since 1990, average workers’ pay is up 4%.  I don’t know about you, but the modest increases in my salary over the past decade have been totally absorbed by higher expenses, from food to gas to health insurance premiums and everything else.

So hell yes, there is something to be angry about!  There is a lot to protest!  There is a lot of work to be done to turn this country and this world around. The question is, how far will we go to rock the comfortable cruise ship of the one percenters?  And how far will they go to keep the status quo the way it is?

Police forces have always done the bidding of the wealthy in capitalist societies; is there any chance this could change?  The police are workers just like the protesters; is there any chance they will break their indoctrination and side with their own class interest?

Seems unlikely, but let’s not underestimate the forces of change.  Who would have believed, even six weeks ago, that people would be turning out in the thousands across the world to protest corporate greed and social inequality?

Look at this crowd.  It’s pretty clean cut, isn’t it?  This doesn’t look like a case for the riot police.  By and large, these people don’t want revolution. They just want to be able to live decent lives in a country they can be proud of.

Is this too much to ask?

No.  But, and this is a BIG BUT: what we’ve come to consider “a decent life” is going to have to change in the 21st century, given peak oil, the impending collapse of industrial agriculture, and the climate crisis.

So much will depend on our being smart enough to put these pieces together with the economic injustice we perceive so clearly, and see our way clear to a new, sustainably grounded society.

This is not too much to ask either.  But it will be a challenge to move from the fist-in-the-air stage to the creative visioning, and most of all to the implementation of a more just and sustainable economic system.

We have no choice but to meet this challenge.  Our global future as a species depends on it. This is the central task of our time.

Leave a comment
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 15, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Climate Change, Community, Economy, Energy Sustainability, Human Rights, Politics, privilege
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 15, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/10/15/much-to-protest-and-much-work-to-be-done-to-make-it-right/

From brooms of resistance to guerilla tactics…let’s keep it going!

Congratulations to the Occupy Wall Streeters for making weapons out of mops and brooms and holding off the Bloomberg eviction forces!  A major victory!  I wonder when was the last time Bloomberg held a broom–probably so long ago he couldn’t conceive of such a strategy of resistance.

Looking out on this rainy, cool morning, I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen when the cold winds of winter start to blow.  Those of us supporting this movement from the comfort of our homes don’t want to see the protesters getting frostbite out by the Wall Street bull!

I saw a great suggestion this morning: why not turn the Occupy movement into a guerilla resistance, with daily occupations happening in designated strategic sites all over the country, the occupiers called in via cell phones and social media?  A movement like this would have the flexibility of motion, and would be able to respond to current events.

It could also be fun–like the spontaneous street parties that often happen in European cities, with the partiers called in by cell phone.

Now almost a month old, the Occupy movement has done an outstanding job of waking up this nation.  Let’s keep the momentum going even as the cold winds of winter begin to blow.

Leave a comment
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 14, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Community, New stories, Politics, privilege, Resilience
Tagged , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 14, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/10/14/from-brooms-of-resistance-to-guerilla-tactics-lets-keep-it-going/

Confessions from Park Avenue: Ignorance, Privilege and Change

This week the Occupy Wall Street protest ventured uptown, to the Upper East Side of Manhattan–where I grew up.

I have always been reluctant to admit that for a good portion of my life I called Park Avenue home.  I knew what kinds of stereotypes would instantly leap to my interlocuters’ minds upon hearing these gilded signifiers: “Upper East Side,” “Park Avenue,” even “Manhattan.”  And indeed, I have known many neighbors who fit the model of the wealthy socialite snob.  But there are also thinking, feeling, compassionate people living on Park Avenue.  They are guilty, above all, of the privilege of ignorance.  They truly don’t know how the other half lives.

I can just hear the scornful snickers and groans that greet this statement.  But it’s true.  I know it because I lived it.  And to some extent, you’ve lived it too.  All of us Americans have this privilege relative to people living in desperate material circumstances in other parts of the world.  At least our society pays lip service to the ideal of equality.

The tony apartment buildings lining Park Avenue are urban gated communities.  Most are co-ops, and it is difficult to buy your way into them–money alone won’t do the trick, you also have to be thoroughly vetted by the co-op board, and depending on the building, you may or may not pass muster.  The people living inside tend to be very reserved with one another.  You might not get to know your neighbors even if you live in the building for twenty years or more.  You might know your daytime and nighttime doorman better than the person who lives on the other side of your bedroom wall.

As for knowing more of the world, and how ordinary people live, well–there is television. There is the internet.  But in terms of flesh and blood, there is very little connection.  Back at the turn of the 20th century, Jacob Riis captured the lives of the less fortunate in his sensational book How the Other Half Lives, which shocked the nation and inspired some excellent reforms.  That kind of documentary expose has become much more commonplace in our time, to the point where even the most shocking revelations–sex slaves in Westchester, sweatshop labor in Chinatown, human organ thieves in Brazil–have lost their power to shock.

A crowd of people chanting, holding up signs and making merry through the hushed, tranquil streets of the Upper East Side, though–now that is shocking!  In my 20+ years of living in that august quartier, I can only remember a few times when anything like this happened.

Once was on a long-ago St. Patrick’s Day, when the Fifth Avenue parade-goers got a little too drunk, a little too rowdy, and the police had to step in and reimpose order.  My mom, brother and I watched in amazement from our the 9th floor window overlooking Park Avenue.  Quiet was soon restored.

Another time was when the lights went out back in 1977, and there was some looting over on Lexington Avenue.  We heard the shouting and sounds of glass breaking, but of course nothing could touch us, secure behind the gates and under the watchful eyes of our uniformed doormen.

This is the central fact of privileged existence, Park Avenue-style.  Nothing can touch you.  The red carpet of privilege rolls out in front of you effortlessly; you live in an enchanted bubble, from which the distant rumors of unrest are just that–distant rumors, which you don’t understand, and don’t care about enough to investigate.

I say this now to underscore the success of the Occupy Wall Street protesters in breaking through that bubble, at least a little bit.  The tight membrane of privilege surrounding the NY Times popped after three weeks of pressure.  It will take a lot longer to penetrate the hearts and minds of the men and women who work on Wall Street and live up on Park and Fifth Avenues.  But just because it will take a while to get through is absolutely no reason to be discouraged.  It can be done!  And it should be done.

I have a feeling that there are probably a lot of people like me living on Park and Fifth Avenues today.  Privileged by birth, but with the same hearts, minds and sense of compassion as any other American.  Just ignorant of what’s up with the 99%.

For instance, one observer of the “Millionaire’s March” noticed “a chic young mother,” who “turned to a puzzled daughter in a tony school uniform, “People don’t have jobs right now,” she explained. Whether Mom connected this fact to the actions of any of her neighbors was anyone’s guess.”

Did Mom connect this fact to her own actions, is more to the point.  For the privileged, it’s too easy to pass the buck.

I am currently working on a book, which I call a “political memoir,” in which I try to understand the social dynamics of privilege, and how and why some people become “privilege traitors” and go against their own class interests.  Judging from this week’s events in New York, I am going to have a lot of interesting material to study, beyond my own story.  Stay tuned.

2 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 12, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Community, Empathy, Politics, privilege
Tagged , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 12, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/10/12/confessions-from-park-avenue-ignorance-privilege-and-change/

Hey Boston? Remember your roots! The world is watching you…and so are we!

Have you noticed that there hasn’t been any more pepper spray lately down on Liberty Square in New York?  If that gratuitous act of police brutality hadn’t been caught on videotape by an alert citizen journalist, the pepper-spray impunity might have continued.  Such is the power of the public sphere.

What’s different about this 21st century protest movement is that the public square has expanded to be as big as the whole networked world.

Even if we’re not physically present,we’re watching, we care, and, as Medea Benjamin of Code Pink said yesterday on Democracy Now, “We are here to stay….It really doesn’t matter to us that our permit has run out. We feel like this is a public square, we are the public, and we are occupying this square, so we will stay here.”

Last night the Boston PD unceremoniously removed Occupy Boston protesters from a park that turned out not to be public.  They manhandled Veterans for Peace representatives who were peacefully protesting under the banner of the American flag, and threw the protesters’ tents and belongings into a municipal garbage truck.  Check out this report in the Harvard Crimson, or watch this video and see for yourself.

Bad move, Boston.  Aren’t you the home of the original Tea Partiers, the ones we celebrate as patriotic resisters of British oppression?  Do you really want to trample on American citizens’ right to the peaceful expression of dissent?  How un-American is that??

There was no way the Boston Tea Partiers could have predicted that their action in the harbor would spark the American Revolution.  All major watersheds in human history have unfolded in the same way, set off by the actions of a few dedicated individuals who are willing to stand up for their rights and their principles.

Why should our historical moment be any different? The truth is that every hundred protesters arrested will bring another thousand to the movement for change.  Get used to it, Boston–and Chicago, New York, Atlanta, San Francisco….This movement is just getting going.

Leave a comment
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 11, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Community, Human Rights, Media analysis, Politics
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 11, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/10/11/hey-boston-remember-your-roots-the-world-is-watching-you-and-so-are-we/

Honoring Native Americans instead of Columbus

I’d like to suggest that instead of honoring Christopher Columbus on this day in October, we make this a national holiday in honor of the indigenous peoples of North America.

It is shameful that we have no national day of recognition for the native tribes who were here to welcome the first European explorers.  Perhaps this is no innocent oversight; if there was a day of recognition, we’d have to confront the ugly truth of what those Europeans did to the Native Americans–from smallpox to displacement, massacres and enslavement.

Still, that bloodstained history lurks beneath the surface of national holidays like Columbus Day and Thanksgiving.  It would be better to look squarely at the truth and do something to atone for it–at minimum, honoring the native ancestors of this land, and their contemporary descendants, who continue to struggle and resist the tsunami of Euramerican industrial civilization.  

For an idea of what that struggle looks like today, check out the Honor the Earth website.  Honor the Earth works “to address the two primary needs of the Native environmental movement: the need to break the geographic and political isolation of Native communities and the need to increase financial resources for organizing and change.”  It was founded in 1993 by native rights and environmental activist Winona LaDuke and the Indigo Girls.

In honoring the Native peoples of the United States instead of the European explorer who accelerated the invasion of their territories and the assault upon their cultures, we would be honoring the amazing resilience and wisdom of these ancient tribes, who have withstood the onslaught of European culture with incredible strength, courage and dignity.

We contemporary Americans are standing at a turning point in history where we may be able to get away from the destructive mode of domination represented by Columbus and a host of European explorers after him.

Changing Columbus Day to Native American Day (or perhaps selecting one significant representative Native person from history–I would not presume to suggest a single figure, but there are many to choose from) would be a good start at not only atoning for the bloody history of European-Native encounters, but also moving more harmoniously into the future.


4 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 10, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Community, Environment, Human Rights, New stories, Politics, Resilience
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 10, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/10/10/honoring-native-americans-instead-of-columbus/

Occupy Wall Street: Finally, the New York Times Gets It!! Now, how about Obama?

Protesters Against Wall Street – NYTimes.com.

This is a big victory for the Occupy Wall Street movement.  To move the staid NY Times from complete indifference to disdainful incomprehension to vigorous approval in the space of just three weeks is truly remarkable!

Haven’t I been saying that the young people today are the sleeping giant that needs to awaken, stretch and roar?  Any subordinate class (and make no mistake, the young ARE a subordinate class) is only kept down through ignorance of the true extent of their power.

In the past, it’s usually been a charismatic leader who has seized the microphone and shaken the masses out of their beaten-down stupor.  Think Frederick Douglass or Martin Luther King Jr., for example.

With Occupy Wall Street, we’re onto something new: a “leaderless movement,” without microphones, but with the extraordinary amplifying power of the World Wide Web.

Social media couldn’t have done it alone–we need the resolute presence of those flesh and blood people down at Liberty Square and in parks and street corners all across America.  But their resistance is exponentially strengthened by the social network around them, spreading like wildfire throughout the country and the world.

President Obama responded at least obliquely in last week’s press conference, showing at least a glimmer of understanding of what the movement is about.

If he had a shred of political sense, he’d be looking for ways to harness the intelligence, social commitment and determination of these young people to stand up to the Tea Party crowd and the drill-and-kill Republicans who have shown themselves again and again to be against social equality in any way, shape or form.

This could turn into the political juggernaut needed to push the Republicans back into their holes, and give the Democrats some much-needed backbone.

One thing is certain: these kids are not backing down, and they’re not going to be fobbed off with half-hearted gestures of appeasement.  They are after real social change, from the ground up.

What was it Arundhati Roy used to say?   “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.  On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

Yes.

Leave a comment
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 9, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Community, Economy, Media analysis, Politics
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 9, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/10/09/occupy-wall-street-finally-the-new-york-times-gets-it-now-how-about-obama/

Let’s take back Black Friday, and change history!

I have a suggestion for the Occupy America folks all over this country.  Let’s take back Black Friday.  You know, the Black Friday after Thanksgiving Day, supposed to be one of the biggest shopping days of the American year?

It’s a great day for a decentralized national protest, because nearly everybody, including all those college students, is on holiday.  It’s also a great day for an anti-Big Money protest, because it will hit the corporations where it hurts most: retail sales.

What if instead of swiping those credit cards and running up our consumer debt on Black Friday–making it a black day for consumers, but a golden day for corporations and financiers–we deliberately boycotted the malls?  Instead, let’s declare a day of participatory democracy in action, a chance to meet with our neighbors and fellow citizens out on the public square, in cities and towns all across this country, to collectively envision a new society based on the true ideals of Thanksgiving: joining together as human beings across superficial differences like ethnicity, nationality and creed, nourishing each other with the bounty of our natural world and helping each other through lean times.

We live on a rich and abundant planet where there are sufficient resources for all of us to live well–the problem is the inequitable distribution of those resources.  On the original Thanksgiving, the native hosts were kind enough to give their Puritan guests a helping hand.  The rest is history, and it’s not a happy history at all.

We are standing at a crossroads where we have a chance to step off the path we began as a nation when the Europeans colonized this country and the capitalist machine began to roar.  We may not get another chance, given the precarious state of our global climate.

Now is our time.  Let’s step up and change history together.  Black Friday organizers, let’s get busy!

Leave a comment
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 7, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Community, Economy, Environment, Human Rights, New stories, Politics, Resilience
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 7, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/10/07/lets-take-back-black-friday-and-change-history/

Resisting the Zombies: At what point will we stop bearing witness to ecocide and begin to act?

My favorite chapter in Derrick Jensen’s new book Dreams is entitled “Zombies.”  Jensen describes the corporate elite as zombies, that is, as “flesh-eating…mindless monsters who are not only to be feared for their insatiability and ferocity, but because their sickness is highly contagious….Zombies eat human flesh, but they are also as relentlessly omnicidal as corporations.  They destroy forests, grasslands, rivers, oceans, mountain tops, and the mountains themselves.  They consume everything, and they shit out plastic” (367).

For Jensen, “zombie capitalists” are especially terrifying, because “on the one hand, they pursue their prey–I mean, profits–with an unfeeling, unrelenting, insatiable mindlessness, unheeding of all the pain and suffering they cause in their victims–I mean, in the resources they exploit (I mean, develop).  On the other hand, they fabricate extraordinarily complicated rationales for their zombie economics (or zombinomics) and for the further zombification of the world and all its inhabitants” (368).

Jensen imagines a “realistic zombie film” being made, in which “the remaining humans”–the ones who haven’t been consumed or infected yet by the zombies–are “refusing to resist, but instead hoping against reason that the zombies will stop on their own, that the zombies will undergo a miraculous awakening…or that if they personally could just live sustainably, then their shining examples will cause the zombies to suddenly stop, look at the torn flesh all around them, and say, ‘What have I done?  I need to make this right!’….In a realistic zombie movie,” Jensen says, “too many humans would try to stop the zombies by gardening, taking shorter showers, recycling, petitioning.  In a realistic zombie movie…many of those humans who opposed resistance would be revealed near the end to not really be on the side of the living but rather, unbeknownst even to them, already among the living dead” (369).

Unfortunately, all too often, even those who profess to be on the side of justice and environmental sanity are eventually shown to be soulless creatures of the corporate capitalist zombie machine.

It seems that the minute an authentic human leader arises who has the possibility of successfully resisting the zombies and making real change, s/he is either smeared and discredited; corrupted with financial payoffs; driven mad with frustration by repeated, humiliating obstructions; or simply imprisoned or killed off.

Thus we have watched with horror as our beloved Barack Obama, the young man we came to know and love in Dreams from my Father and The Audacity of Hope, has slowly had the soul sucked out of him by the zombification crucible of politics and media.  The face remains the same, but the eyes are hollow, and the spirit is clearly guttering.

Bill McKibben is still holding out valiantly against the zombies–maybe it’s that pure Vermont air that is keeping his head clear of contagion so far.  Derrick Jensen has some harsh questions for Bill, though, which I think are entirely reasonable.  Given the steady destruction of the planet by the zombie forces of corporate capitalism, Jensen asks, “Would McKibben ever countenance the physical dismantling of infrastructure in order to stop civilization from killing the planet?” Jensen’s question, “for McKibben and for everyone,” is: “What is your threshold?”  At what point will we stop bearing silent witness to ecocide, and begin to seriously resist?

The reason the Occupy Wall Street protests have so seized the American imagination is because the young people out there on the street are so clearly NOT ZOMBIES.  Not yet, anyway.  They have not been corrupted; their souls are intact.  That’s why they can see so clearly that what the zombie nation accepts as normal–the enrichment of the few on the backs of the masses–is not normal at all, and is neither just nor sustainable.

There is another up-and-coming activist who is right now wavering on the border between zombie and human.  His name is Van Jones, and he’s the man behind the Rebuild the American Dream movement.  Jones is all about developing “green-collar jobs”; in other words, rebooting the old American Dream in a new, more sustainable version.  Unlike Occupy Wall Street, Jones comes armed with a nice bullet-pointed list of “demands.”

Nothing wrong with his list.  But it’s just not radical or visionary enough to ignite the minds and hearts of the young people out in Liberty Park Plaza.  Even the way his website is presented, with red-white-and-blue stars and flashy campaign-style graphics, is very likely to turn a lot of the Occupy Wall Streeters off.  It reeks of zombification.

When you look into Jones’ bio, you see why: “Jones served as the green jobs advisor in the Obama White House in 2009 and is currently a senior policy advisor at Green For All. He also holds a joint appointment at Princeton University as a distinguished visiting fellow in both the Center for African American Studies and in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.”

I’m sorry, but once Princeton and the Woodrow Wilson School get their hands on you, zombie contagion is almost assured.  You may not want to become one of them–the elite, the 1%–but like it or not, you will be beholden to them, and they will begin to mold you in ways you won’t even be aware of.

For example, contrast that slick Rebuild the Dream website, completely cleansed of its grassroots origins, to the Occupy Wall Street website, with its livestream coverage of the chaotic goings-on down on Liberty Square.  The livestream may be focusing on a dark corner, but you can hear people in the background singing together and talking in real human-speak–not the carefully crafted politician-speak of Rebuild the Dream’s “demands.”

I don’t like to dis Van Jones, any more than Derrick Jensen likes to dis Bill McKibben.  All of these men, including the old Barack Obama, are heroes for our time for having dared to at least try to resist.  Bill McKibben is still holding out, and we need to applaud him for it and help him in any way possible.

But most of all, we need to help those kids out in Liberty Square.  We need to make sure they know that what is best and most powerful about their nascent movement is the fact that it is not slick, not uber-organized, not hyper-networked.  It’s human, and I still dare to hope it will stay that way.  I still dare to hope that a real resistance to the zombie elite might just be getting underway.

Leave a comment
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 6, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Community, Media analysis, New stories, Politics, Resilience
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 6, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/10/06/resisting-the-zombies/

Ruminating on the demand for “demands”: Protesters, stay on target!

This morning we were discussing Nietzsche in my Seminar class at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, and I asked the students to think about Nietzsche’s advice to his readers in the preface to The Genealogy of Morals.  “One thing is necessary above all if one is to practice reading as an art,” Nietzsche said; “something that has been unlearned most thoroughly nowadays….something for which one almost has to be a cow and in any case not a “modern man”: rumination.”

In other words, Nietzsche says you have to read his work like a cow lying in a sunny field chewing her cud: slowly, deliberately, with total concentration.

If the “modern men” of 1887 had already “unlearned” this art, imagine how far away it seems to us now, in our age of the 24-hour media news circus, the Twitterati, and the sound bite.  Hardly anyone has the patience to just sit and ruminate anymore.  We are too busy clicking and chatting and running from one appointment to the next.

It’s in this busy, hectic spirit that, after having ignored the Occupy Wall Street protests entirely for their first ten days, we are now hearing impatient cries from the media for a list of “demands.”

It irritates me to no end that the media punditocracy, from Nick Kristof to Bill O’Reilly, are now pushing the protesters to get their collective act together and come up with a proper bullet-pointed list of all their grievances.  Unspoken is the subtext: tell us what’s upsetting you, dear children, so we can pat you on the head and make everything all right.

It’s condescending, again, and way too simplistic a response to the complex and serious nature of this rapidly spreading protest movement, which some are now calling the Tea Party of the left.

Some of the protesters, nettled by the insinuation that they lack focus and don’t know what they want, have hurried to put together a bonafide, if tentative, list of demands. These have been launched into the great wiki of the blogosphere, where thousands of minds are now busily turning them over and vetting them for possible political viability.  Not only the trade unions, but also Moveon.org and other big national political organizations are now poised to make hay in the sunshine of this nascent movement.

They all ought to take a deep breath and follow Nietzsche’s advice.  Take the time to ruminate.  Don’t leap too fast.  What is the hurry?  It took many years of steady, malicious manipulation to get us 99%-ers into this fix.  It’s going to take at least as long to get us out of it.

What the protesters really want cannot be contained by the old-fashioned concept of “demands.”  Their motivation comes from a much deeper place, a primal sense of justice and community.  They know that the 1%, the wealthiest Americans, have been living like parasites on the great sleeping flanks of the 99% for at least the past quarter-century.  If we 99 percenters wake up and stretch and begin to roar, there’s no telling what we might be able to accomplish together!

That’s why the protesters should not be lured in and fobbed off with the promise of a few candies or pats on the head.  What’s needed is deep systemic change of our social system.  There are some pretty radical ideas floating around out there right now, including complete debt forgiveness as a grand national “stimulus” plan.  Why bail out the banks?  Why not bail out the consumers?

This idea has merit, but it shouldn’t be just about getting us back into the same old groove of shopping for cheap foreign-produced goods, the production of which are contributing more and more to the destruction of our planetary environment.

There should also be a massive subsidy plan for renewable energy.  Instead of destroying the boreal forest in Alberta and building a misbegotten pipeline, we should be investing in low-impact renewable energy, especially solar and geothermal, which seem like the least hazardous forms of energy production currently available.

Coming up with “demands” implies faith in a political system to respond.  The Occupy Wall Street protesters are down there on the front lines precisely because they know the current political system cannot be trusted.  They’re right.

“I am no man–I am dynamite,” Nietzsche wrote in his autobiography, Ecce Homo. The Occupy Wall Street protesters are, similarly, much more than a group of individuals assembled in one place.  They are the long fuse that has now been lit; or to use a more contemporary metaphor, they are the surge in the power line.

What will happen next we do not yet know, but one thing is certain: it will not be reducible to, or solvable by, a simplistic list of “demands.”

Leave a comment
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 5, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Community, Environment, Politics
Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 5, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/10/05/ruminating-on-the-demand-for-demands-protesters-stay-on-target/

« Older Posts
Newer Posts »