``Ahem, if you view them as ignorant and superstitious, then you probably won't have much luck organizing them. Because they'll think you're an elitist condescending jerk. The Right doesn't make that mistake. They listen to them, treat them as equals.'' Bob Morris
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I've met and talked with a lot of people from the `working class' over the years. Most of these friendly encounters were filtered by the work I did, by my relationship to the people I met, and the region I worked in. They read me as working class because I was in auto mechanic cloths and did auto-mechanic type work. My impression was that a majority were socially friendly and basically liberal. Their members in congress pretty accurately represent most people's views in the general SF Bay Area. There are Republicans around and most are in the business class. You usually have to drive a ways out of the immediate area to find more conservative views, and find a more conservative working class.
What I think is that most adults sometime in their twenties make up their mind about the world. They have a world view and they choose their politics based on that view. Actually I think most people have finished most of the construction in their teenage years, but still remain elastic into their twenties.
I have tried hard to convince very liberal friends to come over to my view of things. They will tolerate some stretching, but basically stop, if I press them to directly. I sort of agree with Carrol on this particular point about working with those closest and move out from there.
If I could explain myself to myself, I think I could figure out a way to do political outreach. I think for the moment the best way to reach other people is through `show and tell' stories. But others have to be interested in listening.
For example, I think Haiti is a great show and tell story. The story is not of tragedy and endless suffering. The best story is the almost instant collectivization of Haiti by Haitians. Almost all the news items I went through from either Haitian sources (Cine Institute students) or outside the US, like Aljazeera noted Haitians pulling together to get themselves out of the rubble, get others out of the rubble, get the injured to medical stations, and build themselves temporary shelters. The early videos of dump trucks and bulldozers collecting bodies (hard to watch) were run by PaP ministry of public works. Drivers showed up to work, organized themselves, made work assignments and were loosely coordinated by the homeless, but still alive and well minister of public works.
Global neoliberalism's task will be to re-establish itself and prevent Haitian re-organization via public collectivization. It should be pretty clear that the neoliberal economic system is incapable of providing for the collective needs of life since most of those are owned and controlled in a system of private ownership: medicine, food, clothing, shelter, communication. When the system built on private ownership collapsed so did its distribution system. When that disappeared, collectivization for distribution took over. So the first conflict was between public collectives against a neoliberal regime attempting to re-establish the system of private ownership and distribution, etc.
So that's the best story I could find. I started to see this in a very simple story of Cine Institute students in Jacmel two weeks ago who turned into public journalists in about two hours. I started there because it was the only source of Haitians on Haiti I could find. But I saw very similar activity in the last piece by Ray Suarez Friday on PBS. The Newshour certainly didn't frame their story around collectivization, but it was apparent in the video that Suarez provided. The piece had some focus on the Haitian government officials. What I saw was essentially a collectivized government that had to re-distribute their authority and become a public committee.
Then on the darker side, I briefly followed the Idaho missionary story and their attempt to kidnap Haitian children. This was of course an illustration of neoliberism's reduction to primitive accumulation. Steal the children. That's a perfect metaphor for what neoliberalism does in the larger picture, which is steal everything of public value. Neoliberalism's brilliant idea when there is nothing left to steal, well seal the children. Thankfully, I got to laugh at this story because these `Christians' got caught at human trafficking.
Below is a link to a short KPFA piece by George Lakoff.
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/58260
Go to 7:00/min through 22:00/mins. It's a quick summary of the US political state under the Obama administration according to Lakoff.
I agree with Lakoff that the US worldview is always framed as a moral view. He points out the conservatives first moral priority is preserving their worldview. What he doesn't see is that goes for the whole political establishment. He fails to notice both political parties have a shared worldview and that neoliberalism is that worldview and that's the worldview that needs to be saved. One side has the mean spirit or strict father version, the other a more nurturing neoliberal worldview version. I see the crash of the US economy in the Haitian earthquake and see the same solution to both disasters. So I'd frame both in a very similar fashion with the solution as collectivization, or public ownership.
Here is an hour long Lakoff lecture from October 2005:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM
Whether you agree with him on the higher theoretic level (which I don't), or not, he has plenty of useful things to say about how to communicate with people. His main metaphor in this lecture is the strict father moral view (as the conservative frame) and the nurturing family as the progressive moral view or frame. Another example. When do conservatives start using Orwelling language---the use of words that are the opposite of what they mean? Lakoff's answer is when conservatives are weak. When the facts don't fit the policies. He notes the Clear Skies Act which actually increases pollution (limits). Lakoff calls it the Dirty Air Act.
Toward the end of this lecture at 52:20/mins he uses Katrina as an example of the failure of conservative government.
The parallels are stunning for Haiti and how the current events are framed in the US world view. The problem with Lakoff is that he fails to see that the Democratic leadership is following essentially the same policies as the conservatives, most particularly the economic policies. He thinks this following by Democrats was a mistake of judgement about what to do. I certainly don't agree. I think it is deliberate policy.
Just as Katrina pulled the sheet of lies back temporarily, so does Haiti, only at a much larger scale. Haiti puts the lies up front and on the entire global political economic system.
CG