"Oh no! If the good people stop funding elections, only Republicans will have money!"
Well, you know, only Republicans do have money; some of them are just called Democrats. Well-run independent principled organizations working for peace and justice do influence our society right now, but if they had a fraction of the funding routinely dumped into lesser-evil electioneering, this would be a country dominated by a ringing demand for positive change. There'd be no more need for, and no more time wasted on, hope. And don't talk to me about the media; with the kind of money good people dump into elections we could create a new people's media.
Republicans are pushed in the directions the tea partiers want, not because the tea partiers politely criticize them and swear to work for their reelection no matter what, but because tea partiers often denounce them without any self-censorship and threaten to toss them out of office. Nobody does that on the left. There's a whole industry working to imitate the tea party from the left that completely misses this central point. An example of this is Van Jones' October 3, 2011, speech at the Take Back the American Dream conference.
As we watch electoral-political groups swoop in to join Occupy Wall Street, you'll notice attempts to label this Occupation movement the anti-teaparty, followed in the next breath by attempts to define the duty of the anti-teaparty as electing Democrats. No matter how well-meaning this may be, if you agree with me that what we desperately lack is non-electoral politics, then you have to see this "support" as an act of betrayal. If the energy of independent outraged activists too young to have been properly corrupted is redirected, as it was in Wisconsin, into electoral politics, a movement will have been betrayed.
If you want to understand the motivations of this bandwagonism, pay close attention this Thursday when an occupation begins in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. Will organizations that jumped on board with protesting wealthy interests on Wall Street who corrupt our government be willing to protest the government itself? In recent years, the obvious answer would have been "Yes, if the president is a Republican at the time." This reflects an obsession with presidents over Congress or cabinet departments, etc., but that's another story. The answer now is a definite maybe.
If the results of the democratic process in Freedom Plaza are as I hope and expect they will be, then there will be a rule established to discourage any advocating for any party or candidate in the plaza or as part of the occupation wherever it may take us. This will, at least in theory, mean that individuals and groups that favor the Democratic Party, or the Green Party, or any other party, should be able to come and participate as long as they leave their electoralism at home.
If the collective decisions again go as I hope and expect, the activities of the Washington Occupation will not include cheering for events or to any great extent demonstrating against events or institutions or individuals. Rather we will focus on actually nonviolently preventing the ongoing activities of those working against majority positions on these demands:
- Tax the rich and corporations
- End the wars, bring the troops home, cut military spending
- Protect the social safety net, strengthen Social Security and improved Medicare for all
- End corporate welfare for oil companies and other big business interests
- Transition to a clean energy economy, reverse environmental degradation
- Protect worker rights including collective bargaining, create jobs and raise wages
- Get money out of politics
Bringing these demands as we the people to them the government ought to be as separate from electoralism as from religion or sport or sex. Elections have their vital place, but this is bigger and far more serious.
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