OK Are the winds of change finally blowing? I've had CNN playing in the backround all day and they have given massive coverage to both the
Dufar Rallythat is going on in DC today and the upcomming immigrants rights marches tomorrow.
CNN has announced that they will be giving coverage all day to tomorrows action, even hooking up with Univision to provide spanish language coverage. They are starting at 6AM.
They also did interviews with business owners who are closing down for the day calling it "Immigrant Appreciation Day". Including a spokesman for Cargill.
They did a CNN Presents on Global warming. It was pretty hard hitting considering the source.
Yesterday CNN.com frontpaged the anti-war march.
On one of the news shows it was announced that Corporate political donations are at 52 percent for Dems. A huge turnaround.
So how do we as a progressive community capitalize on this shift?
buhdydharma did a diary asking for recollections of Watergate. Well the parallels are getting stronger in the birth of numerous movements.
Watergate was the end of a story that started many years before, and it was a long slow road. Back then there wasn't just the anti-war movement, there was the civil rights movement, the womens movement, Native Americans were making their voices heard, the Panthers were marching through Oakland, the Young Lords in spanish Harlem, the Gay rights movement was born, the Environment became an issue, Greenpeace was founded, and finally the issues started to come together in the call for real structural change.
Here are some of the structural changes that happened:
Voting Rights laws went into affect
Legal age became 18. "Old enough to die old enough to vote"
Affirmative action opened up education, employment, and housing.
Abortions became safe and legal
Environmental protection laws were enacted and enforced
Bilingual education was instituted
Whaling was outlawed
I know I have missed many movements and many more outcomes, but I think you get the point.
A generation of time has passed since those days and all the progress that we made then have been under attack since Reagan.
We don't have to wait 10 years to build that kind of movement again, we can start to create that massive movement right now.
Start tomorrow, IF you can't go to a rally, wear white and don't shop. Point out how many immigrants children are in Iraq, how many are joining the military in order to get citizenship, how many minorities of all ethnicities have died there.
What are your thoughts on starting to build a movement that will make the kind of structural changes Progressives long for?