I was one of many of the people who went to jail in Flint. I was an organizer for the state workers union. We went to jail with unemployed workers, all of us fighting against the massive cuts in welfare benefits (and for jobs) at the time. Dozens of people went to jail (repeatedly) for this kind of activity around Michigan, generally during the period Moore's non-documentary was being made. People got fired, lost homes, etc. We did halt some of the attacks. We stopped the cuts in day care for several years. The idea that people do not resist is simply not true, ever, and is written into Moore's comments, another reason his work is not to be considered progressive, at least in my book. Working people do not need to know things suck, are unfair, unequal, and that we lose a lot. We know that. What else has Moore told us?
More to the point, it seems to me that our project should be at least partly a matter of trying to carefully examine our particular circumstances. What, exactly, is the state of the industrial working class (and the rest of the potential gang), in the US and elsewhere? How about a state by state (is nation by nation byeond our reach?) analysis of the material/ideological forces at work? Is there really a reason to think that in the forseeable future the working class of the key imperial countries should be the focus of activist work, or are the industrial workers so privileged that for the time being work should focus elsewhere? Could we even agree on categories that would help in this analysis?
We could contribute to the process of better understanding the terrain if we did a job like this, especially if we found a way to talk to each other that drew on what must be something of a common past expereince, that is, it's possible that each of us might just be, just a little, wrong. Once we have gotten thru that initial piece of work, perhaps we will have better grounds to help figure out what is next.
I am frustrated by the voluminous debates here--the ones that take place in the rarified air of well turned phrases that are nearly empty of careful examination of circumstances. I read the debates because I think I have a lot to learn about what we have all tried to do, often in different ways. I respect people who have sacrificed, and had some fun, in the struggle for democracy and equality. But I would also like to see if we cannot try to do some more.
I do think we are going to win. That best guess comes from my understanding, limited as it may be, that we really are being driven together in lives that are ever more social, but that we are being set against each other by a social system that has no interest in any of us. I think we can choose to live otherwise, and be rid of the obstacles. Working on the details here might be worth the effort.
Rich Gibson Director of International Social Studies Wayne State University College of Education Detroit MI 48202
http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/index.html http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/meap.html
Life travels upward in spirals.
Those who take pains to search the shadows
of the past below us, then, can better judge the
tiny arc up which they climb,
more surely guess the dim
curves of the future above them.