No, I do not "Want to become a 99% trainer?"

An email with the following text was delivered to me that other day:

Dear MoveOn member,

Inspired by the everyday heroes of Occupy Wall Street, this spring people everywhere are getting ready for a surge of action to confront the 1%.

To prepare, dozens of groups from across the progressive movement are starting with an unprecedented and ambitious goal for the 99% Spring: to train 100,000 people in nonviolent direct action, in the spirit of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks.

I say no.

There was a time I had some hopes that moveon.org might prove an effective advocate for policies I support, that it would use its resources to effectively support ideas and candidates with policies I share, and most importantly, actually spend time educating and building a constituency for these ideas.

Say what you like about the reactionaries, they have spent the last 30 years do these things. They have

• Used mass media to explain their theories, and why they are better.
  
• Popularized goals and objects and made them part of the political discussion through poltical organizing and outreach.
  
• Created a cadre of individuals who are willing to take on public office at all levels of govenment to implement their policies.
  
• Created a core group of constituencies who are loyal to their cause -- even against their own interested.

Let us put that another way, they have play practical electoral politics effectively.  In the course of this they have created a separate reactionary nationalism, which while at odds with the views of many, has no counter balance.

Now moveon.org wants me to devote resources to 'confront the 1%'.  One can only assume they mean more 'grassroots organizing',  'consensus planning', and  'occupation'. That is to say more feel good politics.

We need to organize and motivate large numbers of people, get them to the polls, provide them with candidates who not only support our goals but have an understanding of how to do that.

Whatever their spirit, Gandhi, King, and Parks were also savvy operators.  They built coalitions, created defining symbols and messages, used media, and changed the behaviors of large numbers of people.


In a recent break of the tradition of preaching to the choir, moveon.org actually made a half way decent add designed to create a wedge with GOP voters.  Now,it needs to create adds explaining why taxing the rich is a good job creation strategy, why anti-union laws depress all wages and kill jobs, and I could go on and on.

They point is to sell our ideas clearly and simply -- which is doable with out deceit  -- and use our resources to counter the strength of the reactionaries.

The first obligation of a political movement is to obtain power.  Nothing else matters if that is not obtained.

Spend money where it will work, punish political figures who have betrayed us, make the movement into a base.

But no, moveon.org wants protest leaders.  There is a simple reason why Republican fear their base, and Democrats have contempt for their.

Violence Works

The most missed object lesson about the Shirley Sherrod business is that in this country, at this time, violence works.

Or more specifically, reactionary violence.

We have seen how the Oklahoma bombing and the suicide attack on a Texas IRS building have, in the end, been adopted as "regrettable but needed," by the reactionaries in Congress. They have been effective rallying points.

The use of borderline armed propaganda last summer during town halls, coupled with implicit and explicit threats of violence, enabled the formation of the reactionary block known as the Tea Party.

The use of, what my father used to call, verbal violence has been established, defined, and implemented as policy of elected political the right (see Newt Gingrich's 1996 GOPAC Memo ), and by the main reactionary media (Fox, Limbaugh, etc).

And it works.  There is no countervailing force from the other side.  There are no armed progressives protesting outside of reactionary political events -- "we reject violence" is the riff you are more likely to here, no militias of our own,  there is no coordinated use of language to counter attack -- hammering home the point, and the reaction to verbal or threatened violence is to 1) wring hands, and 2) duck and cover.

In general, the violence has worked to cow any official progressive leadership.  And behavior that is rewarded is reinforce, that which is not is extinguished.

This time, with Shirley Sherrod, the truth got lucky.

As luck is the residue of design, the rest of us may not be so lucky in the future.  And that being the case, a logic of deterrence and the needs of the republic may require -- at the very least politically -- that both sides are armed.

Missed Opportunity

I have often said that I would like to be an evil henchman when I grow up.

Here is an example of that sort of thinking.

The Obama administration has missed a wonderful opportunity to take lemons and make lemonade -- that is to bash the Republicans -- on immigration.

He should not have sent the National Guard down there, nor taken any other action.

Instead, he should have said he was carrying out the policy of Congress and the legacy of the Bush administration -- which is correct practice -- pending a new immigration bill.

Then Obama could, "I would like to add these National Guard and other changes to secure the boarder, but the Republicans are having a fit of pique.  It seems that by trying to increase the priority of the immigration reform, over the energy bill, some members of the opposition such as Lindsey Graham have had their feelings hurt. Well too bad, we need the reform, and they should help, so I can beef up things on the boarder."

It has the advantage of being largely true.

MoveOn.Org Seattle Council Meeting

Following attending a MoveOn.org community forum, I attended a MoveOn Council meeting.

In theory, the Councils are "MoveOn members who work together locally to organize MoveOn events".  This is  supposed to be sort  of a combination focus group, and core membership team. It is also supposed "a great way to meet other MoveOn members", as I fall into the "I love mankind, it is people I can't stand," school of politics, I find the latter something of a chore.

The issue that we are supposed to be rallying  to challenge one out-of-control corporations, most specifically "person hood" of corporations.  

The genesis of this focus was, of course, a reaction to the Citizen's United v FEC and Davis v. Federal Election Commission, decision.

There was a lot of talk about "participation" being the theory behind their efforts -- which was sort of disappointing as that isn't a political theory.  I suppose I am old fashioned, but I really think that a political theory is needed in a political movement...and that participation should be organized by working with people who accept most of the theory.

I was, as usual, a  something of a contrarian. Specifically, before we go forward fixing the corporate establishment, I wanted to know what they meant by  "corporation".  I assume they meant the joint stock/limited liability companies where the stock holders don't have much control.

At one level, I think that this is a correct understanding and what really needs to be address.  However, the issue was discussed mainly in terms of "getting money our of politics." This may be useful, but does not go as far as I would like.

What we are talking about is means of organizing and governing economic organizations on an an on going basis.

I know that there is some serious thinking about how to define and manage this sort of corporation, but I personally am not really familiar with more than some main currents.  I had hoped when I asked what was meant by a corporation I might get an answer.

Similarly, I really wanted to get a better answer to the question of the theory behind the movement.

It may make me sound like someone from working on the Popular Front in the 1930', but I think that actually addressing the theory of state and economy we plan to be working with (first defining a theory and then getting assent or acceptance from participants)  makes politics actually effective.  Frankly for all their loopiness the right wing does have a theory.

The upshot of the meeting to organize calling parties to get Sen. Patty Murray to sign on to the Fair Elections Now Act.  Worthwhile I suppose, but considering that Obama opted out of the campaign finance for president, probably largely irrelevant.

It was all a bit disappointing, but not surprising. There may be a kernel of a new party -- and I say that rather than movement, because parties govern -- but there is also a lot of the old chaff.  A lot of feeling and not much thinking. 

But as they say in bad magazine articles, time will tell.