If you read no other piece this week, read this
one by David Atkins--Atkins wonders about a tactic that has been on my mind since I read Howard Zinn's
A People's History of the United States. As Liberals, we lean more toward the passive resistance side for fighting our battles--Atkins cites the book of Matthew from the Bible or Atticus Finch as exemplars of this trait (and, of course, Gandhi and MLK). However at the end of his piece, Atkins has the audacity (fuck you, Mr. President) to question how much longer we walk down this road before we realize that we have to punch back.
Although Howard Zinn was somewhat skeptical of the rewards rebellions throughout our history have achieved (he believed our rewards were more in the form of voting rights rather than, you know, actual cash money, and to use a recent example, say of Mr. Obama, we all know how well voting works out for, you know, actually helping us get our share of the cash money), it does seem that throughout our history about the only time the poor and the middle class get a bigger share of the pie is when the wealthy elite have reason to be worried over theit future safety (Shay's Rebellion, Whiskey Rebellion, Colorado Labor Wars, the Labor battles of the 1930s, the L. A. riots of the early 1990s). One need look no further than the recent uprisings in the Middle East (Egypt, Syria, Libya) to realize that you can only fuck people over economically for so long before they get mighty pissed off about it.
In the comments section of Atkins piece there seemed to be a good deal of push back on the idea of using more agression, but frankly, after watching what the last thirty years of capitulating to the republicans and the wealthy elite just to keep our jobs, I'm a bit more inclined to believe that the peace, love, dope faction of our party is a lot of horseshit, and that perhaps a swift kick in the balls will go a lot farther to help reduce the ever widening income disparity that is slowly but surely destroying America.
Peace,
emaycee
