We could have street demonstration after street demonstration – and we SHOULD because the rising tide of demonstrations is part and parcel of an evolving political dynamic in which more people are being drawn into active and increasingly visible resistance against the regime. But this will not in and of itself get us to the point where we need to get. The old model of having big demonstrations producing the results we want will not work by itself because the leading institutions of our society are arrayed against us and are determined to pursue this course. They are not pursuing this course because they are somehow unaware of what they are doing. They are very aware of what they are doing and they are doing so ruthlessly.
Our actions need to do two things: 1) materially as well as symbolically interfere with and block their means for prosecuting their policies, and in particular, their ability to carry forward their wars on Iraq and Afghanistan as well as their ongoing practice of torture and rendition, and 2) spread the visible resistance to their policies by the increasingly widespread display of orange throughout the society, especially on people's bodies and on buildings such as churches.
Regarding this first point: as Sixties' Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio famously put it on December 2, 1964 on the steps of UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”
The ongoing prosecution of this immoral and unjust war means the government must continue to recruit fresh, young, naive bodies into their imperialist army. They were already having major difficulties with recruitment before the anti-recruitment center protests escalated, most of all and first in Berkeley last month. The political targeting of their recruitment centers sent the right wing into paroxysms of fury. Hundreds of especially high school youth came out and exposed the reactionary nature of these loathsome forces:
"Rape, Murder, Torture, War,
That's What They're Recruiting For!"
Actions directed at shutting down the literally and symbolically vital military recruitment centers are extremely important. They are today's equivalent to the Vietnam Era draft protests.
As someone put it on March 15, seeing and then joining the activists trying to shut down the Tacoma Military Recruitment Center at a mall, “Give me a bandana. They have their flag to unite them; we have orange to unite us.” Orange is the color that prisoners of war being tortured by our government are forced to wear. The mass sentiment against the Bush regime, for it to matter, must be made manifest in everyday life. The opportunity for people no matter what their status, age, or circumstances to show their feelings and to shift the political zeitgeist has never been so needed - nor so potent.
A different political atmosphere must – and can - be created on the level of everyday life everywhere. If we succeed in this then the mass media's brown out/black out of the anti-war, anti-torture, pro-impeachment movement will be pierced with the brilliant spectacle of orange blooming everywhere you look. You won't have to hear about the opposition to the Bush regime via mass media. You will see it everywhere you go.
Governments need two things to rule: legitimacy and coercion. Of these two, the bottom line is their coercion; it’s their argument of last resort, but if they lose their legitimacy, their use of coercion will not protect them for long because they would have to use coercion on a scale that would spell their doom in a country with a tradition unlike that of a banana republic. The middle class wouldn’t stand for it.
This government and its policies are widely disliked by the American people. Among tens of millions at least they are despised. Their continued rule depends on riding out this next period without being exposed as being illegitimate and being isolated. The rest of the leadership class is carrying out a sleight of hand trick hoping that we will go along with their promises to do something about the terrible crimes committed by our government LATER, as they abjectly and unconscionably fail to do something about these crimes NOW.
You don’t fight against monstrous crimes later. You fight them now. You don’t claim that you don’t have the votes. Votes have nothing to do with it. If you’re a US Senator, you filibuster if necessary.
This society’s leading institutions are rupturing with the past and radically reconfiguring norms – abolishing due process, legalizing indefinite detention for citizens and non-citizens alike, practicing torture as policy, carrying out warrantless surveillance over all of us, invading countries that do not threaten us and carrying out mass murder, declaring that the executive branch is not accountable to any other branch of government, to the law, or to the people, openly flouting the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, endangering the very viability of the planet by censoring science and denying global warming. Given this, it remains the people’s duty to resist and do whatever is necessary to stop this. It is up to us.
The existing political leadership class and the mass media are complicit in towering crimes and refuse to fight relentlessly and without compromise against these horrid criminals in the White House. Bush and Cheney et al are openly justifying torture and reaction across the board of the worst kind - nooses, misogyny, know-nothing, anti-science, religious fundamentalism and so on. Their actions - and that of the Democratic Party leadership and a compliant media - are so monstrous that they are - all of them - profoundly vulnerable to exposure.
In a room that has been darkened for a long time and in which our eyes have become accustomed to the dark, even a tiny and dim light switched on will stand out brightly. So, too, the actions of even a few brave and moral individuals will stand out in sharp and dramatic contrast to the moral darkness that our rulers are perpetrating. Even very ordinary people can play an exceptional role in times such as these. Sgt. Camilo Mejia, sentenced in 2004 to one year in prison for refusing to assist the military in Iraq said:
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