There’s no one answer.
But we can draw from important lessons of the past and seek to apply them to a rapidly changing world. Historian and writer Howard Zinn delievered a speech on social change that was recently aired on Democracy Now and provides some important insight on the prospects of driving out a sitting regime. While this does not spell out ” the plan”, it is an important contribution to an ongoing debate occuring in a growing number of circles.
Excerpt of a speech delievered by Howard Zinn on April 17th, 2007 in Boston, Mass.
One of the things we can learn from history is that history is not only a
history of things inflicted on us by the powers that be. History is also a
history of resistance. It’s a history of people who endure tyranny for decades,
but who ultimately rise up and overthrow the dictator. We”ve seen this in
country after country, surprise after surprise. Rulers who seem to have total
control, they suddenly wake up one day, and there are a million people in the
streets, and they pack up and leave. This has happened in the Philippines, in Yemen,
all over, in Nepal.
Million people in the streets, and then the ruler has to get out of the way.
So, this is what we”re aiming for in this country.
Everything we do is important. Every little thing we do, every picket line
we walk on, every letter we write, every act of civil disobedience we engage
in, any recruiter that we talk to, any parent that we talk to, any GI that we
talk to, any young person that we talk to, anything we do in class, outside of
class, everything we do in the direction of a different world is important,
even though at the moment they seem futile, because that’s how change comes
about. Change comes about when millions of people do little things, which at
certain points in history come together, and then something good and something
important happens.