Fox News was always partisan, but now it is rudderless and "anti-democratic"

from Boing Boing:

Building on her excellent work in 2017's Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Jane Mayer takes to The New Yorker with a deeply researched, lively and alarming 12,000-word longread on the radical shifts at Fox News that have taken place since the Trump election, as #MeToo has claimed the organization's senior leaders, leaving it rudderless and under the nominal command of an ailing Rupert Murdoch, whose main management contributions have consisted of purging the minor dissenting voices at Fox, leaving behind a kind of Hannity-and-Co version of Lord of the Flies.

Mayer traces the current state of Fox to the disgraced departure of Fox's top brass, starting with CEO Roger Ailes (who promptly dropped dead) and then Bill O'Reilly, both implicated in a string of grotesque, longrunning sexual abuse scandals that also claimed Bill Shine, abettor of these abuses, who quickly took over as Trump's communications director, where he serves while collecting millions of dollars from Fox.

The departures left Fox rudderless, for while Ailes was a monster who raped a female subordinate for decades (she was eventually paid off for $3.1 million) and kept a "Black Ops" department that performed oppo research on a long list of his enemies (including his biographer!), he also represented (incredibly) the voice of reason and balance at the company, punishing on-air talent who campaigned for and provided cover to Republican politicians.

With Ailes gone, Murdoch himself took over, purging the company of those dissenting voices who had kept things somewhat in check in Ailes absence. Then Murdoch, who is elderly and frail, was hospitalized with an injury that also necessitated a long convalescence.

Thus began the new Fox, where anything that protects Trump goes. Where once Glenn Beck was fired for spouting deranged conspiracy theories on-air, now Hannity can say pretty much anything he wants, so long as it's good for Trump.

And Trump has returned the favor: under Trump's rule, Fox and Murdoch have benefitted from regulatory decisions that permitted the Fox Studios' merger with Disney (which put billions into Murdoch's pockets), a block on the merger between Sinclair and Tribune (which would have created a national right-wing competitor for Fox), and a near-block on the Time-Warner/AT&T merger (Trump ordered that this be prevented, but his top aides secretly vetoed him because they didn't want the appearance that Trump was punishing Time-Warner for CNN's unflattering coverage).

With Shine acting as a conduit between Fox and the White House, Fox has been transformed into a kind of state media under presidential control, with power flowing in both directions: Fox enjoys near-exclusivity when it comes to interviewing Trump, while Trump can simply call the network and reverse their policies, for example, he got Ann Coulter reinstated to the network after she was blackballed for being an obnoxious troll.

And if Murdoch is absent from the daily operations of Fox, he remains solid in his role as kingmaker for far-right regimes, with reported daily phone calls between Kushner and Murdoch where Kushner seeks Murdoch's advice on how to run the country.

From its beginning, Fox was not exactly a "conservative" voice, rather, its business model was to build ratings through "fear-based, anger-based politics that has to do with class and race." But in the post-Ailes era, Fox's has a new role that it has never quite had before: running defense and interference on behalf of the White House.

As Murdoch’s relations with the White House have warmed, so has Fox’s coverage of Trump. During the Obama years, Fox’s attacks on the President could be seen as reflecting the adversarial role traditionally played by the press. With Trump’s election, the network’s hosts went from questioning power to defending it. Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Law School professor who co-directs the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, says, “Fox’s most important role since the election has been to keep Trump supporters in line.” The network has provided a non-stop counternarrative in which the only collusion is between Hillary Clinton and Russia; Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is perpetrating a “coup” by the “deep state”; Trump and his associates aren’t corrupt, but America’s law-enforcement officials and courts are; illegal immigration isn’t at a fifteen-year low, it’s “an invasion”; and news organizations that offer different perspectives are “enemies of the American people.”

Benkler’s assessment is based on an analysis of millions of American news stories that he and two co-authors, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts, undertook for their 2018 book, “Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation and Radicalization in American Politics.” Benkler told me that he and his co-authors had expected to find “symmetric polarization” in the left-leaning and the right-leaning media outlets. Instead, they discovered that the two poles of America’s media ecosystem function very differently. “It’s not the right versus the left,” Benkler says. “It’s the right versus the rest.”

The Making of the Fox News White House [Jane Mayer/The New Yorker]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lambasts US government shutdown in first House speech

What A Great Speech - Her First in the House - Love this Woman - A New Leader!

Don't blame democracy's decline on ignorance. The problem lies deeper

from The Guardian:


Shining a light on authoritarians’ actions is not enough – the media need to focus on trends behind the day-to-day news

Democracy is in crisis and, for some, ignorance is to blame. Take the slogan of one major American newspaper: “Democracies die in darkness.” It represents a simplistic answer to the rise of authoritarian and populist forces around the globe. The reason for its popularity is, undoubtedly, its appeal to an Enlightenment logic, in which knowledge means power and progress. Hence, the argument goes, if people would only know how bad politicians like Donald Trump are, they will turn away from them, and democracy is saved.

There is no doubt that transparency is vital for liberal democracy to flourish, but that does not mean that it creates liberal democracy, nor that its absence kills liberal democracy – as centuries of national, and decades of European, democratic rule show. The problem of this idea is that it is based on a broad range of false assumptions, most notably that just shining light will lead to enlightenment.

In reality, few democracies have died in darkness. Even the paradigmatic case of Weimar Germany, in which Adolf Hitler came to power by democratic means to subsequently abolish democracy and throw the world into the most deadly abyss in history, did not happen in “darkness”. Everyone knew, or should have known, what Hitler stood for. His bestseller Mein Kampf (My Struggle), which he wrote in prison after a failed coup d’état, might have been badly written, but it repeated his antisemitic and antidemocratic ideas ad nauseam. And he dismantled the democratic system while independent media were still alive and kicking.

More recently, authoritarian leaders have rarely abolished liberal democracy overnight. Rather, they slowly but steadily chip away at its liberal foundations first, and its electoral foundations later. From Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Vladimir Putin, and from Niclás Maduro to Viktor Orbán, liberal democracies are carefully and often cautiously dismantled, piece by piece, in the spotlight of, at least initially, a relatively free and independent media. These leaders openly express their authoritarian impulses, their disdain for (the) opposition, and their intent to fundamentally change the political system.

In many cases, authoritarian leaders defend every individual “chip” by pointing to similar policies in other western democracies. The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is a master at this, taking individual institutions and rules from a broad variety of EU member states to build, what the US sociologist Kim-Lane Scheppele has aptly called, a “Frankenstate”. Just like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein monster, which is created from all human body parts, the Frankenstate is made up of democratic rules. Each individual rule is, or can be, democratic, but the specific combination of them, creates an undemocratic regime.

Shining light on each individual component, in isolation, will therefore not expose the Frankenstate. As long as the individual components are not connected, each measure is also, in and by itself, not enough to create a sense of alarm, let alone urgency, among the citizenry and internal organizations. Look at the hapless responses of the European Union to Orbán’s near-decade of attacks on democracy in Hungary, or the lukewarm responses to voter suppression in many US states (including my state, Georgia).

Democracies can as easily die in the spotlight as in darkness. Media that simply “report the news”, rather than analyze it, miss trends, and only see the real threat when it is too late. That is why the media critic Jay Rosen has been arguing for a new media logic for several months now, as authoritarian leaders have mastered the old one, and play it to their strength. This is one of the reasons why he, like me, supports a new media initiative from the Netherlands, The Correspondent, which promises to bring “unbreaking news” and focus on trends behind the day-to-day news.

We need the media to break out of its mutually beneficial addiction with mediagenic authoritarians like Trump, and shine its spotlight on the real threats to democracy, rather than the deflections offered by the authoritarians. But even if the media do that, democracies will still die when mainstream elites – cultural, economic, political and religious – continue to collaborate with authoritarians rather than openly oppose them. And they will continue to die, if democratic politicians do not offer better alternatives than the authoritarians.

The best example of this sad state of affairs is Hungary, which this week took the final step towards a (competitive) authoritarian regime, by abolishing independent judicial control on the government. While it is true that this step was taken “in darkness”, at least within the country, as Orbán’s cronies control practically all Hungarian media, most previous steps were taken in full light, scrutinized by various still independent media.

Moreover, international media have covered Orbán’s creation of an “illiberal state” in detail, but complicity of foreign elites, from the German car industry to the European People’s party (EPP), has left the EU unable, and unwilling, to act. Both hide behind the false excuse that collaboration leads to his moderation, while exclusion will further radicalize him. But they also rightly note that Orbán is the most popular politician in the country, and that the heavily divided, and partly complicit, opposition offers no viable alternative.

Perhaps the media can shine more light on all these factors, and connect them in enlightening analyses. We need to look at trends that underlie the “news of the day”, and not be distracted by every Trump tweet or focus almost exclusively on the low-hanging fruits (like the latest raucous White House press conferences or palace intrigues). After all, while democracies cannot flourish in darkness, autocracies cannot flourish in the light.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: abolish Columbus Day, replace it with Voting Day

from Boing Boing:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (previously), the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, has proposed abolishing Columbus Day (which honors a raping, murdering, enslaving, genocidal pedophile) and replacing it with a day off for voting (which most other developed democracies give their citizens).

Ocasio-Cortez first mooted an Election Day holiday, then replyied to Daily Mail’s U.S. political editor David Martosko, who tweeted that "AOC hasn't even started the job yet and she's already angling for more vacation days," by saying, "While I would disagree with your complaint that Americans get too much vacation time (we work some of the longest hours of any dev country & have no Fed required paid leave), I am willing to compromise by eliminating Columbus Day to give Election Day off. See? I can be pliant."

The idea that Election Day should be a national holiday was proposed by independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, for whom Ocasio-Cortez was an organizer, when he pursued the Democratic primary for the 2016 presidential election.

After a turnout of only about 36 percent in the 2014 elections, according to the University of Florida’s United States Elections Project, Sanders co-sponsored a bill to establish “Democracy Day” to make it easier for Americans to vote.

“Election Day should be a national holiday so that everyone has the time and opportunity to vote. While this would not be a cure-all, it would indicate a national commitment to create a more vibrant democracy,” Sanders wrote on his website. “We should not be satisfied with a 'democracy" in which more than 60 percent of our people don't vote and some 80 percent of young people and low-income Americans fail to vote.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Wants to Replace Columbus Day With Holiday for Election Day [Jessica Kwong/Newsweek]

School of Life Monday: Why Socrates Hated Democracy

We’re used to thinking hugely well of democracy. But interestingly, one of the wisest people who ever lived, Socrates, had deep suspicions of it.

Democrats Don’t Need "Dump" Supporters to Win Elections

from The Nation:

The 2017 elections made clear that the Obama coalition is the majority.

The evidence is in from the 2017 elections, and the verdict is clear—the constituencies that twice voted to put a black man in the White House remain the majority in this country. Democrats spent a year wailing and navel gazing as they tried to figure out how to woo Trump supporters, but it turns out that the way to win is to mobilize the New American Majority—people of color and progressive whites.

In the elections on November 7, Democrats carried the day in contests across the country. From Virginia and New Jersey to Montana to California—and myriad races in between—Democratic candidates swept to victory. What was the secret to all this success? Inspiring and mobilizing those people who are with us rather than trying to persuade those who support Trump that they made a mistake. In Virginia, 91 percent of those who approve of Trump’s performance voted Republican, but Ralph Northam nonetheless trounced his Republican opponent, Ed Gillespie. In New Jersey, 87 percent of Trump supporters stuck with the Republicans, but Democrat Phil Murphy cruised to a landslide victory.

In Virginia and New Jersey, it was the “Obama coalition” of people of color and progressive whites—what I call the New American Majority—that propelled Democrats to victory. In both of those states, the Democratic candidates for governor lost the white vote but won the election because 80 percent of people of color supported them, providing the same kind of cornerstone that Obama enjoyed.

Despite 12 months of worried think pieces, high-profile initiatives, and expensive, poll-driven campaigns designed to appeal to the white working class, the levels of support for Democrats from that constituency barely budged. In Virginia, Northam received 26 percent of the white working-class vote, as compared to the 24 percent Hillary Clinton received in 2016. It is worth noting that Northam and Murphy both received a higher percentage of the white college-educated vote than Clinton did last year, but that could just be a statistical quirk reflecting a higher number of white Democrats turning out to vote than white Republicans. If that uptick is real, it was nonetheless among college-educated whites; in other words, not from the constituency that Democrats have obsessively focused on. The ceiling with the white working class is what it is.

The ability to win without picking up significant additional support from Trump supporters lays bare the fundamental fallacy underlying most Democratic and progressive strategy—the notion that Trump won and enjoys majority support. He didn’t, and he doesn’t. What happened in 2016 was not a mass defection of Democratic voters to Trump. What happened was a dramatic decline in black voter turnout (because of voter suppression, grossly insufficient investment, and overall lack of inspiration from the all-white Democratic ticket), combined with a splintering of the Obama coalition that saw statistically significant numbers of Democratic voters defect to the third- and fourth-party candidacies of Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. Not only did Trump lose the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes; he also failed to garner a majority of the vote in the states that tipped the Electoral College vote—Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

What does all of this mean for 2018? It means that by inspiring and investing in the core components of the Obama coalition, namely people of color and progressive whites, Democrats can capture control of the House of Representatives and replace Republican governors in key states such as Georgia, Florida, Arizona, Maryland, Illinois, Ohio, and Massachusetts.

In order to prevail, however, Democrats must celebrate and embrace the diversity of the progressive coalition in all its multicultural, multiracial splendor. It is time to reject the conventional wisdom that electoral success requires muting our identities for fear of further alienating those who are already so afraid of the country’s changing population that they put a hate-mongerer like Trump in the Oval Office. A proud turban-wearing Sikh man, Ravi Bhalla, was elected mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey. Two out transgender candidates—Danica Roem in Virginia and Andrea Jenkins in Minneapolis, Minnesota—won their races for state legislature and city council, respectively. The voters of Seattle elected out lesbian Jenny Durkan as mayor. Vi Lyles and LaToya Cantrell became the first African-American female mayors of Charlotte, North Carolina, and New Orleans, Louisiana, this year. And despite the relentless demonization of immigrants of color over the past two years, Wilmot Collings, an African refugee, was elected as mayor of Helena, Montana (yes, Montana).

Celebrating the fullness of our nation’s radiant rainbow inspires people to participate and leads to the kinds of wins we saw on November 7. Apologizing for “identity politics” precipitates an electoral death spiral, because it doesn’t work to woo Trump voters, who will always opt for the real racist, and it also depresses the enthusiasm of the very voters we need to win.

Inspiring and investing in progressive Democratic turnout is the winning strategy, even in the 10 Senate races where Democrats are running for reelection in 2018 in states that Trump won. In seven of those states, more people voted for Clinton in 2016 than voted for the Republican nominee for the Senate in the last mid-term election. That means that focusing on getting out the Democratic vote is a far more promising course of action than striking a moderate pose. And in the other three—Missouri, North Dakota, and West Virginia—the Democratic incumbents enjoyed solid support long before Trump entered the political arena.

Especially in the states Trump won handily, the decision to vote for Clinton was a statement. Offering voters a vehicle to make that statement again is what’s required.

Lastly, winning elections isn’t just about inspirational words and impressive candidates. It’s also about the basic, expensive, and labor-intensive blocking and tackling involved in helping busy people overcome the many barriers to participation in the political process. Ample empirical evidence has proven that the best way to increase voter turnout is to work with trusted messengers to engage their friends and neighbors. That means putting money into organizations with credibility in communities of color and a track record of conducting effective electoral work.

One of the unsung heroes of the Virginia election is New Virginia Majority. Its co-director Tram Nguyen spent years coordinating a coalition of community-based organizations, and that work paid off decisively as people of color turned out to vote in record numbers this year. In 2018, millions of dollars should be showered on groups like New Virginia Majority—groups like One Arizona, which registered 150,000 Latino voters in 2016 in a state that represents one of the few Democratic senatorial pickup opportunities; New Georgia Project, which recorded the largest black voter-registration numbers in the history of the state; and New Florida Majority, which has organizers across the state communicating with hundreds of thousands of voters. There are similar over-performing but underfunded leaders in key states across the country (my organization, Democracy in Color, listed several such organizations, which we call Frontline Freedom Fighter groups, earlier this year in our report, “Return of the Majority”).

Perhaps the single most important takeaway from the 2017 elections is that we must carry ourselves with the confidence that we are the majority of people in this country. We should spent less time going hat in hand to try to understand the motivations of people who want to expel and ban Mexicans and Muslims from this country, incarcerate African Americans, restrict fundamental rights for women, and discriminate against the LGBTQIA community. As Democrats and progressives, we can govern in the interests of those people (that is, those who voted for Trump) by preserving affordable health care, access to higher education, and raising the minimum wage, but seeking their votes is a waste of time and energy, time and energy that’s required to get our voters—our majority—to the polls.

We must have less apology and more outrage. This monster in the White House and his enablers in Congress are destroying the country and the world. The appropriate response is outrage, anger, and, most important, action. Action to move our friends and neighbors to the polls so that we can take our country back. We’ve made a good start in 2017, and the results confirm the soundness of the strategy. Now is the time to redouble those efforts.

Steve PhillipsTWITTERSteve Phillips is a national political leader, civil-rights lawyer, author, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and the founder and editor in chief of Democracy in Color, a multimedia platform on race and politics. He is the author of the New York Times best seller, Brown Is the New White: How a Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority (New Press). He is a regular contributor to The Nation.

Elect Joe Keithley a.k.a. Joey Shithead of DOA and the Green Party in Canada B.C.

from Dangerous Minds:

West Coast punk legend Joey “Shithead” Keithley of D.O.A. is running for office in Burnaby, B.C. Keithley will stand as Green Party candidate for Member of the Legislative Assembly in the May 9 election. His promise:

If I am elected I will be a strong voice for regular folks, the same way I have been in DOA. These are some of the issues I will fight for: affordable housing, creation of jobs through green technology and alternative energy, lower cost daycare, affordable post-secondary education and income equality. I will also stand against the expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline that threatens BC’s beautiful coast with potential spills of dirty tar sands oil from Alberta. I will also work towards making the 1% pay their fair share.

Below is the “elevator pitch” from Keithley’s GoFundMe page.

My Photograph of Joey Spithead, as frontman of the group D.O.A.
at the Starwood in West Hollywood circa 1980:



Go Get'em Joey!

from Joey:

Most folks don’t know this, but I went to university to become a civil rights lawyer, but I soon started D.O.A. That act turned me into an informal politician my entire adult life, now I am working on becoming an elected politician. I am running for the BC Green Party in my hometown of Burnaby, BC this May 9th for the office of MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly), basically the equivalent of a state congressperson.

If I am elected I will be a strong voice for regular folks, the same way I have been in DOA. These are some of the issues I will fight for: affordable housing, creation of jobs through green technology and alternative energy, lower cost daycare, affordable post-secondary education and income equality. I will also stand against the expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline that threatens BC’s beautiful coast with potential spills of dirty tar sands oil from Alberta. I will also work towards making the 1% pay their fair share.

I will fight against the corruption in our political system that has become standard fare from the NDP and the BC Liberals. I want your vote, my vote, everybody’s vote to count, so we have real democracy.

Nice Day At The Park

Keep Hope Alive!

THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE.


(click on the panoramic image to see bigger)



Washington Square protest and march on Saturday... good to get out and in it.

Bonus:
Here's a photo I saw on line last week thought it was cool enough to share,
creative graphic this woman made:

Sunday Time to Think: Noam Chomsky: Democracy Is a Threat to Any Power System

To mark The Nation’s 150th anniversary, John Nichols was joined in conversation by the eminent radical intellectual Noam Chomsky at the Tucson Festival of Books in Arizona on March 15. Discussing issues ranging from media accountability and voter participation, to money in politics and income inequality, Chomsky offered insight into the greatest challenges of our time.

“The race towards disaster is being carried out with almost euphoric intensity,” said Chomsky. Chomsky maintains that meaningful change requires a democratic awakening. “Democracy is a threat to any power system,” he said.

Activism in Crisis

from Linkedin:

I dream of a hybrid movement-party that wins elections in multiple countries.

The Crisis Within Activism is a Crisis Within Democracy

“We are living through a period with the largest protests in human history. But they are not working. And when you reach that point, instead of repeating the traditional protest behaviors, screaming and holding posters, you have to innovate,” says Micah White, cocreator of Occupy Wall Street and former Adbusters editor, in an interview with Brazil's CartaCapital about his book, THE END OF PROTEST.

Micah spoke with CartaCapital during his recent visit to São Paulo for the launch of GUME ("Knife Edge"), a new engagement consultancy.



Micah White: Absolutely. In addition to a crisis in representative democracy, there is a crisis in the model of activism, how people protest. There is a crisis in the power of people to force governments to do what they want. We live in a time when there appears to be no way for ordinary people to influence their governments through protest… This means there is no democracy.

CC: Does this mean that the democratic system does not work anymore?

MW: I do not think in any way that the dream of democracy is dead. The dream of democracy has been going on since the beginning of civilization and humans have always been fighting for democracy. For five thousand years we’ve been overthrowing pharaohs, kings and tyrants in a struggle for democracy. Now we're in one of those moments in history when we have a low point of democracy, but there will be a high point of democracy soon. This requires, however, a kind of innovation within our concepts of activism.

CC: How is it possible to reduce the power of corporations in government?

MW: The only way to remove the power of corporations in our society would be to create a social movement capable of winning elections. As movements and as activists, we have avoided the only solution, which is: we have to build social movements that can also function as political parties. This is a need that we do not want to hear. We think we can just organize large protests and get really angry. Occupy Wall Street was a once in a lifetime event and it did not work because we were chasing a false theory of how social change happens. We believe, or wanted to believe, that a large number of people going to the streets can cause changes in their governments, but when we achieved a historical social movement, we realized this story of change is not true. Now it is clear that the only way to win power is to create a hybrid between a social movement and a political party. Something that does not have leaders, but has spokespeople and an organizational structure that lasts more than six months.

CC: How is it possible to achieve social change through protests?

MW: Today, social movements ask their participants do very basic and small actions: to take to the streets, holding posters and shouting. These are very basic behaviors and no longer have a political effect. Occupy Wall Street and the 15M in Spain, brought more complex behaviors, such as participating in general assemblies or utilizing hand gestures, but these are still very simple behaviors. I think we have to ask more of social movement participants. We must show that social movements require difficult behaviors like, winning elections, drafting legislation, governing our cities ... We need to demand a greater investment than just show up. The Internet allows us to ask for more. Thanks to social networks, it’s time to treat participants as capable of developing sophisticated behaviors and teaching each other how to to spread these actions globally.

CC: Do social networks have a new role in organizing and promoting protests?

MW: Absolutely. I think the role of the Internet is spreading contagious emotions. If we look at the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, it seems that the trigger was a mood that spread all over the world and was basically a sensation of losing one’s fear. People said “I do not care about the risks, this is the time to act” and went to the streets. That's what social networks do: they allow us to transfer that contagious mood of rebellion to the whole world. The other power of the Internet is in allowing us to innovate our tactics in real time. From the moment when a new tactic emerges in one city, it can be deployed in another city. So it was with Occupy Wall Street.

CC: Can the internet become something more than a network in which feelings are spread?

MW: There is a hope that perhaps the Internet allows us an electronic democracy. That's the idea of the 5 Star Movement in Italy. Participants use the internet to decide on legislation and to select candidates for the elections. The idea of the Internet enabling collective decision-making is very interesting, but difficult to achieve.

CC: Some people prefer digital activism to the street. What do you think?

MW: In the early stages, the Internet is very important for social movements. However, over time, the Internet becomes harmful because things start to look better online than in real life. This happened with Occupy. The protest looked better on Facebook than it did in the streets. This is negative because people start to prefer the online experience to the real world. So the Internet is a double-edged sword. The internet is a weapon that is not fully under our control, and it is very difficult to wield effectively.

CC: Do you believe that the advance of neoliberalism has helped reduce the importance of social movements around the world?

MW: Protests are a form of war and war is politics by other means. Protests are ways of influencing the political system by unconventional methods. And the revolution is a change in the legal regime. It is transforming what is legal into something illegal or making what is illegal legal. If social movements are a form of warfare then it is clear that the forces that are in power will use all possible means to destroy social movements. The problem is activists do not see their protests in the context of war. We see them as a big party or something, while the other side realizes the importance of the event. Above all, however, it is crucial not blame others. We must blame ourselves. Social movements do not fail because the police are very strong. Throughout history, people have overthrown governments with a much stronger police, either because they found a way to defeat them in the streets or because they managed to get the police to change sides. So when our protests fail it is because our theory of change was wrong and not because the other side was stronger.

CC: Occupy Wall Street was born in 2011 and influenced many movements around the world. To date, we have several social movements emerging in Europe also influenced by 15M or Occupy. What is the role of the internet?

MW: What happened is that a new tactic emerged and it worked, so it spread worldwide. Occupy Wall Street combined tactics in Egypt with those of Spain and applied them to the United States. The police could not anticipate this new protest strategy and that's why the movement worked. Once the police discovered how to respond to our encampments, they destroyed all the movements worldwide in the same way. Protest is a constant war of new attack strategies and counter-attack. Interestingly, at the moment we are increasing the frequency of protests. This is very good, but on the other hand, we must be skeptical because we are living through a period with the largest protests in human history, but they are not working.

CC: Do you believe that we can be in a historic moment of rupture?

MW: What I imagine is the birth of a social movement that wins elections in a country and then begins to win elections in multiple countries. Then you will see Syriza or the 5 Star Movement in three, seven or ten different countries. Yeah ... I really think it's about this storyline of a global social movement.

CC: You do not think that is too optimistic?

MW: I think we live in a time when activists are so focused on what seems possible that we do not achieve anything. We need to disturb power and not act only in safe ways. That's what Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring did. The best activism is the one that asks participants to do the things they fear.

Micah White's first book—THE END OF PROTEST—will be published by Random House of Canada in 2016.

VOTE for the planet and our future today

ATTENTION!!! The Most Exciting Media News In Years!

Haven't been hearing much about this from the good ol' mainstream media. Have you? Shocking! But now, thanks to a historic FCC decision, a chunk of our media is being delivered back into the hands of the citizens. The question is: what are we going to do with it, folks?

In this video you're going to find out:

1:05 — exactly who is going to benefit from this change

3:40 — how we can turn static into democracy without even upgrading our software

4:20 — proof that this is a huge opportunity

6:50 — how to take the first step.

Thanks UPWORTHY and Democracy Now!

Sunday Sermon

A few thoughts on Election Day 2012 + An Essay By Shepard Fairey

Shepard Fairey sent me this blog he wrote for the 90 DAYS, 90 REASONS website. I thought it was pretty cool.

I am under not much illusion to the right leanings of our Democratic Party, President, and since I live in a state that is virtually a lock for Barak Obama I am whole heartedly voting for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party (in fact I already have via absentee ballot). That said, I agree with much of what Shepard says and particularly what Noam Chomsky has suggested during this presidential election.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I wish Obama was everything the republikkkans and tea party accuse him of being, if he was this country would be in a much better place. If they only had an ounce of intellect, or could let up on the greed to think about other humans for more than a day... THE FUCKING GREED OF THE RIGHT MAKES ME SO SAD AND SO DISAPPOINTED IN HUMAN BEINGS... AND THE IGNORANCE THAT HAS PEOPLE ARGUING FOR THEM, AGAINST THEIR OWN BEST INTEREST, IS HEART BREAKING...

Not voting at all is just like drinking or getting high, it's exactly what the corporations and the oligarchy want you to do. You have a voice, it's not only about speaking out on election day, but every fucking day you live, so don't sit this one out becuase you're above it all, because it's counter to "The Revolution" or you're too cool/self important to participate in the system, do something! Oh, and by "doing something" and voting, i don't mean go out and vote for Romney and Ryan, if you think that's a good idea then you're in a boat filled with these pathetic folks, and those referred to above, I look forward to the day that one sails off into the sunset or just sinks.

-GEF

I’M VOTING FOR OBAMA BECAUSE I BELIEVE PROGRESS IS POSSIBLE.

I’m voting for Barack Obama, but not because of "Hope," the poster I made in 2008, or because of hopes, of which I can’t say mine have been particularly fulfilled. I’m voting for Barack Obama because I believe evolution is real and possible. I want to see this country move forward, not backward, and I know that four more years of Obama in office will have our country and our planet looking far more like the ones I want to see than a Romney presidency ever could.

When I created my Obama portrait, the image was originally accompanied by the word “progress,” not “hope,” because I thought Obama was the candidate who would lead us in the right direction. My poster wasn’t directly affiliated with the Obama campaign, but when they politely asked me if I’d change it to say “hope” I obliged, because without hope there is no action, and without action there is no progress.

I come from the worlds of skateboarding and punk rock, and the "Hope" poster was about as un-Jello Biafra as you can get. I didn’t make it because it fit my outsider image or my history as an antagonistic street artist. I made the poster because I care about the future for my kids, and I saw an opportunity within the only political system we’ve got to support someone unlike the people we usually get.

I could go on and on about the flaws of the system itself, but short of a violent revolution (which I don’t advocate), the only way to improve the governance of the country, and the system itself, is to vote people in who will make positive changes for government and for the people. I’ve talked to many people who say “f*ck the system—I’m not voting,” but when you remove yourself from the democratic process by saying “f*ck the system,” you’re only ensuring that the system will be more f*cked.

When I look at the accumulation of power by the oligarchy and the rise of the dog-eat-dog, kill-the-poor mentality, I see civilization, opportunity, and equality sliding backward. I love Devo, but I’m no fan of devolution. This is no time for idealistic posturing on the sidelines. The people who benefit most from your apathy certainly don’t want you to vote. If you’re as frustrated as I am, and you want to give a big F*CK YOU to someone, vote for Obama—and while you’re at it, vote some sane people into Congress, which has been more dysfunctional (thanks to the Tea Party) over the last two years than any other Congress in history—and give the middle finger to the Koch brothers, Karl Rove, Wall Street, and all the other powerful interests who want us to live in their world without any say for ourselves or any humanitarian regard for society’s least fortunate.

Obama can relate to the struggles of average Americans. Obama came from nothing and achieved the American Dream through hard work—he wasn’t born into American royalty like Mitt Romney. As suspicious as I am of all politicians, when I look at the character and perspective of Barack Obama I see a stark contrast between his humanity and Romney’s callousness. Regardless of my frustration with certain aspects of Obama’s first four years, I know that evolution toward manifesting the ideals of equality, justice, general welfare, and the pursuit of happiness with a level playing field is far more likely with Obama as leader and steward of these ideals.

Even if you’re cynical about Obama, look at the alternative. Mitt Romney has promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Romney will protect the power of the wealthy while straining the middle class further. Romney will increase military spending while schools lose funding. Under Romney, the Supreme Court would most likely move even further to the right. A more conservative Supreme Court would be disastrous for future prospects of repealing the Citizens United decision or any other future campaign finance reform, and could result in women losing their right to choose.

Four years ago, I knew that electing Obama wouldn’t be the magic bullet to fix every one of the nation’s problems, but it would at least be a move back in the right direction after eight years of fear, war, and shrinking privacy and freedoms. Another four years of Obama will likely not achieve all I hope for, but it will take us forward, not backward. How far forward we can move depends largely on us, not Obama. Progress depends on how hard we push. I’ve often described my approach as the “inside/outside strategy.” Obama can be our ally on the inside, but we have to use all our voices and resources to push from the outside. Your vote is just one very important part of your voice. There are many issues on Obama’s agenda that I’d like to see succeed, and the potential for effective results is greatly enhanced by exterior pressure on government, not just pressure from government.

If you care like I do about the issues of: tax fairness, Wall Street regulation, green energy, fuel efficiency standards, climate change, education, infrastructure and infrastructure jobs, health care, and marriage equality, elect Obama and then push him and Congress to move these ideas forward.

—SHEPARD FAIREY

Loving Sarah Silverman

There's No Hiding It: Citizens United Wasn't About "Speech" -- It Was About Takeover of American Democracy

Three things don’t go together: Money. Secrecy. Democracy. That’s the nub of the matter. By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, BillMoyers.com

In all the hullabaloo over the Supreme Court’s decision on health care, another of its rulings quickly fell off the public radar. Before deciding the fate of the Affordable Care Act, the Court announced it would not reconsider Citizens United, the odious 5-4 decision two years ago that opened our elections to unlimited contributions.

Within minutes of that announcement, right-wing partisans were crowing about the advantage they now own, an advantage not due to ideas or personalities but to the sheer force of money. They were remarkably candid and specific.

Here’s what Fred Barnes wrote in The Weekly Standard about the Senate race in Missouri:

For three weeks in May, Republican super-PACs took turns attacking Democratic senator Claire McCaskill in TV ads. Republicans hadn’t held their primary — it’s not until August 7 — but McCaskill wound up trailing all three of the GOP candidates in polls. Now McCaskill, unnerved, is struggling to recover… That’s what super-PACs can do. When they emerged in 2010 and worked in tandem, they were a critical force in the Republican landslide in the congressional elections. This year they’re playing an even bigger role. The size and reach of their efforts dwarf what they did two years ago.

Attaboy, Fred, for telling it like it is, for exposing the hoax that the Court’s original decision was about “free” speech. No, it’s about carpet bombing elections with all the tonnage your rich paymasters want to buy.

Try not to laugh when you hear one of its perpetrators, the noted lawyer Floyd Abrams, say,as he did not too long ago:

“I don’t think we should want as a matter of policy, to make decisions which are essentially, people can’t do all the speaking that they can in a political campaign. I don’t think we can ration speech.”

Speech already is rationed. On your playing field, Messieurs Barnes and Abrams, those who have no money have no speech. And just who do you think is doing this “speaking?” Poor people haven’t lost their voice — they can’t afford a voice. Everyday working people suffer from universal laryngitis, brought on by the absence of money. As for children — children who have a big stake in our elections but no vote, forget it — for them to be heard they would need piggy banks the size of Walmart heirs. Or the Koch brothers for uncles.

And if it’s free speech the Deep Pockets are practicing and touting, why are you ashamed of it? If free speech is a right, why all the secrecy? Why hide from voters where the money is coming from? Why not openly say you are downright proud to be exercising their First Amendment rights and writing checks is your patriotic duty?

Instead, conservatives across the country are fighting legal battles to keep their sugar daddies secret. Why? According to their guardian angel in Congress — the highly leveraged Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — the right wing opposes disclosure laws because the super-rich just might be bullied and harassed by the rest of us who want to know who’s buying our elections.

So the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal asks us to have pity on billionaires and those little ol’ corporations and their CEOs who just might have their tender feelings hurt; exposed to boycotts and pickets if it was known which candidates they were buying.

But wait a minute. Weren’t we taught the First Amendment also guarantees the right of every citizen to assemble and petition, even to boycott and picket?

That’s what a couple of hundred protesters were doing just the other day. They marched to the D.C. offices of American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, those right wing money mills run by the mastermind of so much of this massive fundraising, Karl Rove. He’s making a bundle buying and selling “Free Speech,” while at the same time deploring the disclosure of big donors’ names as “shameful” intimidation!

Exercising their First Amendment rights, the demonstrators taped a kind of wanted poster on Rove’s office door, indicating they would like to see him wearing an orange prison jumpsuit. Instead, he could be seen in casual wear, buzzing around in a golf cart at Mitt Romney’s Utah mountain gathering of high rollers. No doubt plotting how to raise more millions to pay for more “free speech.”

So let’s see if we’ve got this right: On the one hand, conservatives declare that corporations and the super-rich can spend all they want on exercising their First Amendment rights, but on the other, they demand to keep it secret so the rest of us can’t exercise our First Amendment rights to fight back. Have you ever heard of more cowardly lions?

It’s one big joke. Big enough to make you cry. Three things don’t go together: Money. Secrecy. Democracy. That’s the nub of the matter. This is all a sham for invalidating democracy in the name of democracy. It’s the trick authoritarians always use to hide their real intentions, which in this case is absolute power over our public life and institutions: the privatization of everything.

The Supreme Court is pointing the way. Instead of mitigating the worst excesses of both the state and the private sector, with Citizens United and the latest decision affirming it, the Court has taken sides — saying to the massed wealth of the one percent: America is yours for the taking, for the buying. Help yourself.

That’s what George II thought, too, which brings us back to our celebration of the 4th of July, to the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson, who seems to have thought that a little uprising now and then would be good for what ails us. This time the overweening power is not monarchy but plutocracy, the convergence of the political, religious and corporate right that would keep us in the dark about where all that money is coming from, and who it’s buying, until one day we wake up and our country is no longer our own.

Fortunately, those orange jump suits come in one size fits all. So remember, moneyed lords and ladies, what King George learned the hard way — you can only push your subjects so far.

Veteran journalist Bill Moyers is the host of “Moyers & Company,” airing weekly on public television. Check your local listings. More at www.billmoyers.com

The rot of Citizen's United and the grim future of American democracy

from Richard Metzger at DangerousMinds

I realize that I keep saying this, but it’s true and the best context I can offer: Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce is one of the—I think—top two political writers in America today, the other being Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, who is far better known. Everyone with even a passing interest about what happened with the Walker recall in Wisconsin needs to read Pierce’s spot-on post-mortem on the vote, “The Wisconsin Recall Aftermath: Scott Walker Steps Right Up into the Pocket of Those Who Got Him There.” Seriously, it’s a must-read if ever there was one and so is his blog, which I encourage you to bookmark.

I’ve been noticing with satisfaction in the past few days how some of Pierce’s posts at Esquire’s Politics blog have been zooming up the charts at reddit—and I’m trying to encourage more DM readers to discover Pierce’s writing, too—like this on-target statement about how big money/big corruption is destroying America. Apologies to Charles Pierce for snagging his entire post, but it’s too short—and the sentiments therein far too important—not to pass it on in full here:

The Rot of Citizens United Is Universal. Get Used to It.

It is a capital mistake to study the corrosive effect of the utterly corrupt Citizens United decision only in the context of the presidential contest, or in the context of other highly visible individual races, like the one for a U.S. Senate seat or last night’s Wisconsin recall. The rot in the system is poisonous, general, and spreading.

(And have I mentioned really how utterly stupid it is to have an elected judiciary, especially in the current cash-soaked political atmosphere? It is the second-worst idea ever behind the Balanced Budget Amendment, aka The Stupidest Fking Idea Of All Time.)

Very soon, there is not going to be a single political campaign, no matter how small, that directly affects anything having to do with America’s corporate power, which is practically everything, that will not be swamped by anonymous cash laundered through bagmen organized under the banner of some nobly monickered political whorehouse. (While considering the names of the front groups, it is always important to remember the blog’s favorite quote from Sam Spade, of the firm of Spade And Archer: “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”) As the NYT says:

“...Justice John Paul Stevens predicted that such spending would overwhelm state court races, which would be especially harmful since judges must not only be independent but be seen to be independent as well. North Carolina is proving him right.”

Of course, I’m sure that, sometime later this week, an earnest young scribe from Politico will tell me that everything’s okay because Democrats spend money, too, and, anyway… unions! So, coming soon to your town: the $40 million race for Register of Probate, and won’t that be fun?

You can follow Charles P. Pierce on Twitter. He’ll be an essential voice during this election cycle. If you are on Twitter, you should definately follow him, and bookmark the Esquire Politics blog.

Meet the Shameless Plutocrats Choking What's Left of Our Democracy

The race for the White House may cost more than two billion dollars. What’s getting trampled into dust are the voices of people who aren't rich.

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, BillMoyers.com

Watching what’s happening to our democracy is like watching the cruise ship Costa Concordia founder and sink slowly into the sea off the coast of Italy, as the passengers, shorn of life vests, scramble for safety as best they can, while the captain trips and falls conveniently into a waiting life boat.

We are drowning here, with gaping holes torn into the hull of the ship of state from charges detonated by the owners and manipulators of capital. Their wealth has become a demonic force in politics. Nothing can stop them. Not the law, which has been written to accommodate them. Not scrutiny -- they have no shame. Not a decent respect for the welfare of others -- the people without means, their safety net shredded, left helpless before events beyond their control.

The obstacles facing the millennial generation didn’t just happen. Take an economy skewed to the top, low wages and missing jobs, predatory interest rates on college loans: these are politically engineered consequences of government of, by, and for the one percent. So, too, is our tax code the product of money and politics, influence and favoritism, lobbyists and the laws they draft for rented politicians to enact.

Here’s what we’re up against. Read it and weep: “America’s Plutocrats Play the Political Ponies.” That’s a headline in “Too Much,” an Internet publication from the Institute for Policy Studies that describes itself as “an online weekly on excess and inequality.”

Yes, the results are in and our elections have replaced horse racing as the sport of kings. Only these kings aren’t your everyday poobahs and potentates. These kings are multi-billionaire, corporate moguls who by the divine right, not of God, but the United States Supreme Court and its Citizens United decision, are now buying politicians like so much pricey horseflesh. All that money pouring into super PACs, much of it from secret sources: merely an investment, should their horse pay off in November, in the best government money can buy.

They’re shelling out fortunes' worth of contributions. Look at just a few of them: Mitt Romney’s hedge fund pals Robert Mercer, John Paulson, Julian Robertson and Paul Singer – each of whom has ponied up a million or more for the super PAC called “Restore Our Future” -- as in, "Give us back the go-go days, when predators ruled Wall Street like it was Jurassic Park.”

Then there's casino boss Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam, fiercely pro-Israel and anti-President Obama's Mideast policy. Initially, they placed their bets on Newt Gingrich, who says on his first day in office he’d move the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a decision that would thrill the Adelsons but infuriate Palestinians and the rest of the Muslim world. Together, the Adelsons have contributed ten million to Newt's “Winning Our Future” super PAC.

Cowboy billionaire Foster Friess, a born-again Christian who made his fortune herding mutual funds instead of cattle, has been bankrolling the “Red White and Blue Fund” super PAC of Rick Santorum, with whom he shares a social right-wing agenda. Dark horse Ron Paul has relied on the kindness of PayPal founder Peter Thiel, a like-minded libertarian in favor of the smallest government possible, who gave $900,000 to Paul’s “Endorse Liberty” super PAC. Hollywood’s Jeffrey Katzenberg has so far emptied his wallet to the tune of a cool two million for the pro-Obama super PAC, “Priorities USA Action.”

President Obama -- who kept his distance from Priorities USA Action and used to call the money unleashed by Citizens United a “threat to democracy” -- has declared if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. He urges his wealthy supporters to please go ahead and back the super PAC. "Our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it stands," his campaign manager Jim Messina said. To do otherwise, he added, would be to "unilaterally disarm" in the face of all those Republican super PAC millions. So much for Obama’s stand on campaign finance reform – everybody else is doing it, he seems to say, so why don’t you show me the money, too?

When all is said and done, this race for the White House may cost more than two billion dollars. What’s getting trampled into dust are the voices of people who aren't rich, not to mention what's left of our democracy. As Democratic pollster Peter Hart told The New Yorker magazine’s Jane Mayer, “It’s become a situation where the contest is how much you can destroy the system, rather than how much you can make it work. It makes no difference if you have a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ after your name. There’s no sense that this is about democracy, and after the election you have to work together, and knit the country together.”

These gargantuan super PAC contributions are not an end in themselves. They are the means to gain control of government – and the nation state -- for a reason. The French writer and economist Frederic Bastiat said it plainly: "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." That’s what the super PACs are bidding on. For the rest of us, the ship may already have sailed.

---------------------------

Veteran journalist Bill Moyers is the host of the show “Moyers & Company,” on PBS - ALWAYS A MUST SEE.
More at www.billmoyers.com.

Michael Winship, senior writing fellow at Demos and president of the Writers Guild of America, East, is senior writer of the new public television series "Moyers & Company."

© 2012 BillMoyers.com All rights reserved.

THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!

It's "Get It Movin' Monday" - Good Morning. How's this for an inspiring kick to get you movin'?

The Panel for Education Policy (or PEP), enacts policy for the New York City Dept. of Education.

The PEP replaced the Board of Education when Mayor Bloomberg took control of the schools in 2002.

It is intended to be a democratic forum where people voice concerns, prior to the panel's vote on educational policy.

Today the panel is convening to discuss new standards being implemented in schools.

200 parents, teachers staff and students are in attendance.

Video by http://www.meerkatmedia.org

For more about General Assemblies, see our other video:
"Consensus (Direct Democracy at OWS):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dtD8RnGaRQ

More about Occupy the DOE:
http://www.OurSchoolsNYC.org
http://www.NYCORE.org

More thoughts from Independent filmmakers down at OWS