In the week of October 22-26, David Horowitz’s fascist student group “Students for Academic Freedom,” has announced a week against “Islamo-fascism” to take place on over 200 campuses. Horowitz is a close ally of Bush and intends for this week to target Muslim student associations, women’s centers, and more for not being sufficiently supportive of the “war on terror.” This has the potential to even more seriously chill what is already an icy atmosphere on campus. But it also has the potential—if it is met with orange-clad students and faculty ready to take them on and increase awareness of the fascist order being locked into place here—to actually turn the tables on these bullies.
Finally, on October 22, there will be a national day of protest against police brutality. This too can bring thousands more into political action against yet another horror of this system, and powerfully stand against outrages like the murder of Sean Bell in New York last December, on his wedding day.
Each of these must be very powerful in their own right; and they must also be times when the “orange upsurge” gets further launched into society.
A Different Political Calculus
If this movement of wearing orange takes hold, and people increasingly see that they are not alone and there’s an everyday defiance that takes hold in the culture and finds expression in all kinds of ways… if these important days of resistance and action this fall break into the atmosphere in a way that cannot be denied or marginalized…and with all that taking place in the face of the Bush regime’s high-stakes horrific gambles in Iran, their grinding bloody war in Iraq, and who knows what new measure within the U.S., as Bush sets out to cement his “legacy”… then there is a chance for a different sort of political calculus to take hold. A chance for a serious challenge to the legitimacy of this regime and to create a political situation in which it is driven out. The synergy between a growing social movement of defiance in the everyday action of wearing orange, and increasingly broad and determined outpourings of resistance, can create something on a whole other level…in other words, in the political sphere the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts.
And let’s imagine what that would mean. A victory like that would change things for millions of people and it would open up new possibilities in everybody’s thinking. People would feel their strength and they would raise their heads. The question of the imperialist character of the kind of system that gives rise to a Bush—and to political “opponents” who refuse to question his basic assumptions—would get posed in a different way, to millions. The question of what to do about it—of what kind of future people do need—including the possibility of revolution, would become a much more living thing.
And the Bush regime and all its horrors and the course it has set things on would be repudiated. The wars, the torture, the attacks on women’s rights, everything symbolized by Katrina, the gay-bashing, the repression and demonization of the immigrants, the outrages to people’s legal rights, the attack on critical thinking…repudiated.
And wouldn’t that be a new day worth fighting, and sacrificing, for?
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
