Beyond Elections: People Power

The presidential election may be grabbing headlines, but the true rallying cry for 2012 is to struggle and organize around those issues that a president might take seriously, to stake out positions that would benefit what used to be called the working class (and now goes by “the 99 percent”) and to garner enough political will and power to pressure the president and Congress to move resolutely on the issues that matter.

Tall order, and one that’s of more than passing interest to those who think of themselves as part of the food movement.

Or the environmental movement. Or the Occupy movement, or the foreclosed homeowners movement, or the indebted students movement, or the unemployment movement, or pretty much any movement you can name that implicitly or explicitly acknowledges that there is a class war in this country, one that the wrong side is winning.

It doesn’t matter what you call the movements, or the people behind them. What matters is forcing the government to act in the interests of the sometimes-silent majority rather than its corporate paymasters. That struggle, probably as old as representative democracy itself, most notably dates from the consolidation of corporate power that began after the industrial revolution.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/beyond-elections-people-power/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1