I remember a news story about a man who had somehow gotten his leg pinned between some downed trees. He waited, but no one came. He had a saw within arms reach and eventually, made the decision to hack off his own leg rather than die in the rubble. He survived. At what point, I wondered, did he finally decide, 'Okay, that's it, I'm doing it now". I imagined myself in his position. I would, I figured, keep telling myself, "I'll give it five more minutes...." And eventually, no doubt, die waiting.
Stand with the Wisconsin 14
Buses to the protest from Jobs with Justice
When the Bush v Gore travesty was playing out in Florida, I kept waiting for the Good Guys to show up. Surely, I assumed, the Democratic party would take an unequivocal stand and declare that unless and until all the votes were counted and counted properly, no Bush victory would be recognized. When the Supreme Court decision handed the presidency to Bush, I assumed that Americans would take to the streets - how could a clearly illegitimate decision, one that undermined the very underpinnings of democracy, stand? An African American friend scoffed at me. "Only a naive white person," she told me, "would be so shocked that votes weren't being counted in America...." I watched as the Black Congressional Caucus stood up and pleaded, literally, for a senator to join them as they protested the outcome of that election. Pleaded in vain. protest Bush "victory"
Like a well plotted novel, the foreshadowing of Bush V Gore led to a greater outrage: a ginned up casus belli: Saddam Hussein's mythical weapons of mass destruction. The spectre of "a mushroom cloud", Colin Powell's eternally disgraceful appearance before the United Nation. The invasion of Iraq and the search for those elusive - and as it turned out, non existent - WMDs. Pundits speculated beforehand that should no WMDs be found, it would prove disastrous to George W Bush and his presidency. There was outrage, of course, both in the US and abroad, expressed in enormous - and largely ignored - demonstrations against the wars. But "Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one", and those who stood to profit from a US invasion of Iraq and unending war were the only constituency that mattered to those making the decisions. And they've profited enormously, and continue to do so; facts didn't matter then and still don't. Mass demonstrations could be, and were, ignored. They were tolerated, they were barely covered, and in the end, they were irrelevant.
And the pundits predicting the downfall of Bush should the WMD argument be proven false were wrong; it didn't destroy his presidency or result in any significant consequences for his administration. It should have, obviously. His disregard for the US constitution, for international law, for the Geneva convention, all those outrages should have had dire consequences. They didn't. Bush won the election of 2004, continued destroying the US economy with his wars of choice and his tax breaks for the rich, and launched new assaults on Social security, science, and the environment.
During the height of the Egyptian uprisings, most of us watched with trepidation as the protesters risked everything, clearly having made the decision that, whatever the price of freedom, it was one they were willing to pay. We watch - and participate - in the demonstrations in Madison, wondering, many of us, if finally, enough people had concluded that there was simply little left to lose by finally, truly fighting back. We're not watching protesters shot on the streets, disappeared into stadiums, the analogies are not precisely parallel. In the United States today, the assaults on working people are a death by a thousand cuts instead of a single bullet. Jobs that don't pay enough to cover life's basic needs, a social service "safety net" that doesn't provide social services or safety. The promise of a better life through an unaffordable education, resulting in debts that never yield salaries sufficient to cover them, and pay one's bills. Health care that is unaffordable and inaccessible, resulting in thousands of avoidable deaths every year. Every year, losing more and more ground, watching hope evaporate, downscaling expectations, redefining acceptable. Inch by inch the bar is lowered, until the unthinkable becomes reality.
There's always a way, the Chinese proverb goes, when the rich get too rich and the poor get too poor. And from the courageous acts of others, our own courage will be stoked. Leaders will - and are - emerging. Voices who will remind us that this fight is not new, not unprecedented. And the victories of those in other places will energize us.
I remember you back in 1992
When they were putting us down
Trying to tramp us into the ground
You exploded like a flame in the night
With a righteous indignation
Told us "everything gonna be alright"
Voices like those of Clara Lemlich, the leader of the Uprising of the 20,000 (International Ladies Garment Workers Union) who told her fellow workers this:
"I have listened to all the speakers, and I have no further patience for talk. I am a working girl, one of those striking against intolerable conditions. I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in generalities. What we are here for is to decide whether or not to strike. I make a motion that we go out in a general strike."
Change come slowly like the ocean
But it keep on comin' nonetheless
Take my hand, oh dear companion,
We may not find happiness
But peace and then some real contentment
And a measure of social justice
Oh change come slowly like the ocean
But they can't stop the tide
And they're never ever goin' to stop us
Voices like that of John Lewis, a warrior and labor hero who saved thousands of lives through his tireless work for the coal miners, those laborers who work in perhaps the most dangerous of all environments. Lewis and others fought battles that would have bent most of us to the ground; fought in an industry that was known for it's history of massacres of striking workers, and never gave in to despair.
posters in support of protestors in Wisconsin
They've got the bullets and the guns
And the propaganda machine
All we ever had was an impossible dream
You stood tall as steel in the flaming night
Said "let us have no fear
The victors will be those who can the most endure
Fox news video "of Wisconsin" protestors featuring palm trees
We can rage against the bread-and-circuses distractions of the corporate media, we can find a thousand reasons not to join the fight. We have young children, we can't risk our own job, the forces against us are simply too overwhelming to defeat. But just as we worried that our government would be "on the wrong side of history" in the battles still unfolding in the Arab world, each of us needs to make the decision here: Which side are we on? Changes are coming, there's no question of that. The forces determined to destroy social security, collective bargaining, affordable housing, Medicare, Medicaid, and what remains of the victories won by the heroes of labor before us; they're not afraid and they're not giving up. All we can control is our response, our commitment.
It's a frightening thing, no doubt. But we're not alone. Arlo Guthrie wrote this:
You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and
they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an
organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said
fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.
We saw the firefighters, exempt from Walker's attacks, join the teachers in Wisconsin. And sure enough - it became a movement. All it takes is the courage to make that decision, the decision to commit yourself to the fight. One person. And then another. And the movement is born.
proceeds to the protestors in Wisconsin
Sally came to me with flames in her eyes
And her long hair blowin' in the breeze
She said "dry up your tears, boy, we've been down too long
It's time we were up off our knees"
Oh the stars in the heavens are blazin' tonight
The moon she is glidin' on high
And the drum roll of liberty beats in my heart
As the warm winds of change blow by
Don't ask me to be a slave anymore
I couldn't be if I tried
For the pipes scream an anthem of hope in my heart
As the warm winds of change blow by
("Change" by Black 47)
call for general strike
Stand with the Wisconsin 14