Can 1600 Meetings Grow into Progressive Clout?

Bigger Than the Tea Party

By Van Jones   

Progressive America Rising via OurFuture.org

Last month, I joined with MoveOn.org and launched the Rebuild the Dream [1] campaign to help give a voice to the millions of Americans who aren't being heard in Washington.

This past weekend, we organized nearly 1,600 house meetings across the country -- nearly double the number of protests the Tea Party held when they launched in April of 2009. The American Dream Meetings gave more than 27,000 people, from all across the country, an opportunity to come together and discuss what the American Dream means to them and their families.

They talked about how the jobless crisis and foreclosure mess is impacting their communities. They put forth creative ideas for the Contract for the American Dream [2] -- a bold progressive vision to help fix the broken economy and rebuild our communities. The Contract has already received nearly 26,000 ideas submitted online alone and over 6 million ratings.

While I'm beyond inspired by the enormous outpour of ideas we've received thus far, it doesn't surprise me that the American people are yearning to come up with practical solutions to our economic crisis. While so many Americans struggle with joblessness and rampant foreclosures, we keep hearing from Washington that we need to reduce the deficit, even if it means slashing Medicare or gutting vital programs families depend on. Washington appears to be operating on an entirely different planet than the rest of America.

There's an important story that's not being told in Washington. It's the story of the mother or father getting the dreaded call into the office where their boss informs them that they've been laid off. They were already underwater on their house, and now without a steady paycheck, they start to get behind on their mortgage payments. Then comes the big bad bank. They do everything they can to keep their house but it's no use. The bank posts that horrifying foreclosure notice on their door, and takes their home. They sell most of their belongings and move their entire family into a one-bedroom apartment. Or if they're lucky, they move in with grandma. It's a vicious cycle and it's happening every single day in America. It's the new American nightmare....

Taking Stock of a Potential Insurgency

Some Reports  From CCDSers Attending The 'Rebuild the Dream' House Meetings on July 16-17 Initiated by Van Jones and MoveOn.org

Lincoln Park, Chicago: Ted Pearson. 

The biggest problem was that it was almost all white and all senior citizens.  I'm sure this does not reflect the racial and age composition of the MoveOn email list in my neighborhood, so I don't know how to account for it.  All of the people who were there except for me and one other person unaffiliated with any other group.  All had worked for Obama in 2008.  

There was great frustration but also a recognition that the right wing is the main enemy.  The point on making Social Security solvent was debated a little - some (myself) do not accept the notion that it is insolvent, although I think we support the call for increasing or eliminating the cap on income subject to FICA.

There was also no discussion of the Dream conference Oct. 3-5 except that I raised it.  Everyone agreed that it would be important but no one expressed interest in going.  

I introduced myself as being from Lincoln Park Neighbors for Peace and Justice (there were two of us there), CAARPR, and CCDS.  I brought copies of the Democracy Charter, only one of which was picked up.  The format did not really allow for discussing it.  I seemed to be the only "activist" at the meeting. ...

The Shock Doctrine: 75-Minute Video Verson   

of Naomi Klein's Anti-Capitalist Book  

The Shock Doctrine (2009) -- Naomi Klein

  Wall Street: Turn the Tables on a Rigged Game

By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue  

Our local conservative newspaper, the Pittsburgh Business Times, carries an instructive story this morning, July 21, 2011, about how to solve our revenue problems, only it fails to make the critical point. So I'll lend a hand. It says:

"Pennsylvania casinos brought in $81.4 million in tax revenue from table games during the fiscal year that ended last month, according to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. Of that, about $71.3 million went to the state's general fund and another $10 million went to local municipalities and counties that host the state's 10 table game casinos.

"The Rivers Casino on the North Shore was responsible for $8 million in state tax revenue and $1.2 million in local payments through its table games operations during the past fiscal year."

It goes on to break the numbers down even more.

Now I can enjoy a day at the Casino. I recently took my Mom and stepfather, a retired J&L worker, to the Rivers for his 84^th birthday. I hit the nickel slot for $1.50 on my first try, but ended up leaving $5 in the hole.

But here's my point. There's a much larger casino in this country that has global reach. It's called Wall Street, and enormous sums are bet there every second, with the biggest bets being placed by hedge fund managers gambling with other people's money....

Aside from the bland icon of the new China, there is a much more dangerous Mao, whose ideas retain their vitality

An article on Marxism, materialism and particle physics

Quantum mechanics is the study of energy and atoms, of the very smallest particles. The discovery of the atom, 2,500 years ago, was just one of the astonishing achievements of the ancient Greeks who lived in Ionia, in great cities on the coast of present-day Turkey. Another was a materialist dialectic.

How did the Ionian philosophers, who were merchants and explorers living a hundred years or more before the famous Athenian philosophers such Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, arrive at the conclusion that the world was made of atoms?

Above all, they observed nature. These philosophers tended to run into trouble with the authorities for denying the gods and looking for material explanations for things - they were materialists. They asked how the stone statues could be worn over time, or how two different coloured liquids mix together - surely, these things must be made up of tiny particles, too small for the eye to see, which wear off statues and mix together.

The ancient Ionian city-state of Miletus experienced revolutions for two generations. The aristocracy were overthrown by the rising merchant class and a succession of revolutions followed. Power passed between the masses - the "demos" ("people") - and the "people of property".

"At first the people prevailed and, after they had thrown the rich out, they assembled... the fugitives on the threshing-floors, and had oxen trample on them and destroyed them in the most terrible manner. Thereupon the rich, again getting control, tarred and burned to death all whom they could get hold of..." (Athenaios, quoted by C J Emlyn-Jones, The Ionians and Hellenism, p. 31)

Dialectics: Nothing is fixed

In another amazing achievement, the philosophers of this time developed what Socrates later called his 'dialectics'. Naturally reflecting the upheavals in society around them, they believed that nothing was fixed - all things that come into being must pass away. Their philosophy embraced the entire sweep of nature and society as one organic whole, perhaps reflecting the way a genuine social revolution sweeps everything into its turmoil, leaving nothing untouched. Dialectics is a holistic philosophy which always considers things in their relations and their development, as Lenin said....