Vote in 2012 against The Fool's Game

In his essay “There are Realistic Alternatives,” Gene Sharp, the renowned scholar/thinker on the use of nonviolence, outlines the “elements of strategic planning” necessary for effective nonviolent struggle.

The elements are worth reviewing in the context of the “Occupy” movement. Unless those in the movement are purposely hiding their planning, I’m seeing very little evidence of it.

What we get are shards, fragments and chucks of vital issues, but there is no evidence of systematic strategic planning.

Rather than go into the requirements as Sharp lays them out, I urge you to download the pamphlet from the Albert Einstein Institute web site. The essay and several others by Sharp are available free on-line.

Here is just one example of a fundamental missing element in the “Occupy” movement: “Develop a grand strategy for the overall conflict. Identify the objective of the struggle in clear, specific terms.”

Unless I’m missing something, we are still waiting to learn the “objective of the struggle in clear, specific terms.”

So here’s one attempt to define an objective and describe a strategy to achieve it:

We, fellow citizens, are playing a fool’s game called “Democracy American Style.” It is literally rigged for and by the rich and has produced a plutocracy/kleptocracy.

Here’s just one way it works: our system can’t represent or understand the will of the people because the major means of communication is paid for and controlled by wealthy vested corporate interests. The U.S. Constitution legalizes media domination and distortion by a wealthy elite.

Democracy requires an informed, thoughtful public making rational — not emotional — decisions. Our capitalist, controlled system of communication is not providing that information or that opportunity for full discussion and reflection.

I also believe that the size of our government makes it so diffuse, impenetrable and powerful that it cannot be responsive to the people it governs. We should be a nation of small regional or local governments. At most the “national” government should be an alliance of these small, responsive, local governments. The United States cannot be both “a major power” and a major force for good. The two have been proven to be incompatible.

The over-arching objective of the nonviolent movement should be to put an end to this Fool’s Game and to create a truly representative, fair, responsive and compassionate system of governance based on local representation and involvement.

At the end of his essay, Sharp lists 198 methods of nonviolent action. The sheer number boggles the mind. The diversity is likewise staggering, everything from strikes (he lists 21 varieties) to various kinds of boycotts, to rent refusal, to mock funerals, to marches and pilgrimages, to prayer and worship. The list goes on and on.

But one, number 124, intrigued me in light of the above objective. It reads, “Boycott Elections.”

What if we boycotted the elections of 2012? What if we “voted” by submitting blank ballots. The tally of unmarked ballots submitted would wildly exceed the number of votes cast for candidates. The tally of blank ballots would constitute the vote against “The Fool’s Game.”

What would the consequences be? Exactly what we’d get if we did cast ballots for candidates — more of the same. A continuation of the Fool’s Game.

But by voting against the system, we would have proclaimed that we, the majority, are no longer party to it — that, in fact, the resulting government does not represent the people or their “will.” These “minority unelected” representatives are hence illegitimate.

The only way to restore legitimacy is to establish a new constitution creating a truly representative government (or governments) that can address this society’s needs. A true “government of, for and by the People.”

Wanted: A rallying cry

I’ve had two “call-to-action” responses to my brief post about Bob Herbert’s recent column and my endorsement of its message that we have serious “street work” to do right here in the USA.

My Hillsdale neighbor Peter DeCrescenzo noted that the Egyptians in the street had a rallying cry, "Mubarak must go!" They were able to invest in Mubarak all of Egyptian society’s ills. It remains to be seen whether freeing Egypt of Mubarak will free the nation of its ills.

But what about freeing our own country of its own ills as cataloged by Herbert?

Peter writes, “...to be effective, the goal embodied in the demand must be understood by the majority of a country's citizens....The challenge for Americans is to figure out what our rallying cry should be. To be effective, it must unite the majority of Americans.”

He adds, “To be successful a rallying cry must be understood on an emotional level at least as strongly as on an intellectual level.”

Who what’s it to be? What are we calling for? What do we want?

I want a government of, for and by the people (sound familiar?), NOT of, for and by the super-rich and multi-national corporations. I want a society where electoral decisions aren’t made based on emotional attack ads but on reasoned, sustained, respectful and fair discourse.

If we are to achieve that, we need a new constitution. That is what the Supreme Court majority is telling us in its back-handed way. Vis. last year’s Citizens United case.

In America, the U.S. Constitution is treated like sacred text. The end-all and be-all of virtuous government. First of all, it's not sacred, but it is, like all things human, suspect and open to criticism, revision and even rejection. If an action is unconstitutional, could it be that the problem may be not with the action but with the Constitution?

So perhaps the cry should be for a “New Constitution," a new “New Deal.” Isn’t a new constitution the starting place for post-Tahrir Square change in Egypt? Why not here?

The other response came from LeeLa Coleman, another neighbor. She wants to organize friends to peacefully demonstrate at a busy corner in our community. A small Hillsdale group has been doing that for five years in opposition to America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was part of their group at one point, but moved on after Obama was elected (Silly me.)

If I felt it would do any good, I’d rejoin them.

Meanwhile, I note in a New York Times story yesterday that a major influence on Egyptian street organizers was one Gene Sharp, a Harvard professor and student of Gandhi. I had never heard his name, but I’m adding his book “The Dynamics of Non-Violent Action,” to my reading list. (Alas, it is sold out on Amazon, and I just bought and have put on hold the last copy at Powell’s. No, it isn’t in the Multnomah County Library. In fact the library has none of Sharp's several books about non-violent protest.)

I'll be looking forward to what Sharp has to say about rallying cries. For a hint, go HERE.