9/27/06, from a World Can’t Wait organizer:
An article on the Voters for Peace website, A New Approach:
Organizing Voters to End War, contains many of the arguments held by or
very similar to those of some people who deeply and urgently want to stop the
Bush madness but have expressed differences in strategy with World Can’t Wait.
Some people ask if it’s right for World Can’t Wait to focus
on Bush. It’s not just right, it’s urgent – this regime is on a mission to push
everything very fast to a very bad place.
That must be stopped. So in another sense, it is not just about Bush, it’s about changing the whole direction society is
going with his regime at the helm – and with the Democrats playing the role
they are playing. Some people say “target
the Democrats – work to make them change.”
But, at bottom, this is not a question of do you politically target Bush
or do you target the Democrats – it is “What do we need to do to stop this
war being waged on the world and the fascist remaking of society?” What kind of world do we have, and what kind
of world do we want? From that
framework, we can evaluate tactics and strategies for solving it. Which ones would more correspond to the
underlying way things work in society and have the possibility of solving it –
even if most people don’t see that yet?
1. The voters for peace pledge recognizes the Democrats’
hawkish positions and unity with the Bush program in substantial ways. It’s true; there is no significant voice
against this whole direction of society among political leaders of either party
– including Lamont. The terms are all
“we could fight the ‘war on terror’ better, we could make you safer, we could
do the same crimes better,” or conciliation on things they don’t agree on,
like some of the theocratic elements.
Anyone who listens to what the Democrats say they will do knows there is
no relationship to the desires of the vast majority of the people in “their
base”, on nearly every issue. If
they were taking positions based on what would get the popular vote, then why
wouldn’t they be adopting the positions that the vast majority of voters
support? Why are they acting in
the ways they are? This question is at the heart of understanding what needs to
be done to actually stop this.
Why did Al Gore, in an interview in Rolling Stone, speaking
about Iraq,
say: “We’re all, in some ways, lashed to the mast of our ship of state here. Because the little group at the helm should
resign. You know, Rumsfeld and that
whole gang have made horrible mistake after horrible mistake….”? The Democrats may not like the crew at the
helm, but they are on board for the bigger agenda of imperialist world
domination, and from that perspective getting out of Iraq would endanger their whole
ship. It’s not that the Democrats haven’t
noticed how many people in their base hate this war; it is that the particular
role the Democratic Party plays is to pursue imperialist interests while
at the same time leading their base to believe it is their will being
expressed. And it is because they are lashed to the same ship, and must serve
the same system, that they are not going to be pressured into positions that go
against what the imperialists see as necessary.
Right now, the Democrats and Republicans basically agree on going on the
offensive to reshape the world into an American empire that is unchallenged and
unchallengeable for decades or more. You might get a candidate like Sharpton,
who puts out some divergent positions, but who is not considered by anyone in
power to be a “serious” candidate.
Look how he was defamed by the media and leading Dems at the DNC in 2004
when he got a favorable response because he spoke about issues the vast
majority of attendees were concerned about.
Many radical people think that the Democrats on their own
would just be concerned with getting into and holding onto power, and would not
be proceeding from the interests of the people unless people in a large enough
voting block threatened to withhold votes from them to risk their not being
reelected. And in this way the people
could force the Democrats to follow policies the people want. This seems to be the main theory behind the
Voters for Peace pledge.
But what happens if people are left in the confines of
voting as the only way they can influence the policies of the government? Either they vote “Anybody But Bush”,
doing anything to win seats for Democrats, and getting democrats with pro-war,
anti-abortion and other positions that continue this same course, or accept the
same terms of it. Or they “withhold
their vote” from the Democrats – and do what? Vote for the Republicans, who don’t even
pretend to be for the people?! Or vote
for a third party that has no chance of winning – when people are looking at
this as the only way to change things that desperately need changing?! This demobilizes and paralyzes people.
The people have no leverage over them in that arena – they
have leverage over the people. They rope
people into voting for one elite or another, on terms that have been deemed
acceptable to them – and which by any measure today are immoral and
unacceptable and not what the people want.
Candidates are only “serious,” possibly electable candidates
if they stay within those terms of what is deemed necessary to serve the interests
of the system (which isn’t figured out by some “committee” of the
ruling class, there is a lot of complexity to the process through which that
gets fought out, but none-the-less, it does not flow from what the broad people
who are the “base” of the Democratic Party want.)
And, elections just aren’t the arena through which major
decisions about US
policy are made in any case – so a strategy of getting candidates with certain
positions elected so those policies are carried out has no hope of actually
working. Think about the 60s in this
context. In 1964 people voted for
Johnson because while he was for escalating the war in Vietnam, it was
not in the same way Goldwater was talking about it. After the election, Johnson massively
escalated the war, both bombing and sending troops, and people felt bitterly
betrayed. Then, in the 1972 election
Nixon won by a landslide on a platform of carrying forth the escalation in
Vietnam and “winning” the war, and shortly after that signed an
agreement to begin pulling troops out – first Vietnamization, then US forced
out. In neither case did the election decide
the policies carried out.
To rely on pressuring the politicians to change their
positions especially on issues right at the heart of their grand designs on the
world is not going to work for all these reasons and more. And it does harm if people put all
their energies into that instead of doing what actually could reverse this.
2. Which leads to the second point: What can work?
Voters For Peace argues that protests are good for morale,
but don’t work for influencing the press, public opinion or the actions of
political leaders. This needs to be
taken apart more. The
“protests-as-usual” where people are called out a couple of times a
year with the aim of influencing policies of the government — and which with
the consensus of different groups are not called out if the Democrats
don’t want them called out (for example, 1 million women who showed up in
protest in DC in 2004 were not called out into the streets to protest the
Roberts or Alito nominations even though the vast sentiment was to fight those)
– these types of protests don’t break out of the very same
“politics as usual” that is part of continuing this whole
trajectory. In some ways, they have even
become demobilizing and demoralizing to people – because it has become apparent
to many that this type of action does not measure up to being able to stop the
enormity of crimes being carried out and which are in the works.
The huge protests in February 2003 (here and all over the
world) were of a qualitatively different scale and directed toward immediately bringing
a halt to the war. It’s true that these
protests didn’t stop the war right then.
However – the US had to fight that war stripped of much of its moral
authority here and internationally, the protests gave heart to Iraqis and
others around the world to see the American people doing something about this,
and it’s hard to imagine Bush’s lies would have been forced out in the way they
have been (which has further torn away support for the war) without this
massive resistance from the people. What
it shows most of all is that resistance needs to grow, gain momentum, strength
and moral authority, and further strip legitimacy from the whole program being
pursued. It shows some of what has
caused trouble for their pursuit of this war. It was only in the wake of
these massive protests that some politicians began to make some noises about
the war (or Dean’s candidacy being promoted as anti-war) – and now there is the
added factor of the increasing Iraqi resistance and complications of civil war,
and the US not being able to win.
It has always been protest and upheaval from the broader
people in society (vs. appealing to one or the other elite at the top) that has
forced changes in a positive direction, forced people at the top to maneuver to
figure out what to do, and brought to the attention of others in society things
that may have been hidden, or caused them to look at things in new ways. The civil rights movement is a good
example. So are the 60s.
World Can’t Wait is calling for people to step out massively
in a way that breaks out of “protest as usual” and to instead have
the people issue a resounding repudiation to this whole disastrous course, and
their determination to stop it by driving out this regime. There is a world of difference between an
administration being voted out – and one driven out in disgrace by a
politicized and mobilized people who have stepped out beyond the channeling and
control of “normal politics” to say ENOUGH, not in our name, we just
won’t tolerate this!
We need to bring out this message in such a powerful way on
Oct. 5 that it can’t be ignored, and that can gain momentum as it reaches the
millions and millions of people who do feel distress and anger, where it can
begin to be seen more and more broadly that this is the moral thing to do, that
this whole course concentrated in Bush’s leadership is illegitimate and immoral
and must be stopped – and that the people themselves have to take this
responsibility to bring this to a halt.
The only way that measures up to doing this is to take this kind
of independent action, which does not stop until the problem is solved.
The nationwide protests on October 5 must be at least 10
times bigger than November 2nd to have a critical mass of people
that can galvanize this movement, create more favorable ground, and gain
further momentum as it draws in more people.
It needs to be a manifesto that can’t be ignored. It is not just the size, but the message of
Bring this to a Halt!
This is where your money could make more of a difference
than any where else.
Vote, or withhold your vote, if you must.
We have a chance to change this – but it depends on what
people do. Right now, people with influence in society and resources, can
make the difference between whether this gets out into society and reaches the
people who want to stop this – or doesn’t.