Hedges on White Liberals
From Chris Hedges at Truthdig, yesterday:
The corporate state keeps some two-thirds of poor people of color in the United States trapped in internal colonies—either in the impoverished inner city or behind bars. And the abject failure on the part of the white liberal establishment to stand up for the rights of the poor, as well as its decision to throw its support behind Democratic politicians such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who abet this institutionalized and economic racism, has left many in these marginal communities disdainful of protesters from the newly dispossessed white middle class…
If the movement starts to pull hundreds of thousands of people together, if it leaps across class lines, as I saw during the peaceful revolutions in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, then the corporate state is probably finished…
The movement eschews the hedonism of the New Left; indeed it does not permit drugs or alcohol in Zuccotti Park. It denounces the consumer culture and every evening shares its food with the homeless, who also often sleep in the park. But, most important, it eschews, through a nonhierarchical system of self-governance, the deadly leadership cults that plagued and ultimately destroyed the movements of the 1960s…
The only effective tool for change will come through movements such as those that stand in direct opposition to state power and seek through the sheer force of numbers and civil disobedience to discredit and weaken the corporate state.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are gonna stay informed and engaged in local politics, whence state and national pols come. Hopefully, the OWS movement will shake a lot of people loose from their apathy and ignorance and they will join us.
As to the Occupy Greensboro bunch, I recommend if they wish to make a difference, they should begin by watching the proceedings of the Greensboro City Council and Guilford County Commissioners. Very soon they will come to understand the enormity of the process running the city and county entail. They are likely to come to the conclusion that they wish in no way to be an elected official, forced to sit and participate in one mind-numbing discussion after another concerning the rather important minutiae of governance. Thus informed, they can join the rest of us in supporting people who actually do.
I rather doubt whether the newly dispossessed have many in their ranks who possess both the curiosity and the ability to be a dedicated local political activist. We’ve had lots of newcomers join the discussion of issues and very few are still around. The reality is all contributors are subjected to scathing criticism. They either get their act together quickly or become an object for derision. It is a Darwinian struggle for the primacy of ideas. And more often than not, the winners achieve the change they are looking for. That is democracy in action. It’s not pretty, but it works.
