In her interview in the Fall 2012 issue of Tikkun magazine, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein predicted Obama’s betrayal of the interests of poor and working people (the “middle class”) which she now documents in her analysis of “the compromise” between Obama and the Republicans which was worked out as the alternative to “the fiscal cliff” two weeks ago: “The Real Obama Emerges Again.”
“Obama better than Romney?” In regard to the economic interests of the poor and working class, almost certainly. But for those spiritual progressives who voted for Obama (and our information leads us to believe that most did) the ethical question that emerges is: “knowing who he was after close to four years in office, and choosing to vote for him rather than a protest candidate (even in states where the election wasn’t close), what level of responsibility do we have for the programs he is now enacting when they hurt the poor and the most vulnerable in our society, when he continues to support drone killings around the world, when he refuses to push for a carbon tax or other measures appropriate to saving the planet, when he continues to support the jailing of people who use marijuana, when he continues…. (well, you can add your own here)?”
If we voted for him, then isn’t there a very strong responsibility to confront him over policies that seem to favor America’s wealthy and their corporate empires? And if we accept this, and we still don’t find time to create a local chapter of the Network of Spiritual Progressives or some other mechanism of sensible non-violent action, what is our level of collaboration with evil policies if only by having empowered them by reelecting him? Can we separate our responsibility to defend him, when he draws irrational (and probably racist-motivated) attacks from the Right, from our responsibility to confront him and the Democrats who support his approach when they confirm policies that seem tone-deaf to the suffering of so many Americans who have been deeply hurt by the workings of the global and local capitalist economy over the course of the past few years?”
We are not answering the question — only posing it. As always, the articles we publish and post do not necessarily reflect the position of Tikkun or the Network of Spiritual Progressives — but they do represent a position with which spiritual progressives should engage, if only to challenge them!
Many have complained about the negativity of the left. I am not so negative that I don’t hope for the President Obama to good things. More importantly, I’m not so negative that I don’t think we can change this country and the world by organizing “sensible non-violent action.” Indeed, the time is ripe to do so. (Those outside the NSP would do well to remember people’s need to be inspired on a level that transcends the purely economistic.)
It is not pessimistic or overly negative to strongly doubt that this president and government will do anything significant to remedy inequality unless heavily pressured to do so by a well organized social movement. It is not overly negative to be “realistic” or even cynical about what this government will do on it’s own based on it’s past record (e.g., see Dean Baker: The Deficit Hawks: When Did They Stop Being Wrong About the Economy?…http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/the-deficit-hawks-when-did-they-stop-being-wrong-about-the-economy ). Not if we still maintain our aspirations for greater possibilities based on empowering social action.
I’m not naive. I know such a movement needs much more strength and orgnization than currently exists. But as we’ve seen the last two years in more than one place, this can start to happen more quickly than we sometimes think. What we haven’t seen yet is staying power. But that can still happen if we work at it. Whether or not such a movement succeeds in pushin this president to do what’s necessary, or accumulatest strength quickly enough to do so, it could still succeed in creating demand for a leader that could eventually do more (Elizabeth Warren?). Or, more to the point, it could eventually become strong enough above and beyond the government to bring the change we need.
I’m for “realism” about what will happen if we don’t get organized, but for embracing the “possibility of possibility” if we do.
Sorry about the typos. I was rushing to catch a screening of Let Fury Have the Hour, which I recommend, especially to the artists (musical and otherwise)….
http://www.letfuryhavethehour.com/aboutthefilm
like reading the journal and accept that the travel you are on will make a real significant journey toward the condition of others. Give thanks!
From a description of Peter Camejo:”Breaking the Two-Party System ”
If there’s a unifying thread in the life of Peter Camejo, it’s his hostility to the big business two-party system. The title of his memoir, North Star, comes from the newspaper of the Liberty Party, an abolitionist party that fought the previous Democrat/Whig two-party system. The book also includes a well-written appendix on the origins of the modern two-party system and the various attempts to break it.
Socialist Alternative and Justice newspaper calls for the establishment of a mass party based on the working class, drawing together workers, young people, and activists from workplace, community, civil rights, environmental, and antiwar campaigns, to provide a fighting, political alternative to the pro-big business parties. This is not merely an electoral aim but must be linked to building struggle and a mass movement.
….
Nonetheless Camejo was a tireless fighter against big business until the end. Even without a worked-out program, his electoral work with Nader represented a step in the right direction towards independence from the parties of big business. He also demonstrated an admirable perseverance against pressures from those parties, from the antiwar movement to the Nader campaign.
Under the two-party system, workers, young people, immigrants, the anti-war movement, environmental and gay rights movements, are effectively silenced. Camejo believed in the need to provide working people with a voice. Armed with the ideas of Marxism and the Committee for a Workers’ international (CWI), that’s what we must continue to do.