Election Madness

From the Progressive, an essay by radical historian Howard Zinn:

Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes—the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.

But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice.

Let’s remember that even when there is a “better” candidate (yes, better Roosevelt than Hoover, better anyone than George Bush), that difference will not mean anything unless the power of the people asserts itself in ways that the occupant of the White House will find it dangerous to ignore.

And

Today, we can be sure that the Democratic Party, unless it faces a popular upsurge, will not move off center. The two leading Presidential candidates have made it clear that if elected, they will not bring an immediate end to the Iraq War, or institute a system of free health care for all.

They offer no radical change from the status quo.

They do not propose what the present desperation of people cries out for: a government guarantee of jobs to everyone who needs one, a minimum income for every household, housing relief to everyone who faces eviction or foreclosure.

They do not suggest the deep cuts in the military budget or the radical changes in the tax system that would free billions, even trillions, for social programs to transform the way we live.

None of this should surprise us.

More here.

This isn't just some opinion, either. Zinn, who documents major American social movements and uprisings in his book A People's History of the United States, makes these assertions with the knowledge that virtually all political change in the US favoring regular working people has come under the above described circumstances. Essentially, this is how political change actually functions in America: the united people hold a knife to the ruling elite's throat and say, "Change, or else." That is, "yes we can" simply won't cut it.

As appealing as Barack Obama's change-a-rama may be, he's headed toward Washington without the backing that he needs to face down the ruling elite. In more cynical moments, I must acknowledge that Obama is, in fact, very much associated with and beholden to the very people he must outrage in order to do what he says he wants to do. That is, he's not really an outsider: he's an establishment player, and has only made it this far in his political career by playing the establishment game.

When you get right down to it, as Zinn asserts, a Barack Obama presidency will only offer superficial change. He can't possibly deliver what he's offering, if he even really wants to. Only the citizenry, united in its demand for social and economic justice, can do that. That's always been the case, and that's how it is now.

He's not our savior. He's just a politician. And politics has an annoying habit of being business-as-usual. Of course, I'd love to be proven wrong...

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