I agree. It's not fear alone that has made people passive, which in any case is relatively a minor factor among white citizens of middle strata. Those who have the fewest rights and most reasons to fear -- undocumented workers subject to deportation -- were also the ones who took the most impressive actions -- the largest wave of strikes and rallies -- in post-9/11 America. Rather, those who once marched against the invasion of Iraq, the Republican National Convention, and so on in big numbers have more recently stayed home because they are at a loss as to what to do next. They have peacefully demonstrated in the streets, and they have voted for Democrats, and neither has changed US policy. What is to be done, then? That's the question we need to address.
Chuck0's idea, mass civil disobedience at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant, may not be immediately doable this year or even six months or a year from now, but it is true that the plant is a great chokepoint, which I hadn't realized till he mentioned it:
The Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence,
Mo., directly supplies the military with more than 80
percent of its small-arms ammunition. Production at the
factory has more than tripled since 2002, rising from
roughly 425 million rounds that year to 1.4 billion rounds
in 2006, according to the Joint Munitions Command at the
Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois.
Most of the rest of the military's small-arms ammunition
comes from Falls Church, Va.-based General Dynamics
Corp., which relies partly on subcontractors -- some of
whom also supply police departments. ("Ammunition
Shortage Squeezes Police," Associated Press, 17 August
2007)
Identification of chokepoints helps us practice thinking strategically, so it helps us in our "mental fight" (to take William Blake's term).
If people are not ready for civil disobedience, why not demonstration at this location? No sizable demonstration has taken place near this plant, so, if nothing else, the media will have a reason to cover it just for its novelty, whereas the media can very well ignore demonstrations at usual locations such as Washington, D.C. unless they are really huge.
Carrol says that we do not have "cadres"* for mass civil disobedience yet, and that is probably true. Then, the question is, how can we turn ourselves into, and encourage others into becoming, such "cadres"?
* And there remains a question that Bitch | Lab asked. What exactly are "cadres" when we don't mean party cadres? Does the term still make sense? -- Yoshie