By Jason Miller
The White House and the Pentagon look so innocuous, yet behind their innocent facades lurk sinister forces which have unleashed much misery and suffering upon the world,â I thought as I scrutinized each of them armed with an insight gleaned from many hours of study.I arrived home on Sunday from the peace and social justice rally in Washington DC and began reflecting. As my mind sifted through the barrage of information which came at me over the course of the weekend, and the information I absorbed while reading on the plane, I began to reach some conclusions and to connect some dots.
My first conclusion was that their weak coverage of an event of this magnitude deepened my belief that the mainstream media is merely an instrument of its corporate masters and of the obscenely corrupt US government. I was there for the march on 9/24. Based on what I observed and experienced, the Washington DC police chief's estimate of 150,000 people was extremely low. My wife and I marched at the end of the procession, which followed a 1.4 mile course, including a pass in front of the White House. We carried our mock coffin draped with an American flag. (Ours was one of about 150 other mock coffins which enabled the American public to finally see at least see a representation of the Americans who have died in Iraq).
A diverse crowd, which included the elderly, the disabled, minorities, military veterans, families of military personnel in Iraq, social activists, Methodists, Quakers, Buddhists, people of Middle Eastern descent, and many other groups comprised the multitude on Saturday. Joan Baez, Cindy Sheehan, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and two Congresswomen spoke and marched. A broad spectrum of Americans want peace and social justice, and are eager to see Bush and the corrupt who dominate the US government out of office.
One of the articles I read in the mainstream media stated that there were no police wearing riot gear at the demonstration. I beg to differ. I counted at least seven men wearing black pants, white, generic-looking shirts with what appeared to be cloth gold badges stitched to them, and military boots. They each had riot helmets with visors, riot shields which were marked "Police" (yet their uniforms bore virtually no resemblance to those of the DC police), and they were equipped with truncheons. As I marched by them, I wondered if they were some of the Blackwater security people, hired mercenaries whom the Bush administration has used in Iraq and now in New Orleans.
Despite his absence, Bush's fortress was heavily defended by police on the street and by snipers on the roof of the White House and surrounding buildings. Bush exhibited his usual spinelessness. He spent part of the day in Colorado, where he would not have to face the hundreds of thousands of his constituency who were calling for peace, social justice and his impeachment. He was also well out of potential harm from Hurricane Rita. Later in the day he did find the nerve to travel to San Antonio, but even there he was still well out of harm's way.
As we passed the US Treasury a man riding a bicycle was using a portable PA system. What was his message? âPay no attention to this building. It is the treasury. It is empty. It has been looted.â With the volume of money flowing into the coffers of corporations with incestuous ties to the Bush regime and a $7.5 trillion deficit, it would be difficult to dispute his contention.
Frequently throughout the march, I heard and read the slogan "power of the people". The unfortunate reality is that for now, the ultimate power in the US rests in the hands of a select few aristocrats, and has in varying degrees since our nation's founding. I saw ample evidence of that fact as my wife and I toured the Smithsonianâs American History Museum the day before the march. The decadence in which many of the presidents and first ladies engaged was truly disgusting to see. I saw the outrageously expensive clothing, china, jewelry, art, and White House furnishings and realized that I was witnessing evidence that the US is as much an aristocracy as the monarchy from which our founding fathers severed themselves. Further fueling my nausea, I saw that Barbara and Laura Bush were enshrined in the section of First Ladies who have made significant contributions to social justice in the United States. The Bush wives honored alongside Eleanor Roosevelt, a giant in the pantheon of those who have advanced social justice? The Smithsonian curators have a very sick sense of humor.
Mr. Bush, good luck selling your fairy tale of democracy and equality to the victims of Katrina, to many others in America, and to the rest of the world. Your criminal neglect of New Orleans and the poor in general, your lies, your theft of the 2000 election, your numerous violations of the public trust, your cronyism leading to incompetents like Michael Brown causing thousands to suffer or die, and your war profiteering combine to make you the biggest felon to serve as President of the United States (Note to Bush: as an "elected" official, you are merely a public servant, not a monarch. You belong in one of the many penitentiaries which are a part of the prison industrial complex).
In skimming my 120 emails I received while I was away for the weekend, I discovered that ANSWER, one of the demonstrationâs organizers, has apparently been accused of being Maoist Communists who are virulently anti-US and who advocate supporting any group which opposes the US government (i.e. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Khmer Rouge). My response to that is that I do not care. United for Peace also sponsored the event, and to my knowledge, they have not been targeted as âanti-Americanâ. I am not a member of either group and regardless of how extreme their positions may be, this event served a valuable purpose. It demonstrated the strength of the movement in the United States for peace and social justice, and the depth of the desire amongst Americans to remove the avaricious, tyrannical, and criminal Bush regime from power.
Going out on a limb (as I usually do), I am going to state that while I do not condone terrorism (which I am defining as the act of killing innocent civilians to achieve a political purpose), I understand the viewpoint of some of the groups whom the US mainstream media and the Bush regime have labeled as terrorists. Bush and his ilk, and many of their predecessors (including Clinton via Kosovo, Bush I via Iraq, Reagan via Central America, and Nixon and Johnson via Vietnam.) have engaged in the most lethal state terrorism imaginable, killing millions they label (and labeled) as "collateral damage".
The US is attempting to implement "democracy-at gun-pointâ in a nation embroiled with ethnic and religious tensions. The Iraqi people know why the US government is killing their people and destroying their cities, which makes their resistance quite logical. They realize that a cruel and greedy imperialist government needed to assert its military might on what they anticipated would be a weak target so it could begin implementing the Bush Doctrine and the Project for the New American Century. Halliburton, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, and many other cogs in the military industrial complex were itching to see their profits skyrocket, and Iraq appeared to be a ripe plum for the picking.
The disguise is slipping as the US government has slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians. Hurricane Katrina revealed the hypocrisy behind their ânoble causeâ of spreading freedom and liberty. Those abstract concepts exist in the US on a very limited basis. The US government has been, and is increasingly dominated by a select few plutocrats and aristocrats who are groomed for public office from birth. The elites of America place their carefully prepared candidates before an American voting public rendered apathetic by the mainstream media and years of government corruption. The Democratic/Republican Duopoly ensures that only two candidates have a real chance of winning public office in virtually every election, and each candidate is beholden to corporations and the US aristocracy. Sometimes decent people sneak into Congress and the Judiciary, but there are few real choices for middle and working class Americans, particularly when one factors in the stolen Presidential election of 2000. Jimmy Carter, one of the few former Presidents known for his honesty, recently publicly stated his certainty that Gore won the 2000 election.
The flood-waters of Katrina unmasked the depraved engineers of the runaway train called the United States. Bush, Rove, Rumsfeld and Cheney have been exposed to the world as malevolent profit seekers who regard humanity simply as a means to enhance their wealth and power. I need only look at the T-shirt I bought at the march on Saturday as a reminder. My shirt is emblazoned with a picture of a suffering, elderly Black American woman in New Orleans who has bundled herself in the American flag for warmth. Bush and his war-mongers have perverted the meaning of a once sacred symbol of the ideals of a true republic to one of hatred, criminality, brutality, and imperialism. I hope it served her well as a blanket. Some members of Congress want a Constitutional amendment to prevent flag desecration. Too late! The criminal acts of the Bush administration have already grossly defiled the American flag.
Ooooooooh. He's got " a plan"!
What Are Some Potential Aspects of a Velvet Revolution in the US?
1. If enough Americans become conscious to the inhumanity of our leaders and join a non-violent movement comprised of the poor, the working class, the middle class, minorities, intellectuals, those in the government who are not a part of the corruption, and artists, sheer numbers of people demanding change could overwhelm the ruling plutocracy, who are clearly a numerical minority.
2. We the People need to form a third political party of the people which will have the support of enough Americans that it can rival the corporate-controlled Democrats and Republicans. This party will need to base its principles on the needs and desires of the common people rather than on those of corporations and the elite.
3. Unions need to fight to regain the strength they enjoyed during the Twentieth Century. This will unite workers and restore their power in negotiating with giant corporations. Despite what they would have America's citizens believe, corporations are not "kinder and gentler" entities with the interests of their workers and customers at heart. They are merely wolves who have donned sheepâs clothing to make it appear so. They are motivated by profit and the fear of lawsuits. The will of the people imposed through organized labor needs to motivate corporations to take a deeper interest in the welfare of employees and customers.
4. We the People need to push for passage of the ERA and an equal rights amendment for gays.
5. We need to work for permanent implementation of the Voting Rights Act.
6. Writers with a social conscience need to continue to publish books and essays advocating social justice, spreading truth, and dissenting against our corrupt oligarchy by any means we can find.
7. Christian Churches need to spend less time and money squabbling over seemingly eternal and irresolvable issues like abortion and focus their efforts on demanding the social justice Jesus Christ would have insisted upon.
8. Educators need to stop teaching the white-washed history of the United States, which virtually ignores the genocide of Native Americans, barely scratches the surface of the depth of the cruelty and immorality of slavery, maintains silence on the topic of the American apartheid system which Katrina brought into the spot-light, and which glorifies an imperialistic, war-mongering government. It is incumbent upon educators to teach their students the truth about America, past and present.
9. We the People need to boycott major corporations like Wal-mart and McDonalds as frequently as possible by shopping at local businesses owned by individual entrepreneurs. Hit the insatiably greedy corporatacracy where it hurts them the most: in their wallets. My wife and I have not spent a penny at Wal-Mart or McDonaldâs for over a year.
10. Progressive taxes on the rich and on corporations need to be increased while regressive taxes on the poor and working class need to be decreased to move the US toward a society with a more equitable distribution of wealth.
11. The US government spends $600 billion per year on defense, including funding for the Iraqi Occupation and money for ancillary functions. It is time to truly bring the troops home from Iraq (over a period of time to allow stabilization to occur) and from the 700 military bases in over 56 countries around the world. We will save $64 billion over twenty years by closing 33 domestic bases under Donald Rumsfeld's plan. Imagine the money we would save (besides the $5 billion per month from ending the occupation of Iraq) in closing 700 bases. To my knowledge, there are no foreign military bases on US soil. If We the People are intent upon retooling the US into a nation focused on the needs of its people with enough military simply to defend our nation rather than enough to dominate the world, it is time to remove the US military from foreign soil. Removing US military bases from their nations is one of the legitimate demands of those the US government has labeled as âterroristsâ.
12. The US needs to relegate the notion of repealing the estate taxed to the dustbin of history, where it belongs. Eliminating the estate tax would further ensure the perpetuation of the American Aristocracy and virtually eradicate the already extremely slim chance that a poor American can realize the Horatio Alger dream.
13. We "Commoners" need to demand a system of national health care (or implement it once our third political party has become a power capable of rivaling the existing Duopoly). The US holds the shameful distinction of being the only industrialized nation without a guarantee of healthcare to each of its citizens. What a dubious distinction for the wealthiest nation in the world! With money derived from cuts in defense spending and increased taxes on the wealthy and corporations, the US could readily implement a national health care system comprised of a synthesis of the best features of the systems of other nations. To make the system affordable, those Americans whose income exceeded a particular thresh-hold would pay premiums based on a percentage of their income.
14. We need to demand that the US government cut Israelâs umbilical cord. Israelis have received more than enough money and weapons from the US to stand on their own. US support of Israel, which, like its benefactor, often engages in state terrorism and has committed acts of genocide against the Palestinians, continues to infuriate Arabs throughout the Middle East. The US has a moral obligation to let Israel fend for itself and to see to the establishment of a legitimate homeland for the Palestinians. There is also the pragmatic consideration that as long as the US supports Israelâs abuse of the Palestinians, it will continue to feed the rage of many Arabs.
15. We the People need to find and elect a populist leader like Hugo Chavez, who will place the needs of the poor over the desires of the wealthy elite.
16. The US government needs to respect international law, treaties, human rights, and the autonomy of sovereign nations, and to participate fairly in the UN.
17. The public education system needs to be restructured in such a way that students across the nation attend schools with comparable facilities, teachers, and textbooks.
18. Americans with a social conscience need to insist the US pass and enforce restrictions on corporations to protect the environment. Ending the charade that global warming is a hoax and signing the Kyoto Treaty would be a tremendous start.
19. Besides the creation of a powerful political party, boycotts, labor strikes, marches, providing better education to all American children, dissident writing, staying informed, demanding accountability of public officials through the avenues which are still available, joining groups advocating civil rights and humanity, We the People have another non-violent weapon at our disposal. When it is warranted, civil disobedience is a powerful tool to evoke change. For example, while conscription is not yet a reality, if I am confronted with a call from the US government to participate in one of their imperialist conquests, I will follow the fine example of Kevin Benderman and refuse, even if it means prison. If enough people engage in civil disobedience, the plutocracy will not have the capacity to punish all of us, and will lack the manpower to grease the wheels of their money-making machines.
Jason Miller is a 38 year old activist writer with a degree in liberal arts. He works in the transportation industry, and is a husband and a father to three boys. His affiliations include Amnesty International, the ACLU and the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He welcomes responses at willpowerful@hotmail.com or comments on his blog at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.