What liberals need now: ballots
So let me say first that I think initial coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement — and similar protests and rallies staged by groups like 350.org — was terrible.
The mainstream media downplayed, trivialized or simply ignored an important chorus of voices, raising concerns every bit as salient and thoughtful as those raised by the tea party.
A lot of ink has been spilled already about why that has happened. It’s an important question and I follow those discussions with great interest.
But I want to wrestle here with what I think is the major shortcoming of the “liberal movement” itself and that’s the lack of a clear linkage from the current activism to the spirit and process of practical, real-world democracy.
I’ve covered left- and right-leaning populist movements in the US for many years.
Conservative groups often have the trappings (guns, uniforms) and rhetoric (revolution, take back our country) of militancy.
But by and large, with the exception of very rare fringe elements, the right tends to remain fiercely engaged in the business of winning elections and controlling the machinery of democratic policy making.
The far-right changed the Republican Party not by abandoning it and marching in the streets, but by engaging it and marching in the streets.
Long before the tea party staged big rallies, movement conservatives had taken over the inner operations of many GOP party affiliates around the country.
From that linkage, there exists a clear and logical path to the kind of focused activism that wins elections, shapes democratic power and changes the direction of the country.
The modern left, meanwhile, tends to be much more distrustful of and disengaged from democracy.
The kinds of consciousness-raising that goes on in big rallies like the one now on Wall Street, or the 350.0rg gatherings in Washington earlier this summer, generate huge amounts of interest and energy, especially among young people.
But despite the looming 2012 elections, the leaders of these movements draw almost no connection between their values and their policy desires and the ballots that will be cast thirteen months from now.
To the extent that they talk about the Democratic Party, the tone is one of disdain, disappointment and dismissal.
Liberal leaders have been remarkably unsuccessful at recruiting and supporting candidates who reflect their views.
Even when suitable candidates do appear, there is enormous cynicism about “the process” and “the system” now in place.
It’s worth noting that it wasn’t always this way. When activists headed South to battle Jim Crow, one of their chief weapons was voter enrollment.
Some of the earliest progressive causes — and hardest-won reforms — involved voter rights and the direct election of US Senators, measures intended to put more democratic power in the hands of average citizens.
Indeed, one of the weirder aspects of the current liberal disenchantment with democracy is that our present system — flawed as it is — is fairer, more transparent, and less corrupt than at any time in US history.
Yes, recent Supreme Court decisions have increased the power of money and corporations in our elections. That’s worth debating and fighting over.
But through most of the last two centuries — including periods when some of the most important liberal gains were being made — rich and the powerful elites held far more sway over our politics.
Even if you accept the left’s notion that democratic politics are too sullied and money-soaked to warrant their involvement, an obvious question is raised: How do you make the changes you want, if not through democracy?
If you want major reforms on Wall Street, or new laws restricting carbon pollution, or higher taxes for the wealthy, how do you make those things happen if not through the slow, complicated and tedious democratic process?
There has to be a mechanism that translates passion and activism and rage into the kinds of decisions and policies that move a society forward.
That mechanism is the ballot box.
Tags: analysis, election12, politics
Corporations are NOT people. Corporations are put together by people to shield their money and misdeeds from the people.
No, Mervel, corporations are not people. Teachers are people but schools are not people. Executives of corporations are people and so are the members of the board of directors. Many of those people from most of our largest banks and financial institutions should be prisoners. Prisoners are people but jails are not people.
Janitors, secretaries (executive assistants), salespeople, engineers, designers, tellers, laborers, steamfitters…these are all people and many of them work for corporations. Many of them have been fired in order to make the balance sheets look better to “the Investor Class” after the executives cooked the books, or made bad financial decisions.
By the way, I am a part owner of a corporation but I am VERY certain that I am a person and that the corporation is NOT a person. Perhaps other people can’t figure out that distinction.
Well if corporations are not people, they can’t hear you and you might as well go protest a rock.
Getting rid of corporations is getting rid of the owners, suppliers and workers of those corporations, in that sense they are indeed people. But then again its always easier to protest against the idea of a nameless faceless corporation than it is a real person.
1% is not that many people we should be able to get a list.
This just in: Citigroup is paying $285 million to settle fraud charges.
“The penalty is the biggest involving a Wall Street firm accused of misleading investors before the financial crisis since Goldman Sachs & Co. paid $550 million to settle similar charges last year. JPMorgan Chase & Co. resolved similar charges in June and paid $153.6 million.”
“In the July-September quarter, Citigroup earned $3.8 billion. CEO Vikram Pandit this year was awarded a multi-year bonus package that could be worth nearly $23.4 million if performance goals are met.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/citigroup-paying-285m-settle-sec-fraud-charges-14769791
To sum up 3 Wall Street firms settled charges on a Billion Dollar Fraud Scheme but NOBODY IS GOING TO JAIL!!!!!
Mervel, you totally miss the point and I believe you are doing it purposely because I know you are a very intelligent person.
The point isn’t that OWS protesters are against the fundamental idea of a capitalist society–I am certainly not against capitalism. The point is that the system has spun out of control. As corporations gained more money they gained more political power. The Greed Is Good crowd took over and laws were re-written or repealed in order to make it easier for the few to work the system in order to make ever more fantastical amounts of money.
How is it right that people are arrested for going into a Citibank office to close their account? They are CUSTOMERS. How is it right that people judge this group of humans, citizens, neighbors who went to the center of financial power to say that they saw their future being squandered, traded, sold? These are what we used to quaintly call “our future”, the younger generation. The generation on whom we have saddled all our debts. These are the best educated Americans in history.
The question shouldn’t be “what do they want”? The question should be “how is it that we have failed them so?”
I have a child who graduated from a prestigious college 16 months ago with a Masters degree and a relatively meager debt load of about $30,000. After a year of diligently looking for a job and only ONE face to face interview my child was lucky enough to find a job…not in the US, but overseas. And it was lucky that the degree offered that opportunity. What has happened to this country?
It is fundamentally unfair, un-Christian, inhuman that the system has been allowed to get to this point where the machinery of capitalism has turned from the ideal of a perpetual motion machine that greased all the cogs and gears into a maniacal grinder that destroys more than it creates.
By the way, the people in the Wall Street system believe they are doing the right thing. They believe in “market efficiency.”
I can guarantee you that the most dangerous people are the unquestioning true believers.
I think many people are suspect because they fear that if these protesters were offered jobs on Wall Street most of them would take them, just like their spiritual heirs did in the 1960’s. The working middle class will once again be left holding the bag. It comes down to our acceptance of the basic model that says careers and money and “things” are what is important in life and if we don’t get those things we get mad and demand them of those who do have too many of those things.
Instead of worrying about who much these guys make I think we should focus on how we treat those at the bottom. That may mean the rich pay more I agree they should, but they can still be rich that is fine by me.
I don’t think anyone is complaining about people who get rich through honest, moral and ethical means as long as they pay their fair share of the tax burden.