Revolution #032, January 22, 2006, posted at revcom.us
Something new is struggling to be born: a movement, encompassing
more people every hour, with the potential to drive out this regime and
turn the tide of history. It is still way too scattered right now; it
must be transformed, very quickly, into an active and dynamic and much
more organized force that can actually challenge the Bush regime’s
right to rule and can politically force Bush to step down. But this can be done. The basis to do so exists and grows stronger each day. And it must be done. The consequences of failure are too dire.
It is up to us–including you, reading this paper–to make it happen.
You could see both the basis and the dire need for this last
weekend, as the international commission convened in New York to judge
whether the Bush administration is guilty of crimes against humanity.
While the verdicts will not come in until February 2, the coverage in
this issue of our paper makes a horrific and compelling case. The media
coverage leading up to the Tribunal and the attendance at it–along
with the publication that same week of the Human Rights Watch report
condemning torture by the U.S. as “a deliberate policy choice”–showed
a growing willingness among people to hear and speak the truth about
the crimes being committed in their names.
And you could see the basis–and, yes, the urgent need–for this in
the increasing outcry last week against the Bush regime’s domestic
fascism. It is not all the time that a former vice-president comes out
and accuses the sitting president of serious and persistent
law-breaking, of putting the Constitution itself in danger, as Al Gore did in his speech on Martin Luther King day.
The next day the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center
for Constitutional Rights (CCR) sued the administration for its
widespread illegal wiretapping–with the ACLU suit including former
allies and advisers of Bush on Iraq. These cracks at the top create a
potential fissure through which the discontent that is seething among
ordinary people can crack and find expression. And that has begun to
happen, in exciting ways–ways we will speak to shortly. While the
liberal establishment overall has tried to pooh-pooh and contain these
developments, even with the Gore speech, there is increasing fury from
those they purport to lead over their capitulation.
The regime responded with a typically gangster-like
counter-offensive. Bush spokesman Scott McLellan went after first Gore
and then Human Rights Watch. Thursday saw the Bush Justice Department
simultaneously justify the illegal spy program and sue Google
for millions of its users’ search queries. On Friday, Bush’s top
political advisor Karl Rove re-emerged from his hole to viciously
attack those who’ve opposed the war, the wiretapping, or the
reactionary restructuring of the courts. And throughout, in the
background, beat the ever-louder and ever-more-ominous “discussion” of military action against Iran.
In other words, the Bush regime is not at all backing down; they are
going on the counter-offensive. They plan to use the State of the Union
address to definitively re-seize the political initiative. They aim to
further silence the opposition from the top Democrats and to demoralize
the millions that hate them. Given that their flagrantly illegal doings
have been exposed, they aim to essentially ratify their fascist program
through a big fanfare for the State of the Union and a declaration that
the American people approve. If they succeed, it would be very, very
bad. And they will get away with this, unless the
anger and discontent in society is mobilized against it. Only such a
mobilization–powerful outpourings on the night of Bush’s State of the
Union in cities all over the country, followed by a massive
demonstration in D.C. on February 4 demanding that Bush step
down–could change the ominous direction of events. Failing that, who
will challenge Bush and his crew?
Do You Dare To Change History?
That leads to those of you now reading this. Some of you will be
clicking on this on the evening of the Monday the 24th. Others will
pick up this paper during the week preceding the State of the Union, or
will bring it home with you from the demonstrations on the evening of
the 31st itself. But for all of us, this question is posed: do we dare to change history??
And we CAN do it. If the past two months have made increasingly
clear that we are up against a fascist sea-change with this
administration, the past two weeks in particular have shown in practice
that we are not doomed to choose between the Bush regime and an
opposition with little appetite for the kind of fight that’s needed
right now. The turnout for and participation in the Tribunal sessions
were one big indication. The ways that people respond now to the World
Can’t Wait Call is another: the people who read it carefully, read it
twice, and then sign, along with those who read it once and
jump to sign it. The big response to the new “Bush Step Down” ads in
the New York Times and on Air America is yet another. The sprouting of
chapters in different parts of the country is a fourth; the turnout and
character of World Can’t Wait programs at Grand Lake Theater in Oakland
and Steppenwolf in Chicago a fifth; the reaction to World Can’t Wait
speakers a sixth; and on it goes. Even the polls on cable television,
one of them in response to the World Can’t Wait ad in the Times, reflect this.
But again–all this both has to spiral to another level and has
to take much more organized form very quickly. The millions who are
seething must not only be reached–and they must be–but they must also
be given the framework through which they can put their energies and
creativity to work.
That takes imagination and it takes work and it takes struggling
with people. As Bob Avakian put it in these pages two weeks ago, “This
is not a matter of throwing out a fishing line in a pool stocked with
trout–all you have to do is put the bait out and everybody comes to
it, to use an odious analogy. This is a matter of struggling with
people, in a good way, to win them to rupture out of the killing
confines of the dominant political framework and dynamics, and take
independent historical political action on a massive scale.”
This is a time when people must surge forward to make things happen,
and we have to struggle with people and with ourselves to rise to the
challenge being posed by history. To those who are already active, you
must raise your level of activity; you especially must figure out the
ways to reach out to, make room for, mobilize, and unleash those who
are agonizing about the situation. To those not yet active, you must
become so: your anger and passion, your ideas and creativity, your ties
and skills must become part of a rolling social movement that makes
January 31 a huge “drown out” of the Bush State of the Union and then
brings forth an even more powerful and more massive repudiation of that
regime on February 4 in Washington.
There will not necessarily be more favorable odds later; there may well not be another chance.
Right now there is a certain crossroads. Things can go one way or
another. If there is not a massive repudiation of what has already come
out–and doubtless, this is just the tip of the iceberg–then this will
become the “de facto” new norm. Silence and passivity will become,
despite anyone’s intentions and private opinions, approval. And Bush
will have succeeded in making his crimes and his power grabs accepted
as somehow “legitimate.” History has seen this movie before, and it is
not one you want to watch again.
Whether a different road can be opened, whether a clearing can be
hacked out, depends on you. Staying on the sidelines is a road to the
death camps. As the World Can’t Wait site said last week, changing
history is not a spectator sport.
Working Together, Standing Together, and Fighting to Win
The coalition now coming together is varied and diverse, and grows
more so every day. In just the past week members of Congress, prominent
artists, and other major public figures have signed on to the call.
There has been the participation in the Bush Tribunal of a former
general, an ex-ambassador and a one-time CIA analyst. These are very
important and favorable developments, and another powerful basis to
actually make the leap to the needed mobilizations. Any movement with
aims as ambitious as this one will necessarily encompass a wide range
of people, including people in–or formerly in–the government itself.
This movement has to have room for everyone who wants to see Bush step
down; it needs an atmosphere where a broad range of people can take
initiative and debate a wide range of ideas. And this expansion has to
be done in a way that will keep to the grounding vision of the
movement’s Call and keep the movement’s eyes firmly fixed on its goal
of forcing Bush to step down . . . and to take his program with him.
The road will be rough and bumpy and twisting. The people running
this regime are vicious. They will do everything they can to keep a
grip on power. They and their camp followers will lie. They will
slander. They will attack and divide. And they will do worse; for all
the piety they parade, they have the ethics of brownshirts.
But this is the only thing worth doing. And we, all of us in this
movement, can deal with what they throw at us. We can keep our compass,
we can maintain our unity and purpose. There is a righteousness to what
we’re doing. We are taking responsibility to not only stand up against
a very vicious form of oppression, but to mobilize others–tens of
thousands now, eventually millions–to do so as well. To resist, and to
change the direction of society, and to do it in the interests of
hundreds of millions in this society, and billions worldwide. The
ousting of this regime is a goal worth fighting for with all you’ve
got, and a fight we have to win.
Bush must step down. And, to make that happen, you must step forward.