Pax Americana

198 More Sundays: What If They Had A Super Bowl And Nobody Came?

I hear tell there's some sort of athletic contest being held today.

Hey, I like football.  I like sports in general.  But last year our nascent family (more on that in a postscript) started a new tradition and quit the Super Bowl.

As this long-lived protest marks its second year today, I thought I'd revisit the Method it's an example of even though I'm sure blog traffic will be down as everybody's watching the game and ads so nobody will read this post.  From the category of Social Noncooperation we have 61. Boycott of social affairs:

A spirit of resistance may be expressed by a corporate refusal to attend certain social affairs, such as receptions, banquets, parties, concerts and the like.  During the Nazi occupation, for example, the Danes refused to attend concerts of German military music.  In late 1940 and early 1941 a wave of "cinema strikes" occurred in Norway in which patrons boycotted cinemas.  These began in Stavanger, where the local cinema board was dismissed for refusing to allow members of Quisling's elite organization (the Hird) to enter for free.  Cinema-going was then suspended elsewhere, culminating in the Oslo cinema strike in February.  (This example is also related to the economic boycott.)

In Poland during the same period the underground forbade Poles to patronize cinemas and theaters which had been started by the Germans.  In 1942 the underground determined that Polish theaters as well as German-operated theaters should be boycotted, and that no Pole should operate such a theater.  Jan Karski reports that the predominant reason was that "no Pole could be allowed to forget, even for two hours, what was happening to his country, or to amuse himself.  It was forbidden to interrupt the fight and insurrection in permanence against the invader."

Allow me to pre-emptively protest that I'm not a soulless, puritanical revolutionary who thinks people must be Morally Pure and shouldn't have fun or socialize until we have achieved Glorious Victory in The Great Struggle.  As Emma said:

I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal...for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things."

With that as backdrop, I'll indulge in a little more modified self-plagiarism:

There is value to social events--that's kinda why we have them.  And when engaged in resistance, community is very important, so the question is what types of community-building are the most valuable.  I found the time at my first war tax resistance gathering to be one powerful example, and of course there are many others that might still be "mainstream" or could be alternatives to the expected social interactions.

Of course we weren't planning on attending the Superbowl itself, but watching on TV is still part of the system.  There are the ads that many people actually watch the game for and  products are being pushed that we might buy them.

We have no illusions that today's refusal to watch football will end corporatism in America, or even obnoxious player salaries, let alone get us single-payer.  No duh.

Yet imagine if more people joined in boycotting the NFL's crown jewel with all its militaristic displays, refused to help the media networks that don't do their duty as the Fourth Estate while gladly taking our money, and didn't purchase the products crammed down our throats...maybe something could change for the better in our consumerist society.

Ad prices are deflated this year because of our current economic morass.  I suspect a social boycott could also have similar financial ramifications.  And consider all the money that people could redirect from spending on Super Bowl parties to feeding the hungry, donating to peace and justice organizations, funding HCR lobbying trips to DC, etc.  Yeah, I know it ain't gonna happen, but it's still a useful exercise to think about such things.

With the CBS' political policy of allowing anti-abortion ads but banning gay-friendly commercials, there's an added incentive for us to skip the big show.  Beer and other products have always been sold with sexist themes, but this year struck us as a bit worse than usual so Ericka suggested we call our action a MANcott.  And that's just what we're doing, man!

Anyway, feminists like madamb have a different take.  I especially like the idea of effectively turning one's back on the Tebow ad when it comes on.  It's all good.

It's actually a Boys Weekend here since my beloved is off visiting her BFF, who is recovering from cancer surgery (another personal reason why we fight for HCR).  I admit that when the game's on I will probably check in on Twitter to see what's going on, but no ads for me.

I hope everybody has a good Sunday whatever you're doing.  Recharge and be ready to carry on the struggle!

ntodd

PS--About that family.  We were full of that hopey-changey feeling after I returned from my penultimate tour at the soon-to-be-defunct DC Pink House and Pinking the Inaugural, and it turns out the math indicates we spent time we would've watched the Super Bowl much more, uh...productively.  As I write this, I'm listening to our little boycott coo and shriek and laugh as he exercises in his pack-n-play.  There are many ways to create peace...

(Post at Pax Americana, Dohiyi Mir, Green Mountain Code Pink, Corrente and Daily Kos.)

198 More Sundays: A Day Without Insurance Employees

I'm going to stick with economic noncooperation this week since I think that's an integral part of an intervention strategy to force Congress to pass real reform, as I outlined the other day.  I've generally thought that a combination of boycotts and strikes were the real key to success, hindering our corporate overlords' ability to function.  This general tactic has been employed in a variety of struggles, including for marriage equality, Indian independence and even resistance campaigns against the Nazis.

Today's gonna be a three-fer because I'm not entirely sure if there is a single form to use.  As Sharp observed:

The broad categories which must be used in classifying the many methods of nonviolent action are too rigid to suit the reality...Consequently, in every general class and subclass--such as the strike--there are some methods which also have one or more characteristics of another class (or do so under certain conditions) or which differ in at least one respect from the general characteristics of this class.

This is especially true in the case of the strike.  Normally, the strike is a temporary withdrawal of labor, but there are methods in which the withdrawal is, or at least intended to be, permanent.  Also, some methods are combinations of boycotts and strikes.  Other methods operate by withdrawing labor but do so only symbolically, so that they might also be included within the class of nonviolent protest and persuasion.

I have in mind some application of examples from three subclasses: Restricted Strikes, Multi-Industry Strikes, and Combination of Strikes and Economic Closures.  First, Method 112. Reporting "sick" (sick-in).  This is a form of restricted strike (i.e., not a total or general work stoppage):

Where strikes are prohibited by law, decree, or contract, or are not feasible for other reasons, workers may achieve anything from a slowdown of production to the equivalent of a full strike by falsely claiming to be sick.  This is an especially useful method when sick leave has been granted in the contract or law but strikes have been prohibited.

A great deal of feigned illness was reported among African slaves in the southern United States, sufficient to have had considerable economic impact.  Sometimes the illness ratio was nearly one sick to seven well.  Slaves were frequently sick on Saturday but rarely on Sunday, which was not a normal workday; more sickness occurred when the most work was required.

Although there was a great deal of genuine illness among the slave population, it is also clear that much of it was feigned in order to get out of work, to avoid being sold to an undesirable master, or to get revenge on a master (by feigning a disability while on the auction block and hence fetch a lower price).  Women pretending pregnancy received lighter work and increased food.  The Bauers write:

Of the extent to which illness was feigned there can...be little doubt.  Some of the feigning was quite obvious, and one might wonder why such flagrant abuses were tolerated.  The important thing to remember is that a slave was an important economic investment.  Most slave owners sooner or later found out that it was more profitable to give the slave the benefit of the doubt.  A sick slave driven to work might very well die.

One population that would be very good to have join in our efforts is employees of the health insurance carriers themselves.  Of course a full-blown strike in, say...billing or customer service likely is problematic for a number of reasons, but what if they used sick-ins, perhaps in the form of a "rolling" strike, to create work slowdowns in conjunction with stoppages in other tangential industries? 

Of course I wouldn't limit this form to just insurance workers.  An epidemic of HR676 Flu could have great impact on any industry, and the government.

We might also try a tactic used quite frequently and successfully outside the United states: 117. General strike (multi-industry strikes):

The general strike is a widespread stoppage of labor by workers in an attempt to bring the economic life of a given area to a more or less complete standstill in order to achieve certain desired objectives.  The method may be used on a local, regional, national or international level.  Wilfred Harris Crook defined the general strike as "the strike of a majority of the workers in the more important industries of any one locality or region."
...
While a general strike is usually intended to be total, certain vital services may be allowed to operate, especially those necessary for health...Crook distinguishes three broad types of general strike--political, economic and revolutionary.

A political general strike has the goal of achieving specific concessions from the government.  One great historical example is the series of strikes in 1893, 1902 and 1913 in support of electoral reforms in Belgium--actually, Belgians seem to love this Method for lots of goals.

Belgium has a long tradition of mass industrial strikes. In 1886 a great series of strikes broke out first in the neighbourhood of Charleroi, then in Liége and over a large part of the Walloon provinces. The main demand was universal suffrage; but there were economic demands as well in some places.

Then in May, 1891, a mass strike of some 125,000 workers put forward a demand for changes in the electoral system. In April, 1893. another strike, embracing about a quarter of a million workers, broke out around a similar demand. The outcome was a universal, but unequal, franchise, the votes of the rich and “cultured” counting for two or three times those of workers. Dissatisfied, the workers called another mass strike nine years later, demanding a complete revision of the Constitution.

An even bigger strike – in which 450,000 workers took part – was called by the Socialist Party and trade unions to achieve electoral reform in 1902, and again in 1913.

Another general strike, which wrested a forty-hour week and paid holidays from the capitalists, took place in 1936. In 1950 a general strike led to the abdication of King Leopold.

In 1958-9 the coal-miners of the Borinage spontaneously began a general strike not merely for wage demands but for the nationalisation of the mining industry.

Our reformist tradition in the United States also includes general strikes, usually in support of labor, such as the Seattle General Strike, the San Francisco General Strike and Textile General Strike.  It wouldn't be much of a stretch for Americans to use such tactics to achieve other forms of social change like universal healthcare.

The final strike Method I've been musing about is 118. Hartal (combination of strike/economic closure).

The hartal is an Indian method of nonviolent action in which the economic life of an area is temporarily suspended on a voluntary basis in order to demonstrate extreme dissatisfaction with some event, policy, or condition.  It is not used to wield economic influence, but to communicate sorrow, determination, revulsion, or moral or religious feelings about the matter in question.  Although the form of this method is largely economic, the effect is one of symbolic protest.

The hartal is usually limited to a duration of twenty-four hours; it may rarely be extended to forty-eight hours or even longer in an extremely serious case.  The hartal is usually city-wide or village-wide, although it may occur over a more extended area, including the whole nation.  Generally speaking, there is greater emphasis in the hartal than in the general strike on its voluntary nature, even to the point of laborers abstaining from work only after obtaining permission from their employers.  Also, shop owners and businessmen fully participate by closing their establishments and factories.

This is one of the forms of nonviolent action known to ancient India, where it was used against the prince or king to make him aware of the unpopularity of a certain edict or other government measure.  The hartal is also used at a time of national mourning.

Gandhi employed this ancient method in resistance movements he led.  He often used the hartal at the beginning of a struggle with the intent of purifying the participants in the struggle, of testing their feelings on the issue, and arousing the imagination of the people and the opponent.  It was used, for example, at the beginning of the nationwide satyagraha campaign in India against the Rowlatt Bills in 1919, and at the beginning of and during the 1930-31 satyagraha campaign for independence, especially to protest the arrest of important leaders.

Gandhi emphasized the inward readiness required to begin a struggle.  Can we implement an Americanized version of hartal?  Perhaps it would lack some of the explicit spiritual aspects (attending vigils could count), but include the voluntary component (no union asking membership to strike), the notion of asking for permission to not work (maybe in the form of using sick or personal time), the limited duration (24 hours) and intent (protest more than true economic intervention). Maybe use this specifically in DC as opposed to nationwide?

As usual, I don't have a specific formulation of how to apply these just yet, and am looking for other people's thoughts on their practicality and usefulness particularly in the fight for HR676.  I do think peace and justice activists need to consider updating tactics and strategy to work more effectively in the current political, economic and media environment, and one or more flavors of strike really ought to be part of the discussion.

ntodd

PS--I appreciate the feedback from some commenters at Great Orange Satan about my timing of these posts, so introduction of new Methods might move to a day other than Sunday.

(Post at Pax Americana, Dohiyi Mir, Green Mountain Code Pink, Corrente and Daily Kos.)

198 More Sundays: Power Of The People And The Purse

I began a couple weeks ago to try introducing direct action to a wider audience by covering the Move Your Money campaign.  I followed that up the next week with a discussion of sedition, which bloggers can engage in to some extent.

My idea was that I should skip any preliminary discussion of theory and history to more quickly get into things people could easily start doing.  Going for the low-hanging fruit, I figured people would start thinking about the resistance they're a part of and start to see their inherent power, then perhaps the larger context would become more apparent.

However, I see that our educational system is so lacking in any treatment of nonviolent social and revolutionary movements, there is a good deal of misunderstanding about and bias against their application today.  I won't go tinfoil and suggest that's a deliberate ploy by our overlords to make people passive, but the effect is the same: we've been convinced we have no recourse so might as well stay at home and enjoy the consumer items corporatism bribes us with.

I guess I should therefore take a step back and present the big picture before getting into today's specific form of action.  A good place to start is whit what Gene Sharp, the person who originally cataloged the 198 Methods that I'm always going on about, explaining a bit about nonviolent action:

"If the withholding is undertaken by enough people for a long enough period of time, then the regime will have to come to terms or it will be collapsed. Nonviolent action seeks to bring about change in three ways. The first is conversion, which is the rarest. The second is accommodation, which is the most usual. The third is nonviolent coercion, which is the most extreme of all forms."

Sharp is at pains to divest nonviolent action of any semblance of passivity. He says: "Nonviolent action is a means of combat, as is war. It involves the matching of forces and the waging of "battles", requires wise strategy and tactics and demands of its "soldiers courage, discipline and Sacrifice'. Sharp also tries to make it different from anarchism. It is based on fear of sanctions as well as consent emanating extra constitutional tenor. He says that it is possible to integrate nonviolent action into a constitutional system of government. Here, Sharp at once defends the existence of the state, integrates nonviolent action as democratic and posits it as a perennial element in society capable of defending and sustaining human freedom. He detaches nonviolence from its normative life forms as Gandhi did in his critique of modem civilisation and incorporates it as a legitimate mode of action rooted in liberal democracy.

Sharp first cataloged his methods in 1973's The Politics of Nonviolent Action and revisited them in his 2005 book, Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential.  They fall into three overarching categories: actions to suspend social relations, actions to suspend economic relations, and actions to suspend political submission and assistance.

When I bring up direction action, people often only think of protest marches.  They correctly observe that such demonstrations "don't work": we marched against the Iraq War, for example, and Bush still invaded.  The problem is that marches are a type of protest and persusasion, which Sharp describes in Waging Nonviolent Struggle:

Nonviolent protest and persuasion include numerous methods that are mainly symbolic acts of peaceful opposition or attempted persuasion.  These extend beyond verbal expressions of opinion but stop short of noncooperation or nonviolent intervention.  The use of these methods shows that the resisters are against or in favor of something, the degree of opposition or support, and, sometimes, the number of people involved.

The impact of these methods on the attitudes of others will vary considerably.  It is possible that where a particular method is common, its influence in a single instance may be less than in locations where the method has hitherto been rare or unknown.  The political conditions in which the method occurs are also likely to influence its impact.  Dictatorial conditions make an act of nonviolent protest less common and more dangerous.  Hence, if it does occur, the act may be more dramatic and may receive greater attention than it would where the act is common or carries no penalty.

The message may be intended to influence the opponents, the public, the grievance group, or a combination of the three.  Attempts to influence the opponents usually focus on convincing them to correct or halt certain actions, or to do what the grievance group wants.  The methods of nonviolent protest and persuasion may also be selected to facilitate a concurrent or later application of other methods, especially the forms of noncooperation.

Some Methods are designed to garner sympathy and persuade people to come to your side.  Some intend to shame those in power.  And some merely register dissent.

Other Methods are more intense and meant to tangibly threaten the opponent, which could be a regime, a particular social group or even corporations.  Those are forms of noncooperation (social, political, and economic), which Sharp describes:

Overwhelmingly, the methods of nonviolent struggle involve noncooperation with the opponents.  "Noncooperation" means that the resisters in a conflict either deliberately withdraw some form or degree of existing cooperation with the opponents or the resisters refuse to initiate certain forms of new cooperation.  Noncooperation involves deliberate discontinuance, withholding, or defiance of certain existing relationships--social, economic, or political.  The action may be spontaneous or planned, and it may be legal or illegal.

The impact of the various forms of noncooperation hinges heavily on the number of people participating in the use of the methods and the degree to which the opponents are dependent on the persons and groups that are refusing cooperation.

I've heard people say, "I'd do that, but I don't want to be the only one."  A minority of one is certainly more symbolic and less effective than a mass movement, yet you do have start somewhere.  And if you consider blogs as being a cheap and fairly wide-reaching--though admittedly still not having as the same penetration as TV or radio as yet--medium that can help coordinate collective efforts, you won't be alone for very long if you're willing to take a risk.

One type of collective noncooperation in the economic sphere has been widely used since at least the 18th Century, such as when British abolitionists responded to Parliament's failure to abolish slavery (a great early example I will cover later): Method 71. Consumers' boycott.

Again, Sharp:

An economic boycott is the refusal to buy, sell, handle or distribute specific goods and services, and often also includes efforts to induce others to withdraw such cooperation.

Just as with Move Your Money, this tactic (generally) carries less risk with it than something like civil disobedience and allows individuals and groups to flex their economic muscle.  More importantly, this is a step up from just trying to persuade an opponent to do the right thing: now you're threatening them directly by cutting off the lifeblood of their revenue.  Following a few simple rules, there have been many successful consumer boycotts just in the last 20 years, so clearly it's still a useful tool in our kit.

So when I use the word 'escalate' I don't mean getting more people to more marches.  I'm talking about upping the ante in terms of psychological pressure, physical intervention and economic impact.  Once you've issued your demands with a "down payment" of action in the form of protest and persuasion Methods, you must move on to higher-level actions and ratchet up the force brought to bear through tactics like coordinated boycotts.

Okay, people have been able to get corporations to change some policies and whatnot, but how could we use this Method for something like HCR?  Ignoring the difficult logistics for a moment, an obvious target would be the insurance companies themselves.  If we were to attack their obscene, ever-growing profits by massively refusing to pay premiums after demanding they end policy rescissions, stop increasing premiums, reduce denial of claims, etc, they would necessarily have to accommodate us.  What's more, we probably would put indirect pressure on politicians who get campaign contributions from their corporate constituents, so government policy could also be influenced.

Now, of course that would be very difficult to organize.  I'm not saying it wouldn't work, because it absolutely would.  When people say "it won't work" they're usually conflating the issues of an action's effectiveness vs mobilizing people to act, and really mean "it won't get anybody on board."  In this specific example, there is too much to risk from some folks' perspective--there's no alternative to insurance available for most--not to mention that so much insurance is through employers and trying to get them to stop paying premiums would be extremely problematic.

So regarding the insurance companies themselves we probably would be better served by sticking with symbolic acts of protests.  Perhaps sending mock rescissions along with premiums, or standing vigil outside their offices, etc.

Maybe instead we could make more of a flanking maneuver and target other corporate entities that are tangentially related.  The media is certainly part of the problem, so what about boycotting cable companies who take ad dollars from insurance companies and deliver "news" shows that misinform the electorate?  Cancel your cable TV and you will harm their revenue stream, plus you could redirect some of those savings to other forms of action, donations to groups doing yeoman's work on reform and the like.

What other corpos could we try this on?  Which targets would be the most likely to help us mobilize participation? How would we organize it?

As we experiment, we must keep in mind that we can't expect this Method alone to carry the day.  What's more, boycotts themselves can divide a movement as some factions might harbor concern about potential negative consequences, timing and other issues, so we can't count on everybody buying into the idea (which ultimately can limit effectiveness).  Thus I'll be elaborating on more tactics in the coming weeks so we can have a fuller toolkit to work with.

ntodd

(Post at Pax Americana, Dohiyi Mir, Green Mountain Code Pink, Corrente and Daily Kos.)

"I hope we shall take warning": Citizens United, Direct Action And HCR

While we were sitting around drinking Kool Aid, writing agitprop and plotting the demise of HCR, fellow unqualified progressive MBW observed that there's a possibility that the Senate bill could run afoul with SCOTUS if challenged by virtue of the Printz decision over a decade ago.  Rightwingers certainly love that idea, some lefties take issue with it.  I'm not so sure if there's an opt-out or waiver clause whether the exchange provision really falls under "commandeering".

I have previously argued that the Federal government is empowered to provide health coverage, though I once again admit I ain't got conlaw experience.  I'm pretty sure my reasoning stands, I guess so long as there is no requirement for States to implement national policy in the manner Printz proscribes.  Providing for the General Welfare is a powerful thing but it can't intrude on States' prerogatives, which is yet another reason why I'd much prefer something like Medicare for All as opposed to individual and State mandates.

The larger constitutional question on my mind is about SCOTUS' ruling this week on Citizens United.  To me that was the final nail in the "fix it later" coffin.  I just don't see how we're going to get any further reform with corporations free to use their increasing largesse to influence elections even more--unless we agitate more, that is.

Adam Smith observed in The Wealth of Nations:

[The rate of profit] is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin...As [merchants and master manufacturers'] thoughts...are commonly exercised rather about the interest of their own particular branch of business, than about that of the society, their judgment, even when given with the greatest candour (which it has not been upon every occasion) is much more to be depended upon with regard to the former of those two objects than with regard to the latter.

We're certainly going to ruin fast as the rate of profit grows ever higher.  Do we not think insurance companies will exercise their political thoughts--and now unfettered monies--about their business interests rather than that of society?

Fundamentally, a lot of folks trust the electoral process to be the sole mechanism for change.  Despite the Democrats' clearly demonstrated ability to look hapless and ineffective, for some reason party loyalists are desperate to pass the current bill...so they don't look hapless and ineffective.  That ship sailed a long time ago, I'm afraid.

Now is the time for bold action by the Majority to show they really are in charge instead of being weak and unable to govern even with a significant mandate.  Polls have shown that a good chunk of the People think the Senate offering doesn't go far enough, which is one component of the Democratic failure to keep Teddy's seat.  Shoving a shit sandwich down our throats isn't going to endear the party to the voters this November, so the worries about looking bad if "nothing" passes (as though there aren't other alternatives like, say...HR676 which is only 30-odd pages, could be read overnight and passed right over the Minority) are a bit confusing to me.

Of course the Majority isn't going to be bold.  Not without our help, anyway.  We need to take the lead and create the space for them to move into.

We do that by saying we will only accept a bill which includes women's health and coverage for all Americans.  We will only accept a bill which includes a public option and doesn't require states to establish exchanges.  We will only accept a bill that lets States establish their own single-payer programs and doesn't entrench insurance companies.

If our demands aren't met, we will do all we can to kill the simulacrum of reform that's being sold to us.  If our demands aren't met, we will push for primary challenges and in November won't support incumbents who voted for the bill.  If our demands aren't met, we will engage in escalating direct action.

I keep seeing a lot of resistance to direct action, which isn't so surprising but still disappointing.  As I've said before, a lot of it comes from a position of ignorance so I try to educate as much as I can without getting overly frustrated (with even less success on the latter than the former).  One of the biggest problems is people seem to think nonviolent direct action only comes in one flavor: big demonstrations with giant puppets and Free Mumia posters (and that ain't a straw man).

From that assumption, many other objections follow.  Marches can't work because we'll never get media attention.  Demonstrations can't shame the people in power any more.  Nonviolence only works against regime and can't bring about social change.

Never mind woman's suffrage, civil rights, collective bargaining...that's all history and Things Are Vaguely Different Now.

All power is derived from consent, whether in a democracy, dictatorship or fascist corporatocracy.  In our environment we have many ways to withdraw our cooperation and exercise our collective power.  We just need to employ some of those Methods persistently.

I started out my renewed series of tactics a couple weeks back with a discussion on withdrawal of funds from financial institutions, which has been used effectively time and again.  Tomorrow in my regular 198 More Sundays post I'll talk more about economic intervention as a tool for change.  In the meantime I echo what Thomas Jefferson once wrote:

I hope we shall take warning...and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

It's time to redouble our efforts both through political and non-electoral means.  If we mobilize now to crush the insurance industry's agenda, we can build upon a solid foundation to fight corporatism in other parts of our government and society.  For example, we can learn lessons from this struggle and with our newly energized base of grassroots activists finally get real campaign finance reform that SCOTUS can't toss aside.

The Left is not monolithic--our boon and bane, it seems--so not everybody will engage in, let alone agree on, every approach.  Yet I think we can all benefit from vigorous discussion of how to achieve our common goals by recognizing the value of our diversity, encouraging action over impotence, and respecting each other as allies who might have honest differences of opinion.

So let us take warning from Citizens United and work together for health justice instead of helping our opponents divide and conquer.

ntodd

(Post at Pax Americana, Dohiyi Mir, Green Mountain Code Pink, Corrente and Daily Kos.)

Abort The Senate HCR Bill

Experience has abundantly proved to me that to every honest man there come in his life occasions for parting of ways which I have termed “Non-co-operation”. - MK Gandhi

Yes, I want to abort the Health Care Deform Bill of 2010. 

It's defective.  It's not even viable.  It's a divide and conquer wedge that throws table scraps at a variety of groups who will be even less likely to mobilize to fix things once they get their slice of the pie--the have nots are typically more generous than the haves, who rarely give up what they have.

Even though I realistically think that HCR will come from an Island Hopping Campaign (state-by-state efforts until we reach critical mass) the problem is that it really will be harder to mobilize constituencies to fight for others.  Labor got their Cadillac compromise and now, after threatening to withdraw support from Dems in 2010, is supporting the bill.  Plenty of people have told me we must pass the bill because it will benefit them.  I'm certainly sympathetic, but when do we help the rest of the people?

I admit to thinking I had the luxury of holding my moral, philosophical position when it was really moot: the bill was going to pass despite the reservations a lot of progs and I had.  But now it seems that, at least for a brief time, the House might not even have the votes to pass the Senate bill and reconciliation--that which was supposed to save us--is still up in the air.

The thing that puzzles me about the "fix it later" (in any of the proposed variants) is this: how the fuck are you going to fix anything when there has been no resolve to stand for the right things in the first place?  Are the Dems really all of a sudden going to stick together and get rid of Stupak, restore the public option, allow States to implement their own single-payer programs, and actually cover everybody?

We already have seen our position erode because the Dems and the People have capitulated at every turn.  Single-payer became the PO.  Reproductive freedom was restricted.  Mandates were introduced.  States had to get waivers.  The PO was tossed aside.

It seems to me we've shown we cannot hold the line.  And we're already starting from scratch, which is one of the reasons why some folks want to pass the bill as-is.  But when you stop to think about it, we wouldn't have to start over on building a 1000-page Frankenstein monster when we already have a short and simple solution available in HR676 and Medicare For All.

Readers might be wondering why I would think, after saying Dems won't be able to fix things, that we could pass something "extreme" like HR676.  Simple: because we'll have burned our ships and all pols have their own survival in mind.

The Dems know they have to pass something, which is why Obama et al are so desperate just to get this thing done.  They need to declare Mission Accomplished so they can move on to other meaty election year legislation.  Take away this particular bill--which is NOT the same as killing HCR itself--and they must get something out lest more Dems and Indies bail on them in November for not doing enough.

One of the big political optics problems is if nothing comes out of Congress, people will blame the Dems.  Yes, that's absolutely true if they don't actually use their majority position effectively.  So instead of reacting to the GOP, they need to become proactive and get inside the Republican OODA loop.

But how to deal with the Mythical Sixty Vote Threshold?  Currently, almost all business in the Senate is conducted through unanimous consent agreements.  That fundamentally means the Majority and Minority have agreed to suspend the rules and usual rights Senators have in favor of a streamlining process.  Generally that makes sense because there's so much business before the chamber that little would progress if they didn't bypass parliamentary procedure.

UCs can only be implemented if nobody objects (duh, they're unanimous).  Otherwise, Senate rules as they stand must apply.  Because the Majority hears the siren song of bipartisanship in the collegial Senate, they oft agree to skipping the real filibuster and cloture rules and agree that 60 votes are required for certain big ticket items, like HCR.

So the Democratic Caucus could, if it showed some spine (and perhaps we helped give them spine, eh?), have a Senator Sanders or Senator Feingold object and the 60 vote requirement evaporates.  Yes, the GOP could filibuster and use plenty of other parliamentary tactics to delay debate and floor votes.  And guess who then is shown to be obstructionists?

Real filibusters are hard to maintain.  Even if the GOP and Lieberman could sustain one, all that does is give us time to further mobilize direct action to pressure "moderate" Republicans and Blue Dogs to get on board.

Direct action, not donating to groups who promise to run TV ads and other vague action in the future.  Not joining text and mailing lists.  Not petitions.  Not emails.  Not phone call barrages.

All of those things are nice and useful in the beginning of a struggle.  Not so much at the 11th hour.

I mean national, distributed marches in every state supporting what the majority of Americans want.  A follow up march in DC.  Massive lobbying on the Hill and in-district.  Boycotts.  Strikes.  Civil disobedience.  Strategically applying a variety of the 198 Methods of Nonviolent Resistance, from low-level protest to physical and economic intervention that completely disrupts the status quo.

March For Lifers always mobilize on this very day.  We need to be more active to counter their protests, not to mention legislative and judicial tactics.  We need to say we won't compromise on our core beliefs, like the absolute right to choose.

NOW has come out against the bill (those silly, emotional women!) because it erodes reproductive freedom, and said it in 2010 won't support candidates who vote for it.  It's a great threat, but we saw labor play the same game and back down, so let's have something tangible to back it up.  I looked on the action page at NOW and at NARAL, but there's really no out-of-your-chair stuff, which is what we desperately need if we're to win the definitive civil rights struggle of our time.

If every person who told me "that shit'll never work" (because of the current political climate, it ain't the 60s, etc) actually tried to help make it work, it possibly could. But we've been rendered meaningless by our continued collective capitulation as every outrage has been thrown at us.

I don't have a big platform, so my calls for action are less audible than a 'yopp' on a speck of dust, but there are plenty of activist organizations that do have access to large audiences (and those organizations ignore as much my ideas as everybody else does, believe me).  I wonder what it would look like if they really committed to fighting for true reform and universal health coverage?  How about it, Labor, MoveOn, NOW, NARAL, Netroots...direct action, escalation, a strategic effort beyond just issuing demands?

We have begun our work knowing full well that it will be difficult. Having sacrificed everything, if we fail, it is not failure but success. Because in that failure lies our well-being and that of others. - MK Gandhi

Conflict hurts.  No outcome is guaranteed.  Yet if we stick to our principles and fight for what we believe is right to our utmost, we cannot fail. 

That's not just some bullshit I-read-it-in-college New Age happy claptrap: we guarantee failure if we don't try at all.  If we honestly apply ourselves to the cause, we actually have decent odds of winning.  Not without sacrifice.  Not without pain.  Not even without some damage to our ultimate objective sometimes.

But in the end we know we fought for our own well-being and that of others, and that sets the stage for our future efforts to achieve justice.  Passively accepting what the power structure shoves down our throats gains us nothing and provides no platform for continued struggle.  Kill the bill so we can get to work on what we really need: reform that covers not just union members, not just men's health, not just 93% of America, but all of us.

ntodd

(Post at Pax Americana, Dohiyi Mir, Green Mountain Code Pink, Corrente and Daily Kos.)

One Year Later: The Mild Urgency Of Whenever

As Ericka reminded me, today's date has a certain significance for us. I didn't yet realize what it meant to our family or even our nation, but personally it was part of a momentous week with my Code Pink sisters and brothers in DC last year, celebrating the end of the Bush Era, hoping for good things from the Obama Era, and reminding our new President of his campaign promises and our continued vigilance.

I had media, police and Facebook friends asking why I was going to Washington to protest the President I campaigned for.  I wasn't, actually--I went to promote peace and justice, and reset the program:

Compared to my first time at the Code Pink house, this really was a joyous week of action--not to say I didn't have fun learning with my new friends back then, but there was less of a sense of hope and potential change.  We still used many of the same Methods, though perhaps in slightly modified ways:

• 6. Group or mass petitions
• 7. Slogans, caricatures, and symbol
• 8. Banners, posters, and displayed communications
• 9. Leaflets, pamphlets, and books
• 15. Group lobbying
• 19. Wearing of symbols
• 26. Paint as protest
• 32. Taunting officials
• 35. Humorous skits and pranks
• 37. Singing
• 43. Political mourning
• 54. Turning one's back

Note that we did not court arrest or engage in any more intense psychological or physical intervention.  Starting anew with protest and persuasion, leaving room for escalation as the Obama Era wears on...

Photo from Women's Suffrage Parade, Washington, DC, March 3, 1913.  Courtesy US Library of Congress.

Our various Pinking activities did not mark the first time women and men descended on our Capital with a specific agenda when there was an Inauguration on the schedule:

On Monday, March 3, 1913, clad in a white cape astride a white horse, lawyer Inez Milholland led the great woman suffrage parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation's capital. Behind her stretched a long line with nine bands, four mounted brigades, three heralds, about twenty-four floats, and more than 5,000 marchers.

Women from countries that had enfranchised women held the place of honor in the first section of the procession. Then came the “Pioneers” who had been struggling for so many decades to secure women's right to vote. The next sections celebrated working women, who were grouped by occupation and wearing appropriate garb—nurses in uniform, women farmers, homemakers, women doctors and pharmacists, actresses, librarians, college women in academic gowns. Harriet Hifton of the Library of Congress Copyright Division led the librarians' contingent. The state delegations followed, and finally the separate section for male supporters of women's suffrage. All had come from around the country to “march in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded.”

...

At the railway station a few blocks away, president-elect Wilson and the presidential party arrived to little fanfare. One of the incoming president's staff asked, “‘Where are all the people?’;—‘Watching the suffrage parade,’ the police told him.

The procession began late, but all went well for the first few blocks. Soon, however, the crowds, mostly men in town for the following day's inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, surged into the street making it almost impossible for the marchers to pass. Occasionally only a single file could move forward. Women were jeered, tripped, grabbed, shoved, and many heard “indecent epithets” and “barnyard conversation.” Instead of protecting the parade, the police “seemed to enjoy all the ribald jokes and laughter and part participated in them.” One policeman explained that they should stay at home where they belonged. The men in the procession heard shouts of “Henpecko” and “Where are your skirts?” As one witness explained, “There was a sort of spirit of levity connected with the crowd. They did not regard the affair very seriously.”

The suffrage movement was criticized for their tactics and timing, not just at the time of Wilson's party but when they engaged in hunger strikes, and all throughout their struggle.  In the end, women won their right to vote after forcefully issuing their demands and escalating actions until they achieved their ends.

Almost a century after that march, there we were educating and singing and dancing, for which Code Pink is oft criticized: we're a joke, a bunch of clowns, etc.

Actually, the latter charge isn't entirely inaccurate.  After all, six months after Obama was sworn in, a number of us were resisting American and Israeli policies while being shot at with tear gas, concussion grenades and rubber bullets by the IDF in the presence of Fungus the clown in the West Bank, and we were joined by none other than Patch Adams as we tried to deliver aid to Gazans who live in rubble courtesy of weapons Americans paid for.  Despite the value of clowning in advocacy and the inherent danger of security forces with automatic weapons, I heard criticisms of our "antics" as being simply fooling around.

What if that were really the case, that we were just having fun while expressing dissent?  Revolutionary Emma Goldman wrote in Living My Life:

[After getting women to join in the cloakmakers' strike] I became alive once more.  At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.

I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.

It's the very joy of life that compels us to not only protest, but put ourselves on the line with other more intense forms of civil resistance despite unpopularity and danger to change mindsets, dynamics and policies. It's deliberate method to our dancing madness.  It's what earns Code Pink MVP awards in some progressive circles.

So a year ago we danced to celebrate hope and worked to effect change.  I remember being particularly stirred as I listened to Obama's speech in the bitter, windy cold:

[Y]our people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

As Jodie Evans notes, much of that hope is gone, but not the drive to push for change: we need to change our course on health care NOW; we need to change our course on equality at home NOW; we need to change our course in Afghanistan NOW.  We continue trying to remind the President of his own admonition, that he needs to build and not destroy.  And we remind ourselves that we must make him do it.  Now.

ntodd

(Post at Pax Americana, Dohiyi Mir, Green Mountain Code Pink, Corrente and Daily Kos.)

198 More Sundays: Sedition Must Become Our Creed

Since I've already posted about a fairly tangible resistance method and a tactic that's a bit controversial, I thought I'd go more in the direction of something that bloggers could buy into pretty easily.  First, a reminder:

Activism, by definition, cannot be done online.  At best you can be an online advocate.

Advocacy is a necessary thing, and I certainly do not dismiss the utility of the blogosphere and twitterverse in that arena.  But let's not have any illusions that nice rants online do not equal picking up a musket (metaphorical or otherwise).

With that caveat in mind, I'd like to  consider rejection of authority as a tool in our efforts to effect change.  This is a sub-category of political noncooperation (from Gene Sharp's The Politics of Nonviolent Action):

Political noncooperation is the third subclass of methods on noncooperation [the others being social and economic, like the Move Your Money campaign]; these methods involve refusals to continue the usual forms of political participation under existing conditions.  Sometimes they are known as political boycotts.  Individuals and small groups may practice methods of this class.  Normally, however, political noncooperation involves larger numbers of people in corporate, concerted, usually temporary suspension of normal political obedience, cooperation and behavior. 

...

The aim of the political noncooperation may be to achieve a particular limited objective or a change in broader government policies.  Or it may be to change the nature or composition of that government, or even to produce its disintegration...

The political significance of these methods increases in proportion to the numbers participating and to the need for their cooperation for the operation of the political system...

Political noncooperation may take an almost infinite variety of expressions, depending on the particular situation.  Basically they all stem from a desire not to assist the opponent by performance of certain types of political behavior.

One way to refuse cooperation with a regime is to engage in Method 122. Literature and speeches advocating resistance:

In many situations, the making of speeches and the publication and distribution of literature which call on people to undertake some form of nonviolent noncooperation or nonviolent intervention themselves become acts of defiance and resistance.  This is especially so in those countries where any call for resistance, especially for illegals acts of resistance, is itself illegal or seditious.

Now sedition is a rather subjective thing, and often used too loosely to describe a variety of acts (e.g., Michelle Malkin loved throwing the word around, and so do liberals these days).  I think for our intellectual exercise today we can apply it in a more colloquial sense as "advocating stuff that upsets the status quo," so it could include rebellious progs calling out Obama and the Dems on HCR, for example.

I can't allow any seditious discussion take place without bringing up the quintessential practitioner, MK Gandhi.  A year before his arrest for sedition, he wrote in Young India on March 30, 1921:

If sedition means disaffection towards the present system of Government, it is a virtue and a duty. But we do not need to preach it...We cannot paint the system blacker than it appears to the average audience today. All we need do is to show the people the way to destroy it. That way is self-purification. We shall put the Government in an uncomfortable corner...

Hitherto the word “revolution” been connected with violence, and has as such been condemned by established authority. But the movement of non-co-operation, if it may be considered a revolution, is not an armed revolt: it is an evolutionary revolution, it is a bloodless revolution. The movement is a revolution of thought, of spirit. Non-co-operation is a process of purification, and, as such, it constitutes a revolution in one’s ideas. Its suppression, therefore, would amount to co-operation by coercion...

Inaction on our part will kill Government madness. For violence flourishes on response, either by submission to the will of the violator, or by counter-violence. My strong advice to every worker is to segregate this evil Government by strict  non-co-operation, not even to talk or speak about it, but having recognized the evil, to cease to pay homage to it by co-operation.

I don't know if that specific article was used as part of the basis for the sedition charge, but certainly his writings in Young India in general were.  Fans of Attenborough's movie might remember a stirring court scene that encapsulated the trial which ended with this statement (necessarily summarized in the film):

I know that I was playing with fire. I ran the risk, and if I were set free I would still do the same. Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also last article of my creed. I know that my people have sometimes gone mad. I am sorry for it. Their crime consisted in the love of their country.

I am here to submit not to a light penalty but to the highest Penalty. In my opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good Nonviolence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-co-operation with evil. I am here to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be the inflected upon me for what in law is a deliberated crime and what appears to me be the highest duty of a citizen.

The only cause open to, judge, is either to resign post and thus dissociate yourself from evil if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is evil and that I am innocent or to inflict on me the severest penalty, if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good for the people of this country and that my activity is therefore injurious to the public weal.

He was sentenced to six years in prison, though he was released early because of illness (he was 53 at that point and had ended a fast just prior to his arrest on March 10).

We in the US have had a long history of trying to suppress dissent via sedition laws--almost as long as our nation has existed.  From the Alien and Sedition Acts passed in during John Adams' tenure in 1798 to the Sedition Act of 1918 under Woodrow Wilson to the Smith Act that was signed into law by Franklin Roosevelt and remains on the books to this day.

Lest you think charges of sedition are in the remote past:

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico...demanded an explanation from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for investigating a federal employee who published an editorial critical of the Bush administration in a local newspaper.
 
In her letter to the weekly Alibi, Laura Berg, a clinical nurse specialist, criticized the Bush administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War, noting that, “as a VA nurse working with returning…vets, I know the public has no sense of the additional devastating human and financial costs of post-traumatic stress disorder.”  She urged readers to “act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.”
 
In September 2005, VA Information Security employees seized Berg’s office computer because they claimed “government equipment was used inappropriately…during government time for drafting an editorial letter.”  No evidence was recovered to support that belief.
 
“The VA had no reason to suspect  Laura Berg used government resources to produce her editorial,” said ACLU of New Mexico Executive Director Peter Simonson.  “She signed the letter as a private individual.  From all appearances, the seizure of her work computer was an act of retaliation and a hardball attempt to scare Laura into silence.”
 
In a November 9th memorandum to Berg, Mel Hooker, Chief of Human Resource Management Service at the VA, conceded that no evidence was found implicating the use of Berg’s work computer in the writing of the editorial.  However, he justified the investigation by saying “the Agency is bound by law to investigate and pursue any act which potentially represents sedition.”

A year later, Rep Jane Harman (D-CA36) introduced the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, a lovely little bill:

Odette Wilkens, the executive director of the Equal Justice Alliance, a constitutional watchdog group, compared the legislation to the McCarthy Commission and to the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), which infiltrated, undermined and spied on civil rights and antiwar groups during the 1950s and 60s.

"The commission would have very broad powers. It could investigate anyone. It would create a public perception that whoever is being investigated by the Commission must be involved in subversive or illegal activities. It would give the appearance that whoever they are investigating is potentially a traitor or disloyal or a terrorist, even if all they were doing was advocating lawful views," Wilkens said.

Terrorism is the new sedition, seems to me, and Code Pink or anybody who talks about altering the existing order could be accused of it.  Harman's bill was passed by the House but fortunately died in committee in the Senate and apparently has not been reintroduced.

But I digress.  Regardless what legal framework exists, we all must be seditious in calling for change through individual and collective actions to disrupt the current power structure.  As it stands, GOP obstructionists and Democratic corporatists are actively preventing passage of meaningful healthcare reform, and simply relying on standard electoral politics is not going to get us anything but more of the same.

It can be depressing these days as we're stymied on so many progressive issues: Obama is escalating an increasingly deadly and unpopular quagmire; marriage equality has been rejected by ostensibly friendly States; MoveOn, labor and other supposedly liberal entities work furiously on their cognitive dissonance as they justify the bribes they've accepted to support the Healthcare Deform Act of 2010.  When I despair I think of something Thomas Jefferson wrote at the time of the Alien and Sedition Acts (with many apologies to my dear friend Hecate and her co-religionists):

A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to it's true principles. It is true that in the mean time we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war & long oppressions of enormous public debt...If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, & then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are the stake.

So keep patiently, passionately preaching revolution, and don't forget to actually participate in it.  I'll keep posting ways to do so and hope you'll join me in some merry sedition in the process...

ntodd

(Post at Pax Americana, Dohiyi Mir, Green Mountain Code Pink, Corrente and Daily Kos.)

PS--The Army's thrown an Iraq vet in the clink for some anti-stop-loss hip hop lyrics, but he's not being charged with sedition under Article 94 of the UCMJ.

198 More Sundays: Nice Bank, Be A Shame If Something Happened To It

As threatened promised, I'm following up on yesterday's epic crossposted blog entry by reviving Pax Americana's regular 198 Sundays feature.  Since I'm trying to get my seditious ideas more widely disseminated, I'm going to pull the same trick and publish this in several channels.

I had a little difficulty deciding what Method to look at.  In a sidebar chat with Lambert, we figured that what's important is not just saying "here's 198 ways we could maybe fight the power" but providing more concrete success stories with specific tactical suggestions. 

So should I go with a basic Method to illustrate where I would start and try to paint a picture of escalation in a strategic context, or choose a more dramatic example that might spark better discussion and lead to an organic strategic arc?  I considered looking at some things that have come up in yesterday's threads, like boycotts and strikes, and stuff like sedition, which would be right up most bloggers' alley.

In the end I thought something that's already getting some attention on a larger online platform and now in the mainstream media would be best.  So here's a reprise of Method: 86. Withdrawal of bank deposits.

Money deposited in private or government banks or government savings systems may be withdrawn either as an expression of protest against the government or as a means of noncooperation intended to help overthrow an unsteady government.

For example, the withdrawal of bank deposits was called for at least twice during the 1905 Revolution in Russia--first by the All-Russian Peasant Union at its founding conference in midsummer 1905, and second, by the St Petersburg Soviet on December 2, 1905.  This was designed to weaken foreign confidence in the Russian economy and government and thus prevent the government from obtaining a foreign loan to be used to combat the revolution.

Now the 1905 Russian Revolution--which I studied in the 80s and 90s as a Russian/Soviet Studies major--is probably remote to most Americans.  Regardless, the basic premise no matter where or when it's used is that withdrawing money from financial institutions can directly protest an opponent or be a sort of flanking maneuver to achieve a larger aim.

A current application comes from Arianna Huffington.

It has been two weeks since Arianna Huffington began imploring people to move their money to small institutions, and big banks do not appear any worse for the wear.

But whether Huffington's much-talked-about campaign proves to be anything more than a flash in the pan is beside the point. The point is that the pundit turned Web entrepreneur has tapped into an undeniable aspect of the consumer psyche — a festering resentment of big banks and a growing frustration with government officials seen as having donned kid gloves for a task that might have required brass knuckles.

At first blush, any problems presented by the Move Your Money project seem to be confined to the realm of optics. After all, Huffington appeals to a narrow slice of a fragmented society, and even her biggest fans might be stymied by inertia when contemplating the idea of moving their checking accounts — especially with so many other New Year's resolutions in need of follow-through.

But down the road, the suspicion and anger that has been building toward big banks could cause damage at the margins. That may sound minor, until one thinks about how much of a company's fate — particularly in industries becoming more and more commoditized — is decided at the margins.

...

[I]t would take an awful lot of dissatisfaction to persuade customers of Citigroup Inc. or Bank of America Corp. — or any company that has similarly engendered public angst over the course of this crisis — to actually yank deposits. But it also would be easy for those customers to look elsewhere when it comes to taking out mortgages, selecting wealth advisers or seeking any of the other products and services that banks would hope to cross-sell to clients.

...

In online postings, aggrieved bank customers inspired by Huffington's Move Your Money campaign describe their participation as an exercise in revenge, a way to take action against a system in which they otherwise feel profound helplessness. Dramatic — and yet these people will be a mere blip on the radar screen for big banks.

The real impact of the movement is in the education it provides people about their banking options — something that may not move them to close accounts, but could stick with them next time they need bankservices.

Since Move Your Money's Dec. 29 kickoff, daily Web traffic has more than tripled on the National Association of Federal Credit Unions' CULookUp.com, a credit union locator site. That's no proxy for new account openings, but NAFCU President Fred Becker said it is a good indication that bank customers are looking for alternatives.

Alternet puts it this way:

Reacquire your wealth. The easiest way for the Federal Reserve, led by Time Magazine's ludicrous Person of the Year Ben Bernanke, to pick your pocket is through your accounts and investments, which can be liquidated in the blink of a discount window's eye. Withdraw any extra cash you have, close whatever extra accounts you have, and take it somewhere besides Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase or another bailout addict. Better yet, keep it on the sidelines. The Fed hates that and so do the markets, which have nothing to do with you anyway. That game is above your head, and rigged outright. You either play with the house, or you play your conscience. Right now, your conscience should be worrying about another economic clusterfuck. Plus, the banks left standing after the financial crashes of the last few years are fatter than ever, and are still hoarding cash instead of lending it.  

“It’s insanity that the too-big-to-fail institutions are even bigger today than they were,” Vermont's independent Senator Bernie Sanders told Bloomberg. “God forbid we have another financial crisis.”  

God forbid? These banks have gotten bigger specifically to survive the next crisis they have already priced into the market. Thanks to Congress, the Fed and the last two administrations, they've got your cash sitting in their vaults, whistling while they wait. Take it out.

One might also take their other advice of eliminating credit as much as possible.  That's inflationary and part of what has created our unsustainable, consumerist economy.

Anyway, this Method isn't specifically about HCR, but indirectly related because we're talking about resisting entrenched monied interests, and the massive bank bailouts come at a time when we're told there's no money for single-payer or a public option.  It also is a form of economic intervention that can put those in power on notice that we can actually threaten the financial system's status quo.  And best of all, it's actually a fairly accessible, low-risk action anybody can take that could easily become a mass trend.

For a little inspiration, I like to turn to one of my heroes, Mario Savio:

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

He provides us with a great example of another Method, but right now just consider his overall message and passion: stop the economic machinery of power by refusing to be a cog in it!

ntodd

(Post at Pax Americana, Dohiyi Mir, Green Mountain Code Pink, Corrente and Daily Kos.)

Five Pointed Palm Exploding Heart Technique

AP:

Senior House Democrats have largely abandoned hopes of including a government-run insurance option in the final compromise health care bill taking shape, according to several officials, and are pushing for other measures to rein in private insurers.

Okay, this is where I traditionally caution what I call the Magnet Ballers--reference to 6yos' style of playing soccer--that this report may or may not mean anything substantive.  Could be a trial balloon.  Could be a smokescreen.  Could be somebody's personal agenda being pushed.

The main takeaway is that, of course, we never really know because we're not privy to all the wheelings and dealings behind the scenes and depend, therefore, upon reports from the inside.  Sure some reporters--even bloggers!--have good contacts that might have some info, but all of this stuff is run through so many filters that its veracity is rather doubtful.

So what can we do?  How about be engaged citizens and do a little responsible legwork of our own?

I know everybody's busy surviving, and of course the holidays took their toll, but if we've been given a Republic and HCR is an issue at least as important as Civil Rights, couldn't we step up our game a little bit?  There are plenty of comforts and distractions that demand our time, but they'll be there tomorrow after we've won this fight

I've been told that the netroots has done all it could because, afterall, Jane and FDL had that whip count tool!  That's not even a strawman on my part, FWIW.

Yes, some A-listers have written wonderful things excoriating Obama and the Dems for their complicity in this madness.  Some A-listers have admonished their readers to "light up" the switchboards.  Some A-listers have even made nifty little "online activism" tools.

Activism, by definition, cannot be done online.  At best you can be an online advocate.  At the worst and most passive you can delude yourself into thinking that expressing your opinion in an email or another damned Internet petition is activism. 

Activism requires being, you know...active.  Not necessarily getting into the streets, but certainly out of your chair and really, a bit out of your comfort zone.  Most importantly, it means not relying on proxies to do your work for you.

Lemme tell you a story about FDL's whip count.  Back during the debate about Afghan appropriations, Jane heard from one of her People On The Hill that my Representative, Peter Welch, was going to vote for the resolution, which we progs did not want to pass.  That was odd, I thought, because he'd voted no on the measure previously.  So I e-mailed his Legislative Assistant and learned that, in fact, he was going to continue his opposition (which he did in the final vote).

Lesson The First, Grasshopper: don't accept what somebody tells you somebody else said about somebody else.  To steal from Sean Connery, if you don't want a rotten apple, go to the tree, not the barrel.

That was an act of information gathering, of course, not an attempt to effect change.  Obviously one could turn such a contact around and make it into an expression of opinion in hopes of swaying one's Congressmember.  But that only goes so far.

I was in Harry Reid's office one day back in December 2007 during some controversial debate--I honestly cannot remember if it was Iraq appropriations or some other nonsense.  Phones were ringing off the hook with constituents weighing in, but during a brief lull I chatted with one of the Senator's staffers about the efficacy of phone calls.  She told me they don't pass every message along individually, but make a general note about the volume of calls regarding a particular issue and convey the overall sense to Reid.

In other words, "lighting up" the switchboards has about as much impact as any other polling: next to nil.  Frankly, if polling really mattered we'd have single-payer right now and I wouldn't be typing this much.  Such communication is valuable, absolutely, in setting down our demands, but doesn't put any political, economic or otherwise tangible pressure on a politician.  Call all you want, but lacking a physical presence--say...chatting with staff in Reid's office--you more than likely are not going to achieve your aim of swaying an opinion and vote.

Now let me think...who is in Congressional offices every day?  Oh yeah, lobbyists.  In fact, when Ericka and I went to visit Welch's LA back in May, the visitor signed into the office log just before us was a Lockheed Martin rep.

I know not everybody can be in their Congressmembers' faces every day like a K-Streeter.  However, we all can build up some level of relationship with our elected employees by making regular contact with them (e.g., through electronic means) and following up with more individual and/or collective actions on a less frequent basis (e.g., meeting with Reps and Senators during "district work periods").

We can certainly congratulate ourselves for what we've attempted so far, and use that as an excuse for being passive now in the face of continued mendacity.  It's not clear to me what more aggressive tactics would be really possible or effective--I do have some ideas--but what is clear to me is that we have not done enough.  Now's not the time to quit, but to escalate and try new things.

And we really do need to keep fighting the good fight rather than just accepting the shit sandwich that's being presented to us.  Fix The Billers: you told us the Senate bill could be remedied in reconciliation (which ain't happening) and/or conference (which ain't happening), so what exactly are you going to do now?

Over at Pax Americana my regular 198 Sundays feature has been on hiatus.  I'm reviving that in the HCR context.  In the coming days and weeks--because that's all the time we have before this fake reform is entrenched--I'll talk more about specific concrete actions everybody can take that collectively gives us an excellent chance of creating space for Obama and the Democrats to fulfill a campaign promise other than escalating in Afghanistan.

A few actions in other milieux for you to ponder in the meantime:

• From 2005: Sponsored by the Women and Girls Foundation of Western Pennsylvania, a group of 23 girls...initiated a "girl-cott" against T-shirts being sold by popular teen retailer Abercrombie and Fitch. The girls find these T-shirts offensive and I have to say that I agree. A few slogans on the front of the shirts:
  
      * Who Needs brains when you have these?
      * Blondes are adored, brunettes are ignored.
      * I make you look fat.
  
  The girls decided that they are demeaning and offensive and the girls started their "girl-cott". Their effort caught the attention of NBC's Today Show and the media onslaught began - MSNBC, CNN, and all the other major televised news outlets picked up the story. This past Friday, Abercrombie and Fitch announced that it would stop selling some of these offensive T-shirts. Chalk one up for a visible coalition of 23 principled girls and some media attention.

• March 2009: There was a rally scheduled...regarding AIDS policy where activists were going to unveil their "50 day report card".  when the Obama team found out they were going to get Fs, they called the organizers to ask what they could do to not get bad grades and proposed they meet to discuss the issues.  That never happened during the Bush Era.

• July 2009: According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, manufacturers of the F-22, have given nearly $1.4 million in campaign contributions to 50 senators and spent nearly $9 million lobbying Congress as they fight to keep the expensive yet unwanted fighter jets in the budget.  [Lobbying efforts by Code Pink and other organizations and individuals helped convince Obama to threaten a veto if F-22 funding were included in appropriations, and lead to the Senate and House killing it.]

Extrapolate from those small victories achieved by small groups and consider the power of larger mobilization.  So what do you say, A-listers, Twitterers, MoveOn, Labor, et al?  Game to try?

ntodd

(x-posted at Corrente)

198 Sundays: X-in

There are several "-ins" cataloged by Gene Sharp: teach-ins, sick-ins, sit-ins, etc.  They can be educational, lower levels of protest or even psychological and physical interventions.  Yesterday there was a "kiss-in":

The Mormon church's vigorous, well-heeled support for Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California last year, has turned the Utah-based faith into a lightning rod for gay rights activism, including a nationwide "kiss-in" Saturday.

The event comes after gay couples [in St Lake City, Utah,] and in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas, were arrested, cited for trespassing or harassed by police for publicly kissing. In Utah, the July 9 trespassing incident occurred after a couple were observed by security guards on a downtown park-like plaza owned by the 13 million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The court case was dismissed, but the kiss sparked a community backlash and criticism of the church.
...
Atali Staffler, a Brigham Young University graduate student from Geneva, Switzerland, said she joined the 200 or so people who filled a downtown amphitheater for the event because she has watched her gay father and many gay friends struggle to find their place.

The 31-year-old, who was raised Mormon but is not active in the church, said the church shouldn't be involved in Prop. 8.

"I encourage them to promote the values they believe in and to defend their religious principles in advertisements, but civil rights have nothing to do with religious principles," she said.

Twenty-two people, many of them strangers to one another, gathered under the scorching sun on Washington's National Mall to participate in the national smooch. They were gay and straight, couples and singles of all ages, with placards that read "Equal Opportunity Kisser" and "A Kiss is a Not a Crime."

"This is America. A kiss on the cheek is OK," said Ian Thomas, 26, of Leesburg, Va., who organized the Washington Kiss-In. "It's got to be OK. If not, we're in serious trouble."

About 50 people, mostly gay and lesbian couples, gathered at Piedmont Park in downtown Atlanta and kissed for about five minutes.

I love this.  Engage in the very activity the Opponent is trying to squelch, show how it doesn't harm anybody and that you're defiant, and you push the nut forward just a little bit more.

That's not a very high-level of intervention or pressure, but it's a good action.  That won't be enough for healthcare reform, sadly, so we'll need to step things up a few notches.

Right now, I'd like to see more persistent and passionate engagement with Members of Congress this month, then massive rallies in DC and nationally around Labor Day, then a nationwide "sick-in" (strike) to drive the point home.

ntodd

Covered on previous Sundays:

THE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT PROTEST AND PERSUASION  

1. Public Speeches
2. Letters of opposition or support
5. Declarations of indictment and intention
6. Group or mass petitions
8. Banners, posters, and displayed communications
9. Leaflets, pamphlets, and books
10. Newspapers and journals
11. Records, radio, and television
14. Mock awards
15. Group lobbying
18. Displays of flags and symbolic colors
19. Wearing of symbols
21. Delivering symbolic objects
22. Protest disrobings
23. Destruction of own property
25. Displays of portraits26. Paint as protest
30. Rude gestures
31. "Haunting" officials
32. Taunting officials
33. Fraternization
34. Vigils
35. Humorous skits and pranks
37. Singing
38. Marches
44. Mock funerals
45. Demonstrative funerals.
50. Teach-ins
52. Silence
53. Renouncing honors
54. Turning one's back.
55. Social boycott

THE METHODS OF SOCIAL NONCOOPERATION

57. Lysistratic nonaction
61. Boycott of social affairs
62. Student strike
65. Stay-at-home
66. Total personal noncooperation

THE METHODS OF ECONOMIC NONCOOPERATION

71. Consumers' boycott
86. Withdrawal of bank deposits
88. Refusal to pay debts or interest
90. Revenue refusal
91. Refusal of a government's money
97. Protest strike
112. Reporting "sick" (sick-in)
113. Strike by resignation
117. General strike
118. Hartal

THE METHODS OF POLITICAL NONCOOPERATION

120. Withholding or withdrawal of allegiance
122. Literature and speeches advocating resistance
124. Boycott of elections
135. Popular nonobedience
137. Refusal of an assemblage or meeting to disperse
140. Hiding, escape, and false identities
147. Deliberate inefficiency and selective noncooperation by enforcement agents
148. Mutiny
150. Noncooperation by constituent governmental units

THE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT INTERVENTION

158. Self-exposure to the elements
159. The fast: a) Fast of moral pressure; b) Hunger strike; c) Satyagrahic fast
160. Reverse trial
162. Sit-in
164. Ride-in
170. Nonviolent invasion
171. Nonviolent interjection
173. Nonviolent occupation
174. Establishing new social patterns
177. Speak-in
178. Guerrilla theater
179. Alternative social institutions
180. Alternative communication system
189. Selective patronage
193. Overloading of administrative systems
195. Seeking imprisonment
196. Civil disobedience of "neutral" laws
198: Dual sovereignty and parallel government.