What Kind of Changes for America And How Will Those Changes Come?

Solidarity America By John Funiciello BlackCommentator.com Columnist

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. -President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) Change is coming in the United States of America. There are some signs of change, but it’s hard to know in what direction it will go. There has been a slight uptick in the percentage of workers in unions, but it’s a mere fraction of a percent, so it would be premature to say that American workers are finally on the march and will soon be at bargaining tables across the nation. Occupy Wall Street and other “branches” of the “Occupy” idea are still functioning, although they have been kicked out of the public spaces they occupied last fall. The movement, made up largely of young men and women, has moved inside and are working in circumstances that the majority of Americans can understand. Some of them have offices, now, but they continue to bring the attention of the nation to the disparity in wealth and the powerlessness of a majority of the electorate in our political system. Millions of ordinary people continue to suffer, especially the unemployed, the underemployed, the elderly, the disabled, and the young who are burdened beyond their capacity to repay their debt for what they were told is vital for their success, an education. We have seen reform movements come and go, both on the streets and even in Congress over several generations, all aimed at bringing some equity to our system of pay (compensation), the economic system, the way we tax income, and the way we don’t tax wealth. There has always been a lot of noise and a flurry of movement, but no real action that has resulted in fundamental change. With a glance at our situation, one can see that the same people are in power, thatthey still write the laws, and they still rule the economy. They are the 1 percent that is being discussed everywhere. They have had great power over the lives of the people for generations and they still wield that power. They still own the wealth and direct the use of the money that is held by the other 99 percent. Those in the Occupy movement had hoped that their raising of the issues would catch fire and that the people would move into the streets to show public officials and the heads of powerful Corporate America that they are not going to take it anymore. The flow of the citizenry into the streets to demonstrate their anger has not happened, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t happen. Organizers of the first Occupy group, in New York City, had seen the “Arab Spring” and had observed the amazing action of millions of citizens rising up and protesting their authoritarian or dictatorial rulers. And they saw the success of ridding those countries of those who kept the people down, kept them in their place, kept them from the freedom that they wanted, both in politics and in the economic life of their countries. In most of the uprisings of the Arab Spring, it was done with a minimum of bloodshed, although there were deaths, mostly among the protesters. After all they didn’t have the guns and other weaponry. Libya was one exception, when the fighting turned into a civil war, prompted and assisted by air power and support from other countries, but that conflict faded from the world’s press within a few weeks after the killing of Muammar Ghaddafi. The aftermath of the Arab Spring in most of the countries is another matter. Making something new out of authoritarianism or dictatorships, by people who have little experience in governing, is a tough job. In Egypt, a year after the people rose up against Hosni Mubarak and ousted him from 30 years in power, the people are rising again because the army looks as if it is not willing to turn over the reins of power to civilians. They remember that Mubarak took power in the same manner. No matter the country, protesters are on the short end of power and suffer the most casualties, but they continue to fight for their right to some measure of self-determination. Who would have thought that the vicious apartheid system in South Africa would finally fall, without an open revolution? Revolutionary change came, but only after decades of struggle and suffering. And the Berlin Wall fell without a shot being fired…another revolutionary act by the people on both sides, again, though, after many years of struggle. Such examples are numerous, although there have been bloody risings of the people, some resulting in war crimes that have yet to be prosecuted. In countries of the European Union there have been recent stirrings of peaceful revolution, as there has been in Israel, a democratic country in what was once a sea of dictatorships, royal rule, and authoritarian governments. Syria is very close to open rebellion, even though Assad has been vicious in his response to the people’s protests. One could say that the stirrings have occurred in the U.S., as well. There was the Tea Party movement, inspired and supported by billionaires trying to maintain the status quo. Tea partiers even brought their guns to demonstrations, but there didn’t ever seem to be a question of their use. Now, the Occupy movement has brought the attention of the nation to the gross disparity in wealth between the 1 percent and the other 99 percent (most of us). The country’s Right Wing has viewed this with alarm. The front-runner for the Republican nomination for president, Mitt Romney, said last fall that the rhetoric of the Occupy movements that sprang up around the country amounted to “class warfare.” In Florida last October, he said, “I think it’s (class warfare) dangerous.” In the same month, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Republican, expressed alarm at the “growing mobs” that were sowing division in the country. What they were doing that so upset the Republicans and their base is that the Occupy movement was attempting to shine a light on the disparity in wealth and political power. Romney, Newt Gingrich, his lead opponent in the race for the GOP nomination, and those in power, in general, are denouncing the protesters and their exercise of their First Amendment rights to show how the disparity has crippled social programs that serve those most in need. For Romney and the rest, that’s “class warfare.” During the past 40 years, when the disparity was being constructed by the rich and powerful, so that the vast majority of Americans was being left out, that wasn’t class warfare. Rather, it was an adjustment upward of the wealth of the nation, to the extent that, today, the top 1 percent of Americans, in 2007, owned 34.6 of all privately held wealth, and the next 19 percent had 50.5 percent, which left only about 15 percent of the wealth for the bottom 80 percent of Americans, according to Professor G. William Domhoff of University of California, Santa Cruz. This disparity has taken time to construct and few people (with the possible exception of some sociologists, some on the margins of politics, and especially, trade unionists who had to negotiate contracts for workers with the very people who have carefully caused the disparity in both wealth and income) ever called it class warfare. Now that there is a general discussion of the philosophy and goals of the rich and powerful, it’s class warfare. The Mitt Romneys and Newt Gingriches of the nation don’t want this discussion. The GOP leaders of both the U.S. House and Senate do not want this discussion. They are always rumbling about “class warfare,” and they will fight to the end to maintain the status quo. That’s why they are afraid of the Occupy movement and all of the movements that came before it. The people are responding to the discussion and debate and that could be dangerous. Across the country, mayors and governors have pushed to have the Occupy encampments removed, as if that will minimize the intensity of the debate. They have succeeded, in part. Just in the past week, they removed the encampment in the District of Columbia and plunged a taser into the back of a young man who was being held by two officers and who was not resisting in any measurable way. In the past weekend, some 400 Occupy participants were arrested in Oakland, Cal. Even in countries with no tradition of what The West calls democracy, the people have managed to change the direction of their nations just by the force of their massed presence and because they made it clear that they knew who the oppressors were. In the U.S., there is a tradition of democracy and, for many observers around the world, it seems inconceivable that a nation of 310 million could be fleeced of their living standard and allow the wealth to be concentrated in the top 1 percent. It is just that kind of imbalance that has caused disruption and revolution elsewhere in the world. When President John F. Kennedy said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable,” he was addressing the diplomats of the Latin American nations, in observance of the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, in 1962. He was not thinking of his own country at the time, and yet the reduction of the U.S. working and middle classes was under way, but not yet in full swing here, as it was in the countries to the south. Americans are at that time and place in which, had he lived to see this era, Kennedy might well be warning that the people can only endure so much before there is a response or a reaction to their treatment at the hands of the rich and powerful. Those who call it class warfare only when the people call them out might well go back and read what Kennedy was talking about, because there were plenty of petty dictators and tyrants (most of them supported by the U.S.), who had oppressed and exploited their people. In our time, their role is played by CEOs and a majority of politicians. BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.