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

Friday, March 15, 2013

Begging Obama to Turn on His Banker Friends

Click here to access article by Glen Ford from Black Agenda Report. (You have the option of reading the transcript of Ford's broadcast commentary, or listening to it by clicking on the audio link at the end of the transcript.)

 Ford ridicules the shallow thinking that still infects many US activists who want to change government policies via petitions. I've probably signed thousands of petitions over the past 50 years and I've seen our government sink deeper into the morass of corruption, secret and not so secret wars, a growing police state, privatizations, attacks on social programs, etc. 
Outfits like the Campaign for a Fair Settlement encourage this kind of delusional thinking, that Obama is the good guy who needs our help. The petitioners urge Obama to “secure his legacy as a champion of justice.”
Ford accurately sources all these symptoms to a ruling class: "...the concentrated capital of the financial class...." And, of course, this class derives its power and wealth from the system of capitalism that it has successfully imposed on most of humanity for the past 300 plus years.
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