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<DIV>Fred, please forward to your list.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>As a former member of the radical community at Berkeley, Greetings to
comrades in South SF Bay.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I am not really affiliated with UFPJ other than as our group's
representative on the UFPJ listservs, so I don't speak for UFPJ.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I'm not sure if am looking over a cliff, just trying to reach the next
mountain over the empty chasm of our current political life.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I am really more of a radical than a progressive, but I will cop to being
outspoken, it comes from having been a Spock baby.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Thanks for the invitation, I am looking for a party to join and will keep
the Green Party in mind when I make my selection.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Good luck with your activism. I heard Ralph might be running again on
the Green party ticket, believe it or not I knew his sister Laura.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Take care and thanks for your message.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Mark</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=fredd@freeshell.org href="mailto:fredd@freeshell.org">fred</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=sosfbay-discuss@cagreens.org
href="mailto:sosfbay-discuss@cagreens.org">South SF Bay Discuss at CA
Greens</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=mcstahl3@cox.net
href="mailto:mcstahl3@cox.net">Mark Stahl</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, October 06, 2010 5:31
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Fwd: [ufpj-activist] Chris
Hedges: ONWT March to Nowhere</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Chris Hedges, the bold reformist, and Mark Stahl, of the United
for Peace and Justice (ufpj) coalition activist" talk like they are looking
over a cliff, with no place to go. Why don't they pick out an active,
independent third party - preferably the Green (How about it,
Mark?) - and help recruit others? Hedges, a well known progressive
blogger, and Stahl another outspoken progressive, should look around and join
a party, even though Ralph Nader hasn't. <BR><BR>The Green Party openly stands
for most, if not all, of what they express.<BR><BR>In the spirit of peace,
justice and open discussion,<BR><BR>Fred Duperrault<BR><BR>-------- Original
Message --------
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<TR>
<TH vAlign=baseline noWrap align=right>Subject: </TH>
<TD>[ufpj-activist] Chris Hedges: ONWT March to Nowhere</TD></TR>
<TR>
<TH vAlign=baseline noWrap align=right>Date: </TH>
<TD>Wed, 6 Oct 2010 03:48:17 -0400</TD></TR>
<TR>
<TH vAlign=baseline noWrap align=right>From: </TH>
<TD>Mark Stahl <A class=moz-txt-link-rfc2396E
href="mailto:mcstahl3@cox.net"><mcstahl3@cox.net></A></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TH vAlign=baseline noWrap align=right>To: </TH>
<TD>ufpj-activist <A class=moz-txt-link-rfc2396E
href="mailto:ufpj-activist@lists.mayfirst.org"><ufpj-activist@lists.mayfirst.org></A></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><BR><BR>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Attached
below is an essay by Chris Hedges about the One Nation rally on 10/2 which he
refers to as the "March to Nowhere". Following are my prefatory comments
to his essay.<BR><BR>Overall, I think that participation by the peace/antiwar
movement in the ONWT rally was a worthy experiment, but not a truly successful
one, although I think there was benefit provided by the Peace Table/UNAC
contingents and by the socialist contingent, which met in the late morning and
marched to the main event.<BR><BR>Other than the Belafonte speech, however,
there was very little peace/antiwar content at the main rally, with the
exception of UAW president Bob King, who called for an end to the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars. Given the major escalations in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, any truly liberal/progressive rally should have had a major focus on
ending the wars. Nor was there much emphasis on Guantanamo or the steady
erosion of civil liberties in this country.<BR><BR>We know why the rally did
not seriously address such critical issues as the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan
and Pakistan, the erosion of civil liberties, or the growing role of corporate
interests: because the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress
have not only maintained the policies of the Bush administration, but in many
cases they are actually worse than Bush, including the steady escalation of
the drone war in Pakistan.<BR><BR>Yet, the major purpose of the rally was to
encourage people to vote for Democrats on November 2. Since the
Obama administration is weak to catastrophic on virtually every major issue,
they had no choice but to avoid any serious challenges to the party in power
on these critical issues.<BR><BR>Only a movement which is independent of the
major political parties, committed to a strong platform of immediate
withdrawal from all foreign wars and occupations, and prepared to address
issues of global imperialism and economic collapse, will be able to mobilize
people effectively for the kind of radical changes necessary to move our
society forward in the face of a growing reactionary trend in our public
institutions. The article by Chris Hedges follows.<BR><BR><BR>Mark
Stahl<BR>Providence</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT>
<H1><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT size=4>March to Nowhere</FONT></FONT></H1>
<H6><FONT face=Arial size=2>Posted on Oct 5, 2010</FONT></H6>
<DIV class=printlinks><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT
face="georgia, times new roman, times, serif">
<P><FONT size=3>By Chris Hedges</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>We can hold One Nation marches every week. It will not make
any difference until we revolt against the formal structures of power.
</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>The liberal preoccupation with positive forms of propaganda
ignores the root of our problem. The tea party and hate mongers on Fox such as
Glenn Beck, however repugnant, are the manifestation of the crisis, not its
cause. The forces assaulting the remnants of American democracy will not be
cowed or discredited with rallies, such as the one in Washington on Saturday.
We will blunt these rising anti-democratic forces only when we organize
outside conventional systems of power. It means dismantling the permanent war
economy and the corporate state. It means an end to foreclosures and bank
repossessions. It means a functional health care system for all Americans. It
means taking care of our poor and unemployed. And it means a system of
government that is freed from corporate interests. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Mass support for anti-democratic movements and public
acceptance of open violations of human rights are not caused, in the end, by
the skillful dissemination of misinformation or brainwashing. They are caused
by the breakdown of a society and the death of a liberal class that once made
reform and representative government possible. The timidity of our liberal
class was on public display during the march in Washington. Speakers may have
called for jobs, but none would call on citizens to abandon the rotting hull
of the Democratic Party and our moribund political system or put Wall Street
speculators in prison. The speakers at the rally proposed working within the
current electoral system, although most Americans are aware that it has been
gamed by corporate interests. This is hardly a call, especially given the
failures of the Obama administration, that will fire up the unemployed and
underemployed. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>“We need jobs,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said at the march. “We’ve
bailed out the banks. We bailed out the insurance companies. Now it’s time to
bail out the American people.”</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>But Sharpton and the other speakers, too close to the power
elite in the Democratic Party, did not call for rebellion. There was no war
cry against Wall Street and the purveyors of death in the defense and health
industry. There was no acknowledgement that unfettered capitalism and
globalization are killing our ecosystem and creating a worldwide system of
neo-feudalism. There was no acceptance that the corporate state must be
dismantled if we are to save ourselves. Any effective resistance must begin
with a condemnation of our political elite and liberal institutions, including
the press, the universities, labor, the arts, religious institutions and the
Democratic Party, for selling us out. But the speakers on the mall in
Washington would not go there. And I suspect, for this reason, the Americans
who are hurting most found nothing they said of interest.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>All totalitarian movements, even those that are openly
criminal, succeed because they have widespread mass support. They are the
expression of a yearning that sweeps through a nation that has been convulsed
by economic dislocation, a loss of hope and flagrant political corruption. And
in these times of lament and deprivation the absurdities, crimes and excesses
of reactionary forces do not matter. It wasn’t hard to find out what Slobodan
Milosevic was doing in Bosnia. It wasn’t hard in Nazi Germany to hear about
the widespread massacres of Jews in Poland. It is not a secret to most
Americans that Muslim detainees, held for years without charges, are tortured
in black sites around the world. The murder of tens of thousands of civilians
by our forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan is tacitly acknowledged by the
public as the price of war. The massive human suffering in the open-air prison
that is Gaza is not a mystery. We know what happens to the millions of
undocumented workers who live as stateless citizens among us and have become a
kind of modern day slave labor force. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>The rising proto-fascist movement in America is caused by a
hatred and alienation so profound that the crimes of the state, along with the
buffoonish antics of those who defend and champion these crimes, do not
matter. We will not discredit the right-wing with facts, a demand for a
respect of law or rational discussion. Propaganda or counter messages of
tolerance are not the issue. The issue is societal collapse. This issue is a
corporate state that has carried out a coup d’etat. The issue is the rupture
of all mechanisms within the political process to protect citizens from
accelerating impoverishment, internal control and corporate abuse. Those who
refuse to acknowledge this bleak reality cannot offer solutions. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>The right-wing propagandists have not created the problem.
They have tapped into the moral void that has left tens of millions of
Americans yearning for a profound and radical change. And if torture, war,
racist attacks on immigrants, gays and Muslims, along with increased
repression against internal dissidents, is the price for moral and economic
renewal, many Americans are ready to sign on. If those who lead this rising
proto-fascist movement insist on a Christian nation, teach creationism and
believe in the physical existence of Satan, many Americans will sign on for
this too. Hatred, when mobilized, is a very effective political force. And
hatred, including the hatred for a liberal class that abandoned the working
class, is what we face. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>The decimation of our working class through outsourcing and
globalization dynamited two of the most important props of the democratic
system—class consciousness and class conflict. This has left traditional
political parties, which once represented differing class interests, with
nothing to offer the public beyond fringe issues such as abortion or gay
marriage. Those in the liberal class who cling to the corpse of the Democratic
Party do so not because they believe in the policies of the party—it does not
differ in any significant way from the Republican Party—but because they hope
against hope that the party will somehow restore itself to its former position
as a defender of liberal values and the working class interests. It is the
politics of nostalgia. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Our political theater has orphaned citizens who once looked to
political parties to express and defend their interests. It has engendered
apathy toward traditional social and political structures and an inchoate
rage. This mixture of apathy and rage is a volatile cocktail. It finds its
expression outside normal systems of dissent and in leaders who, in times of
prosperity and stability, would be dismissed as lunatics. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>No rally, no positive message, no effort to expose the
idiocies of those arrayed against us will work until we restore to the
political process mechanisms by which ordinary citizens can be heard. Hannah
Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” cites the collapse of traditional
political mechanisms, which now plagues us, as the opening needed for all
totalitarian movements: </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>“The fall of protecting class walls transformed the slumbering
majorities behind all parties into one great unorganized, structureless mass
of furious individuals who had nothing in common except their vague
apprehension that the hopes of party members were doomed, that, consequently,
the most respected, articulate and representative members of the community
were fools and that all the powers that be were not so much evil as they were
equally stupid and fraudulent.”</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>The One Nation March in Washington, which lacked moral and
political courage, did nothing to educate or rally our most important
constituency—those out of work, those being foreclosed, those without hope. It
refused to confront the real, corporate structures of power. It refused to
disown Barack Obama and the Democrats. And in the end it only confirmed what
those who hate us think of liberals. </FONT></P>
<P><A href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/march_to_nowhere_20101005/"
moz-do-not-send="true"><FONT
size=3>http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/march_to_nowhere_20101005/</FONT></A></P></FONT></FONT></DIV><FONT
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