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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSome Zinn-spiration this morning........
[font size="4"]Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders and millions have been killed because of this obedience Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves (and) the grand thieves are running the country. Thats our problem.
Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.
The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth.
Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson that everything we do matters is the meaning of the peoples struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back.
We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.
Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals the fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such as world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.
The prisons in the United States had long been an extreme reflection of the American system itself: the stark life differences between rich and poor, the racism, the use of victims against one another, the lack of resources of the underclass to speak out, the endless "reforms" that changed little. Dostoyevsky once said: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."
It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. But when the rich did commit crimes, they often were not prosecuted, and if they were they could get out on bail, hire clever lawyers, get better treatment from judges. Somehow, the jails ended up full of poor black people.
What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing--permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.
Why should we cherish objectivity, as if ideas were innocent, as if they dont serve one interest or another? Surely, we want to be objective if that means telling the truth as we see it, not concealing information that may be embarrassing to our point of view. But we dont want to be objective if it means pretending that ideas dont play a part in the social struggles of our time, that we dont take sides in those struggles.
Indeed, it is impossible to be neutral. In a world already moving in certain directions, where wealth and power are already distributed in certain ways, neutrality means accepting the way things are now. It is a world of clashing interests war against peace, nationalism against internationalism, equality against greed, and democracy against elitism and it seems to me both impossible and undesirable to be neutral in those conflicts.
TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and placesand there are so manywhere people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we dont have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.[/font]
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1899.Howard_Zinn
OneGrassRoot
(22,920 posts)KG
(28,751 posts)In_The_Wind
(72,300 posts)L0oniX
(31,493 posts)and that is why he advocated for it. Most of the time it takes demonstrating, protesting and civil disobedience to change things ...not voting or when it is obvious that voting will not solve the problem.
lastlib
(23,252 posts)"...it is the job of thinking people...not to be on the side of the executioners." Magnificent idea.
Thucydides
(212 posts)Words were never better spoken....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2xB4dbdNSXY
leftstreet
(36,109 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)adieu
(1,009 posts)Maybe he or the transcriber meant "furtive"?
proverbialwisdom
(4,959 posts)Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
It is those small, personal steps that matter, that bring about change despite the wishes and forces of the parasites that own the microphones and cameras that deliver the dictates to those that listen.
treestar
(82,383 posts)We elect the people who make the laws. Thus we can respect them.
Brother Buzz
(36,448 posts)is all wet.
Orrex
(63,216 posts)OT: We had to watch that stupid tripe yearly in school, every grade from 3rd through 9th. And they invariably presented it as if it were a great treat for us.
Holy shit it was awful.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)I wrote it in your other thread (http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023928837), but I want to say it again. These sorts of messages are so desperately needed right now. We are steeped in corporate propaganda that teaches cruelty, judgment, greed, and hopelessness. We need not just policy changes, but a fundamental change in our national values and priorities. It really is about choosing as a nation to love human beings over money.
Thank you again.
marmar
(77,084 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)Electric Monk
(13,869 posts)progressoid
(49,992 posts)I just got a package of these :