[A-List] Doug Dowd on US politics

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Don't Waste Any Time in Mourning: Organize!

Doug Dowd

Most are familiar with that justly famous exhortation of Joe
Hill in 1915, made just before he was  to be executed by a firing
squad.   If things  look bleak  to us  today, thing  of how  much
bleaker  they must  have  looked  to Joe  Hill  at that  terrible
moment.  Think, too, of the many-faceted bleakness facing so many
in  the decades  to follow  who,  despite and  because of  fierce
opposition,  "organized," no matter what.   Had they not, and had
they not won more than a  little, today's terrible world would be
that much worse.

For those who have spent years trying to move society toward
decency, equality, sanity, and peace, these times could break the
heart; and Joe's words  ring more truly than ever.   With all the
reforms accomplished in  the USA from the 30s  on, the education,
health  care, and housing  for a majority  remained disgracefully
inadequate in  the 1970s; but  not inadequate enough as  those in
power  have seen  things:   as the  70s ended,  the  processes of
undoing those reforms began --  along with a reheated militarism,
the cruel disgrace  of Vietnam notwithstanding.  Now,  in a blitz
that seems unstoppable,  we and the world the  U.S. dominates are
coming face to face with multiple untold disasters.

Maybe  it's unstoppable;  maybe  not.    It  is  not  merely
dreaming to believe there is more than  a glimmer of hope.  There
are several reasons for thinking so.

The  first regards pessimistic  predictions:  We  don't know
enough about society  -- nor shall we  ever -- to support  either
optimistic or pessimistic predictions about the future.

The  social process  is an  ever more  kaleidoscopic  mix of
interacting   and  mutually   transforming  economic,   cultural,
military,  political  and  scientific/technological  "variables."
The  resulting complexities make it difficult fully to understand
even the  past; to  predict how  all that  will work  out in  the
future is so indeterminate that to anticipate even month-to-month
changes of  any substance is hard enough;  accurate forecasts for
future years are virtually impossible  -- even by the most astute
Marxists, let alone  mainstream social "scientists."

Consider  a variety  of examples  from the  past:   In 1910,
nobody  anticipated the Russian  revolution of 1917 nor, in 1922,
the birth of  fascism in Italy or,  even after it had  taken hold
there, its spread  to much  of Europe  and to Japan.   Closer  to
home,  in the USA  as late as  1932, anyone who  had argued there
would  be what  became the  post-1935  New Deal  would have  been
thought a halfwit.

And, some  will remember  that the young  in the  1950s were
called  the  "silent  generation."    Silent  they  were, on  the
surface; but  there was  an underwater  volcano simmering  which,
even  before the 50s ended, had  begun to froth near the surface.
Not long after, it produced what became the civil rights movement
in  the South  and the  student movement  on campuses.   (For  an
insightful early  look at that  "simmering" see the 1958  book by
Richard Farina, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.)

It  wasn't long  before both adults  and "kids"  became very
noisy about  matters never  in the  news a  few years  earlier --
about racism and poverty, nukes and Vietnam and, more than a few,
about South Africa:  The young  blacks who ordered coffee in  the
wrong place in the early 60s didn't  spring from nowhere; nor did
the anti-nuke and "peace candidates" in the 1960 elections in New
York   and    Massachusetts   --   with    considerable   student
participation.

In  short, the transformation of attitudes and behavior from
the  50s to  the  60s did  not descend  from  the heavens;  those
flowering plants emerged from no longer dormant seeds.

That particulars of that past  will not be repeated, but for
the present and future there are good grounds for thinking we can
do  at least as  well; and we'd  better to  more than that.   One
basis for thinking  so is as  forbidding as it  is hopeful:   the
cherished leftie notion  that worsening times energize  people to
change things  for the better.   It is "forbidding"  because such
times also step up rightwing energies.

Nor are the odds even  as good as 50-50 as between  movement
to  left or  right politically,  for those  in power  normally --
natcherly  -- assist  those  of  the right,  "lest  a worse  fate
befall."   Nevertheless, these worsening times furnish some basis
for  hope --  especially when we  join them to  the more cheering
current reality that has to do with -- perhaps surprisngly -- the
young of today.  Of which, more in a moment.

First,  a short walk  on the precarious  "dialectical" side.
As  today's USA  becomes  always  more  dangerous,  obscene,  and
corrupt, it is  entirely likely that hitherto  complacent people,
as in the past, will be provoked by anger and/or fear  to do more
than just vote for  Tweedledee/dum   (if  that);  and   that  those  who
have  been
politically active will become considerably more so.

In the  USA, that has happened more than  once, and in a big
way in  the 1930s.  Being political in  those distant  days meant
taking  unaccustomed, difficult, and often dangerous steps in the
socio-economic   realm:      For  workers,   attempts   to   form
independent -- as distinct from then common company -- unions was
always  an uphill  and dangerous  battle.   But struggle  up that
steep hill they did, one battle after another -- most prominently
struggles in autos, rubber,  coal, and steel -- with  innovations
such as  sit-ins and, on  the waterfront of San  Francisco, USA's
first general strike.

It took courage and imagination to do all that in the  midst
of the worst depression in history, especially in a country whose
 president  (Coolidge) only  a few  years  earlier had  unerringly
announced that  "The Business of  America is  business";   where,
until 1938, there  was no minimum wage or maximum  hours, no laws
against   child  labor,   no   unemployment  compensation,   paid
vacations, pensions,  and employer-financed  health care;  where,
although unions were "legal," strikes were illegal ("invasions of
property   rights")   --  and   where,   even   after  successful
unionization,  throughout  the  entire  30s  -- after  protective
laws -- their  efforts continued to be met  by firings, injuries,
jailings, and killings.  As late  as 1933, and even after, nobody
had  expected anything like  those displays of  determination and
determination.

Also, and  much to the  shocked surprise of  journalists and
politicians,  there was  a  noteworthy quantitative  increase and
qualitative  shift  in  electoral efforts  on  local,  state, and
national levels after 1932, producing in 1934 a Congress that was
very different from its predecessors.   Soon after, FDR, though a
conservative  Democrat when elected, was persuaded that there had
better be  a "Second New  Deal" before the  1936 election,  or he
 would lose it.   It began  in 1935 with  the enactment of  Social
Security, and went on from there:  not as far as it could have or
should have, but considerably farther than anyone had dreamed.

BUT.  In addition  to those and other  positive developments
of a "left of center" trend, were the developments of an opposite
(though not  equal) trend  to the right.   Its  best-known groups
were Father  Coughlin's Silver Shirts in Detroit  and Huey Long's
"Share the  Wealth" movement  (which had  begun as  left populist
but, with help of the major Louisiana oil companies, became right
populist).     However, in the  USA in the  1930s -- already  the
richest country  in the world,  by far -- neither  left nor right
movements  had either  the import  or  the strength  they had  in
Europe,  severe depression notwithstanding.  Thus, even though by
1933 the  U.S. economy's production  had fallen by 50  percent --
matching  Germany's, the  two the  worst  in the  world --  great
though the misery  of the unemployed and poor  was, they remained
relatively less badly off than their European counterparts.

Moreover,  the  U.S.  union movement  was  still  very weak;
despite  the hopes  and efforts  of  the few  small left  groups,
unions never  went beyond  seeking reforms,  never constituted  a
labor movement -- one, that is, seeking a different socioeconomic
system.

In short, U.S. business had no need to  fear anything like a
socialist revolution; and, in that the emergence of fascism was a
response to a socialist threat, no likelihood of fascism.  By the
same token,  if it was  extremely unlikely that the  USA would go
either way, it was a virtual certainty that countries like Italy,
Germany, France, and Japan would go either  fascist or socialist.

So, with support from  their  economic  and  political  power
structures, the doors to  fascism opened:  Italy,  1922, Germany,
1933, Japan,  1929.  (France  was more than "halfway"  to fascism
before the German occupation.)

Today?  In the  USA there exists no  likelihood of a  strong
socialist movement  for  the foreseeable  future; however,  times
have changed  such that an  "americanized" fascism  has become  a
distinct possibility, even without a socialist threat.

It had begun  to seem so already  as the 1970s ended.   Then
the  U.S. began  its  evolving lurch  toward  what Bertram  Gross
called  Friendly Fascism  (in his  1980  book of  that title)  --
"friendly"  because, in  the absence  of  a broad  and deep  left
movement,  and in  contrast  with the  fascisms  of the  interwar
period, the need for deep and violent repression is limited:  Not
Auschwitz, but some variations on the U.S. "relocation camps" for
the Japanese and today's Guantanamo; not the mass executions of a
Pinochet,  but a "few"  prominent leftists  (likely to  be called
"terrorists") given show trials and  then life or death; not book
burnings, but the relegation of critical works to an underground;
not mass firings in the  universities, but a  rebirth and intensification
of earlier
repressive programs.

What is  above termed "limited"  would not seem so  to those
directly and indirectly afflicted.  It can be limited because any
likelihood  of there  being  a  well-organized  and  strong  left
movement in the U.S. after World  War II was seriosly crippled by
the systematic  and lingering effects of McCarthyism and the Cold
War.    That  earlier   repression  and   the  rampant   selfish
individualism fed by  consumerism, have had a  devastating effect
on the consciousness  and character of the people  of the USA and
our politicians, unions, universities and, of course, the media.

The  present administration and  Supreme Court  already have
the  power and  the inclination  to move  toward and  even beyond
those "limited" forms  of repression and, as well,  to war(s) and
increased socioeconomic injustice.   Unless we develop  more than
intermittent demos  and an  always stronger  movement to  reverse
present trends,  we must expect that  the both the power  and the
inclination of their creators will increase.

Remember and  be warned:   In Germany,  as things  went from
very bad in the early  30s through indescribable horrors by their
end, its "free" population came to  earn the ironic title of "The
Good Germans"  -- those  who had not  been Nazi  enthusiasts, and
might have very  much disliked some of  its doings, but  who kept
their  misgivings to  themselves (and,  who, after the  war, told
themselves and others  that had they only known,  they would have
behaved differently).

We  of USA  we  have  long been  habituated  to being  "Good
Americans" --  looking the other way as  regards slavery, racism,
the exploitation of  workers (including that of  children) and of
nature,  and, among  much  else, as  concerns our  many repugnant
political and military interventions abroad.   To go from that to
becoming "Friendly Fascist Americans" would not be a great leap.

In  sum,  though  richer and  more  powerful  than ever,  as
concerns  the matters  just noted  we are  not as  different from
other countries as  we were in the  1930s.  That is,  even though
the dour hope contains some hopeful possibilities, by itself  the
hope that  depends upon  bad times leading  to a  better politics
remains at best problematic for the USA.

Fortunately,  there is  that  still  that  sweeter  side  to
consider.  It is  also problematic, but by no means  as scary.  I
refer to  the young people of  today, those between  about 15 and
30.  In my experience  and observation they are sharply different
from their counter-parts in the years since World War II.

First some personal background:   I started teaching in 1949
in the San Francisco Bay Area, thence to New York for many years,
then back to the Bay Area  until now; meanwhile, beginning in the
1960s, I began also to teach in Italy.  I still teach both in the
Bay Area and in Italy, half the year in each country.

All along the way I have been much involved with students in
the classroom, in the civil rights  and anti-Vietnam struggles up
into the 1970s and, more recently, in globalization and war/peace
controversies.

Now  I say  this  about today's  young  people:     They are
something  else, very different from earlier generations and very
probably for the better as regards the possibilities of a growing
movement.

"What?" it will be said.  "The  young of the 60s -- at least
some of  them --  were wonderful:    lively, irreverent,  daring,
courageous,  funny, freaky:    Chicago,  storming  the  Pentagon,
Woodstock, cool!"  I agree; some of my best friends then  -- when
I was old enough to be their father  -- are among my best friends
still.    But   what  universally  marked  that   generation  was
disillusionment.   And it  marks them still,  along with,  now as
parents, endless worries about "kids."

As anyone can see, today's  young are freaky too, very often
in a non-attractive  way:  Those goddamned rings  in their noses,
bellybuttons, and  who knows  where else;  that blaring,  banging
music; those grungy clothes,  those low-hanging jeans:   "You can
see the ring in the bellybuttons!"; their ways of speaking; other
irritants.   That's the surface.

Under the surface  is something very hopeful  and reassuring
for  a  distinct minority,  enigmatic  for  the  rest.   In  that
distinct minority,  those I  have observed up  close are  just as
decent  as earlier  generations,  at  least  as  intelligent  and
informed as their  elders, and more likely  to join a demo.   But
they do so with a big and hopeful difference.

Being idealistic  seems to  go with the  territory of  being
young;  my "youth generation"  in the 30s  was, those  in the 60s
were, today's are. But,  and very much unlike those  of 1930s and
1960s, the young people I know now are totally without illusions:
The corruption,  the lies,  the cruelty,  the irrationality,  the
obscene  twinned existences of extreme wealth and extreme poverty
and of the poor health of our  people and the wasting away of our
environment:  That's this system, man; normal.

But they don't like it; they are  angry and very much so; at
the same time, they are eager for  something much better.  That's
what sends those of the attractive minority to all those demos in
goodly  amounts in  the  USA  and  elsewhere, where  they  always
outnumber  their elders.   You  can't  help but  notice how  they
predominate,  whether in S.F. or D.C.,  Genoa or Florence, London
or Paris, wherever;  nor, behind that anger, can you  fail to see
how  friendly, how decent,  they seem; how  internationalist, and
"interracial"   they  and   their   banners   and  slogans   are.
Impressive.    That  bunch is  of course  a  minority of  today's
young.  There  is also the  "skinhead" minority and  a large  and
seemingly  apathetic middle.   Taken  together,  they are  pretty
frightening in appearance and, a few, in behavior.  Virtually all
the young people today strike me  as feeling lost, adrift but, at
the  same  time, trapped  in  a dull,  senseless,  dangerous, and
stupid society; and  angry at pretty much the same matters as the
left-leaning minority.   And some  of the skinheads, it  has been
noted, are rebels  waiting for a good cause,  rather than a dirty
fight.

In this -- alas! -- the  latter may be seen as similar  to a
significant number of the German  Nazis -- those murdered on "the
night of  the long  knives," taken  in by  what the  acronym Nazi
stood for:  National Socialist German Workers' Party.

In all the foregoing respects (except "illusions") the young
of   today  stand  in   significant  resemblance  to   their  60s
predecessors.  And   is  it  not  entirely  probable  that  their
irritating ways of dressing and acting are their means for giving
the finger  to the  complacency of both  their parents  and other
"grown-ups" who, with  few exceptions, rarely lift  their fingers
to reverse the USA from its descent into the slime?

Moreover, if  we take visible  opposition as a  measure, the
young  today constitute  a  higher  percentage  than  than  their
counterpart elders  at similar times  of need.   If and  when the
non-young activists increase in numbers,  so too will the  young;
but, as  was suggested above  and will be further  pursued below,
the  vital  need  is  for  the non-young  very  soon  to  involve
themselves/ourselves  considerably  more,  both  numerically  and
creatively -- if  hope is not to  be snuffed out by  the building
repression.

In support  of that, it  is important to remember  that when
the young of the 1960s came to be politically formidable, whether
for civil rights  or against poverty, the draft,  and the Vietnam
war, they were joining already existent movements whose roots had
been planted and nourished for many years.

A seeming  exception was  the civil  rights movement,  which
came to be symbolized by young blacks illegally ordering a cup of
coffee.  The young blacks did outnumber their elders from the 60s
on, but they had been brought to that point by at least two prior
sources:  1) a long,  recognized and, among them, well-known pre-
and post-Civil  War history  of struggle  and sacrifice by  their
forebears  up through  the  1930s,  and 2)  the  added and  vital
impetus provided by black GIs back from a war that was publicized
as meant to  end oppression abroad --  with never a  reference to
the oppression "at home" -- and the associated and simultaneously
energized resentments of a whole people who refused to go to  the
back  of the bus anymore  or to put up  with the murders of their
leaders,  let alone of  little girls  in church.   And,  as those
young blacks  were  joined  by  (mostly) young  whites,  new  and
charismatic leaders emerged -- along with always more victims.

Driven as much by shame as by decency -- a century after the
Civil War  -- the nation answered with modest reform legislation.
But for the past 25 years or so we have been moving back to where
we were before the 60s, and at an always accelerating rate.

Just as the civil rights movement did not just sprout out of
the  ground  in  the  60s,  neither  did  the  antiwar  movement.
Unbeknownst to most, during World War II, and in conjunction with
cooperative war efforts with Ho  Chi Minh against the Japanese in
Vietnam,  FDR agreed that the Vietnamese would become independent
after  the  war.   Soon  after  his death  in  April,  1945, that
agreement was broken:   Already in the  late fall of 1945  (and I
witnessed  this) U.S. ships  were transporting British  and Dutch
troops (newly-freed from  Japanese prisons) from Manila  to Hanoi
to hold the  fort until the  French could arrive  in 1946.   (See
Marilyn Blatt Young, The Vietnam Wars:  1945-1990.)

The  few who knew about that  and similar developments began
already in  the early 1950s to  protest, not in  demos (for there
was too little awareness), but  through writing and teaching.  By
the early  60s that produced the Inter-University Committee for a
Debate on  Foreign Policy (the  campus "teach-ins"):  a  prof vs.
the U.S. interventions in Vietnam, arguing with a CIA or State or
"Defense" Department person for.

When  those  teach-ins  started,  the students  were  either
indifferent or supportive of the government.  By  the end of 1965
that was  in dramatic reversal,  because 1)  government reps,  by
then being boo-ed off the stage,  became "no-shows," and 2) to be
drafted to fight in what was becoming a well-publicized dirty war
served  as  an  educational  force in  its  own  right.   So  the
organizers  of the  teach-ins, in  coalition  with civil  rights,
anti-nuke, and a sprinkling of left groups, concluded that it was
time for what became numerous and always larger demos and created
"the   Mobe,"  (Mobilization  Against  the  War  in  Vietnam);  a
substantial majority of whose marchers and participants from 1966
on were young people.    The same may be  said for today's demos:
The  information and spirit  behind the  "no global"  and antiwar
demos have  been underway  for many  years,  organized by  Global
Exchange, Food First, "peace  and justice" and other  such groups
dating back to the late 50s and early 60s.

Until  recently, all such efforts were moving slowly uphill;
it's  still  uphill,  but now  with  considerably  more momentum.
However,  if today's  patterns and  procedures do  not go  beyond
those  of  the  60s,  whether  as  regards  domestic or  overseas
concerns, our and the world's  future will continue to plunge "to
the bottom." Why?

The reasons are several, and can only be barely touched upon
here.  First,  in all  cases in  the past the  efforts made  were
adequate enough to gain certain  domestic reforms or to help stop
a  war, but were both qualitatively and quantitatively inadequate
to bring about sufficient or lasting changes.

The fault did not lie with any age group, old or  young, but
in the past and present limitations of "lib/left" politics in the
USA (and, by now, not only in the USA).  This is not the place to
propose "plans  for a new  movement."   But a  suggestion can  be
made: We need broad-based, deep, and continuous discussions among
all participant groups of a potential  movement if our weaknesses
are to be overcome.

A good beginning would be see to it that an integral part of
all planning  meetings for demos will be  serious discussions and
plans integrating short-term and long-term strategy and
tactics:    What  will  we be  doing  "the  day  after"?   It  is
unquestionable that demos serve vital  educational and energizing
purposes; they  are essential  for the long-term  as well  as for
immediate purposes.   But they  are something  like exercise  and
health:  a  demo now and then with  nothing in between is  like a
bike ride every Sunday, with  no exercise and a foolish diet  the
rest of the week.

Our  "exercise  and  diet"  must  consist  of  steady  self-
education and  reaching out to  others -- at work,  with friends,
family   and   neighbors,   in  our   various   civic   or  other
organizations,  etc.    There is  so much  that we and  they must
learn and unlearn,  so much that is  wrong but that we  have been
socialized  to  see as  OK  or better;  so much  apathy,  so much
baseless fear, so much learned ignorance.., and so little time.

Is all this a backdoor way of saying that we need is a third
party?   The answer  is "Yes, but."   Having  been a  third party
candidate and having managed campaigns  on both the local and the
national  level in  the  past,  what follows  is  based on  harsh
experience:   Of course a third party is essential.  But since at
least World War II, its  history has been something like  demos:
lots of  activity building  up to elections,  and damn  little in
between.

A third party can only be  meaningful insofar as it is  part
of a  an always building  movement; and where still  weak, seeing
elections as mainly educational opportunities, until never-ending
political work has  made it into a movement  with breadth, depth,
and muscle.

That does  not exclude the  real possibility of  third party
victories  on the  local and  even  the state  levels; the  need,
however,  is to  create a  national movement:   What  profiteth a
movment if  it wins  on the  local level  while the  rest of  the
nation  violates civil liberties,  allows millions to  be deathly
ill, goes to war...?

We  cannot  displace  the  existing fortress  of  political,
economic,  and cultural power with appeals for decency, equality,
peace,  and sanity;  quite apart  from  any other  consideration,
those who  rule from  that fortress are  either scornful  of such
appeals, and/or define those words in ways that allow them to see
themselves  as their benefactors:   Does Ashcroft  see himself as
against civil liberties?   Bush see himself  as against equality,
or  adequate  medical  care, or  for  war?    Do  the  media  see
themselves  as corrupted  and  corrupting?    Do  the  economists
touting "free markets" see themselves as capitalist ideologues?

We can't change them; but we can change ourselves; indeed we
must  change ourselves  if we  are  to change  the many  inactive
others we  need to  have join  us --  not just in  our and  their
political behavior, but in  how we think and feel.   For we, too,
have been captivated  in some degree by our  country's standards;
we too have  been less concerned than  we need be about  past and
continuing  inequalities,  violations  of  human  rights  and  of
nature.  Etc.

Enough already.   Born  in 1919, I  have lived  through many
scary periods; this  one is the scariest,  and gets more  so each
day.   Those of us who see that must reach out to one another and
to  others we don't yet know,  and get to work.   In doing so, we
will  almost inevitabily undergo some very unpleasant moments and
find ourselves working with people  not entirely endearing to us;
nor we to all of them:  that has to be taken as given.

What is also true, but not  so obvious, is that working hard
for  a better  society, whatever  its bumps  and scratches,  is a
fulfilling process  -- not  in some foolish  ecstasy, but  in the
realization of  one's humanity,  and that of  others.   Those who
have done so, know that; those who haven't will find it so.

Time is  running out.   In the  ancient saying, "If  not me,
who?  If not now, when?"



Bologna, Italy
November, 2002