Independent Media, Independent Political Movements and Independent Electoral Activity is the Path to the Paradigm Shifting Change America Needs

If I had to pick one word for Americans who want real change, it would be independence.

Not only because the United States was founded on the idea of independence but because those of us who work to try and change the country for the better and have studied American history have learned this has always been the critical ingredient for real change.

First, we need independent media. Web based outlets like this one are a critical ingredient to the success of advocacy efforts. Like so many businesses in the United States, the media is controlled by concentrated group of corporations. A handful of companies own all the hundreds of television stations on your cable TV. The same is true of radio stations. More and more newspapers are part of syndicates. These conglomerates has resulted in homogenized that only reports a concentrated corporate perspective.

The media does not report on the incredible activism taking place all around the country. They don’t want America to have another Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Ralph Nader and so many others who in the past helped to move the United States in part because the media reported on their activities. Now we only hear about corporate CEO’s and elected officials elected due to corporate donations otherwise it is sports stars and entertainment. The truth is there is more activism and organizing going on than even those of us working for change realize. If you attended the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit this month you could see it at least 12,000 people attended, almost all were parts of organizations representing many more people, each working on a range of issues from housing and banking, to peace and criminal justice people working to transform the American economy and political system. Did the media report on this conference? Does the media report on the movements these people are part of?

This leads me to the second area of independence we need independent political movements. Throughout history it has been independent movements that made paradigm shifting change happen. Woodrow Wilson worked to prevent women from getting the right to vote. Leading suffragists were jailed and tortured during his presidency for protesting outside the White House. But in the end, woman got the right to vote while he was president. LBJ was a member of a political party dominated by southern segregationists. They opposed African American voting, ending Jim Crow, blacks and whites living together, going to school together, eating in the same restaurants but LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act because an organized, independent civil rights movement demanded it. Richard Nixon, a war hawk did not want to end the Vietnam War admitting defeat of the U.S. military. He was forced to by a persistent and independent anti-war movement that criticized both political parties for their support of the war. The peace movement and the people in Vietnam resisting U.S. aggression forced Nixon to end the war.

The Obama era has shown many Americans that advocacy groups that work hand in glove with the Democratic Party sell out their base and claim false victories. A prime example is the health care bill. This “reform” protected the status quo health care dominated by private insurance was the problem before reform and remains the problem. The bill will result in hundreds of billions of dollars going to the insurance industry every year in tax payer subsidies and Americans being forced to buy their flawed corporate products. The cost of health insurance was not controlled, tens of millions will be left without insurance ten years from now and every regulation of the insurance industry in the law contains a poison pill that protects the insurance industry. The coalition, Health Care for America Now, spent tens of millions of dollars, donated by donors allied with the Democratic Party, to support the Democratic leadership bill. It was a sell out of their constituents who needed real reform. Americans will not receive better health care, health care will devour more and more of the GDP, and deficit spending by government will continue because of a fraudulent “reform” that preserved market dominated health care. This is happening on issue after issue corporations win, the people lose, and organizations supposedly working for the peoples necessities claim victory while selling Americans out.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Americans need to declare their independence from two parties dominated by concentrated corporate power. Both parties take tens of millions from big business interests every year, elected officials, their staff members and sometimes their spouses profit going to work for corporations they “regulate” in the revolving door between government and concentrated corporate interests, receiving big checks for serving on their boards and feeding off the trough of crony capitalism.

This is not a new problem for America. Big business interests have always dominated government and the two parties have consistently represented status quo business interests, but throughout our history we have seen the people transform the government by creating independent political movements that challenged the two parties.

When the most valuable industry in the United States was slavery, the two parties the Democrats and the Whigs conspired to ensure that abolition of slavery would not be considered in Congress. The Democrats, dominated by slave holding plantation owners, and the Whigs, dominated by Northern industrialists who profited from cheap cotton, did not want to see slavery end. More than a hundred years of abolition advocacy was unsuccessful in breaking the grip of two parties whose political power came from slavery. Some of those who opposed slavery decided to challenge the two status quo parties. They formed abolition parties and ran to end slavery. They were called spoilers just as Ralph Nader is called a spoiler for challenging the corporate parties today but they ran and ran. They never won. But gradually the Whig Party weakened. Finally, the abolitionists evolved into the Republican Party and the most successful third party president in history, Abraham Lincoln, was elected president and slavery finally ended.

Looking back at this history would you have voted for either one of the slave parties? Or, would you have voted to end slavery even though your candidate had no chance of winning?

Look at many of the major paradigm shifts in history farmers fighting banks that were foreclosing on them, workers not allowed to unionize and forced to work long, unsafe hours, the creation of Social Security, health care for the poor, ending child labor the list goes on and on. All of these major changes in American history were first brought into the electoral arena by independent electoral efforts.

The government is dysfunctional today. It is unable to deal with pressing problems facing the country. People are losing their homes, declaring bankruptcy, dying from lack of health care, suffering from endless wars but elected officials are stuck in inaction or fake action that protects the status quo. Independent politics means recognizing we have two corporate dominated parties and that we need to have at least one party not dominated by concentrated corporate interests in order to make progress on the urgent necessities of the American people. Independent politics does not necessarily mean winning elections, at least not right away. It may mean that the greater evil gets elected an evil that will fund war and dole out taxpayer dollars to corporate interests much like the lesser evil will do. But the path to paradigm shifting change has always included people willing to fight in the electoral arena even if they lost the election. These parties lost the election, but won the argument and in the end won real reform.

It is becoming more and more evident to Americans that the issue of the day is concentrated corporate power. We are in the midst of a major paradigm shift that will end corporatism the combination of government and concentrated corporations working for their interest and not ours. Will you continue to vote for one of the corporatist parties? Or, will you do as our ancestors did and create the paradigm shift we need by challenging the powers that be.

So, on Independence Day remember the roots of the United States declaring independence from the most power imperial power of the day, remember Americans throughout history challenging two parties that protected the status quo and look at the lessons of the last year when the lack of independence has only led to change that corporations can believe in.

This weekend Declare Your Independence and work for the real change we need.

Kevin Zeese is director of ProsperityAgenda.US and VotersForPeace.US.

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Thanks,

Karyn and Gregory

While I had a productive and enjoyable time in DC thanks to colleagues and proactive friends ready to deal with the messes our country faces, alarm bells continued to ring from every block I walked, and every train I hopped.

First, drinking from a glass half full, I would like to thank my hosts in Columbia Heights who let me ramble on about leftism as well as sleep in their comfortable environs. You all at the Peace House are good people.

Further, it was a joy to be able to interact with Amy Belanger (she is on Facebook but I do not know how to tag her – feel free to search for her among my friends), as we are like-minded souls in search for measurable solutions to the goings on in this world with the express intent to improve the global condition.

Other visits to organizations and with the scattered individual were likewise inspiring.

But let there be no mistake: Washington DC is corporate occupied territory. The machine guns blocking entrances to parking zones next to congressional offices attest to the fear the government (OUR government) has for us “average citizens”. The culture of intimidation permeates nearly every street of import, and acknowledges that this is no longer America the Free.

We have a lot of work to do to bring the power brokers to heel and back in line with where we, the American public, would like to go. Unpopular wars, half-assed attempts at reforming healthcare, a tax code no one can understand except for the corporate attorneys looking for (and finding) loopholes, are just a few of the examples of the outright extortion of the American public one can view visiting with just a small segment of the DC community.

The beltway is corrupt, and that means our country is complicit in this corruptness.

It is time we all pay attention, and take action.

While my one man visit may make an impact for a day or two, we need to coalescence into thousands in DC and millions across the country, regardiess of partisanship, and take our country back from the rich, out-of touch cronies that propagate the White House, the Senate, the Congress, and the administrations that convolute laws and space and time to suit their greatest benefactors – those corporations that hold no vote, and are constitutionally prohibited from exerting any powers.

If we do not do it, who will?

Peace and strength and fortitude be with you in our collective march towards a just world.

The outright capitulation of Democrats in Congress, as well as the so-called “progressive” community of activists both inside Washington DC and around the country,  should come as no surprise;  it is simply another manifestation of the status quo – policies, compromises, and failures meant to salute the corporate goings-on in that city.

This, of course, is a manifestation that started decades ago as corporate moneys began to – and continued to – influence characters selected by the “left” to run for local, regional, and national offices. The grossest recent display of a Democrat suckling from these corporate coffers came during the Clinton years of NAFTA; failed health reform; and deregulation of industry sector after industry sector -  including the allowance of negligent conglomeration of banking entities and investment houses, the foundation upon which the economic downturn lies, and the downright suffering we normal folks are struggling with, and dying for, on a daily basis.

Observations of Al Gores, Joseph Leibermans, Dianne Feinsteins, Nancy Pelosis, Barack Obamas ,and Max Baucuses since further prove the point: just because a candidate has a big fat (D) following his or her name doesn’t meant his or her scruples are any more inline with the American public then those hairy, scary R’s on the other side of the aisle.

It has been stated time and time again, and we may collectively repeat the sentiment today – with more poignant evidence than ever. Democrats and Republicans have destroyed – together – the notion that our government is “Of the people, For the People, and By the People”.

It does not matter to the power brokers on either side of the aisle that poll after poll in the last several months demonstrated overwhelming support from the American public for Single Payer health care. It does not matter to these same power brokers that a consortium of over 15,000 health care workers and physicians support single payer legislation – and want it passed sooner rather than later -  in order to prevent another death cycle of 45,000 Americans who are uninsured or under-insured. Americans have no access to anything but emergency care at best,  and not even that for fear of falling into the trap of immediate bankruptcy following a visit to their local emergency room to deal with a situation that could have easily been prevented with adequate care prescribed much earlier in the individual’s life had that individual ( and the thousands of them ) been able to visit a doctor without the discriminatory factor of wealth being a determining cause for their inability to schedule even a regular, preventative-type visit, to a favorite, qualified physician.

It does not matter because these power brokers are in the pockets of the corporations that simply want to continue to dictate who they will cover, and under what conditions they will provide coverage, in order to satisfy particularly well-refined formulas to maximize profits driven by our illnesses. They need us to be sick (but not too sick, initially) to siphon dollars and expand their bottom lines towards record quarterly and yearly profits, boost the resumes of the drug companies they actively pimp for in doctors’ offices after doctors’ offices, and ultimately drive those of us that are trying to keep up into a stage of financial ruin, without any long term measurable health improvement status.

And then once we cannot pay, they drop of us from coverage, force use into emergency care (if any at all), bankruptcy, and eventual death – each degrading step that could have been prevented or otherwise curtailed utilizing a single payer system.

So today we see the demise of the Weiner Amendment because some on the supposed “left” believe it was a flawed strategy to have a debate about single payer on the House floor. What could have been a fine litmus test as to how the movement for real reform is moving forward,  has now been derailed from the “left” – by Democrats – much to the delight of Republican who have no intention of fixing a broken system, as well as to the delight of the corporate dollars that will continue to flow so we plebians on the ground, working so hard to guarantee the right to secure universal health care rather than keep it as privilege for the wealthy minority alone, will continue to flounder, and – yes – die. Daily.

This is not a government Of the People, For the People, or By the People.

This is a government for Aetna, by BlueCross Blue Shield, and from Cigna. Follow the contributions. Watch the votes. And if you are still alive after the abysmal bill makes the light of day, know that continued mobilization for comprehensive health care, should, must, and will continue – until we have a civilized Single Payer health care system like every other industrialized nation in the world.

Every human being in this country deserves adequate health care. Not emergency care, not a policy document provided by a corporation seeking to profit from your ill health, but a clear, clean system where preventive care is a priority and ability to pay (wealth) is not a discriminatory factor.

What we do not need is a corrupt ruling class of Democrats and Republicans dictating to us what we should “want, accept, or otherwise compromise”. What we do not then need to do is meekly follow through on that acceptance, like sheep heading to slaughter.

“Of the people, for the people, by the people”. It is a simple concept. Or was, until the two major parties agreed behind closed doors and on the floors of limited debate in the halls of Congress as dictated by their massive corporate campaign sponsors and paymasters.

It is well beyond time we seize the day, and advocate and demonstrate loudly and without compromise what we deserve. Health Care for all. Now.

Visit PNHP , Unions for Single Payer , Single Payer Action and Health Care Now! .

Get engaged, donate, and do your part (and more) to get past the capitulation on the left, the brain dead stonewalling on the right, and disgusting display of lobbying on the part of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries that refuse to recognize health care as a right for human beings in this great country of ours.

Please feel free to comment or seek advice by posting to our blog, or by contacting us directly via email.

We look forward to working with you to establish new paradigms in your focus area.

Take care – Gregory Vickrey