But the US doesn't have a debt crisis, apart from the one that might be created by not paying the bills. So the public is correct, just like they are about the need to raise taxes, end the wars, allow gay marriage, protect the environment, increase education funding, improve infrastructure etc. This is just the press try to create fear in peoples minds so they agree with the bosses. .-----------
This is all correct - excerpt perhaps the final speculation about motivation of the media, which may be correct in substance. Perhaps I should review again a few of the basic truisms of left politics. (And by politics of course I mean direct action of various sorts, not the silliness of electoral pseudo-politics.)
1. Real lefat politics occur only episodically, with long inervals of a few decades to half a century or so between episodes. (There are a number of reasons for this, but the important thing here is merely the fact.) Those episodes are unpredictable and tend to surprise even those whose activitdy generartes them.
2. .Leftists focus their attention only on that largae number of peopelwho already agree with them passively (as shown inthis poll for example). They do not waste their time and make themselves look foolish by trying to change the midns of those they address. Thy rather try to activate those who, at a given time, agree most vigorously and deeply on some immediate issue.
2a. A corollary. Though knowing that persuasion does not change minds on issues left agitation nevertheless tries to do so: not, howver, to change the minds of those it assresses but to give psychological comfort to those conducting the agitation. For example the anti-war slogan, "Supporaat athe Troops: Bring them Home." This has never persuaded a single sujpporarter of any war to change his/her mind and oppose the war. But it has certainly given a huge psychological boost to new activists who are still undertain in their new-found political activity.
3. One of the reasons episodes of life upsurge (working-class upsurge) are unpredictable is that the correct issues and fundamental positions which energize such episodes cannot be atheorized in advance. Activity begins around very obvious general positions (usually negative ones), and it is within the activity so generated that discussion and thinking begins and issues, slogans, goals become concrtized. These initioal goals are not "spontaneous," but usually are generated by the political leaders of local groups. The issues that get identified begin to spread, and . . . . who knows. The leadership of the Mongomery NAACP knew that the issue for them was eliminating segregation on busses. They knew this on a numberof groumnds, probably emerging from a number of years of tentative actions, discussiolns, etc. Certainly they did not know (no one could know in advance) that seats on a bus and seats at a lunchd counter could ignite, because certain other unpredictable conditions (like a war 12000 miles away and some angry students in Paris) could ignite an upsurge that practically spread over the globe.
3a. An interesting case in point. In the summer of 1965 a committee of scholars in international affairs, ones upset by the growing war in Vietnam, called a conference in Ann Arbor: a two-tier conference. The intended core of the conference was a number of _closedd_ meetings of "experts" in which they thought deep thoughts on what the "solution" to Vietnam should be. The conference was rather widely advertised for thsese reasons (quite a few big names were involved). But the _second_ tier was simply a conglomveration of workshops, etc, open to anyone. Tbhose workshops mostly revolved around tactics and organizing ideas. There was relatively little discussion in them concerning the "issues" in Vietnam: we knew all we needed to know: stop that war.
I believe the "Official" tier of the Conference came out with some fairly detailed report and various suggestions etc - though I rather doubt anyone ever read it or ever paid much attention to it. But people from the "unoffaicial" tier came from all over, experiecend (i.e., sis motns to a year of experience) organizers chatted with new ones. Everyone scattered back home, and the anti-war movement begin to grow.
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Even after they are well underway serious left movements remain pretty invisible and unpredictable. Many doubtless have died after a shor flourishing. But just because of this unpredictability it is essential that leftists (new or old) plunge into the development of any remotely promising beginnings. Of course there are sometimes those who _can_ predict. In the late 1940s C.L.R. James noted that the membership of local NAACP chapters had been growing each year for several years. He predicted odn that basis that an age of social change was approaching. Looking back, I would throw out the possibility that the explosion of that aage of social change was delayed by fiver or more years by the School decision. Had that decision been a segregationist decision, the explosion might have come sooner and developed mdore rapidly.
Locally, we have Sonny Garcia. For 14 years he attened classes part time at ISU while working as a janitor there, and becoming a militant in the union. (He has since been promoted to a supervisory position out of the Union.) But he had also organized the Bloomington participation in those huge May Day Protests that launched the Immigrant movement. (I forget what year that was.) A few years ago he got in contact with BncPJ and made presentations at meetings on the migrant movement. He attended mass anti-war actions in Chciago with us. The May Day demos eventuated in Latinos Unidos para Cambio (look it up on the web), a group which has grown even as (for the time being) the demos have become smaller. Then this year a church-based group (CIOP) changed its name to Illionois Peoples Action (IPA) and be gan to take individuals as members. Sonny joined. And IPA, which had _mostly_ (not wholly) operated by lobbying and negotations with occasional demonstrations was becoming much more active. (Look up NPA, National Peoples Action on the web. Also see the Bill Moyer show on the Iowa Peoples Action -- slightly different title.) Sonny is a Vesuviius of ideas. He tried to organize a local Teach In in response to the Plleven-West initiative. No one came but he kep a video for later use. Then he proposed calling a local Conscience-Raising meeting of local progresdsive groups. (Old Fogy Cox thought it was too ambitions.) But he got together a Committee, the paln went through several metamorphoses, & on June 5 over 40 people showed up for a meeting at which local groups from Common Action (anarchist) to the U-Hih Young Democrats had 10 minutes to present what their group did. Then there was a half hour for smaller groups to discuss some prepared questions, focusing on Corporate Threat to Democracy. This had bothered the Anarchist on the Committee at first - he truthfully noted that we'd never had any democracy to be threatened, but he and his group saw the need for a slogan that would cast a wide net. The amazing thing about the meeting itself (to me) was (a) that no one left early and (b)a surprising number stood around afterwardds for quite a while chatting about (guess what ) _politics_. (My own part, near the end, was a one or two minute ttribute to to late heroes of the local left, Father Joe Kennedy of the Newman Center and Beulah Thornton Kennedyd*, a black factory worker, whose vision in the mid-t0s created the US group from which the local left flows, and to an event, the 1969 November Moratorium.
*http://www.mchistory.org/blackHistory/kennedy.html
Sonny continues to be a Vesuvius of concepts. The Committee that had planned theevent met this week to review it and to plan for the future. Sonny wants a similar event uniting all the central Illinois cities (Spriingfield, Peoria, Bloomingotn/Normal, Decatur, and Champaign/Urbana. After discussion we decided first on the agenda was to consolidate and expand what we have; probably aboaut two more such occasions, adding some groups not involved the first time around and exploring focus. Meanwhile we all explore our contacts elsewhere in Central Illinois (CIA: ;->). IPA has a strong base in Black churches, and Sonny's LUC (Latinos Unidos para Cambio) also stretchesd into several central Illinois communitiesd.
(Sidelight: I understand that in northern Wisconsin communities as small as one or two thousand the Governor has been been met with booing croweds as large as 4000! That takes organizing - the kind of organizing that the U.S. has not seen much of since the '60s.
We really don't know how all of this will turn out. But I think my private slogan, quoted a couple weeks ago, holds:
Defeats are defeats, one lives with them; But to succeed and not be organized to build on that success is unacceptable.
Carrol
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