WHY WE NEED A RAINBOW COALITION for OUR ACTIVIST GROUPS.

After reading about the theft of millions of dollars from the State of California, by a single SENATOR, still in office, I put a question out to my progressive pals "could it be that all politicians are money grubbing dirty muggers? I pulled the info on this famous politician and put it at my website.   http://www.masterjules.net/califcorrupt.htm   and sent my close chums the URL

Senator Feinstein, it turns out, has been a thief. Her booty: fifty mil pulled outta California's treasury for her and her hubby to share.  Yet the state puts 100,00 thieves in jail each year. The famous case was the black guy who got LIFE in prison (three strikes you're out law,) for taking a slice of pizza. Guess the old European maxim is true "The big thieves jail the little ones." 

So I am trying to figure out how do we build a coalition of all the progressive groups out there. And it occurs to me, we need to mend all fences with every sector. We have to get the Asians in on it, the Blacks, Latinos, even prisoners who can't vote. The disabled, the LGBT's And we have to go into colleges, give fun lectures and pull TEENS into this. Not just into voting, but letter writing, pickets, demonstrations, OCCUPYs calling in the radio talk shows, writing letters to the editor, The WHOLE ACTIVIST RHUMBA!

How many Teabaggers and LIberterians and Progressives does it take to pull down the White House and all the state capitals full of thieving pols? Probably there aren't enough radicals in the active dissenting movement. We'd need a true rainbow coalition, blacks, Mexicans, MUSLIMS, and we need them educated, ANGRY and ready to picket. Like the Latinos were at the million man Latino march in LA, organized by an FM DJ, PIOLIN.

Progressive brainy guy reads my ponderings, HE ANSWERS: Anita, if things keep up the way they are, radical change is a possibility -- although I have to say that the power structure is well aware of all this and any insurrection would be met with quick and lethal force.  These guys -- these militia guys -- who think they can fight some kind of guerilla war here is a pipe dream.
 
He means liberals, not just liberterians with guns. Not the DAKOTA WYOMING UTAH groups He means ALL OF US LIBERALS can't do it. The only way to foment real change is at the ballot box. We may be too far gone, but I hope not. Any insurrection would be met with quick and lethal force. These guys -- these militia guys -- who think they can
fight some kind of guerilla war here live in a pipe dream.
 
~^~^~^~^~^

SO then I ANSWERED HIM: I'm only a dummie and a girl at that but the
ballot box hasn't worked for l00 yrs since Andy Jackson but I could MAP
THE highway we'd have to tread to get to an effective ballot box ASSAULT
--one that would rid us of these slimey pols. Get new laws to regulate Wall
Street, prevent more Deep water Oil rigs, and lower taxes, get out of the
Middle eastern wars, give us back daycare for working parents, and patching
all the CUTS that governments have done across the country. Take away usurious
student loans, absolutely. WAR MONEY goes for education. LAST ANYONE who
promises to do PRO BONO LAW and sue big corporations for theft, infractions
ENRON type maneuvers goes to LAW SCHOOL FOR FREE.

TO GET ALL THAT we need POPULAR VOCALIZING, via the media, getting a quorum of
concurrence, a unanimous  belief which will create manifested PROTEST  would be first
MILLION MAN MARCHES ---spectacular protest -- would be SECOND, and Then
amping it up some POPULAR MEDIA campaigns that LAUGH THEIR bogus
"CANDIDATES" off the air ..into total unpopularity, curt ridicule ...done
early with puhlenty of ad hoc editorialits, journactivists participating in
massive PROPAGANDA, yes P.R. campaigns is propaganda. that would be third.
And establishment newspapers would fight like sons of guns

GETTING SMART PROGRESSIVES to MARTIAL A CAMPAIGN FOR OFFICE is next.
GETTING VOLUNTEER PR CAMPAIGN BEHIND THOSE "new candidates" is next.
LAST is the VIRGINIA CONGRESS type idea, which our early colonists did
to lose GEORGE. http://www.masterjules.net/resolution.htm
THEN and only then, THE BALLOT BOX.
~^~^~^~^~^~^~

SO you. Yes I'm looking at you.
YOU HAVE ANY OTHER IDEAS/ STAGES of this assault? and can we
attain unanonymity if we can't spell it? Unany..i give up. HELP!

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
THE FIX. A MOVEMENT by Sam Smith of prorev.com

I may be jumping the gun a bit or perhaps I've let some childish optimism sneak out from under my usually cynical brow, but I think there may be a movement underway. A movement is not like a campaign. No one gets to start a movement and no one gets to own it. You don't have to file any contribution reports. The archaic media pretends you don't even exist for as long as it can. And it doesn't even have to have a name.

That's why I just call it the movement. It's sort of like the Gulf Stream, hard to see yet undeniable as it moves you faster in a certain direction.

And if a movement hasn't started, it may not be long before it does. I have never seen so much cause for so many Americans to be so mad at so many of those who have been running the place - establishment politicians, academics, media, economists and corporations. They've lied, denied, connived and contrived, often with an unprecedented blend of stupidity and greed for which we all now paying. If a movement has started, then present at the birth were those factory workers who staged the sit in until Bank of America backed off.

And if a movement hasn't started, then one reason why may be the headline that read, " Vote up if you would rather bail out Nat'l Public Radio for 30 lousy million than failing auto companies for 15 billion."

You had to travel a third of the way down the 500 comments before any
responders even mentioned the auto industry, and when they did many
didn't like it or its workers. An exception came when one of the workers
wrote:

"I like reddit a lot. But sometimes it really gets me down. People here
so often come across as children in the way they speak, or how biased
they are. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people may
lose their income if the auto industry goes under, and you joke about
it."

It's not just the people in power who are the problem; it's the ones
they've taught. Taught to believe in lies and now think they're clever
by being snarky about anyone who wasn't smart enough to believe those
lies, the sort of education that leads you to think that saving NPR is
more important than saving the auto industry. The sort of education that
makes you think you have to choose between them.

When I saw it, I remembered that it was like that under segregation,
too. You had the bad guys at the top and then you had all those who went
along, either to get along and get ahead or because they had come to
truly believe the stupid stuff the bad guys at the top had taught them.
And even educated people talked about blacks back then like educated
people talk about auto workers today.

But now the market for myths and lies has dried up and there's nothing
on the shelves any more but reality. The folks who deceived us can't
come up with the answer so it has to come from somewhere else.

We are now into the third month of the most severe financial breakdown
since 1929. And, worse, we are in the third month of repeated
demonstration of the incapacity of leaders of both parties to deal
rationally with the problem other than to throw money at it in
directions unknown, for uses unknown, and with results unknown. Add to
this the disaster in Iraq, our inability to respond sensibly to climate
change and the dismantling of our constitution, and it would be hard to
point to a time when the American elite has reacted worse to its
problems. We are, for all intents and purposes, a dysfunctional country
in a state of collapse.

The solution lies not in a new administration whose appointments seem to
reflect more a team of revivals rather than of rivals, including repeat
performances by some of the very people who created the mess in the
first place.

The answer, if there is one, lies in a movement that that gathers the
wisdom of the disaster's victims, the critics of what created it, and
the imagination of those able to see past both cause and effect to a
truly better time.

It is hard for some to conceive of such a phenomenon because of the
current obsession with Barack Obama and the still widespread belief that
he will, through some personal magic or gift of God, come up with
answers that not only have eluded all the rest of Washington, but eluded
his own campaign and transition as well. Those of us who question such a
fantasy are called mean spirited and instructed to be silent until the
wise one works his way.

But then America often works like that. There's always some myth to
distract us from what's really going on. We're like a schizophrenic
trying to play soccer. One minute our eye on the ball, the next moment
we're deep into some national delusion.

Truly bad times don't have much tolerance for that sort of thing. And so
ordinary, rational people have to come up with their own answers, often
small solutions in many different places. Such as the group in Milwaukee
creating a local currency. Or the sit-in at the factory.

We can expect more of this as matters continue to deteriorate. It will
include new ideas as well as ones brought back to life and ones that
have already been pursued for years with too little money and respect.
It will include union workers, environmentalists, teachers tired of test
totalitarianism, 401Kers discovering the difference between stock funds
and a pension, unemployed professionals, women losing their jobs only a
few decades after gaining a right to them, minorities learning that
white guys can also get screwed, white guys learning what it feels like
be dissed like a minority, the ill without proper care and people who
want their constitutional rights back again.

Add it all together and you start to see a movement. It doesn't need a
name; it doesn't need an address; it doesn't need an icon on the alter.

At times the movement may find itself allied with Barack Obama; at other
times he may be its major opponent. In either event, Obama will define
change no better than John Kennedy defined the civil rights movement or
LBJ the anti-Vietnam war movement. Change doesn't originate in the White
House; what happens there merely reflects the power of the change around
it. Which is one good reason not to go soft just because Obama's in the
White House. If he won't be an ally, then he must be made irrelevant.

Where might the movement lead us? Sarah van Gelder of Yes Magazine has
given us a clue based on polls -, "an agenda that the majority of
Americans support, whether they vote red, blue, green or something
else."

67% favor public works projects to create jobs.

55% favor expanding unemployment benefits.

76% support tax cuts for lower- and middle-income people.

71% say unions help their members; 53% say unions help the economy in
general.

80% support increasing the federal minimum wage.

59% favor guaranteeing two weeks or more of paid vacation.

75% want to limit rate increases on adjustable-rate mortgages.

58% believe a court warrant should be required to listen to the telephone
calls of people in the U.S.

59% would like the next president to do more to protect civil liberties.

79% favor mandatory controls on greenhouse gas emissions.

90% favor higher auto fuel efficiency standards.

75% favor clean electricity, even with higher rates.

72% support more funding for mass transit.

64% believe the government should provide national health insurance
coverage for all Americans, even if it would raise taxes.

55% favor one health insurance program covering all Americans, administered
by the government, and paid for by taxpayers.

81% oppose torture and support following the Geneva Conventions.

76% say the U.S. should not play the role of global police.

79% say the U.N. should be strengthened.

85% say that the U.S. should not initiate military action without support
from allies.

63% want U.S. forces home from Iraq within a year.

47% favor using diplomacy with Iran. 7% favor military action.

67% believe we should use diplomatic and economic means to fight terrorism,
rather than the military.

86% say big companies have too much power in politics

65% believe attacking social problems is a better cure for crime than more
law enforcement.

87% support rehabilitation rather than a “punishment-only” system.

81% say job training is “very important” for reintegrating people leaving
prison.

79% say drug treatment is very important.

56% believe NAFTA should be renegotiated.

64% believe that on the whole, immigration is good for the country.

A stunning portion of these choices of the American people are at odds
with those of their leaders in both parties and with the way popular
opinion is routinely described by the major media. The choices are also
far from radical. They are actually conservative, aimed at conserving
our constitution, our integrity, our economy, our environment and our
standing in the world. It is the establishment center that led us into
this disaster which has been radical and extreme: radically wrong and
extremely incompetent in dealing with the consequences.

Back in 2001, in my book "Why Bother?," I tried to describe what was
happening to America and what could be done about it:

The system that envelopes us becomes normal by its mere mass, its
ubiquitous messages, its sheer noise. Our society faces what William
Burroughs called a biologic crisis -- "like being dead and not knowing
it."

The unwitting dead -- universities, newspapers, publishing houses,
institutes, councils, foundations, churches, political parties -- reach
out from the past to rule us with fetid paradigms from the bloodiest and
most ecologically destructive century of human existence. . .

Yet even as we complain about and denounce the entropic culture in which
we find ourselves, we are unable bury it. We speak of a new age but make
endless accommodations with the old. We are overpowered and afraid. We
find ourselves condoning things simply because not to do so means we
would then have to -- at unknown risk -- trulychallenge them.

To accept the full consequences of the degradation of the environment,
the explosion of incarceration, the creeping militarization, the
dismantling of democracy, the commodification of culture, the contempt
for the real, the culture of impunity among the powerful and the zero
tolerance towards the weak, requires a courage that seems beyond us. We
do not know how to look honestly at the wreckage without an overwhelming
sense of surrender; far easier to just keep dancing and hope someone
else fixes it all.

Yet, in a perverse way, our predicament makes life simpler. We have
clearly lost what we have lost. We can give up our futile efforts to
preserve the illusion and turn our energies instead to the construction
of a new time. It is this willingness to walk away from the seductive
power of the present that first divides the mere reformer from the rebel
-- the courage to emigrate from one's own ways in order to meet the
future not as an entitlement but as a frontier.

How one does this can vary markedly, but one of the bad habits we have
acquired from the bullies who now run the place is undue reliance on
traditional political, legal and rhetorical tools. Politically active
Americans have been taught that even at the risk of losing our planet
and our democracy, we must go about it all in a rational manner, never
raising our voice, never doing the unlikely or trying the improbable,
let alone screaming for help.

We have lost much of what was gained in the 1960s and 1970s because we
traded in our passion, our energy, our magic and our music for the
rational, technocratic and media ways of our leaders. We will not
overcome the current crisis solely with political logic. We need living
rooms like those in which women once discovered they were not alone. The
freedom schools of SNCC. The politics of the folk guitar. The plays of
Vaclav Havel. The pain of James Baldwin. The laughter of Abbie Hoffman.
The strategy of Gandhi and King. Unexpected gatherings and unpredicted
coalitions.

People coming together because they disagree on every subject save one:
the need to preserve the human. Savage satire and gentle poetry.
Boisterous revival and silent meditation. Grand assemblies and simple
suppers.

Above all, we must understand that in leaving the toxic ways of the
present we are healing ourselves, our places, and our planet. We rebel
not as a last act of desperation but as a first act of creation. ­

What I was talking about was a movement of the sort that may now or soon
be underway. Providing mediation for anger, structure for hope, and
pragmatic plans for tomorrow, a movement can seem anarchistic,
disjointed or directionless, yet what we see may be no more the little
waves on the surface that conceal the force of the current underneath.

Further, it is sometimes hard to perceive because while the cause is
national, the action is often local. We have become trained in recent
decades by both liberals and conservatives to define action by simply
being on a national mailing list and making a contribution. Which is why
Move On and Emily's List are so powerful but nobody knows what a liberal
is any more.

Movements work differently. They don't use popes; they rely on
independent congregations. They are driven not be saviors but by
substance. They assume a commitment beyond the voting booth, they think
politicians should respond to them rather than the other way around, and
they believe in "Here's how" as well as "Yes, we can."

If you are presently doing anything to try to repair the damage that has
been done by our cynical, greedy and incompetent leadership you are part
of the movement. Student, union worker, teacher, retiree, infirm,
ecologist, defense attorney, community organizer, informed or reformed -
you are part of the movement.

So welcome to the movement. If you don't believe there is one, trying
using the word anyway. The very term is a weapon in our arsenal. If the
politicians and the press start hearing the phrase in places they
thought had little in common, they will start to pay attention. We can
leave it to the historians to define it. In its very ambiguity lies its
strength. We may contradict ourselves, but as Walt Whitman once noted,
that's okay; it merely proves that we contain multitudes. http://prorev.com/

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