Power. Is it good? Is it bad? Does it corrupt? Who really has it today? Should it be cultivated or avoided? Who is powerful? Are any of us truly powerless? What can be done to bring "power to the people?" At the same time, how do we ensure that this power is used for the good of all and not the tyranny of the majority or the short-run selfish interests of this generation of humans?

So many questions arise about the concept of "power," and so many ambivalences we hear expressed that we thought it would be good to explore some of these issues here in the Peaceworks Monitor. In many ways, we've just scratched the surface, but we hope these articles will both aid you, the reader, in understanding current power relationships, as well as spark your thinking on some of the underlying questions.

While we explore concepts of power, we can't allow ourselves to forget the many urgent issues that need to be addressed.

Peaceworks and our allies need your participation in our work to end the Iraq War, to avoid a war with Iran and to more generally challenge U.S. imperialism and militarism. In response to AmerenUE's announcement that they are considering building a new nuclear plant in Callaway County, we've also begun a new campaign to reach our fellow citizens on this question, while we continue to promote sustainability in energy choices and in general.

Our success in these endeavors will largely be a function of participation. While some have power and the ability to control outcomes based upon their wealth or the political connections this buys, whatever grassroots power groups like Peaceworks generate is a function of being on the side of just outcomes and being able to mobilize a community of concern. The essential ingredient is YOU.
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By Mark Haim

Until recently, many geographically challenged Americans were without a clue. Now, most know that Iraq is the oil-rich country that the Bush administration illegally invaded three years ago, justifying this on the basis of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, and Iran is the oil-rich country that they are currently rattling sabers at, based upon the potential that they may soon acquire such weapons.

Most folks know that both are somewhere "over there" in the Middle East, and both are predominantly Muslim, but beyond that, many are rather unaware of the history and politics of these two critical countries.

For those still struggling to differentiate, Iraq is the land between the rivers (Tigris & Euphrates) known historically as Mesopotamia, and earlier as the location of Babylon and earlier still Sumeria. It is a country that was constituted in modern times, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, as a British-administered dependency, and a land ruled for most of the past four decades by the Baathist Party of Saddam Hussein.

Iraq is a country that served as a U.S. ally during the 1980s, a period in which our government supported Saddam Hussein's worst atrocities, and then become an official enemy in 1990. The first Bush administration refused to negotiate an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, and instead launched a punishing war against Iraq. They followed this with brutal sanctions that were kept in effect for 12 years by Republicans and Democrats alike. Sanctions were responsible for the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Iraq is also the country that the United States has occupied with more than 100,000 troops since invading in March of 2003. It's the one where approximately 2,300 GIs have died, 17,000 GIs have been wounded in combat, and upwards of 100,000 Iraqis have died since the Americans invaded.

It's a predominantly Arab country, with more Shias than Sunnis, and a significant number of non-Arab Kurds. These sectarian and ethnic groups are struggling for political position at the same time that the United States is attempting to move forward an agenda that includes establishing a permanent U.S. military presence and integrating Iraq into the global economy in ways that allow transnational capital profitable access and ensure significant U.S. control of Iraq's vast oil resources.

As many readers know, Peaceworks has opposed the invasion, the occupation and the ongoing Iraq War. We call for withdrawing U.S. and other occupying forces and bringing in peacekeepers, primarily from Muslim nations and under U.N. command, to help facilitate a rapid transition to Iraqi self-rule. We also support renouncing any U.S. claim on bases in Iraq and repealing all the laws illegally put in place by Paul Bremer and the occupation government, which include privatizing the Iraqi economy and establishing a system of taxes, tariffs and rules favorable to foreign control of Iraq's economy. Finally, we believe that, given the harm our invasion has caused, the United States is responsible for funding Iraq's reconstruction. This work should be done by Iraqis, however, not by Bechtel, Fluor and other U.S. corporations.

If you don't remember reading much about Iran in your history books, it's probably because up until the 1930s, this country was called Persia. While it is a Muslim country (overwhelmingly Shia), Iranians are not Arabs, but rather an Indo-European people. Iran has modest Arab, Kurd and Azeri minorities, but, unlike Iraq, is relatively homogenous ethnically. It is also nearly three times as large as Iraq in population and almost four times the size in area.

Iran was, until the middle of the twentieth century, within the British sphere of influence, with its vast oil resources controlled by British Petroleum. When a nationalist government under Mohammed Mossadeq was democratically elected in 1951, it began the process of nationalizing Iran's oil. The Brits called upon the United States for help, and in 1953 the CIA staged its first coup in Operation Ajax, bringing down the democratic government and putting in its place the brutal regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. For the next 25 years, Iran was ruled with an iron fist. Our government armed the Shah's military and trained SAVAK, his secret police, whose brutal repression is legendary.

By the late 1970s, the Iranian people had had it with the Shah, and, by extension, with his imperial sponsors in the West. The revolution, which began in late 1978, was backed by broad elements of Iranian society. Soon, however, power was consolidated by the theocratic establishment under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. When students seized the U.S. Embassy in 1979, they knew they were going into a "den of spies." It was, in fact, in the basement of that very embassy that the 1953 coup was plotted, although this was seldom, if ever, reported in the American media.

Iran's enmity toward our country is in part ideological. The fundamentalist Shia leadership rejects Western values, including materialism and sexual liberation. It is in part based upon resentment built up over decades of living under repressive British and U.S.-sponsored governments that turned over large portions of the nation's wealth to foreign corporations. It is in part because of support by our government for the Iraqis during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, as well as the ongoing efforts of the United States and its European allies to exercise a controlling role in the Persian Gulf region. The American tilt in favor of Israeli expansionism at the expense of the Palestinians is also on the minds of almost all Muslims, Iranians included.

While an extreme fundamentalist, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected Iran's president last summer, and his bombastic comments have aroused ire around the world, he does not speak for all Iranians. Iran's society is complex and includes many who oppose the anti-Western fundamentalist attitudes of the mullahs. On the other hand, even most secular Iranians are nationalists and are not enamored with the projection of U.S. power in their region.

As we go to press, the United States and its European allies are pressing for the Iranians to abandon their uranium enrichment program, which the Iranians say is for peaceful purposes and allowed under international law. The Americans and Europeans claim that Tehran is working on getting the bomb. While pursuing diplomacy, many believe that this is a prelude to, at the very least, an attack on Iran's nuclear installations, if not a full-scale invasion.

So what, you may ask, is the position of Peaceworks on this? Clearly, we don't want our government to go to war with Iran. We also don't want the Iranians to acquire nuclear weapons. We encourage you to consider the following:

1. Iran is correct that under the Non-Proliferation Treaty they are allowed to develop enrichment capabilities. We see this as a flaw in the NPT, which is designed to prevent weapons proliferation while promoting the spread of nuclear power, an inherently contradictory set of goals.
2. While we don't want a nuclear-armed Iran, we also don't want a nuclear-armed Russia, China, Britain, Israel, United States, etc. The NPT requires those states without nukes to eschew acquiring them, but is also requires those states with nukes to eliminate their arsenals. This treaty, which the United States signed in 1969, is one our government is constantly insisting others live up to, but consistently refuses to itself.
3. We do not believe that the Iranians only want uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes, but we also must acknowledge the role our government has played in giving Iran incentives to pursue these hellish weapons. It is not only America's hypocrisy regarding its own vast arsenal, and not only the fact that we turn a blind eye to Iran's regional rival Israel's hundreds of nukes, it is also the way we treat countries without these weapons. Consider that when George W. Bush gave his "Axis of Evil" speech in January 2002, he read the riot act for three countries, North Korea, Iraq and Iran. It is only Iraq, which had absolutely no WMD capacity that the United States attacked, however. North Korea, which appears to actually have nuclear bombs, has been pursued diplomatically, while Iran, which is still by all accounts years away from the bomb, is now facing the threat of an attack. Could the message be clearer? If you want security, get some nukes.

So, our nation must decide, is our policy to deny others nuclear capabilities so the United States can remain dominant and control others, or is it our policy to work to eliminate the threat of nuclear war by pursuing mutual, verifiable and universal nuclear disarmament? The former is clearly unworkable over the long haul. Only by committing our nation to the path of disarming can we create the sort of international climate conducive to cooperation and the creation of mutual trust.

As long as our government remains a hegemonic power that refuses to acknowledge the legitimate rights and needs of all peoples, democratic elections will tend to put in power the likes of Ahmadinejad or Hamas, and the violence of the powerful will be responded to by the violence of the weak, which is terrorism.

Moreover, if the United States launches air strikes on Iran, our nation will be sowing the seeds of far greater and more widespread violence. Bush's wars have been making enemies at a faster pace than at any time in recent memory. Not since the horrors of the U.S. onslaught on Indochina in the 1960s has our nation been so universally reviled. An attack on Iran would exacerbate this exponentially.

If we find the notion of a nuclear-armed Iran unacceptable, we must consider how unacceptable a nuclear-armed United States or Israel must seem to others. Today, there are eight or nine nuclear weapons states. If we continue down the road we are on, how many will there be 10 or 20 years from now? Perhaps it's time we rethink our assumptions regarding the utility and necessity of nuclear weapons, as well as our understanding of our nation's role in the world.
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By Mark Haim

Many Missourians are disconcerted about the prospect of AmerenUE building a new nuclear fission reactor at the site of Missouri's sole operating nuclear power plant in Callaway County. Many others have yet to hear about this ill-conceived proposal. The new Missourians for Safe Energy, a Peaceworks educational project, is determined to rectify this.

It is important to note that at this point Ameren has simply said that they are considering this option. It is by no means a concrete plan, let alone a "done deal." We in Peaceworks believe this is the time to act to make sure that this goes no further. Once the company commits to the project, it would be much harder to stop it. Broad public opposition expressed in the political realm is needed, and needed now. All of us can play a role in nipping this in the bud.

Nuclear power is an unforgiving technology, the consequences of whose operation can be disastrous. We oppose nuclear power for a constellation of related reasons including: the unsolved (perhaps unsolvable) nuclear waste problem; the possibility of catastrophic accidents; the fact that nuclear plants routinely release radiation into the air and water (as does every step in the nuclear fuel stream including mining, milling, conversion, enrichment, etc.); the fact that nuclear plants, on-site nuclear waste storage facilities and nuclear transport all make very inviting targets for terrorists; the Siamese Twin-like connection of nuclear power and nuclear weapons, which both require the same technologies (enrichment and reprocessing) and the same know how; and the fact that a fully developed nuclear energy-based economy would, due to the high risks of terror, sabotage &/or diversion of nuclear materials, require restrictions on civil liberties incompatible with a democratic society.

Moreover, nuclear power is horribly expensive and requires huge taxpayer subsidies. The limited funds we have to invest in energy technologies would be much more productively spent on efficiency improvements and renewable technologies like wind and solar power. Peaceworks will be working on several tracks simultaneously to generate opposition to the nuclear power option and public support for safer, more sustainable alternatives. In December of 2005 we became intervenors in a Missouri Public Service Commission proceeding in which AmerenUE is required to show how much of their customers demand for electricity can be met by conservation and efficiency improvements. Our first goal in this Integrated Resource Plan proceeding is to get full public disclosure of this information, which Ameren has declared proprietary. Our second goal is to make sure that efficiency's potential, which utilities often low-ball, is accorded its proper place in a least-cost, rapidly employable strategy.

We are also pursuing a grassroots public education strategy. We have revived the name Missourians for Safe Energy. MSE was the leading group working on this issue during the late 1970s when Union Electric, Ameren's predecessor, was attempting to build two nuclear power plants at Callaway. Unit I was completed and went on-line in 1984. Unit II was cancelled.

Our MSE grassroots effort will initially include:

1. Public informational programs, possibly bringing speakers to Columbia
2. A teach-in for activists (scheduled for Sunday, April 9. Contact us for details.)
3. Outreach at community events, especially at Earth Day (April 23)
4. Gearing up a speakers bureau to speak to community groups, opinion leaders, politicians, editorial boards, etc.
5. Publication and distribution of information on the nuclear power issue (including an issue of the Peaceworks Monitor on this subject later this year)
6. Encouraging well-informed anti-nuclear letters to newspapers, to public officials and to candidates for office.

We would very much welcome your ideas, participation and support of these efforts. If you are interested in any aspect of our work on this, please contact us.
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If you are already a member of Mid-Missouri Peaceworks, we thank you for your support. If you're a member who has not yet renewed for 2006, we hope you'll take the opportunity to do so today.

We're writing this note primarily to those of you who receive the Monitor but are not members. Please take a minute to consider a request:

Peaceworks is a membership organization. It is the support of upwards of 500 families or individuals in the mid-Missouri area that allows us to continue our critical work for peace, justice and sustainability. If you appreciate the importance of this work, we invite you to become a member.

Peaceworks has been active at the grassroots since our founding in 1982. Our focus has always been on making social change through empowered citizen activism. Times like these call for the kind of people-to-people organizing, outreach and education that Peaceworks does.

Our priorities today are mobilizing effective opposition to the ongoing Iraq War, calling into question the flawed logic of the so-called "war on terror," working to promote cultural transformation (from consumerist to citizenship-based), and promoting a sustainable energy future, while working to oppose Callaway or any new nuclear power plants being built.

We organize major peace demonstrations and big events such as Columbia's Earth Day Festival and the Sustainable Living Fair, but the real key to our work is that we keep plugging, day-in-and-day-out, year-round, and year after year. We keep the Peace Nook open seven days a week as a community resource center. We are out each Wednesday afternoon standing for peace at Broadway and Providence. We organize classes, informational programs, petition drives, yard signs, campaigns and so much more.

Peaceworks is a low-budget organization. We rely primarily on volunteers to make things happen. We send e-mails out regularly to more than 2,500 people in the mid-Missouri area. The Monitor goes out by mail to more than 6,000 households. We serve as an antidote to the politics of fear, conformity and pessimism. Our vision is one filled with hope for a future that works for all. We can only advance this vision if you and other good people pitch in, get involved and lend a hand financially.

Unlike many groups that have a required amount to be a member, Peaceworks recognizes that everyone's situation is unique. Thus, we ask each of you to give as generously as you can, whether that's $15 or $1,500. We hope that many of you will give in the $50-100 range, as the cost of everything we do keeps going up, and we really need your support to make sure the bills are paid. We also encourage you to consider a monthly pledge, which is really easy if it's put on your credit card. We urge you not to put this aside. Please send what you can today. We thank you in advance.

Please offer us your support.


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By Mark Haim

Power - what is it? Is it something exerted over others? Something that allows one to control her or his own destiny? Is it something shared or something held to the exclusion of and at the expense of others? Actually, it is all these things and more.

The imprecision of our language does not distinguish, without the use of modifiers, the power that some hold to control others' destinies-what many now call "power over"-from the variety that connotes the ability to control one's own life and situation, "self-determining power." Likewise, it takes another modifier, "shared," to communicate the sort of power that is co-equally and collectively exercised by any grouping of people-from a couple, to a household, to a community-operating on egalitarian principles and sharing control of their common situation.

The primary mindset of our culture is to view power as the ability to exercise control over others. This worldview has been labeled "Dominator Culture" by feminist scholar Riane Eisler, among others. The top-down power relationships-the ones that fit the Merriam-Webster definition, "possession of control, authority, or influence over others"-are anathema to many progressives.

Caught up in a general rejection of the dysfunctional and destructive culture that makes war on people and the environment, many of us fail to differentiate between these forms of power and tend to see all who seek power as control freaks or power-hungry individuals. This is reductionist. It fails to recognize that positive pursuits of power are not just possible but also necessary if we are to change the existing order and chart a course toward a peaceful, sustainable future.

Many of us experience feelings of powerlessness. These come in many shapes and sizes. We might feel controlled by our parents, our spouses or even our kids. We might find that working in a hierarchical business or institution puts control of our time and energy in the hands of a boss, or more broadly, a bureaucracy. We might similarly feel trapped by our financial circumstances, enslaved by our debts and obligations and forced to trade our time for money doing things we neither enjoy nor believe in. On a societal level, we might feel powerless to end the Iraq War, eliminate nuclear weapons, stop global warming, end mass starvation or to effectively address countless other tragic, pressing concerns.

Desiring to exercise control over our personal destinies is healthy, as long as that desire is balanced with a recognition of the need to pursue the common good. For example, it is wonderful to find meaningful, rewarding work of the sort that one would enjoy doing even if one had no need for money. On the other hand, if one's preferences are warped in such a fashion, for example, that one enjoys being a hit man or takes great pleasure in driving around on rainy nights with a tanker truck of toxic waste allowing its contents to pour out in the freeway, one's power to do what one chooses impacts directly and obviously on others' rights to life and health.

While these are extreme examples that we all can agree cannot be accepted as legitimate personal choices, there are other areas that are in dispute. Some people wish to exercise societal control over aspects of our lives that most progressives believe are rightly the domain of empowered personal choice. The rights to engage in homosexual sex, or display their same-sex affection publicly, to control one's own reproductive decisions or to choose if, and how, one would alter one's consciousness are all battlegrounds in which some in power-both in government and in religious institutions-attempt to exert their influence. When they succeed, they leave individuals disempowered.

On the other hand, there are many examples of actions nowhere near as egregious as dumping toxic waste on the road, yet clearly harmful, that raise questions. For example, should personal empowerment include total freedom over consumption decisions? Should there be any restrictions on how big and fuel inefficient cars and SUVs are allowed to get? What about smoking in public places or filling the landfill with reusable and recyclable stuff?

We are constantly battling over where power legitimately resides with each individual and where with society as a whole. As progressives, it seems to me that we should promote responsible personal freedom, supporting civil liberties and the decriminalization of all victimless crimes, while insisting that reasonable standards be applied to assure that the rights and needs of others, the Earth and future generations are not trampled.

Many would argue that, in democratic societies, political action in all forms is a means of collective action for shared empowerment. Indeed, parties, factions, large corporations, trade associations, unions, churches and interest groups jockey for position in electoral, legislative and regulatory arenas. Groups, some stronger, some weaker, each bring their resources and the allies they can enlist to the fray, with win-lose outcomes. Those who are more powerful, or more agile strategists, come out the winners, while others fail to achieve their ends. Sometimes there are compromises, and more interests are represented in the outcome, but the general pattern is for competing interests to work to attain their own goals at the expense of others.

Among progressives, so-called "realists" will argue that this is the way the game is played; the stakes are too high not to play, so progressives must work to build organizations with political muscle. This includes groups representing labor, peace, environmental, feminist, civil rights, LGBT and many other constituencies. Most work with a blend of grassroots mobilization and fundraising to influence elections, to lobby, etc.

Another perspective is that even when progressives represent the interests of the majority (We'd like to think this is most or even all of the time.), rather than using the win-lose political process of exercising power over others, we'd do better to work for consensual outcomes that are win-win. In the sort of future that many of us would like to create, social reality would be non-coercive, power would be more equally distributed and decisions would be made through processes that involve hearing and accommodating the perspectives of all participants as much as possible.

These advocates recognize that our contemporary culture is far from this Partnership Model, which involves shared agency, rather than hierarchical, top-down control. They point out that there have been earlier civilizations that were more based upon partnership than domination. They also demonstrate that Dominator Cultures are more authoritarian, more sexist, more alienated and more violent, both in terms of war-making, as well as in interpersonal relations. Continued use of the power-over model, they say, is likely to lead to more deadly and destructive wars and ever-greater environmental degradation. The Dominator Paradigm is a very real threat to our survival.

The Partnership Model is most easily applied in small to medium-sized groups, from couples and families to collectives, grassroots groups and intentional communities. It is always a challenge for those of us who've grown up in a competitive and control-oriented world to adopt a more cooperative style of social organization. It is perhaps easiest when there is a fairly high degree of explicit agreement over basic values and a commitment to work at effective communication. We certainly don't come close to these conditions in the contemporary macro-political realm.

Are the pursuit of political victories within the contemporary system and attempts to build a Partnership-based set of social relations mutually exclusive? Personally, I don't think so. I believe that we progressives must articulate a politics of inclusion. We can make it clear that we hold no personal animus for our fellow human beings who happen to hold different beliefs or are working for different ends. We must operate openly, without the use of dirty tricks or negative attacks. Rather we can demonstrate that our objectives are not sought for our personal benefit to the detriment of others. While we won't win all to our banner, we can start to change the tenor of politics.

It is essential that we act to, as Gandhi put it, "become the change you wish to see in the world." This portion of our work for social change involves building the new, visionary, power-sharing relationships and institutions. At the same time, we must stand up to defend the rights of all from being trampled by those with power over others. This includes challenging the "right" of anyone to take actions destructive to others or the Earth.

Put in terms of a concrete example, if a utility, say AmerenUE, decides to build a new nuclear power plant, what can we do? We could work to build a broad consensus that this is a bad choice by educating our fellow citizens as to the negative impacts of these dangerous, expensive, waste-producing monsters, and as to the availability of other, much more attractive options. We can even work to get as many energy consumers as possible to switch to safe, renewable energy sources.

To achieve a complete consensus, however, might be impossible, or it might take far longer than it does to bring on-line a new plant. To defend our collective rights to a clean environment and safe energy, we activists must seek to empower ourselves. This can be done through reaching decision makers on the utility's governing board, in regulatory agencies or in the legislature. Ultimately, the issue can even be taken to the voters by the initiative process.

While our preference would be not to coerce Ameren or anyone else, we would rather have the collective power to stop a nuke from being built, a war from going forward, globalization policies that drive farmers off their land from being put in place, etc., than to allow these sorts of destructive acts to be committed. This said, when we act in the common interest, we must do so in a spirit of fellowship and respect, even for those who seem to have compromised their humanity by their inhumane acts. Rather than regarding the "other" as enemy, to be opposed and defeated, we must learn to regard those on the other side of issues as fellow humans, potential allies, albeit somewhat-perhaps at the moment very-misguided.

Those of us who are sensitive to how those with power, of the power-over variety, have used it to the profound detriment of humanity, past, present and future, are often hesitant to accept the mantle of power. We recognize that there is a danger that in the process we will become what we oppose. It is critical, however, that we not allow our awareness of this danger to blind us to the moral bankruptcy of failing to use what power we do have for good. If done selflessly and transparently, the collective exercise of power for the common good is both necessary and not inconsistent with our work to create a culture of shared power based upon cooperation, mutual aid and partnership.
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By Keith Brekhus & Mark Haim

An old joke ends with the punch line "for the rich the birds sing," and indeed, we all recognize that the well heeled often seem to have it all. In contemporary capitalist societies such as the United States, class plays a key role in determining one's position and power, with race and gender serving as important subtexts for the class narrative.

While this is so obvious that one might wonder why we bother to point it out, what the reader might not have considered is that today this is widely accepted as a given; normal, natural or just a reflection of human nature. Up until the past generation, however, there were broad-based movements throughout the world to eliminate this hierarchical ordering of society. Millions participated in organizations aiming to create either classless societies or at least a leveling that would assure everyone's basic needs were adequately met and no one had far more than their fair share.

Today we find instead an ever greater skewing of the wealth/power spectrum, as the majority of our society's assets are becoming concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. While opponents of specific measures, such as the repeal of the estate tax or the massive tax cuts for the richest of our citizens, may raise protests over these measures, questioning if, with massive deficits, we can afford them, few are the voices who call for a general overhaul of our tax codes to make them more, not less, progressive. And almost no organized groups, certainly not the Democratic Party or the AFL-CIO, are presenting a vision of society that is significantly more cooperative and egalitarian.

Rather, the best so-called "progressive" alternatives given serious consideration would continue the established pattern of allowing a powerful elite to continue to accrue ever-greater wealth and power. They would leave the majority of our population struggling under tenuous conditions to keep their situation from getting worse. If you think we exaggerate, consider the following.

Over the past two decades, the wealthiest one percent of Americans (with an average income more than 1.1 million dollars) saw their after tax income (adjusted for inflation) soar more than 150 percent, while the lowest fifth of households saw their real incomes decline. The middle class saw their pay stagnate.

In order to make ends meet, working class and middle class Americans are working longer and longer hours or taking on more household consumer debt. For many families, the past decade has been marked by a loss of personal savings and the corresponding growth of consumer debt. The U.S. savings rate has dropped into negative territory for the first time since the Great Depression, and consumer debt is roughly two trillion dollars. Debt as a percentage of income is at an all-time high. Home equity borrowing has been so extensive that homeowners have let their equity fall to the lowest levels on record since the first modern mortgages of the 1930s, according to the Federal Reserve. Last year saw more than two million bankruptcies or nearly one in every 50 American households.

Today, working Americans are fiscally unprepared to endure even brief periods of economic downturn or unemployment. Millions of families have such meager personal savings that even a month or two without work would be financially crippling, forcing them to assume even greater consumer debt, or to take new jobs that lack job security, health insurance, retirement plans or other benefits.

Our political leaders, instead of promoting policies that will expand savings or raise the minimum wage, have opted to endorse plans that will only increase the country's economic divide between haves and have-nots. Instead of raising the minimum wage for the working poor, our leaders drop the tax on multi-million-dollar estates. While speaking the rhetoric of self-sufficiency, the politicians eliminate taxes on passive income such as inheritance, while they punish workers with loss of benefits without providing any relief for payroll taxes.

The stark contrast between the haves and have-nots was made abundantly clear last year when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. Americans saw firsthand the effects of poverty and how Americans with less wealth were left behind, as citizens with more means escaped the waters and winds of Katrina. Not since the sinking of the Titanic had water so unambiguously highlighted the cruelty of class differences in such visible life and death terms.

The hurricane brought issues of class and race to the fore and made them harder to ignore. We still live in a deeply stratified society where a select few amass obscene riches while larger numbers struggle from paycheck to paycheck just to survive. In the case of Katrina, those who couldn't afford to leave were both figuratively and literally drowning in debt, unable to escape poverty in a system that is so obsessed with dollars that it has become insensitive to human needs.

The disparities exposed by Katrina have deep-seated, historical and institutional roots While it is unlikely that public policies in the aftermath of Katrina will resolve these disparities, perhaps the inequalities laid bare by the hurricane will provide a longer-term wake-up call to those who wish to actively build a more fair and meaningful democracy in the United States.

The legacy of institutionalized racism still haunts the nation, as African American families have a net worth less than one-tenth that of white families. Blacks also find it harder to obtain home loans and harder to avoid arrest because bankers and police officers, while mostly paying heed to the myth of a colorblind society, continue to reinforce racist policies in aggregate even as they deny doing so. Similar barriers inhibit progress for Latinos, Native Americans and other people of color.

Gender discrimination still creates a glass ceiling in the workplace where women find it harder to advance. The elimination of social safety nets and welfare programs continues to exacerbate the problem of childhood poverty and intensify the feminization of poverty, whereby women and children make up the bulk of the nation's hungry, homeless and destitute.

If this weren't enough, lawmakers continue to enact regressive tax policies designed to shift the tax burden from the affluent to the working poor, furthering the country's great class divide. President Bush provides "tax relief" for those not in need of relief while social programs such as student financial aid, Medicaid and affordable housing are given the budget shaft. The U.S. Congress passes a bill to make personal bankruptcy more difficult for ordinary Americans despite their history of repeatedly bailing out mismanaged multinational corporations. At the state level, Governor Blunt and the state legislature seem bent on a similar course to enrich the affluent and bring greater hardship to the poor.

Historically, labor and social justice advocacy groups have worked to attain a larger share of the pie for working people and the unemployed. While social welfare initiatives, employment programs, progressive taxes, universal, single-payer healthcare and the like are all worthy of support, they really are not sufficient to serve as a platform for a just, sustainable society in which power is equitably distributed and the needs of all are attended to.

Rather than a bigger slice of the pie, what's needed is a whole new pie made using a different recipe. This is not to disparage those who struggle to attain a modicum of security and comfort for themselves or for others living at the margins of our often callous and uncaring culture. Rather, while saluting their work, it is to point out that a new vision is needed of the sort of future that works for all. This is one that, while assuring no one is without the basic necessities, also recognizes that the world cannot afford to have billions of people living like affluent Americans.

The vision that we must share is of a society in which our power derives from democratic participation in the critical decisions that affect each of us in our workplaces and our communities. These decisions should not be in the hands of people more wealthy and powerful than ourselves. But the answer is not for all of us to attain their riches. Rather the society at large must recognize that we need to live simply but richly, simple in our material consumption, while developing culturally rich lives with ample leisure, time for creative activities, personal relationships, and connection to nature and spiritual pursuits.

If our goal is a future that works for all and leaves an Earth restored and healthy for generations to come, the key is for us to recognize that the power that comes from having more wealth, owning property and controlling the lives and labor of others, is not a legitimate power to be strived for, but rather is a distortion of our human potential. The challenge we face in the twenty-first century is to recreate a movement for radical transformation that simultaneously recognizes the inherent worth and value of all people and respects everyone's right to assure their basic needs. We must also recognize the place of humanity within nature on a finite planet, and devise ways to see us all empowered, while not allowing that power to run roughshod over other people, other species or the lives of generations yet unborn.
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By Kim Dill

Despite its name, for the most part public relations is not about relating to the public but rather about "handling" public perceptions. When there's an oil spill or an accident at a nuclear power plant or just that someone's image needs to be cleaned up, the PR people get called. It's not just crisis management that PR is responsible for, though; in its everyday functions, the industry often uses fake news, front groups, junk science and other tricks of the trade that deliberately undermine public knowledge and hence, our democracy.

This power over our public perceptions is not accidental. Since its unofficial birth in the early 1900s, the PR industry has aimed to sell its bill of goods to the public. One of the first PR men, Ivy Lee, represented the Rockefellers among other clients. His tactics were generally ones of openness toward the media, but he counseled his clients how to shape their affairs so the public would approve.

While Lee's philosophy embraced transparency, Edward Bernays, often considered the founder of public relations, used PR as a means to manipulate and control the public. Bernays claimed "if we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind," it would be possible to "control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it …" These ideas held over to his view of society as a whole. He claimed that democracy was dangerous because it gave power to too many people who weren't smart enough to make decisions without benefit of elite oversight.

As one means of getting their message out there, PR firms become the media; or rather, the media become leaden with their output. According to the public interest group PR Watch, up to 40 percent of the television news we see every day is PR. Video news releases have become a standard tool for the PR industry to get its message across. VNRs are tight, pre-packaged bundles of "news" that often make it directly to TV newscasts with little or no editing. Media aren't required to tell viewers that they're watching industry PR, making it seem as though an industrious reporter was responsible for the story. And making it seem as though the story itself is newsworthy.

Recently, the White House came under fire for more than 20 different agencies making and sending tax-payer-funded VNRs to hundreds of local news stations around the country. The VNRs in question promoted Bush administration policies, and the Government Accountability Office called them a form of covert propaganda, which the administration denied.

When the business you represent has made errors so egregious that no one will support it, how do you dig your client out of the hole? Create your own group and make it look like it has wide citizen support! Give it a clever name that makes people think it's something other than what it is, and you've got a winner.

These "Astroturf" (fake grassroots) groups allow industries to remain behind the scenes and protect their public image while others do the public work.

One of the most visible Astroturf groups is the so-called Wise Use Movement, created in 1988 by Alan Gottlieb and Ron Arnold to challenge environmental activism and legislation. Gottlieb and Arnold are president and vice president, respectively, of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, a non-profit organization that, according to its website, promotes "individual liberty, free markets, property rights and limited government." This non-profit serves as a think tank for Wise Use ideas. They favor private ownership over the common good, deregulation over government oversight and capitalism over all else. Wise Use is funded by various industries interested in getting the environmentalists off their backs. Under the guise of a citizens' movement, they have called for opening all public lands (including wilderness areas and National Parks) to extraction, drilling in ANWR and rewriting the Endangered Species Act.

Wise Use appeals to certain segments of the population by touting private property rights and the inherent knowledge of rural people while smearing environmentalists as self-interested commies who want to impose unjust restraints on individual liberty, increase government and destroy civilization. At the center of their agenda, though, is access for businesses and people interested in making a profit off of environmental degradation.

Wise Use isn't alone, however. The tobacco industry has long used front groups as a PR tactic. The National Smokers Alliance was created in 1993 by the Burson-Marsteller PR firm in response to passage of no-smoking ordinances around the country. Within a few years of its launch, the NSA had more than three million "members," essentially unpaid lobbyists for Philip Morris and other tobacco companies, which hired Burson-Marsteller to handle its crisis.

The NSA was exposed as an industry front group in 1997, but that hasn't kept big tobacco from trying to infiltrate community boards to influence decisions on smoking ordinances or restrictions. This is usually done with board members hiding their ties to the industry.

A recent addition to the front group line-up is FishScam.com, an industry-sponsored website denouncing the facts about mercury poisoning from eating fish. Berman & Co., the public affairs firm that launched FishScam, is also responsible for the new union-bashing Center for Union Facts, the Center for Consumer Freedom (alcohol, tobacco and restaurant industry) and the Employment Policies Institute (anti-minimum wage), all front groups for industry.

And coming soon to a TV near you: The Nuclear Energy Institute will pay PR firm Hill & Knowlton $8 million to promote policies that favor nuclear power, especially the controversial plan to begin operations at Yucca Mountain, the proposed waste repository.

In science you begin with a question, a hypothesis, and using the scientific method, you determine whether that hypothesis has merit using quantitative analysis. This independent study - free of biases and other encumbrances - is what makes science "objective." In reality though, there are very few truly independent scientific inquiries. Researchers have to obtain funding from somewhere - governments, corporations, foundations, etc. - and they must get a publication to report their findings. Behind these seemingly innocuous funding entities, though, may lurk a hidden agenda.

Companies and governments sometimes pay "experts" to herald their products. Pharmaceutical companies routinely hire PR firms to promote new drugs. Doctors and other professionals get paid to write favorable reviews or to speak out for a product (Or to keep their mouths shut about unfavorable research.). Non-profit organizations get paid to allow their names to be used as endorsements on products.

Or sometimes companies bring in outside help. How many times have you heard that a product has been verified by independent labs? Or that something is third-party certified? When you follow the trail, though, you'll often find a PR firm or corporation has paid for these "independent" studies.

Of course, these tactics aren't limited to business. When George W. Bush wanted to promote the "achievements" of his No Child Left Behind Act to black families, the White House paid prominent African American talk show host Armstrong Williams $240,000 to claim it was working well. And it was recently revealed that a PR firm, not the Pentagon, wrote the administration's "plan for victory" in Iraq.

What began as a field for press agents in the entertainment arena has since blossomed into a multi-billion-dollar per year industry. All of this money pays for lots of mediocre and downright harmful ideas that the public has drummed into their heads. This deceiving of the American public does nothing to further democratic ideals; rather, it puts the power into the hands of a few wealthy corporations and politicians.

To some, this intentional manipulation seems so pervasive that they think there's no point in trying to counter it. That kind of thinking, however, will get us nowhere. The PR industry has power over much of what we see and hear, and consequently what we are likely to think, but we can claim our own power of consumers' rights and citizens' rights. If we make a concerted effort to maintain a healthy skepticism and demand accountability from the entities that use PR to manipulate the public, we can get better information and a more meaningful democracy.
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By Mark Haim

Each day we hear more bad news: melting ice caps, phytoplankton dying off, carcinogenic chemicals found in babies' umbilical cord blood, species going extinct faster than we can identify and name them, the hottest year on record, yet again, aquifers being mined dry, old growth forests cut for pulp … the list goes on and on.

We all recognize that the one planet we know of that supports life is in trouble, that the viability of the web of life is threatened, and that the source of this threat is human in nature. Yet many of us feel disempowered and see nothing that any one of us can do to turn things around. So, who does have the power to save the Earth from ecological catastrophe?

The sustainable living movement operates from a position that each of us makes a difference by our actions.

Those who choose to walk or ride bikes, rather than drive, help cut back on greenhouse gases, air pollution, etc. Those who live simply, switch to renewable energy, grow their own organic gardens, travel less, reuse or recycle everything they can, limit their number of children, etc. have a smaller ecological footprint than those who consume wantonly.

The logic for living more sustainably is hard to argue with. Clearly the overall human impact on the Earth is the sum of all our actions. Anyone can rationalize, thinking, "I'm just one out of 6.5 billion people, how much difference can my actions, or lack thereof, make?" The bottom line, however, is that it all adds up. If 150 million Americans seriously downshifted, changing their consumption patterns to lighten their impact, the net effect would be millions of barrels a day less oil consumed, much cleaner air and water, fewer toxic chemicals in the biosphere, and many other improvements in environmental quality, not to mention setting an example for the rest of the world to emulate.

On the other hand, while switching to sustainable lifestyles is necessary, is it sufficient? This question haunts all of us who struggle to outgrow our over-consumptive upbringings only to look out at what is going on in spite of our frugal, mindful living.

Those of us who are conscious of the threats to the ecological order are constantly frustrated by the fact that power is so inequitably distributed. So many critical decisions are in the hands of either private-usually corporate-decision makers, or of governmental bodies that are heavily influenced by the power of such entities.

Corporations generally act in accordance with their own short-run profitability interests. If building a new power plant will yield more net revenue than embarking on a program of incentives or investments to reduce energy consumption, it's a likely bet that most utilities will take the former course of action. And if there is no method for public oversight of the utility's actions, who's to stop them? Ditto for those cutting old growth forests, rather than promoting recycling and tree-free paper. Ditto for those who'd rather sprawl than engage in infill development.

Contrary to Adam Smith's notion that each player acting in accord with their own self-interest will lead to an optimal outcome, when it comes to the environment, self-interested, short-run thinking leads to unmitigated disasters. This is one reason we have, and under capitalism need, environmental laws and some forms of public regulation.

The value of public oversight is clear. A utility should not be able to build a new power plant unless they can show that this is the best option, including factoring in environmental costs. This is why we have public utility commissions and laws mandating utilities to pursue efficiency improvements. This is why we have clean air and clean water acts and commissions to enforce them. This is why we have the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act and regulatory processes to ensure that they are followed.

These rules and regulations sound good in theory. Then you get to the details, where the proverbial devil lies. The laws are, of course, made by legislators who are elected only if they have money for their campaigns and are influenced by their political backers and lobbyists.

Major industries find it advantageous to fund those who will support their agenda. Since 1990, for example, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (opensecrets.org), the energy/natural resources industries have contributed more than $362 million, transportation corporations more than $313 million and the construction industry more than $312 million to federal campaigns. And this does not include lobbying. As the old saying goes, we have the best Congress money can buy.

It is worthy of note that both major parties are on the industry gravy train. While Republicans have received a larger share, more than $300 million of the money mentioned above went to Democrats. In exchange for their largess, these industries not only buy access; often they write the actual laws that their Congressional allies introduce. The 2005 energy and highway bills not only included hundreds of billions in pork for the districts and states of powerful legislators, but also included vast amounts of corporate welfare, almost all of it for items harmful to the environment.

Many of the most important decisions are made by regulatory agencies. Here, again, the process is also only as good as the laws that the legislatures pass, the people appointed to be regulators and the rules that the agencies make.

The agencies are often a revolving door, with players from the regulated industries being appointed, serving a term and then moving back into more lucrative private sector positions. The rules are written with tremendous input from armies of industry lawyers. Political scientists refer to agencies that serve the agenda of the industry they are supposed to regulate as "captured agencies," and in this day and age it is hard to find an example of one that is not captured. On both the federal and state levels, most of the influence is in the hands of those who profit from minimal regulation.

Our pluralistic system is suppose to be one in which there are countervailing powers. So, while the polluters have their lobbyists, in the opposite corner of the ring the eco-warriors have theirs, and when the bell rings, they duke it out. Again, however, the reality diverges from the theory.

It is not just that the environmental groups are outgunned by industry-welterweights getting mauled by heavyweights-but it is also the fact that many of the major national eco-groups have for a variety of reasons compromised their positions significantly. Some have become dependent upon major foundations for funding and must tone down their positions to continue to be deemed worthy of financial support. The perceived need to remain credible and maintain access within the Beltway also plays a major role in the defanging of the environmental movement.

Sometimes the influence is more direct. More than a decade ago it came out that Dean Buntrock, the chairman of Waste Management Inc., one of our nation's worst polluters, sat on the board of directors of the National Wildlife Federation. This is not an anomaly. Many of the major national groups, sometimes referred to as Big Green, rely on corporate money and appoint industry insiders to their boards. There are exceptions, like Greenpeace and Sierra Club, but all too often those who are supposed to "speak for the trees" are in bed with those who are chopping them down.

While power is concentrated disproportionately in the hands of a few, we all have a piece of the action. And just as working out helps small muscles become stronger, the exercise of what power we have helps us to reinforce a sense of real empowerment. It seems to me that we must operate on a dual track, taking whatever actions we can to make our own lives more sustainable and working in the social/political arena to influence the outcomes of decisions that will impact the environment.

In both cases, it really helps to work with others. Sustainable living can be figured out by yourself, but it is much easier to adopt the sorts of changes we are talking about if one has a support group that is similarly motivated.

When it comes to social action for the Earth, here are a few guidelines seem to me useful: As much as possible, keep it local, grassroots and accountable. It's much easier to work with people you know in your own community and efforts at the grassroots often have a much greater chance of success. This is the classic "think globally, act locally" mindset.

To the extent that national and international issues need to be addressed, this is best done by working with groups that are participatory, decentralist and democratic, rather than those that ask for your money but are distant and unaccountable. Check out any organization carefully before you lend support. Give only to those that are lean, frugal and stay true to eco-principles.

Finally, embrace nature. Spend time in the wild and digging in your garden. Get in touch with the power of natural systems. It enhances one's motivation to struggle to preserve and protect nature if you develop your appreciation for it. Being in touch with the complex, interdependent web of life that is hundreds of times older than humanity, also allows each of us to tap into reserves of power deep within ourselves that we might not even realize we have. It is realizing-making real-this power, and working with others that will ultimately give us the wherewithal to turn things around.
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By Keith Brekhus

In his farewell address to the nation in 1961, departing President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the rise of a military-industrial complex during the height of the Cold War. Four decades later, even as the "Soviet threat" has dissolved into thin air, the military-industrial complex continues to grow unabated. Unmistakably, this interlocking connection between big business, government and the media perpetuates war and a permanent war economy.

The United States currently accounts for nearly half the world's military spending, and it has a military presence in more than 130 countries with more than 350,000 troops on foreign soil. Within the political establishment, military dominance is hardly even questioned anymore; it is almost universally proclaimed that American hegemony is a national goal, and the lines of dissent are drawn around nuances rather than a serious questioning of empire as an objective.

Consequently, we have members of the "opposition" party questioning the president's competence perhaps but seldom his goals. For example, John Kerry not only supported the resolution to go to war with Iraq, he also failed to seriously question the neo-conservatives commitment to decades of war in the Middle East under the guise of fighting a war on terror.

Sadly, rather than campaigning to end the war, Kerry asserted that he could do a better job of winning it. Instead of calling for a new foreign policy, the best Bush's main Democratic rival could do was pledge to keep our military strong, give them more body armor and improve their ability to fight. American military supremacy is almost uncritically accepted as a goal of the bipartisan establishment.

When sociologist and observant social critic C. Wright Mills wrote The Power Elite nearly half a century ago, he was envisioning an unholy alliance between big business, the military and the federal government to pursue a permanent war economy that was profitable for large corporations. But even a visionary like Mills could scarcely imagine the extent to which his thesis would prove true.

When one looks at the war profiteering of large companies, such as Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Raytheon, it is not hard to see just how profitable war is for big business. These three companies alone took in $50 billion from the Pentagon last year. Even more disturbing is the direct contracting being done in occupied Iraq by companies such as Halliburton and Bechtel. Not surprisingly, these major military contractors have deep connections to the Bush White House. In less cynical times, the public might see these connections as conflicts of interest.

Take for example, Northrop Grumman, whose consultants included Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney's former chief of staff now under felony indictment, and Paul Wolfowitz, former undersecretary of Defense and neo-conservative war architect who now heads the World Bank. A Northrop Grumman subsidiary, Vinnell Corporation, was awarded almost $50 million to train the Iraqi Army, even though Northrop Grumman had been penalized $191 million in the previous four years, including a $750,000 fine paid to the Pentagon in 2000 for providing faulty parts to the JSTARS air surveillance system.

Then we have the ethically challenged Halliburton Corporation, which Dick Cheney used to run, and from which he still collects an annual paycheck of $160,000 in "deferred compensation." Halliburton has profited from the Iraq War by inflating its costs, overcharging the American taxpayer at least $60 million in the process. Halliburton paid damages of $2 million to settle claims it overcharged on a contract in Fort Ord, California, in 2002. They are also under investigation for multiple other infractions, including paying $2.4 million to bribe a Nigerian official. Despite Halliburton's long history of bilking the American people, the Bush-Cheney team saw fit to award them more than $11 billion worth of contracts in Iraq and additional contracts to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Likewise, Bechtel corporation was awarded billions in prime construction contracts in Iraq, despite a history of environmental and safety violations. However, the biggest winner of the Iraq War may be Lockheed Martin, which cashed in more than $20 billion in Pentagon contracts in 2003 alone. The company's stock has nearly tripled since Bush took office. Naturally, the fact that Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne Cheney, and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley worked as lobbyists for Lockheed Martin is purely coincidence.

While the military industrial complex has thrived since World War II, the weapons contractors have fared especially well in the aftermath of September 11th. However, it should be noted that the weapons industry had banked on Bush long before 9/11. The industry gave five times as much in donations to Bush as they did to his opponent, Al Gore, in 2000. Bush has returned the favor by increasing the military budget from $300 billion a year to around $450 billion, even before accounting for at least an additional $120 billion for "emergency appropriations" in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2006. Clearly times are flush for those merchants of death in the business of marketing and selling war supplies.

As the nation enters a period of war without end, a few are profiting handsomely while the Iraqi people are suffering death and destruction and having their lives torn asunder and thousands of American GIs are coming home with missing limbs or in flag-draped coffins. U.S. officials are promising decades of international conflict in the so-called "war on terror," and Bush's Middle East wars have now lasted longer than U.S. involvement in World War II. It is time to challenge those who derive power through exploiting our fears. Through collective action we can empower ourselves to put a halt to the military industrial complex's war profiteering and make lasting peace rather than everlasting war our national priority.
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By Kim Dill

A 2005 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 65 percent of Americans favor national health insurance even if it means higher taxes. Other polls show upwards of 60 percent of our populace disapprove of the Iraq War. A 2005 Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy poll showed that more than 70 percent of Americans are ready for alternatives to our current energy programs.

Although Americans appear to favor many progressive ideas, we see little done when these issues reach the level of political debate. Unfortunately, those with the most political power to make change - our elected representatives - continually favor the interests of their powerful backers. There's a synergy as those who serve the interests of the well-heeled are provided the support they need to maintain their own positions of power.

Why do our decision-makers continually disregard public opinion? Because as Noam Chomsky says, there's no "political support." In the case of health care, it's "because the pharmaceutical industry is opposed, the financial institutions are opposed, the insurance industry is opposed, so there's 'no political support,' says Chomsky. "It doesn't matter if 80 percent of the population regard it as a moral obligation: That doesn't count as political support. It tells you something about the elite conception."

Getting elected to Congress takes money - lots of money. Most candidates don't have their own cash cow, so they have to appeal to powerful interests for funding. This often involves supporting the agenda of likely funders. People who don't back these issues often have a hard time raising enough money to run a campaign. Consequently, we end up with more of the same drivel, more of the same rhetoric and very little in the way of new or progressive ideas.

In addition, because of the funding structure of elections, sitting politicians have an easier time getting re-elected, so any chance of seeing real change crumbles as incumbents remain in office. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (www.opensecrets.org), in the 33 Senate races in 2006, incumbents have out-raised their challengers six to one and outspent them five to one.

As of December 2005, Jim Talent, R-Mo., had more than $4.6 million in cash on-hand, compared with Claire McCaskill's $1.3 million. It's not just Republicans with the big money, though; incumbent Hillary Clinton, D-NY, has more than $17 million to run her campaign this year. The 791 candidates for the House of Representatives raised a combined total of $275 million in 2005 alone, and 2005 wasn't even an election year.

The largest portion of funding for elections comes from individual donors, but a significant amount comes from Political Action Committees representing business, labor or ideological interests. According to CRP, thus far in the 2006 election cycle, all PACs (527s) combined have raised a total of $136.6 million for their respective candidates. Individual donors have kicked in another $295 million.

After the dust settles, and elections are over, the money continues to roll in, though not necessarily directly to representatives. According to the Feb. 14, 2006, Wall Street Journal, "U.S. corporations and interest groups spent a total of $1.16 billion to lobby Washington in the first half of 2005, setting a record." From January through June 2005, "corporations, trade associations, lawyers and unions spent about $6.5 million a day to lobby Congress and the Bush administration."

Does money really buy influence? Most politicians will tell you "no, it doesn't." But it will get you access, which is more that the average citizen has in Washington. Because of the money it takes to be in politics, Joe Schmoe from down the block likely wouldn't be able to run for election. Instead, the field is limited to those representing a tightly controlled agenda. Occasionally, real change-makers, such as Paul Wellstone, Dennis Kucinich and Barbara Lee, make their way into politics, and that's how you know there's hope for our democracy.

According to polls, Democrats and Republicans comprise only about two-thirds of Americans. But our two-party system usually requires that people vote one or the other, or to feel they are wasting their vote.

Sometimes people decide to compromise their views and resort to voting against what they hate instead of in favor of what they want. Often, third-party candidates are relegated to "spoiler" or political outcast status, making choosing this option a difficult battle of the mind. (For more on proportional representation and instant run-off voting, see "Why Two Parties," Peaceworks Monitor, Fall 2005.)

However, to make us feel like we are participants in the democratic process, we are presented with options at the polls. We get choices, but generally not a range of candidates that represent the wide variety of views on the political spectrum. This creates the illusion of choice when what we often actually get is a "choice" between two strains of the status quo.

Both major political parties generally present us with candidates that toe a party line. Democrats and Republicans alike favor slightly different versions of our current corporate-driven economic system, as well as a continuation of current foreign policy. At least in its general outlines, most can't see beyond our use of dirty, polluting fossil fuels. It's not much of a choice for progressives who want real change.

So, why do we keep electing people who don't act in our behalf?

"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." - Thomas Jefferson

What many call democracy in our society is better-termed "polyarchy" - a system in which a small group actually rules, and mass participation in decision-making is confined to choosing leaders in elections that are carefully managed by competing elites. This is the system we have in the United States.

This theory of democracy was derived from earlier elitism theories, which argued that an "enlightened" elite should rule in behalf of the ignorant and unpredictable masses. The newer polyarchic definition comes from the need for an elite class to "co-opt, neutralize and redirect mass popular democratic movements-to relieve pressure from subordinate classes for more fundamental political, social and economic change," according to William I. Robinson in his 2006 article Promoting Polyarchy.

Democrats and Republicans aside, it's the elite who really run the show. Merriam-Webster's defines elite as "a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence."

Though there are different types of elites, for the purposes of this article, we're talking about the political elite, which has much crossover with economic and educational elite. The elite who come to power in the United States and abroad naturally have close ties to transnational capital and are thus willing and able to do its bidding.

The elites are the primary decision-makers in America, and the world, for that matter. It is never in the interests of the ruling elite to have a true democracy; that would put too much power in the hands of the people, who need to be controlled, lest some democratic conspiracy break out. In politics, they make decisions for the masses based upon what is good for business, and they try to convince us that their decisions are good for all of us.

Our politics are rife with examples of such ideology. The Bush administration's tax cuts, policy (or lack thereof) on health care, the Social Security plan, selling national forests, promoting nuclear power, the war in Iraq, resistance to alternative energy, drilling in ANWR, all of which overwhelmingly favor entrenched wealth and power over ordinary people.

What our government paints as democracy is clearly not, but that doesn't mean we the people don't have power. Collective movements can harness vast amounts of power to work in the people's behalf. Public opposition was a significant factor in ending the Vietnam War. Likewise, here in Missouri in the 1970s, a group of concerned citizens fought against and stopped the Callaway II nuclear power plant. There is opportunity now to revive this movement and work for safe energy.

Getting involved is the surest way to increase our level of democracy. In other countries around the world, the people have wrested control of their governments from the hands of the elite and the corporate interests. We have the power to do that here. Won't you join with us?
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By Kim Dill

"Popular democracy means a people's control over its own vital affairs, dispersal throughout society of political power, the redistribution of wealth, and majority control over the collective material and cultural resources of society. At the heart of this concept of democracy is the construction of a democratic socioeconomic order." - William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy

When George W. Bush talks of spreading democracy and freedom throughout the world, his heart may well be in it, but if history is a lesson, ulterior motives are afoot.

After World War II, the United States promoted, supported and benefited from the rule of civilian/military regimes and dictatorships in Latin America, white minority and one-party dictatorships in Africa and repressive states in Asia. Corporations had ease of access to resources in areas where the people were tightly controlled and where one party or one person held decision-making power. This type of political intervention often involved direct U.S. military action or maintaining control through the threat of such action.

However, post-Cold War, people's uprisings and demands for democratic reform made the U.S. government aware of the difficulty in dealing with despotic regimes and dictatorships. Hence, the United States shifted its focus to "promoting democracy" (also known as polyarchy) to maintain its dominant position in the global economy.

"The U.S. does, in fact, support 'democracy' around the world-it just sent the term down through the looking glass first," writes William I. Robinson in his 1994 article The New Face of Global Domination. Robinson, professor of sociology, global studies, and Latin American studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara, was formerly an investigative journalist in Latin America and a consultant for the Nicaraguan government.

Just as when it sponsored dictatorships, the objective of U.S. foreign policy today is not really democracy but stability. Robinson argues that this conceptualization of "democracy" is not a new idea; "It is an evolutionary adaptation of the U.S. attempt to impose abroad a model of government and economy that serves the U.S.-led transnational elite in the rich North. Its primary goal is to assure political stability in an integrated global economy dominated by the North."

A primary function of polyarchy is the promotion of a transnational corporate agenda (what those in power call "free markets") under the guise of democracy. There are both political and economic components at work. The economic is to open the world to capital, whereas the political is to make the world safe for capital. In the Third World, where "democracy promotion" is afoot, this involves moving from dictatorships to polyarchy and introducing forms of social control intended to bring about a better atmosphere for transnational corporate investors. In the United States, it involves maintaining our current corporate-driven system.

It is no accident that we have seen international finance organizations (IMF and World Bank) and trade agreements (NAFTA and WTO) come to prominence alongside transitions to "democracy" in foreign lands. Not surprisingly, these agreements benefit the elite of these countries to the detriment of most of the population in these regions.

As Third World nations move toward U.S.-style democracy with the help of U.S. agencies, they are expected to open their markets to transnational corporations hoping to do business in these once-oppressed lands. Where the resources of these countries once belonged to the people through nationalized companies, under U.S.-style democracy, they are privatized and parceled out to the highest-bidding transnational corporation via structural adjustment and other programs.

Countries that are resistant to this new form of "democracy" find themselves targets for "democracy-promotion." Through grants from agencies, such as National Endowment for Democracy and United States Agency for International Development, the U.S. government has created and funded "democracy movements" in the Third World. According to Robinson, promoting democracy "involves several tiers of policy design, funding, operational activity, and influence."

First, at the U.S. national level, the Department of State, the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA decide on target areas for democracy promotion as part of an overall strategy of military, economic and diplomatic plans.

Second, USAID and other agencies are allocated hundreds of millions of dollars, which they give out directly or through other organizations, such as NED, to private U.S. organizations that have close ties to the U.S. policymaking establishment. Prior to NED's founding in 1983, the CIA was responsible for covert funding and guidance of the grantee organizations in targeted countries.

According to USAID, "U.S. foreign assistance has always had the twofold purpose of furthering America's foreign policy interests in expanding democracy and free markets while improving the lives of the citizens of the developing world."

The NED and other organizations provide grants to U.S. organizations to work toward "democracy promotion" in the designated countries. Groups funded by NED and USAID include the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, which are the foreign policy wings of the U.S. Republican and Democratic parties, respectively; the Center for International Private Enterprise; the Center for Democracy; and the Free Trade Union Institute among many others. Many of the grantees operate in several countries at once, such as the IRI and the CIPE.

According to Robinson, "the boards of directors of these organizations include representatives from the highest levels of the U.S. foreign policy and political establishment and representatives from the transnational corporate world. U.S. universities, private contractors, organic intellectuals and other 'democracy' experts may also be tapped. All these organizations and actors coalesce into a complex and multi-leveled U.S. political intervention network."

The third level involves these U.S. organizations providing grants for funding, guidance, advice and political sponsorship to previously existing or newly created groups in the targeted countries. The grantees include trade unions, business councils, local political parties, media, student and women's groups, human rights organizations and others. These groups, as far as the NED is concerned, are non-partisan and independent, but through their work and their interlocking board members, they represent the transnational agenda.

"In the overall strategy, Washington hopes to create through its 'democracy promotion' programs 'agents of influence' - local political and civic leaders who are expected to generate ideological conformity with the elite social order under construction, to promote the neo-liberal outlook, and to advocate for policies that integrate the intervened country into global capitalism," says Robinson.

In this new form of political intervention, what Robinson calls "low-intensity democracy," the grantee organizations are expected to compete with and surpass more popular-oriented groups trying to organize for real social change.

The "Global South" has been a primary focus for political intervention as we've seen once-U.S.-supported dictatorships in Nicaragua, Chile, Haiti and Panama among others fall to popular people's movements, which became co-opted by a well-organized and well-funded elite. NAFTA, CAFTA and the FTAA have become vehicles by which "democracy promotion" has come to fruition and countries become assimilated into the global economy.

According to Democracy Now!, in Venezuela, where tensions have been mounting due to pressure from the United States (and that coup attempt in 2002), the NED has given money to several political opponents of President Hugo Chavez, although NED claims it gives money to both sides. Since Chavez came to power in 1998, NED and USAID have expanded their programs in Venezuela. These programs include help to develop media strategies, workshops for opposition groups, funding for anti-Chavista groups, and trips to Washington for business people, trade unionists and politicians opposing Chavez. With elections coming just around the corner in November, it will be interesting to see the U.S. strategy in dealing with this popular "threat."

The State Department recently stated that its priorities for democracy promotion in 2006 are Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru.

If there was any doubt what Bush & Co. think democracy is, the lead up to the Iraq War gives us a clearer picture. Before the bombs began to fall, the White House was drumming up support for its war. They called on Europe to help out, and the continent was soon divided into "Old Europe" and "New Europe." Old Europe - Germany, France and others - took heed of domestic public opinion and chose not to enter the war. Old Europe, much like the UN according to Rumsfeld, was in danger of becoming irrelevant because it dared defy U.S. wishes. New Europe, however, was to become a great partner to the United States. Spain, Poland and others decided in favor of the powerful United States, despite huge majorities in their respective countries opposed to joining the war. Likewise, Turkey was singled out as "undemocratic" when it went along with 95 percent of its population and didn't allow U.S. planes to attack Iraq from its bases.

As we go about our daily lives, we must turn a skeptic's ear toward anything we hear from those in power. In whose interest are they speaking? In whose behalf are they working? Do their actions match their words?

Asking these questions can help us decipher our country's foreign policy. It is always good to be familiar with the nature of the beast. From overthrowing democratically elected governments to supporting brutal dictatorships, our government has done beastly things and called it democracy. U.S. actions have sparked mass popular protests around the world. It is necessary for the American people to understand the role our nation has played and continues to play all over the globe.

It is our sense of justice and our righteous anger about these acts that could unite us into one broad movement for change. These emotions have inspired and united peasants, farmers, union workers, students, and many, many others around the world to work for social justice. We can support them by calling out our government and insisting on a foreign policy puts people first and gives more than lip service to the term democracy.

Promoting Polyarchy article:
http://www.alainet.org/active/10626&lang=en
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By Melissa Plunkett

In the early years of the labor movement, workers organized to counter the power of capital - the business owners, investors and others who owned the wealth produced by their labor. By banding together, the workers were able to obtain important concessions that most in the United States enjoy today - the 40-hour work week, child labor laws, sick/vacation/holiday pay and workers compensation, among others.

However, labor's power has been in decline for the past few decades in the United States. Major unions, including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), UNITE HERE, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, recently split from the AFL-CIO due to disagreements over the most effective methods for increasing membership, which is in steep decline. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 12.5 percent of wage and salary workers were union members in 2005, a figure unchanged since 2004. The BLS notes that the highest percentage of union workers for years in which we have comparable statistics was in 1983 when union members comprised 20.1 percent of the work force (Non-BLS figures point to a high of one-third in 1945.).

Many reasons have been presented for the decline in union membership and hence power. These range from the strength of the economy to competition from foreign labor to the rise of the service-based economy from a primarily manufacturing-based one to corruption and disarray within unions themselves. While undoubtedly each of these reasons, and many others, have had an effect on union membership, there is one incident that signaled the U.S. government's intention to break unions' power. This incident was the firing of air traffic controllers who participated in a strike called by Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) in 1981, a union, ironically, that broke with tradition in 1980 and supported Reagan's candidacy.

President Reagan deemed the strike a threat to public safety and hence illegal under the Taft-Hartley Act, even though many other government employees had previously gone on strike for better working conditions and pay. For example, the 1966 New York City transit strike and the 1970 U.S. Postal Workers strike. This was a turning point in that Reagan took a hard line against PATCO and fired approximately 11,000 air traffic controllers, replaced them with non-union controllers and then forbid the rehiring of any of the air traffic controllers who went on strike.

It seems that, sadly, enough U.S. citizens supported this move that it did not hurt Reagan politically and allowed him to continue pushing an anti-labor agenda. Since then labor has lost much of its political clout. David S. Broder in his Sept. 9, 2004, op-ed piece for the Washington Post, "The Price of Labor's Decline," notes that when telling a younger colleague how the "the most influential lobbyists" used to represent labor unions and not "business or trade associations," "it made me realize how rarely observers like me make the link between the decline of progressive politics and with it the near-demise of liberal legislation, and the steady weakening of organized labor." Reagan's right-wing, pro-business politics required that he weaken labor's representative - unions - and this incident was the beginning of implementing that agenda.

How could workers not support an organization that assists in providing a salary 10-28 percent higher than a non-union worker's, provides more fringe benefits, protections from exploitation, etc.? Within the United States, there are many factors fighting against labor organizing, from public perception and attitudes to cooperate strategy. Some companies have kept unions out of the workplace by paying wages and benefits that are the same as a union shop.

One such example is Toyota's U.S. plants as reported by NPR on Dec. 20, 2005. In NPR's interview, many Toyota workers didn't see the need for a union since wages and benefits were comparable to union workplaces. However, some thought a union would be helpful in dealing with workplace injuries. "The company drives them so hard that people get injured, and when they can't work anymore, Toyota pays them off to leave."

There is also a pervasive anti-union attitude among the working-class that has been promoted by the "right-to-work" movement and other political interests. In the article "Unions Seek to Restore Their Image with Workers" on The Wall Street Journal's CareerJournal.com Web site, a woman who works at Wal-Mart says that she feels she doesn't need a union to protect her and that "[y]ears ago, I believe work conditions were bad, and unions had their place of bringing standards up and making jobs safe. Unions are headed downward now. And the government is there to help."

This same article discusses workers' fears of joining unions too weak to help protect them from management and fears that the public sees unions only "once negotiations get intractable, leading to strikes, denouncements and posturing," which contributes to a negative image. In addition, "white collar" workers view unions as something for "blue collar" workers. All of this leads to only about 40 percent of Americans with a "somewhat" or "very positive" image of unions.

These attitudes, the government's intervention to diminish the power of unions, and company stratagies to keep unions out of the workplace have kept labor's power in-check by dissuading organizing. If unions become a thing of the past, one should not be surprised to see many of the benefits won by unions lost and laws that protect workers repealed.

At a global level, the organization of labor is stymied at the highest levels. Jeff Faux of the Economic Policy Institute speaking at the 2002 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, noted that international actors such as the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and World Bank represent and protect capital's interests, not labor's. Faux explained that the "global marketplace, like all markets, is built on a set of rules. Indeed, according to a former director-general of the WTO, the rules of the WTO represent the 'constitution' of the new global economy. The current rules of the global market - those of the WTO, the [IMF], the World Bank and other global regulators - were not established to promote the dignity and well-being of Labor. They were established to protect the interest of those who invest for a living, at the expense of those who must work."

At this global level free trade ensures that the workers who are utilized are those who cost the least. He noted that the "common pattern in the concentration of economic growth [is] in the 'informal' sector - where workers are unorganized, contingent, and unprotected. That is, where they have little or no bargaining power with capital."

One example Faux cited of free trade's disastrous effects on labor is NAFTA, which the leaders of all three countries involved consider a success. He mentioned that a study done by economists from Canada, Mexico and the United States "shows, from the perspective of the working people in all three countries, NAFTA has been a failure. All three countries saw a decline in real wages, an upward redistribution of income and a dramatic expansion of the informal sector jobs characterized by insecurity, low pay and no bargaining power." These effects of NAFTA could be countered if labor worked together across borders so that capital could not pit one county's labor force against the others.

One of the reasons free trade agreements like NAFTA have these affects and have caused a decline in labor's power is because they do away with tariffs that protect workers from competition with cheap labor abroad. Tariffs were attached to imports making it just as advantageous for companies to do business in a country with well-paid workers as elsewhere. Now, however, cheap labor is abundant in the global economy and many corporations believe they have no incentive to keep their operations in countries with workers who are paid a fair wage.

Even when labor is able to maintain tariffs within their country they can't win against the powerful international economic institutions. For example, in 2003 the WTO ruled that the Bush administration's tariffs on imported steel were illegal. To avoid a potentionally devastating trade war, the Bush administration decided it was worth losing the support of the steel unions and repealed the tarriffs that were supposed to help the U.S. steel industry compete.

Capital, however, still depends on labor, and hence labor still holds a tremendous amount of power. As recently as Feb. 16, 2006, USA Today ran a Reuters story titled "Hotels brace for possible labor unrest." With unions, such as SIEU and UNITE HERE, working to unionize the workers of the service industries, there may be a chance that employees of hotels and other service positions will be able to win better pay and working conditions like those in the manufacturing sector before them.

For these, and other unions, to be successful, they need not only to change attitudes of U.S. blue- and white-collar workers, they also need to make a stronger effort at organizing labor around the world. Hopefully they will listen to Chris Chafe of UNITE HERE who said on Democracy Now! on Dec. 9, 2004, in response to a question about the AFL-CIO split being partly over a disagreement about consolidating unions, "a fundamental issue here is that this is about globalization. This is about what can the labor movement do to structure itself so that a worker in any facility who is now no longer working for the local owner, no longer even working for somebody who is based in this country, but in many cases is working for a multinational conglomerate where decisions are made far beyond the reaches of your average worker."

If labor is to maintain its power, it must find a way to counter the globalization of capital. Hopefully more Western unions will support their fellow workers in other countries, to see them not as a threat but as people in a similar situation to Western workers 100 years ago. We need to extend a hand of friendship by opposing the WTO, IMF and World Bank policies until fair labor standards become a part of their economic policy. In doing so we can help improve the lives of all who must work for a living.
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By Mark Robertson

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." - Jacques Anatole Thibault in The Red Lily

While equality of all under the rule of law is enshrined in the minds of most of us as one of the great equalizers in our system, a closer examination leads to a very different understanding. In fact, it is arguable that the system established by our nation's founders, who were some of the wealthiest men of their age, is one that institutionalizes inequality.

The United States was founded by people strongly influenced by the ideas of what is commonly called classical liberalism (or sometimes Jeffersonian liberalism). This system of political belief stressed human rationality, importance of individual property rights, natural rights, the need for constitutional limitations on government, and freedom of the individual from any kind of external restraint.

The classical liberal line of thought drew heavily from the works of Thomas Hobbes, and subsequent liberal theorists, in basing the concept of governance around the image of the 'rational man' (in the sense of being calculating and self-interested but controlled) operating as a Citizen within the constraints of secular civil authority. It should be noted that the concept was later expanded to 'rational actor' but the founding theorists of classical liberalism clearly envisioned the abstract citizen as male.

The concept of this atomized individual rational actor underlies our entire system of liberal law and is meant to set the limits of state power. All of the citizens operating within the system are, in theory, abstractly equal individuals. Interactions between these actors is essentially treated as a contract, with all decisions being pristinely rational. Formal legal equality is granted (in the case of those not white or male, after long struggle), and political intervention by the state between abstractly equal citizens is forbidden.

The operation of the rational actor principle can be seen clearly in a criminal trial where the two possible avenues for the defendant are either to cast doubt on her authorship of the act or cast doubt on her ability to make a rational decision at the time of the act (insanity defense).

As with most people educated in the U.S. school system, I was taught that this system while imperfect, was the final and best evolution of the 'rule of law.' Now that the right to vote and basic equal legal protection had (finally) been extended to women and minorities, the Jeffersonian ideal had been realized and all was right with the world.

The assumptions that underlie the system of liberal law are so deeply culturally embedded that they are quite hard to see. For myself, it was really only when I began to examine real, existing disparities of power that even questioned the full worth of simple legal equality.

Systems of unequal social power abound within our society; the power of capital, the power of patriarchy, the power of race. At first glance it appears these systems of power that create very unequal actors within our society are discounted as irrelevant in law. Closer examination however reveals that these inequalities are treated as facts of nature, and therefore impenetrable to legal intervention. Even suggesting that such real-life inequities could have impact on the "legal" relationship between individuals is inadmissible, and not within the realm of consideration.

In this manner the liberal law regime creates a legal equality beneath which real social inequality that exists prior to (in the sense of both chronology and its proximity to daily life) the operation of the law.

It is possible to see this at the bedrock of the American legal system, the United States Constitution. It is written in a manner that treated existing conditions of power; be it the power of whites, males, or the propertied; as natural and therefore protected from state legal interference.

By assuming real existing inequality out of existence, under the guise of being a purely neutral arbiter of abstract equality, liberal law removes any prerogative it might have to intervene and change those systems of unequal power. To be certain, the 20th century saw significant challenges to these existing structure of power; however, these challenges inevitably rose in the sphere existing outside state power. Legal intervention came only after the pressure exerted by social forces became too great to ignore.

This system however generally relies on the acquiescence of the public at large to invisible systems of inequity. At the same time, it requires that those closest to the law to actively suppress their natural sense of social conscience. Persons undertaking to practice law are often bombarded with hypothetical scenarios designed to invoke personal moral resistance, so they can then learn discount actual inequities existing prior to the law as irrelevant.

A greater consciousness of this system of reflecting the real-life systems of unequal social power in law and renaming it abstract equality seems a necessary precondition for the struggle toward real equality.

This is not to say that the long and difficult road to legal equality is unimportant, far from it. No more than a century ago in this country, most of even the most basic legal protections failed to apply to the majority of human beings living with its borders. However, it can become easy allow the edifice of legal equality to conceal real social inequity and the systems of control that allow it to thrive. It is important that those of us seeking changes toward social justice be aware of these systems and of the limitations of liberal law.
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By Keith Brekhus

The collective will of the people is often considered the ultimate power. In the lead up to the Iraq War, The New York Times called the global grassroots anti-war movement the "other global superpower" in juxtaposition to the United States government and military. Indeed if common folks cooperate to act on their own behalf, they can combat concentrated power and reshape the world in positive and progressive ways. However, populist grassroots movements are not necessarily progressive. They can also be reactionary, centrist or fall just about anywhere on the political spectrum.

The common thread that unites populist movements, right or left, is that they are mass movements that resist the political establishment and oppose concentrated wealth and power. They can be reformist or revolutionary and violent or non-violent in nature. At their best, they can bring about radical social change and have a positive, transformative influence on society. The American Civil Rights Movement and South Africa's anti-apartheid movement are modern examples of populist movements that have empowered ordinary citizens to dramatically improve their societies through collective mass protest. The recent success of left-wing movements in Latin America also demonstrates how successful populist rebellions can improve the lives of many people. However, at its worst, populism can be twisted by right-wing demagogues and turned into a reactionary force. For example, Nazism in Germany was a popular movement that Hitler exploited to further his racist crusade for world domination.

The term "populism" originated in the United States in the late 1800s when radical farmers and laborers fought the moneyed elite of the Gilded Age. A Populist Party was formed and it was especially strong in the South, Midwest and Great Plains. Through this vehicle, ordinary farmers and workers joined together to combat the elite bankers, wealthy industrialists and corrupt politicians.

Populist upheavals continued into the Twentieth Century with militant labor movements, such as the socialists who supported Eugene Debs for President and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In the interwar years, populism took an uglier turn with demagogues, such as Father Charles Coughlin, exploiting people's prejudices to promote a message of hate and intolerance for an insecure populace struggling with the Great Depression.

The 1930s witnessed a tremendous increase in both radical and reactionary challenges to the status quo. In addition to Father Coughlin, the '30s saw the Ku Klux Klan, the Communist Party and the charismatic Louisiana governor, Huey Long, all appeal to broad numbers of disaffected Americans. Huey Long's "share the wealth" program was an especially fervent campaign that fed off of poor people's resentment and generated a fierce populist challenge to the economic injustices of American society.

In the 1950s and 1960s the civil rights movement became the great people's crusade in America, but the hideously racist Southern white backlash led by the likes of George Wallace, Strom Thurmond and Lester Maddox, was itself a populist movement. While the civil rights leaders fought the segregationist status quo, the white racists appealed to populism by fighting "outside agitators." The 1960s also saw other populist uprisings, such as the anti-war movement and the emergence of militant feminism.

Unfortunately, in the latter part of the 20th Century, it was the conservatives who seized the mantle of populism and used grassroots organizing to shape the development of American political and social culture. Using rhetoric geared toward the "common man," conservatives called for limited government and traditional values. They also appealed to patriotism and turned class resentment away from big businesses toward the so-called "liberal elites," shifting the focus from economic to social concerns.

With profound irony, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush became champions of the working class and rural poor even as they promoted economic policies that drove their supporters to financial ruin. Farmers who voted for Reagan watched as their farms were foreclosed on under his policies and "Reagan Democrats" saw their unions busted and ended up on unemployment lines. As Thomas Franks notes in his book, What's the Matter With Kansas, the populist radicals who raised hell on the Great Plains in the 1890s have morphed into George W. Bush's hapless base who vote against their class interests because they can be swayed by socially conservative assaults on abortion and gay marriage. The Religious Right and economic libertarianism have become the populist legacy as the rural poor have fallen victims to demagoguery. So as they vote against the imaginary threat of gay marriage, they in turn eliminate the Medicaid they need for family health care.

Americans have also embraced populism from the political left and center in the last couple decades. Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988 and Jerry Brown in 1992 led spirited populist campaigns for the presidency in the Democratic primaries. Howard Dean's grassroots internet-centered Democratic insurgency of 2004 also had populist elements to it. From the political center, H. Ross Perot, despite being a billionaire himself, fed upon the widespread anti-elitist anger Middle America had with politicians of both major parties. Ralph Nader had a more thoroughgoing ideological critique of the two major parties in 2000, though he was less successful than Perot at recruiting large numbers of voters.

A key task for progressives is to unite non-elite citizens and empower them to act in ways that benefit society as a whole. The history of populist movements illustrates that non-elite interests are most often activated around self-interest, either perceived or real. Our goal must be to get large numbers of people to recognize that peace, sustainability and economic justice are in everyone's long-term interest, and to provide a vehicle whereby people can empower themselves to make radical change. By connecting with average working folks in our communities, we can inspire a movement that simultaneously promotes empowering the disempowered and creates a just, peaceful and sustainable future that benefits us all.

Getting the majority of Americans to combat the power elite and create a more just society that is democratic and serves the needs of all Americans will be one of the great challenges of the Twenty-first Century. Even greater will be the need to get the world's citizenry to unite in a global effort to bring about a more equitable and peaceful world. The bloodless revolutions that ended repressive state communism in Russia and Eastern Europe in the late '80s and the vast people's insurgencies that have transformed South America show that radical social change is possible when the people unite with coordinated effort and collective zeal in common purpose. Let us join in concerted action to make the change we want to see.
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By Mark Robertson

On Dec. 13, 2005, shortly after midnight Stanley "Tookie" Williams was killed by the State of California at San Quentin Prison.

Williams was nationally known as the cofounder of the West Side Crips street gang. He later became internationally famous as an anti-gang-violence activist, crafter of a Peace Protocol designed to break the cycle of gang violence, author of several children's books, and a five-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee.

The case against Tookie Williams contained many irregularities, including a prosecutor twice censured by the California Supreme Court for racially discriminatory practices and key testimony from imprisoned felons granted leniency for testifying against Williams. Many have gone so far as to call his case a frame-up. While I cannot adequately expound on all the issues surrounding Williams's conviction in this space, I would recommend that everyone research it further at any of the many excellent web sites on the subject.

While his guilt is certainly in question, and reflective of the deep racial bias of the American justice system, the fact that Tookie's life reflects the experiences of tens of thousands of inner-city black youth is not.

We hear of the daily violence of gang activity from Los Angeles to St. Louis, New York to Chicago. It is often the subject of films, television programs, and music, so much so that "gang life" has become an embedded part of our popular culture. Yet with all this coverage, explorations of the birth of modern American street gangs are rare.

Why in the early part of the 1970s did young men like West Side Crips founders Raymond Washington and Stanley Williams suddenly find themselves at the leading edge of an explosion of gangs and gang-related violence in inner city Los Angeles? Further, why did this phenomenon spread to cities with depressed urban centers throughout the nation?

Most records of gangs (or clubs as they were called at the time) in South Central Los Angeles date back to the 1940s and '50s. African-American migrants from the South moved to Los Angeles in great numbers during WWII, with a 100-percent increase in population between 1940 and 1944. They were, however, largely confined to a geographically small area, centered mainly around the Central Avenue and Watts ghetto, due to racially discriminatory housing laws and covenants designed to maintain the racial homogeneity of neighborhoods and prevent school integration.

Many early black gangs were formed as a means of defense against racially motivated violence perpetrated by gangs of white youths. White street gangs would frequently attack African-Americans found outside of the "settlement" area, and they would even cross into those areas to perpetrate violence. Tensions became further heightened as legal challenges were mounted to racially restrictive housing laws.

The growth of suburbs around Los Angeles in the 1950s resulted in "white flight," leaving much of South Central Los Angeles as a primarily black enclave. When white residents left, interracial violence gave way to more intra-racial violence, as street gangs vied for dominance in the new contiguous African-American area from Watts to Central Avenue to West Adams. Rivalry was particularly intense between black youths from different economic strata represented by the "west side" and "east side."

There were six gang-related murders in this area of LA in 1960, and the level of black-on-black violence continued to rise through the first half of that decade. Something, however, changed in 1965.

A key event upon which much of the recent history of South Central Los Angeles turned was the Watts Rebellion of 1965. Decades of racist abuse at the hands of law enforcement, stifled economic opportunity, and the neglect of the needs of the people of South Central came to a head on August 11 of that year, when during a routine traffic stop LAPD officers brutalized two young black men, Marquette and Ronald Frye, as well as their mother Rena when she tried to intervene.

Hundreds of people took to the streets that night and thousands over the next days. Black community leaders called a meeting with city officials in an attempt to diffuse the situation, but their requests were met with refusal. By the third day the Los Angeles police chief requested that the National Guard be sent into Watts. As the National Guard entered, demonstrators set parts of the city ablaze. That evening, an exchange of fire between the community and the National Guard led to the first death of the uprising.

After six days, 34 people lay dead and more than 1,000 injured. Mass arrests were carried out, and the immediate threat to the powers-that-be was abated. But a new consciousness arose in the African-American community of South Central that summer - and a new sense of empowerment.

The effect was especially profound among young people who had comprised the membership of the street gangs. Under the leadership of socially conscious organizations much of the rivalry and animosity between these various groups was largely eradicated, and they became instead of soldiers contesting for pieces of ground within the ghetto, revolutionary activists working to change the reality of life in their communities.

After the Watts uprising, many gang members organized within political groups first to monitor the activities of police in their communities, and further to support the civil rights movement that was gaining strength within LA's African-American community. The most well known and influential of these groups were US Organization, started by Ron "Maulana" Karenga, and the Black Panther Party (BPP), founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland and quickly opening up operations in Watts.

For five years, starting in 1965, there was virtually no black gang activity in the city of Los Angeles.

Contrary to much of the popular media portrayal of these new groups, they did not emerge from the ghettos of Southern California with guns blazing, although they believed in the right of armed resistance to violent oppression. Rather, much of their activity involved creating parallel social structures within in the black community, by and for the people they served, to free themselves from reliance on the dominant white society. From free breakfasts to community supported schools to providing crossing guards at dangerous intersections where the city wouldn't pay for traffic lights, groups like US Organization and the BPP helped created a sense of pride and self-reliance in areas where both had been in short supply.

While popular with the African-American community, the black power movement was viewed with suspicion and outright hostility by many law enforcement officials outside of that community.

Local police organizations saw the monitoring of their activities within the black community as a threat to their authority on the streets, and by 1968, the strength of the Black Panther Party had become a concern to J. Edgar Hoover, who saw it as a subversive threat to the security of the nation. Hoover issued a memo to FBI field agents in 1968 calling for them to "exploit all avenues of creating … dissension within the ranks of the BPP."

The leadership of the FBI saw black power organizations, particularly the Black Panther Party as a domestic threat on par with the Communist Party USA and Socialist Workers Party, and as such, it instituted an extensive and often violent COINTELPRO operation against the BPP designed to divide, conquer and neutralize it, in much the same way it had done with communist and socialist organizations in earlier decades. US Organization and the Black Panther Party became the targets of arguably the most intensive domestic counterinsurgency program in U.S. history.

With a combination of spying, infiltration, psychological warfare, break-ins, legal harassment and extrajudicial violence, Hoover's FBI succeeded in breaking the back of the radical movement that had grown out of the events of 1965. By 1971 much of the leadership had been imprisoned on questionable and often entirely spurious charges or was tied up in legal troubles. Some important members, such as Illinois Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, were assassinated by what can only be termed government sponsored death squads.

Many of the inner-city African-Ameican youth watched their political leadership become decimated by this all-out government assault. The organizations that helped fuel the transformation from street gang violence to political activism were either gone or rendered largely ineffective.

In the early 1970s, the void created by the death of groups like the BPP and the encroachment of a pervasive sense of hopelessness led to the resurgence of gang activity, particularly in South Central LA. In 1972 there were 18 gangs in Los Angeles County, by 1978 there were 60, and 155 by 1982. That number had nearly doubled again by the mid-'90s.

The world in which Tookie Williams came of age was one created by the aftermath of the intentional destruction of the black power movement in America. The drugs, the guns, and the street violence that Mr. Williams ultimately came to struggle so hard against is the legacy of that repression.

www.savetookie.org;
www.tookie.com;
www.stanford.edu/group/blackpanthers/;
www.cointel.org
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