Clausewitz observed that war was the continuation of politics by other means. At this blog, we have observed many times how politics seem to become a furtherance of warfare by other means. Politics is a human invention for resolving crisis without violence; when democracy rises against its oppressors, they may have the voting booth or the tumbrils. The electoral lever is a chief tool of nonviolent crisis resolution in America.
Through nonviolent resistance, every baton wielded against Veterans For Peace taking part in the Occupation movement in Boston is a gift. Indeed, the sight of America’s bravest and boldest holding firm under a row of flags is not just inspiring, it is also a lesson in the origins of democracy. When people act in unity, their strength is multiplied. Every kettling on a bridge is another chance for the army of democracy to show its united resolve to win by nonviolence. Every time the Occupation movement’s food tents are demolished is another gift.
But at some point, it must result in changing the power. Progress requires we think long — I have argued it before — but also in cycles. Every time I read another paean to radicalism as an end in itself, disdainful of this reality, I cringe.
The president has spoken up for us. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have spoken up for us. Civil Rights icons want to speak up for us. Let them. It’s not like they need our permission. Indeed, what we’re doing seems to have encouraged them.
The fact that a jobs bill cannot pass this congress — that millions of actual, real, not-imaginary jobs will not be created when it is cheap and advisable to do so — says everything about what is wrong with America. So does the Senate impasse over any nomination to the CPFB, and the continued failure of this congress to write the regulations it agreed to create under Frank-Dodd. Civil libertarians should ask themselves which branch has actually made closing Camp X-Ray impossible. This body, which enjoys tremendous vacation time yet seems incapable of getting even the most bipartisan work done, must face the same activism we have already begun towards other centers of power. They have more than earned it.
Every so often, I engage in another one of those Obama-obsessive debates with someone in the Occupation movement. I maintain that the executive is America’s least-broken branch of the federal government, that the Supreme Court (Citizens United, anyone?) is more broken, and the legislative branch more broken still. Moreover, the downballot races — school board, mayor, county council, dog catcher — are where the movement must have a permanent effect. We must purge the backward, crazy thinking from American politics; one thousand abortion bills, hundreds of anti-union bills, and teacher-busting bills live in American states.
Rather than focus on electoral politics, the Occupation movement has committed to changing the American culture. No one agrees with this idea more wholeheartedly than me; indeed, none can make a better argument for the absolute necessity of doing it. Yet neither approach is exclusive, or ought to be.
We complain of “bubbles” inside the Beltway, but we will change nothing until we actually puncture them. Without a new reality on the ground in the federal city, the consensus stands — propped under by Dean Broder’s dessicating corpse. That consensus was built on a decadal revolution; so must this one be.
If elections are incapable of effecting real change, then why are Republicans trying so hard to stop Americans from doing it? Why all the voter-suppression efforts? What is the point of taking away the levers of power if they have no power? And if the Occupation doesn’t make congress, the president, and state legislatures accountable at the ballot box, how and where shall they?
While passing out fliers last Friday — occupying Court Street — I met a pair of married friends with their infant in a stroller. Both work full time jobs, have pared expenses down to minimum (no cable, no extras, no outings), and worry about whether they will make it from month to month. They aren’t lazy or stupid. They are the 99%. If this movement can relieve the crisis for them in any real way, it will earn their trust and participation.
This movement doesn’t have to be electoral. It doesn’t have to be legislative, or cultural, or radical, or even a main street phenomenon. But it must be all of these things at some time, or else it was just camping.
