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The great Frederick Douglass made this passionate appeal to an audience at Canandaigua, NY on a hot August day in 1857:
http://www.peopleshistory.us/about
“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
We, American debt-slaves oppressed by an international, corrupt cabal of billionaire kleptocrats, and their minions in government, can no longer patiently wait for the right moment to revolt. Neither President Barack Obama, nor Secretary Hillary Clinton, nor even Senator Bernie Sanders will ever appear on corporate-owned television to tell us to immediately stop taking abuse from our corporate overlords. The moment for massive, non-violent acts of civil disobedience is now, tomorrow, and every day of our lives: until “ justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream” (the words of another great American, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoken on another hot August day in 1963).
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/speech/dream.htm
So, what public protests are you participating in soon? And of course by “public”, I mean to exclude anything done in front of a computer or with a smartphone! Opposing Keystone XL? Fighting the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA? Doing something to push back against killing and surveillance drones? Moving to Amend the Constitution to overturn Citizens United? I don’t care if only 3 or 4 people show up to confront the system at any given event– the point is to constantly remind our oppressors that not all of us have surrendered to their predations.
George Carlin famously pointed out the advantages our oppressors enjoy:
“They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information…” http://prof77.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/george-carlin-forget-the-politicians/
Yet all is not lost! We truly outnumber these sick creeps by more than a million times. Sure there is a risk in standing up in the public square, but really what do we have to lose?
17 Comments
My apologies for the sloppiness in that last block quote, lol!
Thanks for showing a little fire in the belly Anti! Highly recommended, of course.
Just the cities?
Thank you, ANTI! The PTB are not afraid. Yet. Occupy was a nice start but only the beginning. It will be a long haul and you’re so right. What have we to lose but what little self respect we have left. They will stop at nothing to win. I believe it will come down to which side law enforcement and/or the military chooses. I think( hope) they’ll choose the people over the Masters but it will get ugly. Non-violent resistance is the way to go. More citizens will awaken to the truth that way. Ignorance is a very tough enemy. PEACE……p.s. How do we get millions to join a mortgage moratorium/strike? At least for 3 months would probably get the message across. Just think of havoc that would wreak….PEACE,again
Keep articles like this one coming. I had a bank and its officials commit a crime against me – but I can’t find a single lawyer to legally stand on my behalf against that bank. Attorneys know that their small law firm will be inundated by dozens of motions that the banks’ hundreds of attorneys can keep firing off to prevent justice from helping me and punishing them. Then add in the factor, that even if i did find an attorney to help me, that many if not all judges have stock in the bigger banks, or else have business associations, or major loans with bigger banks – so how is there justice?
I have yet to hear of a judge recusing himself or herself from a case because of such affiliations, so what this tells me is we now live in an oligarchy. Americans were always shocked to hear of how dictators of third world nations could enter a store and demand the store’s owners give up the items in the store, for no payment whatsoever, and we now are approaching that kind of lifestyle. The only difference is that they are stealing from us AT THE TOP, so many Americans never even get to open up their small store front. While their Social Security monies and MediCare “entitlements” will be siphoned off to continue to help the Federal Reserve via Treasury, allow Bernanke and Lew to create digitized “loan” accounts to “loan” the Big Financial Firms trillions of dollars.
You don’t think that the military would simply come in and confiscate our homes, if such an actions tarted to gain momentum? History teaches us that once a “government” decides on a policy of scorn for the middle class, that confiscation of property, at the very least, is inevitable. Look at how the middle class neighborhoods in Soweto, So Africa, were bulldozed apart and people forced into camps. Our illustrious leaders are using from the same play book.
You wanna act somewhere else? Nobody is stopping you.
We are not South Africa. I would bet my life (maybe sooner rather than later) that the American people would not stand for that. I also believe it will be touch & go with the military. Most military and families are regular folks . They are slowly but surely realizing they too are getting screwed. I also believe this will be America’s”finest hour”. PEACE
Explain yourself,please.
OK,
Diary says: “A Tah[r}ir Square In every American City!
Tarheel writes: “Just the cities?”
Then I comment: “You want a Tahrir square in somewhere beside a city, go ahead, no one is stopping you.”
Then YOU write: “Explain yourself please.” Which I find a bit demanding in tone, but OK, whatever.
So I do. And here we are.
My BIG mistake. Sorry, I misunderstood completely. When you said,”you wanna act somewhere else? no one is stopping you.”, I took it the wrong way. No excuses, sorry again. The last thing I meant to sound like is demanding. Especially on FDL. This serious talk (finally) of resistance has my brain working overtime, and being a 58 year old brain that’s been waiting many years for this moment,have mercy. PEACE
No worries. I understand the impulse believe me.
I actually have a diary in mind that calls for a bit of keyboard (and phone) activism. THe kind at which FDLers excel. It’s probably OT to talk about it here. I’ll write it up tonight & post it this weekend.
Oh, and recc’d.
Looking forward to it. This is just the beginning. Change is coming, finally! PEACE
Good writing. Recommended. (Typo: Tahrir)
Recommended. Take to the streets, wherever you are!
I’m still waiting for whatever it is that will move the average American to do so.
Thanks to all for insightful comments! I am mortified at the typo in the title, but I appreciate everyone’s forbearance. We should certainly not limit our public protests to city streets! Indeed, very often the PTB must be directly confronted as they further degrade our planet: blowing the tops off mountains, laying oil pipelines, etc. One advantage to a mass protest in a suburban or rural context is that the logistics of repression become more difficult for the PTB. A huge, militarized metropolitan police force spares state and federal politicians from getting their hands dirty.
My guess is that the PTB would first seek to distract us with a little bread and circuses diversion, before inflicting massive casualties. They prefer not having the mask ripped off, but this doesn’t mean they won’t get nasty when they feel that maintaining the facade is no longer worth it.