We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

America’s Secret Political Power

Click here to access article by Olivia Ward from The Star (Toronto, Canada).

This Canadian journalist reports on her experience in Arizona covering the recent annual conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization that brings together large corporations and conservative state lawmakers to draft model bills. She learns about American "freedom of the press"and about how police enforcers of the One Percent contained and managed protests and media coverage at the ALEC conference.

After merely carrying on a conversation with a journalist ("Beau") from In These Times, she reports:
As I say goodnight, Beau is summoned by hotel security and herded away toward the elevator by uniformed police. Why? In Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia, I was evicted from my hotel by machine-gun-toting militias as the Kosovo war began. But in America. . . ?

As I stand staring, two cops flank me: Do I know this man? Who is he?

Beau has disappeared now. Will anything I say be used against him? I square my shoulders and think of my British mother: “How dare you ask me such a question? Is this a morality charge? Are hotel guests of the opposite sex forbidden to speak in a bar? Is this Iran or the land of the free?”

We face off, not blinking. The questions continue. At last the inquisitors give in. “Ma’am, you’re free to go.”