Congratulations, Mr. President Barack Obama, on your second term. I could not be happier that your official swearing-in ceremony now coincides with the Martin Luther King day. How auspicious!
If you are interested to know why I shall still support you, here’s my personal, 13-point oath in 2013:
1. Mr. President, even though you did not keep your 2008 promises for hope and change, I shall still support you.
3. Mr. President, even though you used 13 times more drone attacks than Bush did and killed many innocent people including women and children, I shall still support you.
4. Mr. President, even though you did not support the Wisconsin or Chicago labor and teacher’s strikes and not do anything about Employee Free Choice Act, I shall still support you.
5. Mr. President, even though your Israel-Palestine policy is no different from Bush-Cheney’s, I shall still support you.
6. Mr. President, even though you did not close down Guantanamo, and did put Bradley Manning behind prison, I shall still support you. (I know your big bosses are keeping an eye on my activities just the 1984 way, and that makes me…excited.)
8. Mr. President, even though I know your next four years will be no different from your first four years, I shall still support you.
9. Mr. President, even though I know ordinary people like me will go through exactly the same extreme ordeal, price rises, uncertainties, stress, anxiety and fear, I shall still support you.
10. Mr. President, even though you did not do anything for a comprehensive immigration reform and let millions of undocumented, hard working, family-oriented immigrants go through extreme poverty and exploitation, I shall still support you.
11. Mr. President, even though you have done virtually nothing to address global warming and scary climate change, I shall still support you.
12. Mr. President, even though with your blessing, IMF, World Bank and Wall Street, and their multinational corporations such as Monsanto, GE, Wal-Mart, Exxon and Disney have unleashed economic terror and made their brand of global economy a sure recipé for more poverty and more disaster across the world, I shall still support you.
13. Mr. President, I shall still support you because you and this wonderful, two-party plutocracy tell me we have no other choice.
Guess what, I still have the Obama-2008 bumber sticker stuck on my old American car.
We all thought you were going to use your enormously powerful position to drive this country and virtually the entire world back to the direction of the ordinary working people and families, promote economic equality, hold the corporate criminals accountable and bring them to justice. We thought your leadership would stop global warfare and bloodshed, and bring some peace to mankind especially after the horrors of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft.
I am very sorry and dejected to tell you that you have not fulfilled our hopes, dreams and aspirations. You have let us down.
Yet, at the same time, I challenged the Romney-Ryan ticket with maximum force. I posed some questions to your Republican opponents — questions I thought media should have asked them but never did. Please visit the questions here if you are interested to know.
Of course, at that time very few people thought you could lose; and I wrote the article even before that scandalous and racist “47 percent” Romney speech Mother Jones magazine broke: speech at a $50,000 per plate fundraising dinner Romney had in Florida ($50,000 is the average annual income for an American family; in many Third World countries, it’s the annual income for an entire city, perhaps). When that exposé came out, hardly anybody thought you could ever lose; in fact, even diehard Republicans thought Romney threw the elections straight in your lap; the Florida speech was so devastatingly damaging for him and the Republican Party. But who knows, maybe, that episode had made you overconfident, and you took the first presidential debate casually with no preparation whatsoever; your election prospects since then took a nose dive. Boy, how quickly things turn!
You took that debate with your now-familiar demeanor: you took your audience — your supporters and sympathizers and onlookers across the country — for granted. That non-performance in the debate was really symptomatic of your four years of non-performance. That abject failure to rise up and overpower your fierce, well-oiled opponents and their media with measured documents and reasons was symptomatic of your four years of abject failure to rise up and do the right thing at the most critical moment.
You’re going to be paying a hefty price for that non-performance. And you’re going to drag us all down with you, by your non-performance and lackluster presidency. Your elite circle of advisors — dubious and ill-reputed political insiders who are really part of the now-infamous 1 percent, exposed because of Occupy Wall Street’s resistance and challenge — have ill-advised you. You believed in them, and took us for granted. Your drones killed many innocent people overseas; your political actions killed hopes and dreams of many here in the U.S.
I can never vote for racists and bigots.
President Obama, let me be clear. I would be very sad and disheartened if you get a shock defeat in this election. I would get a chill in my bones if someone like Romney whose racism and hypocrisy is now exposed becomes the president of America. I know he’s going to start another devastating war in Iran: the war industries and Karl Rove are working hard for his victory. I would be frozen to death if a social and economic extremist like Ryan with his Tea Party Glenn Beck doctrine becomes the vice president of this country. I know he is going to kill off the last remnant of the New Deal, including Medicare and Social Security as well as collective bargaining and such precious rights of the working people of America. His party will probably overturn Roe v Wade too, destroying women’s precious reproductive rights. Corporate America, NRA and Koch Brothers as well as organized bigoted groups are working hard for his victory.
Even though I have serious, major issues with your presidency and every single day, I feel cheated by the promises you and your administration didn’t keep, just because I NEVER want a racist and a bigot become the world’s top leaders, I would want you to win.
The only problem is that deep inside, I feel you are not going to win. And you can blame nobody other than yourself for this looming, historic defeat. Your likely loss would be the final letdown of the billions of people — particularly the young generation here in America and peace and democracy soldiers all across the world — who believed so much in your message of hope. They believed in YOU!
You let them all down. How terrible this letdown has been!
NOTE: I wrote this blog using my personal time and resources.
Recently, I wrote two articles on this blog — both on the subject of the U.S. presidential elections. They were both popular — beyond my expectation. I want to thank all the readers — practically from all over the world — for their kind interest. It’s been a gratifying experience.
In the first article (click on the link here), I expressed my fear that Romney and Ryan — the Republican ticket — would win (that was before the Mother Jones “47%” expose broke out). In the more recent article I posted just a few days ago during the Republican National Convention, I challenged and asked some questions to the R&R ticket. You can read it here too.
Readers visited both articles with surprisingly high interest; particularly, the newest post where I challenged Romney, Ryan and Republicans to answer my questions got a very high number of readers. I was delighted. Of course, I never got any response from the Republicans at all; my doubt is that they never even heard my name, let alone read my questions. I wish they did.
But it was reassuring that so many readers took a moment out of their busy life to think about what I had to say on the political and economic scenario — of USA and almost by default, of the entire world. Given that my readership — especially my American readership — has a more liberal tilt, and that too, perhaps with a Democratic affiliation, I felt happy that my questions reached them and that they had the opportunity to use and share those twelve bullet points in their own circles. Who knows, maybe, some of these people are going to attend the Democratic National Convention that’s happening in North Carolina this week; chances are, at least a few of them who perhaps heard my name and about my OneFinalBlog through grapevine, Facebook and Twitter would talk about the issues I addressed in my articles, and have some productive, positive discussion.
At least, that is my hope. With that hope in mind, I’m now going to ask a few questions to President Obama and his Democratic Party — again, on the current political and economic scenario of America, and almost by default, of the entire world.
Republicans are now asking the American voters, borrowing the famous line from Ronald Reagan: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Actually, even though I have absolutely no soft spot for the Republicans and I said it loud and clear that I would never vote for Romney and Ryan, I believe the question they’re asking is not irrelevant at all. In fact, that is a perfect ask any voters should ask themselves: are we now better off or worse off? And, what is the measure of being better off or worse off? Is it economic, is it the war and violence situation, is it domestic repression, is it the elitist status quo, or is it something else?
Remember them? No? No wonder media makes so much money making you forget stuff so quickly!
The only problem is, Republican leaders are asking the question disingenuously, and cheating their ordinary Republican (or undecided) voters who may or may not remember the whole story. If these leaders — most of them affluent and powerful and with deep ties with Corporate America and its powerful lobbyists — were not so dishonest and if they didn’t have an equally disingenuous media on their side, they would rather phrase the question this way:
“We know eight years of Bush completely destroyed the American economy, created an astronomical budget deficit, gave obnoxious tax breaks to the super wealthy, bailed out billionaire bank executives and corporate criminals, waged catastrophic genocides in Iraq and Afghanistan killing millions, looting oil and destroying history of ancient civilizations and bleeding us the U.S. taxpayers here to death, and tarnished the American superpower image once and for all across the world, but still, we believe that we are better than the Democrats to run this country. So, would you not vote for us? Please?”
Neither the Republicans nor the disingenuous, gloss-over U.S. mainstream media would frame their question to the voters this way. They don’t have the guts or honesty to do it.
(And Bill Clinton, in spite of his jackpot speech at the DNC, forgot to tell us how he destroyed age-old American welfare especially for poor women, imposed NAFTA with majority help from Republicans drastically cutting U.S. manufacturing jobs in the U.S., overturned landmark Glass-Stegall, rehired Greenspan to destroy the economy even more, and deregulated financial derivatives with help from Rubin and Summers. He also forgot to tell us how he and war criminal W. Bush have been great buddies ever since. Maybe, he’s preparing us for a Hillary 2016 and a Jeb Bush 2020. Who knows? Nobody but the elite knows anything: it’s all elitist secret. And they call it a democracy!)
Too disturbing to digest!
In any case, we can never believe that Obama-Biden and the Democrats did a wonderful job in these four years and should be able to put all the blame on those eight years of a Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Ashcroft presidency; hence, we should all be happy and happily vote for another four years of Obama-Biden. Not so easy. We have some serious questions for President Obama and his Democratic Party, and here they are. Again, for the sake of time — both of my esteemed readers and Obama and the Democratic leaders who are busy and important people, I’m going to ask only a handful. I’ll save the rest for later.
You know what? I like Barack Obama as a person. I like Michelle Obama too. They are two of the smartest and modernest first couple America has seen for the first time in generations. And I know for sure that just because they are black, a large number of Americans (and Indians — from India) hate them. It’s unbelievable that even in 2012, millions of people especially in USA, Europe and India believe blacks are inferior to whites (and to browns and red and yellows and olives and purples and grays…) and a black president is a disgrace for this God’s Country called USA.
Well, let me tell you this. I think these people are pure racists and sexists and bigots and jerks too; and just because I know them so well from my own long experience to be with racists and sexists and bigots and jerks, I think at the end of the day, I’ll come out and vote for Obama, even though I think his Democratic administration has cheated me of my hope, expectation and enthusiasm for a change. But that’s not what I wanted to do. I wanted to vote FOR a presidential candidate FOR him, and not AGAINST his racist and bigoted and sexist and lying opponents.
So, at this point, without annoying my patient readers to death, I’ll ask a few questions to Barack. Mr. President, Sir, would you please be kind enough to respond, or at least ask one of your colleagues to do it? It would be much appreciated. My questions are not prioritized in any particular fashion.
Question 1.(I asked this to Romey and Ryan too). — Rachel Corrie, a young American woman, in 2003 stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer to protest against Israeli government’s demolition of houses of Palestinian civilians. The bulldozer crushed her to death. Your Democratic Party leaders such as Hillary and Bill Clinton had blasted Chinese government’s human rights violation when its tanks threatened to kill Chinese protesters at Tienanmen Square a few years ago. Do you think your Democratic Party can show the same resolution to protest against the action of the Israeli government when they killed Rachel Corrie? (You might also add here the drama of including Jerusalem as the Israel’s capital in the Democratic election platform.)
Question 2. (I asked this to Romey and Ryan too). — Multinational, U.S.-based companies such as Monsanto, Union Carbide, Coca Cola, Chevron and Disney (among many others) have caused havoc in many other countries because of their ways of doing business. For example, over the past decade, 200,000 Indian farmers (yes, you’ve heard it right!) have committed suicide — the largest in human history — because of Monsanto’s permanent seed replacement with their own genetically engineered products and false promises of crop yield. Union Carbide’s infamous toxic gas leak in Bhopal in 1984 had killed thousand of poor workers and their families; women who suffered are still delivering crippled babies. Are you going to bring these companies to justice and compensate the victims for the disasters they went through?
Question 3.(I asked this to Romey and Ryan too). — Have you ever visited an agricultural or industrial farm in California, Tennessee, Arizona, Florida or Texas where owners work immigrant workers like slaves in a toxic situation — with zero human rights? Many of them die of cancer, tuberculosis and such diseases — because of their inhumane work conditions. Do you see any difference between their condition and that of the black workers and their families in a cotton plantation during the slavery days? Your government has detained and deported more undocumented immigrants — many of such poor workers — than even Bush and Ashcroft government did.
Question 4. — Why did your administration let Goldman Sachs, one of the biggest corporate criminals in the history of modern human civilization, off the hook even after their criminal activities were exposed beyond doubt at bipartisan Congressional hearings?
Question 5. — Why did you include people such as Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Jeff Immelt, et al. — some of the worst-known corporate elements responsible behind the financial disaster — in your administration and would not purge them in spite of repeated pressure even from the pro-people sections of your own party? Why did you not stand behind the Overturn Citizen United campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders — 100 percent?
Question 6. — Why did you not take up, let alone pass, the Employee Free Choice Act when labor unions have always been such an ardently faithful ally? Isn’t that one of the worst examples of not keeping your 2008 campaign promises?
Question 7. — President Jimmy Carter has condemned your drone attacks and hit lists that killed thousands of innocent civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan (and recently in Yemen too). Isn’t that one of the grossest violations of international peace treaties and human rights laws? (And we all know you also backtracked on closing down Guantanamo.)
__________________
Post Script. — This is from New York Times tonight (click for the news story here). Obama’s top strategist, David Axelrod, said, “We’re in a better position than we were four years ago in our economy.” But Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, a Democrat, answered “no” on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” though he blamed Republicans. Other aides equivocated.
I’ll tell you this. Martin O’Malley and the other aides are honest. David Axelrod is dishonest and arrogant with his answer. And that is my problem with this Democratic Party and its top people who run the show. If you tell me we’re better off than four years ago, you’re kidding me. If you tell that to an ordinary American voter — Democrat or Republican or undecided — you’re going to lose their vote. Remember, many of these people didn’t watch Bill Clinton last night: they were working a late-evening shift to make ends meet.
We, the ordinary people who live and work in the U.S., who lost their jobs, health care, life’s savings and houses, and who can’t afford to play the stock market, are not better off. People like us do not see light at the end of the tunnel. President Obama and Mr. Axelrod, you must face the truth. You must tell the truth.
Most importantly, tell us why should we vote FOR you, and not just against your bigoted, lying, racist, sexist opponents?
Thank you, Sir, for your valuable time and kind response. Sincerely Writing,
I was stuck on the G subway for an entire hour today. That was a full sixty minutes.
I felt shitty.
Nobody on the train knew what was going on. The almost-inaudible announcements — don’t you love to hear them — said words like “signal problem,” “stalled train ahead,” and “sorry for the inconvenience.” The voice said it five or six times over the one-hour period. I don’t know about the other “customers,” but I was hoping to hear some new information about the progress, or, what was being done, or like, how long it would approximately take to fix it. It was never disclosed.
I was truly inconvenienced. I was beyond inconvenienced. It was not good. In fact, it was bad.
The only “good” that came out of the entire ordeal was that I now had a subject to write about on my blog. Heck, what else could I do? There was not even a person at the station to bitch about it. Write a letter to the subway authorities? To MTA? Like, are you kiddin’ me?
So, I decided to write a blog. And I then realized Sex and the Shitty was not even a unique title. I felt shitty again. Like, not even profanity is untouched! How uncool!
See, I could’ve named it The Sexy and the Shitty. Or, because I’m also going to talk about clubs — different types of club — I could’ve named it Sexy Clubs and Shitty Clubs. Etc. But because Sex and the Shitty is more catchy and more sexy, I thought, what the heck! Let’s replay. Like, it’s not a trademark or anything, right? Nobody is gonna sue me for it, right? So what? If some people think I’m swearing too much these days and getting more profane, and clearly losing my once-vouched modesty, and then unsubscribe from my blog out of frustration, disappointment and disgust, so be it.
Adios, Sir. Apologies, Ma’m. Sorry for the inconvenience.
See, I came to terms with the hard fact that sex and shit are two important elements of my life. They’re like gem, and how could I not talk about them? How can I hide them — no pun intended — when they are so real? Food is real, money is real, my heartburn is real, that damn G-train ride today was real, and when I was stuck on it, getting claustrophobic on one hand and pissed off by the repeat stupid announcement, that was real too. I was also getting red in my face because I desperately wanted to pee, but could not. I was, like, getting sick.
That feeling is what I call feeling shitty.
Now, what does it have to do with sex? Or, for that matter, why the hell did I mention those clubs?
Pause for a moment.
-Sequel F-
When I was waiting on the stuck G train, red-faced, clasping with my hands the invisible chair handles and with my thighs my desperate urge to pee, I looked out to see Mademoiselle Liberty standing across the Brooklyn Bay. If you know the G train, you know it goes above ground for a couple of stations before it goes back underground again. From the above-ground stations, you can see the sun or snow, the mega Manhattan skyline on one side and minnow Jersey skyline on the other. You also get to see the statue and Liberty Island on the New Jersey side. It’s a pretty picture — almost phony-perfect like a post card.
See Ya, Baby!
So, I was looking out the train window and enjoying the post card, with hope that in that ordeal that would be my last-gasp refuge. Then, I also noticed a bunch of helicopters flying over the Liberty Island — crisscrossing New York and Jersey. I suddenly remembered I saw a number of helipads right next to Wall Street, on the bank of West River. I remembered many of those helicopters were actually transit copters, carrying big Wall Street executives to their New Jersey homes — homes they built in Jersey because of close proximity to the big casino (I mean…stock exchange and Goldman Sachs and stuff), lower taxes and higher privacy than Manhattan, and cheaper real estate for their palaces.
Did I say privacy? Yeah, man, that’s kinda important…especially for them air-commuting New York and Jersey. You need a lot of privacy…especially if you got to hide a lot. America is big on privacy. New York is even bigger. It don’t matter what Supreme Court says about searching your genitalia. It’s not gonna be their genitalia. You can bet on it.
In that one-hour window, in the midst of that claustrophobia, repeated inaudible announcements and my persistent effort to resist a bad-timed nature’s call, a number of things zoomed past my mind — like a fast-forward cinema. I thought, those private helicopters and the privileged customers they carry — they don’t have to get stuck on a subway train and wait helplessly. Some of those privileged customers might be flying to their golf clubs. I could never afford to be a member of a golf club. I heard they were not cheap. I thought, those privately-flown executives might be flying over some place else — I recently saw in a new movie how some of them spent lavishly on sex clubs and drug clubs — doing cocaine and concubines. I could never afford to be a member of a sex club. I heard they were not cheap either. Even if I wanted, I simply could not buy it.
Then you have cricket clubs, croquet clubs, fine wine clubs, dance ‘n dine clubs, fashion cat clubs, Russian pony clubs, poker clubs. You got your broker clubs. You then got your like…Congress clubs. Senate clubs. Business Deans clubs. Democracy clubs. Aristocracy clubs. Fun clubs. Gun clubs. And God knows what other clubs. Elite clubs. D Litt clubs.
I kept thinking. I could never be on any of those clubs. I won’t be on any of those clubs.
I felt shitty again.
In that one frozen hour, a realization newly developed in my mind. I said to myself, New York has so much to offer…literally…in the same city…I mean, just look out the other side of the G train…here’s the dilapidated, forlorn Third Avenue and Smith Street and 9th Street…that desolate corner is a bunch of shuttered-down shops and failed restaurants…in the wee hours, who knows, you might even find a few men and women standing in the corner buying and selling sex…but by no means you can call these New Yorkers privileged members of those uppity sex clubs. Some of them do drugs too, but their habits are not nearly as savvy as those Wall Street executives the new movie showed so vividly.
They do clubs. They fly on their choppers. They are blessed. They’re highly connected too. They never get busted by cops. In fact, they have their own cops.
They are like, sexy.
I felt shitty again. (I know. I’ve repeated my stupid announcements.)
Post Script. — The G train finally walked again. After I walked off and out of it, the first thing that came to my mind was to look for a rest room where I could release my bladder. Then it was time to release a little bit of steam.
Apologies. This blog is not the place where I post hardcore political stuff.
However, given the urgent nature of it, I’m taking the liberty to digress from the “personal” and “apolitical” focus of my blog, to invite you to be a part of this critically important conversation — both here in the U.S. and worldwide.
I shall try to analyze some relevant social and economic scenarios that might prove useful in this conversation.
I hope you take a couple of minutes to go through this note, and think about it.
First, this. You might find it very relevant to the discussion below. Let me know if you need clarification. I’d be happy to speak or write more. Thank you for taking the time to go over this paper and workshop I presented last June in Granada, Spain.
Peer-reviewed paper on political alliance building at
Working people who consider themselves moderate “left” or ‘right” have more overlaps than differences. Below are a few examples – the moderate working people feel similarly and strongly about the following:
1. Economic disparity and frustrations on social mobility: living wages, unpredictable workplace, loss of health care, education costs for children, loss of home and savings, and consequent psychological trauma and depression are major issues.
2. Feeling of being left out: not being a part of the election-time promises to be included in democratic processes.
3. Discontent on lack of peace, right, justice and human dignity issues: state repression, global warfare and poverty issues hit the average home.
4. Helplessness on destruction of the earth and environment: the BP disaster, Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan and Iraq wars are examples.
5. Fast-worsening stability and security situation for the children: terrorism and violence are all-time high.
Can the poor, working man and woman strengthen themselves to a position of power? Can we empower the Middle Majority – which I call the Second Circle – driven by coalition building across the working class, political education, and will power, in a non-violent way? What are the obstacles?
I propose a simple “spin wheel” model to create cooperation and collaboration across the moderate left and right working class spectrum, eventually empowering the Second Circle middle majority, and through the process, disempowering the iron-walled elite center and separatist and violent far right and far left. I believe that with evolving action plans (including but not limited to elections), moderate working people will win and assume power.
The artificial left-right divide is deliberately created by the forces in power aided by corporate media; it’s been detrimental for the working class people and families. It’s time we go beyond the archaic box and come together.
I’m writing my two little cents with hope that somebody at the OWS camp will notice it. The developments since November 15, when Bloomberg and NYPD violated the democratic rights of us the ordinary people to protest peacefully, have been greatly troubling. It is obvious — to me and a number of my friends who worked with me over the years as a grassroots political activist and peace and justice advocate – that with overt and covert support from the political establishment and corporate media, Wall Street crooks and their cronies are now preparing for major onslaughts on the movement. It is also quite likely that there will be violence traps to exploit.
And even though there was no violence from the OWS protesters’ side, there was violence from the suppressors’ side. Yet, media has largely overlooked it. That’s not surprising either. (However, today, May Day 2012, a local popular media report from New York City has covered some of the police action — as narrated by a little girl. Watch report at http://manhattan.ny1.com/content/top_stories/160369/may-day-protesters-join-for-large-union-square-rally.)
Next time, the “radical” protesters might be taken in prison, and strip searched — courtesy U.S. Supreme Court’s newest ruling earlier this week (April 2012).
Maybe, none of the above will happen; without a serious leadership with pragmatic goals and achievable benchmarks, the movement might fizzle. There are already unfortunate signs of it. Street protests have become increasingly unsustainable. (But the May Day rallies across the U.S. today showed that the movement is still strong and perhaps coming back in full force. That is very reassuring.)
Upon this backdrop, this is my brief thought. This is what I urge you to do.
For heaven’s sake, find political support from the pro-people sections of Democratic and other political parties (Kucinich, Feingold, Sanders, Waxman, Levine…you know who I’m talking about; definitely not the Schumer or Clinton Democrats). More importantly, find support from parallel peace and justice groups. Find support from the labor movement.
Without that support, even sane Americans (and onlookers worldwide) will slowly get tired of the prolonged protests “without a clear goal” (I know you have solid demands), and both corporate America and elite-centrist Reps and Dems with their military and police and media will crush you.
Find that critical political support and find a clear time line to achieve certain goals. Have meetings. Talk about it. Call us.
Ideally, OWS with help from all rights, justice and peace groups (and special support from labor) should have their own candidates for the upcoming elections; however, I don’t believe it is anymore possible in 2012. It needs focused energy to achieve election goals; I am yet to see the movement contemplating that goal.
Some of us believe that Obama-Biden Democrats will eventually call. They’ll never call. Most of them do not want to lose their campaign contribution money anyways. Obama is one of them. It’s up to the protesters to show that they have political pragmatism and acumen; they need to show to the world that they know how to find political support from sane, influential people from all walks of life. The documentary Inside Job (Sony, 2010, directed by Charles Ferguson) has interviewed some of these people. Talk to them. Make up a winning strategy.
The other side is WAY too powerful. Plus they have New York Times and CNN, PBS, etc. on their side. (I’m not even talking about Fox or the Murdoch media empire and far right wing nuts like Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh.)
During a Facebook conversation, one committed OWS friend said this in response to the above: “Trying to work within this corrupted, benighted system is a losing proposition. The protesters are righteous and an important part of this process. Screw both parties. Time to change it all.”
I told her that it’s not so easy (i.e., to “screw both parties” and work without them). I did not hear from her ever again.
This is the real "Change We Can Believe In."
I’m trying to articulate my bullet-points here very briefly; if you want, you can circulate them among the OWS leaders, and let me know if they need me in any future conversations.
(1) Obama was elected with bankers’ money. He never did and never will come out strongly against the crooks who stole the U.S. economy. His so-called Wall Street reform has been laughably inadequate. (However, Republicans, Wall Street and their media will use that reform ploy in 2012 as if enough has been done already to reform Wall Street and therefore, now it is old news — to divert peoples’ attention from that subject, moving their spotlight to the so-called tax and deficit questions. They and their corporate media alike will again conveniently not analyze Reaganomics and the deficits ballooned during Bush. See illustration below.)
See for yourself: Bush-era Reaganomics tax cuts for the rich created huge deficit.
(2) Democratic Party establishment is no different than the Republican Party establishment when it comes to their campaign contribution money and allegiance; in fact, I always say that right wing is easier to read because they have no pretense. (Yet, it is true that 2012 is already seeing signs that billionaires and big corporations are heavily contributing to Republicans, especially through their PAC’s.)
(3) The financial sector, after Reagan, got the maximum boost and the stock market bubble happened during Bill Clinton. Remember Clinton had Greenspan as the Federal Reserve chairman, in spite of Greenspan’s well-known connections with Charles Keating of the S&L Scandal. Clinton also recruited Rubin and Summers — the two biggest names behind deregulation of derivatives and illegal-made-legal Wall Street mergers.
(4) The biggest crooks completely deregulated and destroyed the economy with blessings from Clinton, W. Bush and now Obama; nothing changed (Greenspan has Ayn Rand ideological agenda; Summers has Harvard and Columbia Business School support. All of them made millions in these eras).
(5) Neither Republicans nor Democrats jailed a single individual crook such as Paulson or Fuld even though all their wrongdoings are established and beyond belief. (Senator Carl Levine of Michigan, a few-and-far-between Democrat, grilled Goldman Sachs operatives; Waxman grilled Fuld of Lehman Brothers who made a personal income of half a billion dollars off the now-bankrupt company. The hearings are available online. There are more such public exposés. Paulson would be a test case to expose now.)
(6) We are working under this system; therefore, there is NO reason to believe mainstream Democrats would come out to support OWS. Levine and Waxman hearings, although strong and commendable, failed to jail either the GS operatives or Fuld. Note the notable absence of the two big NY senators Hillary and Schumer from these events; I have not heard a single word of support for OWS from them.
(7) As I said before, and as I emphasized in my paper cited above, work with labor unions, peace and justice groups, and civil and immigrant rights groups. This is the time to mend fences and build broad-based alliance of moderate working people and families — both from the so-called left and right (read my new paper for this model).
(8) Therefore, find other politicians who either lost elections in 2010 because of their pro-people positions or are traditionally known for their pro-people politics — there are many both at the national and state levels. Spitzer is one of them (he was set up because he worked against these Wall Street crooks); then there are cleaner images within and outside the Democratic Party.
(9) Work with Volcker and others who do not like the way Glass-Stegall was repealed by Rubin, Summers and Paulson. Work with Elizabeth Warren, et al. too. Warren must win.
(10) Find international support especially from Europe — a whole bunch of leaders — market capitalists — know how to run a capitalist economy without crooks. Iceland has already fixed its colossal problems that precipitated exactly the U.S. way just before October 2008. (Watch the documentary Inside Job: it begins with the Iceland episode.)
(11) Challenge Obama on these economic and political platforms, and also the major Democratic candidates running in 2012. Find shadow candidates who can put pressure on them whether or not they actually run.
(12) Find friends in corporate media who can put out the OWS platform. It does not matter if for various reasons, the street rallies dwindle; people will come back in various ways to rally across the U.S. and beyond if there is a serious action plan based on pragmatic politics.
I do hope the OWS leaders have time to read my two cents.
BTW, it’s much better to have known evils in political power than hypocrites. The peace and justice movement both in the U.S. and worldwide got stronger during Dubya. Egypt and the entire Middle Eastern revolution keep happening because of that solidarity, not because of Obama’s Cairo speech.
NOTE: If you’re more interested to know about my grassroots, empirical model on political alliance building that invites and includes the sane and moderate working people and families from both the so-called left and right – to disempower the elite center and marginalize the extreme right and left – read my new paper Second Circle: Middle Majority of the Working People (International Journal of the Humanities, October 2010). I’m including the link to the abstract here. I’ve already put the text of the abstract above.
Humanity College 