[from national organizers meeting, 11/19 evening panel]
Jim Oberg, Retired Engineer, age 65, from Portland, Oregon
1. From your perspective, why is it essential and urgent to
drive out the Bush regime?
When I realized in 2000 that our elections no longer can be
trusted to represent the will of the voters, I also realized that we now are
living under an illegitimate, unaccountable tyranny in America. Since their appointment by our illustrious
Supreme Court, I have been reading whatever I can find and studying the actions
of this regime, and especially the imperialistic objectives of the
neoconservative cabal of the PNAC, and have concluded that if they are allowed
to extend their agenda around the world, they will totally destroy our country
financially and morally, and undermine any positive influence we might have in
the world. We already are seen by
others as being ruled by a rogue regime, and are hated and feared everywhere in
the world, and our policies are actually increasing those who vow to fight against our tyranny over them.
What led
to your decision to help lead this
effort?
Fairly early this year it became clear to me that they
cannot be stopped through any normal means, like voting or speaking out or
writing, and that it can only be done by an uprising of the people of America,
if it can be done. The leaders of this
regime are totally convinced of their god-guided destinal role, and will do
anything to retain their illegitimate power so their goals can be
realized. When I encountered the WCW
movement, I saw it as a beacon of hope personally, and decided it was worth my
full effort to at least see if this could somehow succeed in mobilizing the
forces on the street it will take to convey the message that we do not support
this regime. And I also saw that such a
movement would have to include many millions of people like myself, people who
never have been activists before, if enough people were ever to be energized
and convinced to support this.
What do you say in arguing to others that they should join
us?
I tell people I meet that we are facing a great threat to
our very survivability if this regime continues much longer, and that it is now
our responsibility as citizens to take back our country directly, since they
have taken away the ballot box as a way to hold them accountable. We, the people, constituted our government
in order to serve our common needs. It
is up to us now to engage in the revolutionary act of demanding that we again
have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. That means we have to go into the street and
vote with our feet and our voices and demand these criminals leave so we can
begin to focus on the real priorities of we, the people. And with the imminent arrival of Peak Oil,
and the impact of global warming, two huge crises soon to impact our society in
devastating ways, we must not delay a moment.
The world can’t wait any longer to figure out how we face these
challenges that threaten our very survival on the planet.
2. Drawing from historical or international examples, what
lessons do you
think we need to bring to bear in our effort to drive out
this regime?
I like the statement by Thomas Jefferson that we likely
would need a revolution in America every generation or so to renew our
experiment of a government constituted by the people and implemented by citizen
representatives for our common benefit. And we can look back in our history and
see some of those previous revolutions, when we abolished slavery and fought
for civil rights and women’s rights. There
comes a time where only people power can bring about the changes needed, or can
even topple a despotic unaccountable regime, and it is clear to me that we are
there now in America. I was living in
Asia when people power toppled the Marcos regime, and I saw that possibility
actually happen. It is possible! I know it is.
What is your vision of what it will take, how it will look,
when the Bush regime
is forced out?
It will take a huge breakthrough in our imagination in
America to make this happen here, as most of us are still in denial about how
serious the threat is to our entire future.
We must literally decolonize our revolutionary imagination, as I read in
a recent essay on the challenge we face ahead in getting past our reluctance to
face reality now. We who seek to extend
this movement will have to use all our powers of persuasion to get our friends
and neighbors to join us, to recognize the potential we represent with this
movement for a chance at a survivable future.
We will literally have to get millions onto the street soon to add to
the growing pressure on this criminal regime from the many directions gathering
strength, and we must do it before they take some extreme action that would
lead to their suppression of all dissent in America.
As to what comes next, if our movement is recognized as
having played an important part in their demise, then we also must be prepared
to play an important part in determining the priorities of whatever succeeds
this regime. Likely that would
initially be some transitional succession, but whoever they are, they would
then be clear that the priorities must radically change for how our government
serves us. We must be ready to say
clearly what we see the really important issues to be, and willing to assert
our then powerful influence to assure this be heard.
3. What is your
vision of what the Bush regime should be replaced with?
We must rapidly build an entirely new political vehicle to
take us into the future, I believe, one that can respond to the reality of our
world situation and is able to make the hard and unpopular decisions and take
the difficult actions required to guide us through the calamities to come as we
run out of oil and the impact of global warming hits us.
I believe that a brand new party can be built by the
majority of us who are fed up with the polarization and corruption of our
failed two-party system. This party
must encompass the many who want reality to prevail in determining what we do
together to meet the real needs we have.
This party must be recognized as truly a party of the people with the
needs of the people its only guiding light.
It must draw on the best
thinking available from every sector of society to come to the best solutions
to the huge challenges we must face. It
will have a name everyone can support, and not be burdened by the baggage of
past characterizations of any of our existing parties.
If I could name it today, it would be called the Common
Sense Party of America, and it will quickly be able to mobilize millions to its
cause, and will soon capture the key positions of power in America. By its effective policies and leadership, it
will come to define how America again uses our great human resource to define
the vision that will lead the world into the future.
Jim Oberg, Retired Engineer, Age 65
Portland, Oregon