Harvey Wasserman : The Demand for a Global Takeover at Fukushima

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant's reactor building number 4 seen in aerial view on July 5, 2012. Photo by Kyodo / Reuters.

The demand for a global takeover
at Fukushima has hit critical mass

Since the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami, the six-reactor Daichi site has plunged into lethal chaos.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / October 2, 2013

More than 48,000 global citizens have now signed a petition at NukeFree.org asking the United Nations and the world community to take charge of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. Another 35,000 have signed at RootsAction. An independent advisory group of scientists and engineers is also in formation.

The signatures are pouring in from all over the world. By November, they will be delivered to the United Nations.

The corporate media has blacked out meaningful coverage of the most critical threat to global health and safety in decades.

The much-hyped “nuclear renaissance” has turned into a global rout. In the face of massive grassroots opposition and the falling price of renewable energy and natural gas, operating reactors are shutting and proposed new ones are being cancelled.

This lessens the radioactive burden on the planet. But it makes the aging reactor fleet ever more dangerous. A crumbling industry with diminished resources and a disappearing workforce cannot safely caretake the decrepit, deteriorating 400-odd commercial reactors still licensed to operate worldwide.

All of which pales before the crisis at Fukushima. Since the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami, the six-reactor Daichi site has plunged into lethal chaos.

For decades the atomic industry claimed vehemently that a commercial reactor could not explode. When Chernobyl blew, it blamed “inferior” Soviet technology.

But Fukushima’s designs are from General Electric (some two dozen similar reactors are licensed in the U.S.). At least four explosions have rocked the site. One might have involved nuclear fission. Three cores have melted into the ground. Massive quantities of water have been poured where the owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco), and the Japanese government think they might be, but nobody knows for sure.

As The Free Press has reported, steam emissions indicate one or more may still be hot. Contaminated water is leaking from hastily-constructed tanks. Room for more is running out. The inevitable next earthquake could rupture them all and send untold quantities of poisons pouring into the ocean.

The worst immediate threat at Fukushima lies in the spent fuel pool at Unit Four. That reactor had been shut for routine maintenance when the earthquake and tsunami hit. The 400-ton core, with more than 1,300 fuel rods, sat in its pool 100 feet in the air.

Spent fuel rods are the most lethal items our species has ever created. A human standing within a few feet of one would die in a matter of minutes. With more than 11,000 scattered around the Daichi site, radiation levels could rise high enough to force the evacuation of all workers and immobilize much vital electronic equipment.

Spent fuel rods must be kept cool at all times. If exposed to air, their zirconium alloy cladding will ignite, the rods will burn, and huge quantities of radiation will be emitted. Should the rods touch each other, or should they crumble into a big enough pile, an explosion is possible. By some estimates there’s enough radioactivity embodied in the rods to create a fallout cloud 15,000 times greater than the one from the Hiroshima bombing.

The rods perched in the Unit 4 pool are in an extremely dangerous position. The building is tipping and sinking into the sodden ground. The fuel pool itself may have deteriorated. The rods are embrittled and prone to crumbling. Just 50 meters from the base is a common spent fuel pool containing some 6,000 fuel rods that could be seriously compromised should it lose coolant. Overall there are some 11,000 spent rods scattered around the Fukushima Daichi site.

As dangerous as the process might be, the rods in the Unit Four fuel pool must come down in an orderly fashion. Another earthquake could easily cause the building to crumble and collapse. Should those rods crash to the ground and be left uncooled, the consequences would be catastrophic.

Tepco has said it will begin trying to remove the rods from that pool in November. The petitions circulating through NukeFree.org and MoveOn.org, as well as at Roots Action and Avaaz.org, ask that the United Nations take over. They ask the world scientific and engineering communities to step in. The Roots Action petition also asks that $8.3 billion slated in loan guarantees for a new U.S. nuke be shifted instead to dealing with the Fukushima site.

It’s a call with mixed blessings. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency is notoriously pro-nuclear, charged with promoting atomic power as well as regulating it. Critics have found the IAEA to be secretive and unresponsive.

But Tepco is a private utility with limited resources. The Japanese government has an obvious stake in downplaying Fukushima’s dangers. These were the two entities that approved and built these reactors.

While the IAEA is imperfect, its resources are more substantial and its stake at Fukushima somewhat less direct. An ad hoc global network of scientists and engineers would be intellectually ideal, but would lack the resources for direct intervention.

Ultimately the petitions call for a combination of the two.

It’s also hoped the petitions will arouse the global media. The moving of the fuel rods from Unit Four must be televised. We need to see what’s happening as it happens. Only this kind of coverage can allow global experts to analyze and advise as needed.

Let’s all hope that this operation proves successful, that the site is neutralized and the massive leaks of radioactive water and gasses be somehow stopped.

As former Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata has put it: full-scale releases from Fukushima “would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.”

[Harvey Wasserman is senior editor of the Columbus Free Press and The Free Press. He edits NukeFree.org, where all factual material in this article can be linked. He hosts the Solartopia Green Power & Wellness radio show at the Progressive Radio Network, and is author of Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth. Read more of Harvey Wasserman's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Susan Van Haitsma : Texans Rally to Save Our Schools

An estimated 10,000 education advocates gathered at the Texas State Capitol, Saturday, February 23, 2013. Photo by Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog.

Texans rally to save our schools

Behind the Capitol edifice, I hope lawmakers are listening. These are the voices of experienced teachers and smart, young learners. In fact, we’ll all learn, if we listen.

By Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog / February 26, 2013

See more photos by Susan Van Haitsma, Below.

AUSTIN -- One thing I noticed about education historian, author, teacher, and former Assistant Secretary of Education, Diane Ravitch, after she joined the march up Congress Avenue in Austin and then addressed the Save Our Schools statewide rally at the Texas State Capitol on Saturday, February 23, 2013, was that she remained on stage to listen to the many other speakers who came after her.

Two were students from Eastside Memorial High School in Austin, a public school that has kept the charter companies at bay, thus far, through the impassioned advocacy of students, teachers, parents, and Ravitch herself, who has visited Austin previously to speak on behalf of the school.

Ravitch lives in Brooklyn now, but she was raised in Houston, where she attended public schools from K-12, so her interest in Texas schools comes naturally. From the enthusiasm shown by the thousands of public education advocates who turned out for Saturday’s march and rally, Ravitch’s critiques of Arne Duncan-style school reform are shared by many Texans. (Ravitch is a prolific blogger as well as a renowned author. Check out her blog post about the Austin rally here.)

The rally, which drew an estimated 10,000, was sponsored by Save Texas Schools, a nonpartisan "coalition of parents, students, educators, business leaders, concerned citizens, community groups and faith organizations," whose stated goal is "to encourage our state’s elected officials to support quality public education for ALL Texas students, pre-K to college."

Watching the flow of sign-carrying teachers, retired teachers, young students, and grown students moving up Congress Avenue toward the Capitol, I appreciated the variety of hand-lettered messages that conveyed a common sentiment: We value the power of knowledge, and we value each other.

When the crowd was gathered at the Capitol, the speakers’ testimonies, facts, and figures continued on that theme, explaining why blaming teachers, students, parents, and public education in general by privatizing schools and amping up testing is hurting rather than helping our education system.

Ravitch is not completely opposed to charter schools, but as a policy analyst, she says that evidence gathered over the past decade shows, on balance, that charter schools do not produce better-educated kids. If private schools want to offer alternatives to public schools, fine. But don’t use public funds to pay for them.

One of the final speakers on the program was Zack Kopplin, a 19-year-old Rice University student who, as a high school student in Louisiana, led an effort to repeal the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act, legislation which allowed the teaching of creationism in Louisiana public schools.

Kopplin’s research on the use of non-scientific and religiously biased curriculum used in public schools in other states, like Texas, has led him to continue speaking out about the dangers of misleading students about the crucial issues of their day, such as climate change.

Behind the Capitol edifice, I hope lawmakers are listening. These are the voices of experienced teachers and smart, young learners. In fact, we’ll all learn, if we listen.

[Susan Van Haitsma is active in Austin with Sustainable Options for Youth and CodePink. She also blogs at makingpeace. Find more articles by Susan Van Haitsma on The Rag Blog.]

Save our Texas Schools:
Photos by Susan Van Haitsma

 

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Daniel Samper Pizano : Here Come the Nuns!

Image from the Brisbane Times.
Here come the Nuns!

They do not preach it from a pulpit, but live it with their example, in miserable hospitals, in shanty towns, schools, jungle dispensaries, and in places of conflict.

By Daniel Samper Pizano / The Rag Blog / September 24, 2012

God knows how to do Divine stuff: the one who doesn't know is the Pope. In a display of celestial irony, women, traditionally marginalized and turned into nobodies by the Roman Catholic Church, are shaking the foundations of that archaic, machista, and reactionary institution.

From Saint Paul, who ordered the wife's submission to her husband, to the Councils and Synods that prohibit ordaining women to the priesthood, the Roman Catholic hierarchy has been a powerful club of old bachelors.

Nevertheless, women created the greatest lay schism of recent years when they decided that their bodies were their own and did not belong to the parish priest, and, without rejecting their fundamental religious beliefs, they disobeyed, en masse, the norms of the bedroom ordained by Rome. The pill, divorce, free sexual relations, and recently, abortion, have been flags of independence for Roman Catholic women.

A small volcano is now starting to boil inside the clerical body. It is a volcano that could bring profound internal transformations and retake the values of primitive Christianity. And do you know who is fomenting that significant revolution? The nuns. God certainly knows how to accomplish Divine works.

The incident that widened the gap between the nuns and the hierarchy is a recent communication where the Vatican criticizes a certain North American association, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, for moving away from the teachings of the bishops, "who are the authentic teachers of faith and morals." In the same document, the Vatican appoints an archbishop to bring the unruly nuns under control.

The arm of the Vatican for the doctrine and the faith affirms that this association of nuns --1,500 out of a total of 1,800 -- disagrees with the papal condemnation of homosexuality and the priesthood of women. Deep down, Rome is upset because the nuns support Barack Obama's program of public health that, among other benefits, offers assistance in some cases of abortion.

For that also there was a tiron de orejas [slap on the wrist] to another group of North American nuns who were chided because "they are too occupied with issues of poverty and social injustice while they are silent about abortion and same sex marriage."

More than an accusation, this is an acknowledgement. Jesus of Nazareth never condemned gays or abortion; He did, however, castigate the rich (remember what He said about the camel and eye of the needle?), and He defended the poor and destitute.

That is what thousands of nuns are doing all over the world. They do not preach it from a pulpit, but live it with their example, in miserable hospitals, in shanty towns, schools, jungle dispensaries, and in places of conflict.

It seems like a strange lie that those who tried to cover up the shameful scandal of pedophile priests are now demanding that the nuns abandon their works of mercy and dedicate themselves to promoting sexual causes that are both stale and alien to the feelings of Christians. That is why tens of thousands of lay people signed a letter in support of the nuns.

All this is depressing. But it also offers a little hope for change. Restless nuns are not rare. They are seen from Saint Theresa of Avila up to our strong Leonor Esguerra, nun, teacher, and guerrilla. It just may be that the nuns, together with indignant priests, will retake the true meaning of the Church.

God knows how to do Divine stuff.

[Daniel Samper Pizano is an acclaimed Colombian-born journalist, novelist, and screenwriter who now lives in Madrid.]

Translated from the Spanish by Movimiento Tambien Somos Iglesia-Chile, at Refugio Del Rio Grande, Texas.

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BOOKS / Harry Targ : Van Jones on Rebuilding the Dream

As election nears:
Van Jones on rebuilding the dream

Activists know that building mass movements entails a variety of cognitive and action steps. Sometimes it is useful for a skilled activist like Van Jones to provide us with a framework for discussing how to proceed.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / August 29, 2012

[Rebuild the Dream by Van Jones (2012: Nation Books); Hardcover; 320 pp.; $25.99.]

The central argument of this book is that, to bring back hope and win change, we need more than a great president. We need a movement of millions of people, committed to fixing our democracy and rebuilding America’s economy.

In June, 2011, Van Jones, former White House advisor on Green Jobs and before that community organizer and author of The Green Collar Economy, called on progressives to organize house parties to establish a policy agenda that could serve as the basis for building a new progressive social movement. An inspiring speech to urge organizing at the grassroots level was widely distributed on the internet.

In July thousands of house parties, advertised as efforts to “Rebuild the American Dream,” were held. These were followed by electronic dialogue that led to the adoption of a “Contract for the American Dream;” a 10-point program for economic renewal. Over 300,000 Americans have endorsed the Contract, and the Rebuild the Dream coalition claims to have 600,000 members.

In some communities, including in Lafayette, Indiana, where I live and teach, local Rebuild the Dream Coalitions became the vehicle for networking among representatives of civil rights and civil liberties groups, trade unionists, defenders of women’s reproductive health, and progressive Democrats. Rallies, petition drives, and panel presentations were organized around jobs and justice, protecting Planned Parenthood, and challenges to the connection between big money and politics.

During the fall of 2011, overshadowing grassroots Dream coalition efforts, the Occupy Movement surfaced and spread all across the United States. Already dramatic fightbacks against anti-labor legislation in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana had begun. Both the activism in the Heartland and in the occupations became more visible (and perhaps more influential).

Reflecting on the possibility of continuing the construction of a mass movement to revitalize democratic institutions and the economy, Jones has written a book assessing these campaigns (including the Obama electoral campaign which preceded them). Most important he presents a conceptual scheme for helping communities decide on appropriate political programs and activities.

Before addressing future needs, Jones makes the important point that the Occupy and Dream movements and the 2008 campaign around the Obama election followed a massive anti-Iraq war movement, new developments in internet organizing, and the construction of movement-oriented think tanks and cable television programs during the first decade of the new century. He believes that social movements build on the successes and failures of those that precede them.

During the first few chapters of Jones’ book, the author discusses strengths and weaknesses of the Obama administration. Among the positive contributions of the administration Jones refers to policies that averted another Great Depression, including saving of the auto industry. Jones applauds passage of the Ledbetter Act. On the negative side Jones discusses the failure of the administration to secure passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, an inadequate economic stimulus package, and weak efforts to regulate Wall Street financial institutions.

From a social movement standpoint Jones included in his critique the successful Democratic National Committee effort to accumulate the power that had been generated at the grassroots to elect Barack Obama. Organizing for America (OFA) groups, Jones wrote, which represented grassroots mobilizations everywhere, were taken over by the formal centralized Democratic Party machinery, thus defusing the energy, passion, and willingness of activists to work for a progressive agenda.

Beyond his review and analysis of 21st century social movements and the Obama campaign, a major theoretical contribution of the book is in its conceptual scheme. By using a 2 x 2 table Jones identifies two critical dimensions of movement building.

The first, involves whether campaigns are organized around rational analysis (thorough argumentation with the use of data and the making of specific proposals) or emotional appeals (referring to emotive symbols, slogans, and inspiring artistic creations).

The second dimension involves politics as conceptualization (generating ideas) or action. Action can be about the “inside game”(bargaining and negotiation, electoral work, lobbying), or politics as an “outside game” (engaging in street heat, mass mobilizations, rallies, and civil disobedience).

Jones calls the process of identifying policies through rigorous analysis as the “head space,” rallying public support through emotions the “heart space,” lobbying, pressure group politics and elections the “inside game,” and going to the streets the “outside game.” For him the political process involves the activation of all four quadrants at different points in time; using concepts and analysis or emotional appeals applied to inside or outside forms of action.

In Jones’ words:

Sometimes the process moves in the order I have just laid out -- from sober analysis and facts (Head Space), to resonant narratives that inspire support (Heart Space), to citizen participation (Outside Game), to official debate, deal making, and rule making (Inside Game). Sometimes it starts in the Heart Space with an impassioned call for change, which activists then pick up on a mass scale (Outside Game), which in turn catalyzes scholars and think tanks (Head Space), and ultimately leads to elected officials changing laws (Inside Game).

...each and every quadrant is the most important one at different stages in the process of making change (121).

The conceptual scheme offered by Van Jones may help grassroots coalitions strategize about their progressive agenda.

First, Jones is correct to argue that politics is about theoretical and policy discussion. Also, politics is about popular, accessible appeals to action. In addition, political activity concerns routinized political action, including the selection of leaders, pressuring them to act on the people’s behalf, and making them accountable. Furthermore, it is about extraordinary public action to demand that leaders defend the interests of the masses of the people (the 99 percent) or be ready to suffer punishment for their inside game decisions.

Second, grassroots organizations must decide, given their local, as well as the national, context where their energies need to be placed: developing theories and programs, generating emotive symbols to build mass support, working in elections and generating lobbying campaigns, and/or hitting the streets.

Third, these four dimensions of politics -- head space, heart space, inside game, and outside game -- are what progressives do. But often we do not reflect on what we are doing; what “stage” in the process of movement-building we are in; and what combination of dimensions -- given our resources -- should be part of our plan of work.

Fourth, all grassroots groups can sit down at a planning meeting, identify the quadrants, list the activities that have been carried out in each somewhere in the country, assess the situation of the local group, and develop a program that is feasible, given resources and local context, to achieve pre-articulated progressive goals.

Activists know that building mass movements entails a variety of cognitive and action steps. Sometimes it is useful for a skilled activist like Van Jones to provide us with a framework for discussing how to proceed. Rebuild the Dream does that. It would be a good resource for study group discussion.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical -- and that's also the name of his book from Changemaker Press which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Ron Jacobs : Cops and Contradictions

Demonstrators form a "human oil spill" in Burlington, VT, July 30, 2012. Photo by Sarah Harris / North Country Public Radio. Inset image below: Riot police used rubber bullets, sting ball pellets, and pepper spray against Burlington demonstraters. Image from Occupy Wall Street / Facebook.
In Asheville and Burlington:
Cops and contradictions

Contradictions between the powerful and everyone else are heightened in places like North Carolina, especially when contrasted to liberal enclaves like Vermont... However, the difference between the right wing state and the liberal one is often much smaller than one might think.

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / August 27, 2012

BURLINGTON, Vermont -- Leaving Asheville, North Carolina, the place I called home from summer 2005 through summer 2012, always provides me with a mixture of regret and relief. I love the beer, music, scenery and my friends there, but the fact that it is in the U.S. South -- with its generally reactionary politics -- always leaves a bitter taste.

Asheville itself is a city whose relationship to its home state is much like the relationship Austin has to Texas. It is a liberal to progressive enclave in a wasteland of Bible Belt intolerance and anti-worker policies designed to keep the workforce in a state of perpetual desperation. Low wages, no unions and bosses who can fire folks almost at will seem to be the order of the day in states like North Carolina.

The high unemployment rates in the state keep the marginally employed and those just a paycheck away from that status in a situation not much different from the slavery once commonplace there.

A friend of mine plays in a number of symphony orchestras in the region. Every summer she performs in a few pops concerts that serve as fundraisers for these ensembles. The most recent one was in a town about 50 miles east of Asheville. She described the scene to me over beer and pizza.

I pulled into the parking lot after getting lost on the back roads. The lot was filled with BMWs, Mercedes SUVs, Lexuses, and Escalades. Standing around in small groups underneath tents covered in corporate logos and set up to keep the sun away were groups of mostly older people.

The women wore light clothing that they probably paid too much for. The men, almost to a T, were dressed in white polo shirts, deck shoes, and pink Bermuda shorts. Many of the automobiles sported Romney bumper stickers and, as I walked toward the performers’ entrance to the stage area, I couldn’t help noticing the number of audience members sporting Romney campaign buttons.

The show was your standard fare: Sousa and other patriotic nonsense, show tunes and a couple edited versions of popular classical tunes. The patriotic tunes received the most applause, of course. When I got back to my car there was a Romney campaign leaflet stuck under the windshield wiper.

Contradictions between the powerful and everyone else are heightened in places like North Carolina, especially when contrasted to liberal enclaves like Vermont (where I currently reside), and the hope of progressive change seems minimal. However, the difference between the right wing state and the liberal one is often much smaller than one might think.

After I bought my airline tickets to Asheville I found out that the Northeast Governors Association (and Eastern Canadian PMs) would be holding their conference in downtown Burlington the same weekend. Like its larger parent, the U.S. Governor’s Association Conference, the northeastern conference is a weekend of political backslapping, conspiring and feasting with lots of corporate sponsorship.

The context of this year’s conference is the ongoing campaign by the energy corporation HydroQuebec to dam up Quebec’s rivers, destroy the pristine wilderness they flow through, and displace the people and wildlife living there. Another part of the context is the desire of the oil industry to ship oil from the tar sand fields in Canada through the New England states.

To top off their arrogance, Quebec Premier Charest, whose refusal to back off of tuition hikes and other changes to Quebec’s higher education system have sparked a strike and massive protest, was feted.
So, protests were planned.

Since I could not afford to change my travel dates I wished my comrades well. Imagine my surprise upon returning to Burlington and finding out that Burlington police had attacked protesters with rubber and other “non-lethal” weapons for attempting to block roads around the conference site.

Of course, in the wake of the police attack, politicians and police administrators were quick to blame the protesters for their “aggressive” tactics. Response from some segments of the community was swift. University of Vermont literature professor Nancy Welch wrote in a Facebook post regarding the police attack:

What Burlington Police Chief Michael Schirling leaves out of his defense of the police assault on protestors outside the Northeast Governors Conference is that the “confrontation” and “conflict” the protestors engaged in was nonviolent.

Just as the men and women who sat in at Greensboro lunch counters and marched on Montgomery in the Civil Rights era had a conflict with Jim Crow and sought to confront it, so do the people who marched Sunday have a conflict with heads of state who push such environmentally and socially devastating projects as Tar Sands and the F-35 bombers while defunding family planning clinics, public services, and state universities.

The protestors’ confrontation took the classic Civil Rights-era forms: lying down in front of the hotel the governors were huddled up in; standing in front of the bus that was to whisk the governors away to dinner. It is sobering that police chose to respond in Bull Connor fashion by unleashing violence. Even more sobering is that our Democratic mayor and governor are championing them.

The fallout continues. The newly elected Democratic mayor of Burlington is now calling for a conversation between the city, the police and citizens. At the same time, some kind of investigation is supposedly being arranged. The likelihood is that little will change and the police will be able to do what they please when situations like that which occurred the weekend of July 29th happen again.

Earlier in this piece I wrote that political environments like that found in North Carolina tend to heighten the contradictions between the rulers and the ruled. So do actions like those undertaken by Burlington police outside the Northeast Governor’s Conference. One can only anticipate with trepidation what contradictions law enforcement in Charlotte, N.C. and Tampa, Florida will heighten when the U.S. Republicans and Democrats hold their conventions in the coming days.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His latest novel, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, is published by Fomite. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

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Paul Beckett : Letter from Wisconsin

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett concedes defeat in Milwaukee, June 5, 2012. Photo by John Gress / Reuters.
After the apocalypse:
Letter from Wisconsin

Frankly, putting it all together, I am very worried about our future, in Wisconsin and in the nation.

By Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog / June 11, 2012

Dear Friends,

Well, we got your attention, didn’t we? Colbert put it best: the Tuesday, June 5, recall election was the most significant event for Wisconsin since discovery of elastic jeans. (Oh, thank you very much, Stephen!)

The race was called by 9 p.m. (some polling stations were not yet even closed). Governor Scott Walker had won the recall election over Democrat Tom Barrett by 7 percent. Worse, county by county, Wisconsin was a sea of GOP red. Sixty of Wisconsin’s 72 counties were carried by Walker! Only small islands of blue mainly clustered around Madison and Milwaukee, and along the Lake Superior shore (traditionally progressive) showed blue above the red tide.

For the many tens of thousands who had been participants in Madison’s version of the Arab Spring, in February and March (2011), and who had, as unpaid volunteers, collected more than one million signatures for the recall petition, it was a like a hard kick to the gut.

You can’t understand, friends, without knowing what those February and March events were like. Never, in my now pretty-long life, have I experienced the exhilarating sense of the people -- the real people, the whole people -- rising and making democracy real, and direct.

Up to 70,000 at a time packed the Capitol Rotunda, and circled the square. Turnout was largely spontaneous: hierarchy and formal organization largely absent. Anger with the multiple violations of democratic tradition was underlain by a kind of joy which reveled in the sense of commonness, and in the incredible wit of common folks which was displayed on hand-made signs and in slogans.

Inside the rotunda was the beauty of “functioning anarchy” as areas were set aside for families with small children, for eating, for resting. In the enormous and densely packed crowds, neither crime nor violence raised its head.

There was, over all, a sense of irresistibility to this truly popular uprising. Stopping the people so mobilized would be like stopping the flow of the Mississippi on our western border. We thought.

How, on June 5, a little more than a year later, could this defeat have happened?

Friends, if Stephen is right and you all have been watching us, you know a lot of the answer. You know that funding for the Walker side was almost ten times (yes, 10X!) that for the Barrett side. And Walker’s money had come pouring in, mainly from out of state, for months. Totals are almost too obscene for a decent blog to publish (the tracking organization Wisconsin Democracy Campaign estimates that the final total will push $80 million!).

The infamous Koch Brothers, along with the whole shadowy neo-con/corporate national leadership, knew that a successful recall would hurt rather seriously their movement to consolidate control over U.S. society, culture and, of course, politics. Money poured in to support the Walker campaign, sometimes in half-million dollar amounts. A sophisticated campaign of TV advertising was launched long before the Democrats even had a candidate.

Meanwhile, there was no real “owner” of the recall effort. If the uprising was largely spontaneous and unfunded, so was the subsequent recall petition drive. Once the million signatures were gathered, we stood and looked at each other. What’s next?

The Democratic Party (state and national) was unenthusiastic at the beginning, and gave tepid support after. There was no obvious candidate besides the one who ran against Walker and lost (by a respectable margin) in 2010. And he –-- Tom Barrett -- could not declare for the race until he had weathered the Milwaukee mayoral election (April 3).

Meanwhile, former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk aggressively threw her hat in the ring. She had negotiated her endorsement from the trade union leadership by pledging that if elected she would veto any budget bill that did not restore collective bargaining rights. The unions not only heavily funded her campaign to get the nomination, but actually aired attack ads against Tom Barrett, her most important opponent.

Falk’s “deal” with union leadership was a gift to the Walker side, which had constantly characterized the uprising as only about union rights and as “run by union bosses.”

In the primary, on May 8, Barrett easily defeated Falk. But he then had less than a month to counter what was already a steamroller of cash that for months had saturation bombed the brain of every TV watcher in Wisconsin.

Now let me assure you, friends: Barrett is a good man -- tall, good-looking, intelligent, well-spoken, polite, and gracious. His qualifications for the Governorship are excellent. He would surely have been a great candidate some time in the past. (In 2009 Barrett had even displayed old-fashioned personal heroism: he had intervened at the state fair to defend a woman who had called for help and received a lead pipe across the face and a broken hand. In the past, would that have won you a subsequent election or not?)

But Barrett was not the man for 2012. Barrett has a now-unfortunate habit of not talking down to the voters, compounded by a tendency to tell the truth, a political defect made even worse by a predilection toward real discussion of real issues.

Meanwhile, Walker was the perfect neo-con candidate, saying little, generating perfect video image material in the “aw-shucks” mode, while looking like a bashful choir boy (does he have a portrait of himself hidden away in an attic?). Never did Walker stray from the familiar jingles authored by his advertising companies.

Meanwhile national support from the Democratic Party remained minimal, and President Obama made it a point not even to come into the state.

All these facts notwithstanding, the surprise, Tuesday evening, made most of us sick to our stomachs.

There are, of course, different ways to view the events, and they tend to replace each other as time goes on. There is the way you feel the day after (that the sky has fallen). There is the day after the day after. Then, again, there is the day after that. Let’s take them in order.


1. First day after: 'The Apocalypse Is Here'

The election lent itself to apocalyptic thinking on the liberal-progressive side, and triumphalist thinking on the right. Perhaps, we thought, Wisconsin has now completed a gradual transition from marginally blue state to solidly red state. An open Senate seat will be contested in November. It now seems even more likely than before to go to a right-wing Republican (is there anything else these days?) , who will join the right-wing Republican (Ron Johnson) who defeated Senator Feingold in 2010. Barack Obama, who carried Wisconsin in 2008 by an amazing 14%, is now expected to have a hard fight (at best) in the state this fall.

Worse, and more fraught with consequences, the deluge of money from billionaires which funded incessant and ultimately unavoidable “30-second drive-by attack ads” (as candidate Barrett called them) seemed to work. Those of us who hoped there might be some eventual tipping point of excess, some point of overkill, after which the public would react against the perpetrators, came away disappointed. Is the lesson of the Wisconsin recall that you cannot, ever, have too much money, and that NO level of saturation bombing with the ads the money buys is too much? It may be.

If so, in light of the number of right-wing billionaires now at large in America, and the Citizens United decision, American democracy is less imperiled than already destroyed. Political advertising, devised by subtle and well-informed minds, is aimed at dumbing down political culture within a wider American culture already dumbed down remarkably by television.

The problem with where we are now is less with Citizens United and the nearly unbelievable accumulation of wealth available to contribute painlessly to political campaigns. It is more with what the money buys: TV advertising. It punishes depth, it punishes honesty, it punishes creativity and imagination on the part of politicians. It is un-speech which drives out and suppresses real speech.

Political cartoon by Mike Keefe / inToon.com

2. Second day after: 'Hey,Things Could be a Whole Lot Worse'

This, the central philosophy of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, comes forward on the day after the day after. Maybe the defeat was not so crushing, and maybe it doesn’t mean as much as we at first thought.

First of all, we look again at the numbers. It remains true that Walker took 60 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties. But guess what? His margin in the vast majority of those counties was thin; in many, razor thin. The counties where his majorities were large to huge were those counties (led by the infamous Waukesha County) which are safe Republican counties in all elections. Walker “flipped” four counties that had gone for Barrett in their first contest (the gubernatorial election in 2010) -- but the “flips” were by modest margins.

Meanwhile Barrett, while losing by about 7 percent overall, managed to “flip” three counties that were taken by Walker in 2010. Turnout was massive on both sides, and Walker received 205,900 more votes overall than he did in 2010. But: Barrett received 158,482 votes more than he had in 2010. Not bad for the victim of a drubbing!

There is another important factor. A significant portion of the pro-Walker vote was motivated by distaste for the recall procedure itself.

It should be acknowledged that this position is not an unreasonable one. All of the elected figures who were subjected to recall elections will be up for regular election in 2014. None of them are (as yet) charged with personal corruption or other illegal activity (although Walker is part of a very slow-moving investigation of illegal activity in his office before his accession to the governorship, and this could result in an indictment later).

Thus, many voters voted against the recall procedure more than for the Walker policy package (or the Walker persona).

It is impossible to say how many voters were so motivated. But it is safe to say that it could represent a substantial portion of Walker’s seven-percent margin.

And as far as the November election goes, exit polls reported by the Washington Post and others showed surprising support for Obama over Romney, even among those who voted for Walker!

So, maybe not so much has changed. As my friend Harry Targ, a frequent contributor to The Rag Blog, has put it:

Wisconsin has [long] been a deeply divided political state. In fact, two important political figures in the state’s history personify the political divisions that shaped competition in the state and the United States at large for at least one hundred years. Senator Joseph McCarthy represented the outlook shared by many that government is the enemy of humankind. . . . And . . . to the contrary, Senators Robert La Follette Senior and Junior represented that strand of political discourse that sees the possibility of creating governmental institutions that can protect the innocent from the criminal, provide for the less fortunate, and use public resources to advance human possibility. Descendants of both political traditions have fought it out over the years . . . (-- Personal communication of unpublished paper, June 7, 2012)

Wisconsin remains divided. This time, it was 1,334,450 for the right, and 1,162,785 for the left. The next time around it could be the other way. The division is probably sharper than any time before. But, hey, things could be a lot worse!

This second-day view leaves us with the idea that given all his advantages, Walker should have won much bigger. Along with that comes the idea that maybe overwhelming monetary advantage is not so decisive, after all.

Students form peace symbol on the floor of rotunda at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison in March 2011. Photo by John Hart / AP / Missourian.

3. Third Day After: 'Actually, Things Could NOT Be a Whole Lot Worse'

Friends, let’s face it. The situation in Wisconsin and the nation is very bad. Electoral analysis (as above) may make us feel a little bit better. But it largely misses the point. The right has been enormously -- and, to my mind -- tragically, successful.

The right has nearly absolute mass media dominance, a financial blank check with no evident limit, unity around central doctrines combined with complete party discipline, control of the Supreme Court, and a noisy and highly active popular movement (the Tea Party) to provide media excitement, and to act as enforcers of party discipline.

The Democratic Party, with none of these, has become a timid shadow of the party of Franklin Roosevelt. All discussion has been skewed far to the right. Legislative party discipline is non-existent. We are engaged only in rear-guard battles, and only in trying to reduce (usually slightly) our losses. Our maximal promises are, well, minimalist.

Some aspects of this have been touched on already. But there is another, deeply disturbing, aspect of the situation. Let me quote a former Madison neighbor, the author Dean Bakopoulos:

As Wisconsin’s new political landscape so clearly indicates, conservatives have now managed to vilify plain old working people as elitist fat cats. Librarians, teachers, public employees, and union laborers: Basically, people who earn health insurance and decent wages have suddenly become the things that stagnate an economy and raise taxes, when in truth they, and those wages they enjoy, have been the lifeblood of a struggling post-industrial economy.

But by declaring war on teachers, union laborers, and public sector employees, the well-heeled spinners behind the rise of Scott Walker have managed to make struggling Americans vote against their own best interests out of a sense of fear and envy. Struggling workers -- and most comfortable middle-class workers -- often to need an identifiable villain, someone who is holding them back from success, in order to vote Republican. If Republicans can present themselves as an enemy of that villain, they win. That’s what happened last night in Wisconsin. (Salon, June 8, 2012)

Frankly, putting it all together, I am very worried about our future, in Wisconsin and in the nation. And the Democratic Party is certainly not going to get us out of this, whatever happens in November.

In fact, dear friends, I can only say we’re in a bad patch, and I think we must look beyond it, beyond November, beyond the Democratic Party, way, way beyond the present. We need to remember that things really don’t need to be this way, that, as the World Social Forum series insists, “Another [and much better!] world is possible.”

Howard Zinn has told us how to think about it:

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

― Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, 1994

OK, dear friends, that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, I mean, Lake Wingra. Stay well, and come visit. The brats and brews are on Kathie and me! And elastic jeans can be found if you need them.

Your friend always,

Paul

[Dr. Paul Beckett lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He can be reached at beckettpa@gmail.com. Read more articles by Paul Beckett on The Rag Blog.]

Go here for Paul Beckett's earlier coverage of the movement in Wisconsin on The Rag Blog.

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Harvey Wasserman : Nuclear Industry Meltdown in Japan, France

Participants hold a traditional "Koinobori" carp-shaped banner for Children's Day during anti-nuke march in Tokyo Saturday, May 5, 2012. Photo by Itsuo Inouye / AP.
Nuclear industry melts in Japan, France;
opposition heats up in United States

This weekend’s message from Japan and France could not be more clear: at nuclear power’s historic core, the collapse has come.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / May 10, 2012

There are zero commercial reactors operating in Japan today. On March 10, 2011, there were 54 licensed to operate, well over 10% percent of the global fleet. But for the first time in 42 years, a country at the core of global reactor electricity is producing none of its own.

Worldwide, there are fewer than 400 operating reactors for the first time since Chernobyl, a quarter-century ago.

And France has replaced a vehemently pro-nuclear premier with the Socialist Francois Hollande, who will almost certainly build no new reactors. For decades France has been the “poster child” of atomic power. But Hollande is likely to follow the major shift in French national opinion away from nuclear power and toward the kind of green-powered transition now redefining German energy supply.

In the United States, a national grassroots movement to stop federal loan guarantees could end new nuclear construction altogether. New official cost estimates of $9.5 to $12 billion per reactor put the technology off-scale for any meaningful competition with renewables and efficiency.

In India, more than 500 women have joined an ongoing hunger strike against construction of reactors at Koodankulam. And in China, more than 30 reactors hang in the balance of a full assessment of the true toll of the Fukushima disaster.

But it seems to have no end. Three melted cores still smolder. New reports from U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), confirm that at least one spent fuel pool suspended 100 feet in the air, bearing tons of hugely toxic rods, could crash to the ground with another strong earthquake -- a virtual certainty by most calculations.

Those uncovered fuel rods contain radioactive cesium and other isotopes far beyond what was released at Chernobyl. A fire could render vast stretches of Japan permanently uninhabitable (if they are not already). The death toll could easily claim millions worldwide, including many of us here, where the cloud would come down within a week.

Japan’s total shutdown cuts to the core of the historic industry. The globe’s primary reactor designers, General Electric and Westinghouse, are now primarily Japanese-owned. Pressure vessels, steam generators, and much more of the industry’s vital hardware have long been manufactured in Japan.

But the archipelago’s antinuclear movement also has deep roots. In 1975-6, large, angry crowds I spoke to were already demanding the end of Fukushima and other reactor projects. They warned that all Japanese reactors were vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis, and that disasters on par with what happened at Fukushima were essentially inevitable. Now that it’s happened, the public rage in what has been a traditionally conservative, authoritarian society is almost unfathomable.

Along the way, local governments did win the right (not enjoyed in the United States) to keep shut nearby reactors that were closed for repairs and refueling. On Saturday, May 5, a deep-rooted, highly focused grassroots movement shut the archipelago’s last operating nuke. It’s bound and determined to keep them that way.

As summer air conditioning demand skyrockets, Japan’s Prime Minister will try to prove that atomic power is essential. But an efficiency-oriented public has dealt very well with cutbacks in supply since Fukushima. Each potential restart will have its own dynamic.

Japan’s stunning reality is that its gargantuan capital investment in more than 50 commercial reactors is now dead in the water... and being irradiated by its own deadly fallout. That can only drag the global industry closer to oblivion at a moment when the public’s financial and political commitments to renewables and efficiency are deepening daily.

Likewise the demise of Nikolas Sarkozy. His allies at France’s nuclear-commited utility, EDF, have been Europe’s primary pushers of the “Peaceful Atom.” Now his Socialist rival is running the country, backed by a constituency largely supportive of a green conversion to parallel the one in neighboring Germany.

America’s green activists also want atomic power ended. In Vermont, New Jersey, New York, Florida, Ohio, Texas, and elsewhere, escalating grassroots campaigns have put the future of 104 licensed reactors in doubt.

The confrontation may be most immediate at San Onofre, on the Pacific shore between Los Angeles and San Diego. Faulty steam generator tubes have forced two reactors shut. As in Japan, the industry loudly warns of shortages when summer hits. It wants at least one reactor back by June. But experts warn that San Onofre’s design deficiencies threaten the public safety, as does its uninsured vulnerability to earthquakes and tsunamis.

The battle parallels the one over new construction. Already plagued with faulty concrete and design-deficient rebar steel, two reactors at Georgia’s Vogtle still await final agreement on federal loan guarantees granted by President Obama last year.

But Progress Energy’s guess that its own double-reactor proposal for Florida’s Levy County could cost a staggering $24 billion casts a long shadow over Vogtle, where tax/ratepayers are already being stuck with huge bills for a project that could be vastly underfunded. A national petition drive has been fired up to stop the guarantees from going through.

And while India’s growing nonviolent army of nuclear opponents vow to fast to the death, the global reactor industry awaits word from China on how many new reactors it thinks it will build. The world will then watch with bated breath as the Middle Kingdom’s own nascent anti-nuclear movement gathers strength in the inevitable race to shut the local reactor before it melts.

But for now, this weekend’s message from Japan and France could not be more clear: at nuclear power’s historic core, the collapse has come. Humankind is running ever-faster toward a green-powered Earth, desperate to win before the next Fukushima strikes.

[Harvey Wassermansoc edits www.nukefree.org. His Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is at www.solartopia.org. The Solartopia Green Power and Wellness Show airs at www.progressiveradionetwork.com. Read more of Harvey Wasserman's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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BOOKS / Ron Jacobs : Two on Working Class Rabble-Rousing

Two books on workers and rabble-rousing:
Kick some ass with the working class

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / April 25, 2012

[Autoworkers Under the Gun: A Shop-Floor View of the End of the American Dream, by Greg Shotwell (2012: Haymarket Books); Paperback; 200 pp.; $17.00
Wisconsin Uprising: Labor Fights Back, edited by Michael D. Yates (2012: Monthly Review Press); Paperback; 288 pp.; $18.95.]

Damn. That’s the word I kept repeating as I read Gregg Shotwell’s recently published book Autoworkers Under the Gun.

The ugly side of being a factory worker in the U.S. auto industry is all here. Sociopathic CEOs, their lawyers, and the acquiescence of the UAW leadership, it’s all there.

This collection of newsletters written by a United Auto Workers activist documents the purposeful destruction of a union, an industry, and a way of life by bankers, corporate raiders and supplicant union bosses. The tale told here is about the daily fight on the shop floor.

Shotwell’s writing is humorous, acerbic, and to the point. As part of a democratic movement in the UAW, he was one of many that fought hard to prevent the tidal wave of layoffs, plant closings, and destruction of benefits the union leadership not only allowed but seemed to encourage.

The missives published in this book are the textual equivalent of the Industrial Workers of the World’s (IWW) Mr. Block cartoons. For those who aren’t aware of Mr. Block, let me quote IWW agitator Walker C. Smith:

Mr. Block is legion. He is representative of that host of slaves who think in terms of their masters. Mr. Block owns nothing, yet he speaks from the standpoint of the millionaire; he is patriotic without patrimony; he is a law-abiding outlaw... [who] licks the hand that smites him and kisses the boot that kicks him... the personification of all that a worker should not be.

In other words, Mr. Block was a satirical character created to call attention to workers and union bosses who identified with the owners and management at the expense of their fellow workers.

Autoworkers Under the Gun makes it very clear how the auto industry's exorbitant payments to its executives and management combined with a penchant for bankruptcy destroyed it. Calling globalization a “four bit word for sweatshop,” Shotwell points out how CEOs and their co-conspirators control the discussion about the economy by blaming the workers for wanting to earn a living and pension.

As most readers know, the other part of this scenario involves those executives purposely downsizing the corporation by moving jobs offshore. His biting commentary reminds the reader how intentional this entire process is.

Unlike most mainstream reporting on the demise of the auto industry, Shotwell gives the reader the view from the shop floor. It’s not just the harassment from management he describes, he also tells stories about workers using their power to fight back.

After one particular attack on management’s machinations to undermine the workers and their union that drew a strong reaction from the bosses, Shotwell arrived for his shift to find his machine taken apart in a show of solidarity. Without that machine, the line was shut down for the entire shift.

Questioning the value of strikes that are not industry wide because of the International’s cowardice or because of the law, Shotwell urges workers to consider alternatives like occupations and working to rule. The point of the former is to prevent management from closing factories. After all, they can’t close a building if people are inside it.

Working to rule, meanwhile, has multiple effects. It slows down the speedups imposed by management to increase production while also preventing shop closures. In addition, working to rule can create overtime or, even better, the necessity to hire more people. The underlying point of both tactics is to emphasize that it is the workers who run the factory, not the CEOs and their minions.

It was more than a year ago that thousands of Wisconsin workers and supporters occupied the Capitol building in the city of Madison. The reason for the occupation was to try and prevent the anti-worker governor and legislature from passing legislation that would end collective bargaining for all state employees except firefighters and state police, end dues check-off from paychecks, and force unions to re-certify every year.

Under the guise of solving a budget crisis (that was created by giving mammoth tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy in Wisconsin), this bill was forced through the legislature despite the protests. Nonetheless, the protests were a welcome reaction to the never-ending attacks on working people in the United States.

Naturally, a few books have been published about this event, now known as the Wisconsin Uprising. Of those texts that wrote favorably, most have done a fairly decent job of describing the flow of the protests, the workers culture that was celebrated, and the intense feeling of solidarity felt by the participants.

Not all have done as good of a job analyzing why the protests failed and what they mean for the future of workers’ movements in the United States.

There is one entry; however, that does broach both of these subjects with some depth. Titled Wisconsin Uprising, this book, edited by labor writer Michael Yates, provides a genuinely left analysis. The collection of essays is divided into two main sections. One discusses the protests, their background and their organization and the other discusses the future of workplace organizing in the wake of the legislation’s success and the concomitant attacks on working people around the world.

The first section takes its subject and looks at the international aspects of the protest (austerity protests in Greece, Britain, etc.), its roots in capitalist crisis, and the lack of resistance experience among protesters. It was this latter element that gave the protesters false hope regarding the role police play, as well as the role unions play.

Indeed, much like the points made in Shotwell’s text, union leadership often concedes benefits, condition, and wages just to keep union dues structure intact and their paychecks coming in. This strategy eventually backfires because it weakens the unions in the eyes of the workers. Seeing this, corporations and governments attack unions, hoping to further weaken their standing in the eyes of members.

Once the union has been defanged, as occurred in Wisconsin after the aforementioned legislation was rammed through in the middle of the night, the rank and file often stop paying dues out of fear or after drawing the conclusion that the union has no power.

Like Shotwell emphasizes in his book, the best response to the attacks on workers and their unions is simple: more actions, more solidarity, and less complacency. The most positive conclusion to be drawn from the Wisconsin uprising is that there is an understanding in the United States that workers not only are being screwed, but that they will fight back.

The narrative here echoes the hope found in other books about the uprising in Wisconsin and the occupy movement that followed. However it tempers that hope with an understanding of what labor is up against in this latest battle with capital. It is an understanding that comes from the years of experience between the collection of contributors and their leftist comprehension of how monopoly capitalism works.

Shotwell explains why Wisconsin happened in a piece discussing concessions when he writes:

The nation that kicked off the struggle for the eight hour day is logging more hours than any modern industrialized nation on earth. Every household needs two wage slaves and every wage slave needs a vehicle to keep them on the treadmill. The turmoil is designed to foil collective action. The degradation of workers is not natural, accidental or unavoidable. It is a plan. Put the jigsaw pieces together and the picture is clear as glass and sharp as pain.

The complementary reason to Shotwell’s concise explanation of neoliberal capital’s plan for the world is that workers ignored the writing on the wall as long as it happened to someone else, while those that were unionized saw themselves as clients of the union when they needed to be fighters in solidarity with those that were the “someone else.”

Check out these books for their analysis, their insight, and their rabble rousing. Then go do some rabble-rousing of your own.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His latest novel, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, is published by Fomite. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Fighting Back Against Groups That Intimidate

Transforming the discussion. Image from pennlive.com.
Voice of Choice:
Fighting back against bullies, stalkers,
and those who would intimidate

Maybe it is time to empower local citizens overwhelmed by moneyed interests and influential groups to find ways to 'speak back' effectively.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / April 8, 2012

“Voice of Choice” offers an effective way to counteract those who would deny us liberty. Its approach was born out of the experiences of those trying to secure their right to a safe and legal abortion. But its approach will work for anyone who is bullied, intimidated, stalked, threatened, ridiculed, disregarded, and harassed as they try to secure for themselves and others their rights under the laws and Constitution.

Last fall, when anti-abortion activists started picketing the middle school attended by the 11-year old daughter of a man who rented clinic space near Washington, DC, to a physician who performs abortions, the landlord decided not to put up with the harassment. There were anti-abortion demonstrations, all legal, with signs proclaiming, “Please STOP the Child Killing,” and posters showing aborted fetuses.

Some of the same demonstrators had been picketing the clinic for nine months before they turned their attention to this young girl in an effort to intimidate her father into getting rid of the doctor’s Reproductive Health Services Clinic. A website posted the picture, name, address, and phone number of the landlord, Todd Stave.

These are well-known tactics of those who would deny women their lawful rights to control their own health care and reproductive choices. Sometimes, the tactics have been even more confrontational.

Demonstrators shout at women who show up at clinics; confront them on the sidewalks imploring them not to kill innocent babies; pray loudly for them to change their minds; force them to run a gauntlet of screaming demonstrators to enter clinics; follow them to their cars; follow them home trying to make personal contact with them; picket the abortion providers (doctors as well as clinic staff); post their pictures, addresses, and telephone numbers in prominent locations; and take any action to hold these people, patients as well as clinic workers, up to ridicule and intimidation.

This particular demonstration at a middle school was organized by a group called Defend Life. It was done in conjunction with a larger effort of the Maryland Coalition of Life that focused on the clinic’s landlord. The intimidation included sending over 100 emails and making 25 or more phone calls to the landlord. To counteract the harassment, the landlord asked for help from volunteers to oppose these anti-abortion activists tactics.

In response to the call for help, hundreds of people in the community of Germantown, MD, reached out “peacefully and individually to each of the protesters” according to Stave. When the volunteers described the protesters’ behavior to them from their perspectives, many protesters came to see that their actions could be fairly described as “thoughtless, mob-mentality accusations and aspersions.”

These experiences led Stave to create Voice of Choice, which describes its views and intentions:

For too long, the abortion discussion has been dominated by angry, nasty protests fueled by individuals and organizations that thrive on sensationalism and extremism. Now it is our turn.

“Voice of Choice” was established as a calm, measured response to anti-abortion activists who engage in misguided, raging protest tactics that are often ill-informed and only serve to victimize women, pro-choice professionals, law-abiding businesses and unaligned bystanders.

We use email, telephone and social media in peaceful, person-to-person counter-protests against groups that target abortion facilities, providers and patients, as well as their families and communities. We don’t question anyone’s right to express opinions and ideals; we challenge their bullying tactics and their contempt.

Voice of Choice volunteers used Facebook and Twitter, as well as phone calls, letters, and email to explain their concerns to the antiabortion demonstrators. Within a few weeks of trying this new tactic against the anti-abortion demonstrators, as many as 5,000 people contacted Stave offering to help.

The response of the anti-abortion demonstrators contacted has been overwhelmingly positive. Many of the demonstrators had not thought about or understood the debilitating and frightening effects of targeting an 11-year old girl for the actions of her father.

Stave asks that his volunteers not argue with the demonstrators, be polite, explain the problem of harassing others for exercising their constitutional rights, and respect the right of the demonstrators to engage in their own protests against abortion.

Such approaches are worth trying against other instances of both legal and illegal protests and actions, such as religious intimidation, bullying gays and lesbians, and government promotion of religion. Locally, websites could be established or Facebook sites could be used to ask for volunteers to help oppose instances of bullying, intimidation, insensitivity, over-reaching, and harassment.

If offenders are approached respectfully, such contacts could lead to a greater understanding of the concerns of varying views on many public issues.

In fact, implementing this idea using readily-available internet resources could be effective on many local political issues. While only a few people attend city council, commissioners courts, and legislative hearings, using targeted electronic and personal communications locally that identify supporters of a proposition could generate many contacts with elected officials and those pushing them to act on many public issues.

Usually, such officials succumb to organized efforts by a few people to promote practices and regulations that are offensive to many of their constituents and sometimes unconstitutional.

Nationally, efforts to get people to sign petitions and occasionally send emails or call national officials are old hat to internet denizens. But using Voice of Choice’s approaches locally could transform discussions and positions on public issues in our community, or at least lead to greater understanding of these issues among the populace, and hopefully help some local officials see the insensitivity and unfairness inherent in some of their decisions.

The effectiveness of such an approach depends on volunteer activists being polite, not arguing, explaining clearly the purpose of their contact, listening to the others’ viewpoint, and being civil. Maybe it is time to empower local citizens overwhelmed by moneyed interests and influential groups to find ways to “speak back” effectively.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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