Power and Resistance – Bringing Democracy to Life

VOICES RAISED
Taking a world view, we often see that resistance to totalitarian control is a young person’s game. If only the young in America today were capable of turning that resistance into change.

America’s birth as a nation came as a result of street demonstrations. The Boston Tea Party did a lot more than say “no” to British taxation without representation: it literally took money out of their pockets as well. War was declared. The American Revolution had begun.

College kids bursting out of university buildings and dorms to ferociously demonstrate against the Vietnam War (and using street language forbidden by hypocritical societal norms while doing so) was only topped by college students bursting right back into those college buildings, sitting in to stop normal activities and holding college Presidents hostage when they could. Columbia University and NYU in New York. The California mega-universities most especially in Berkeley. Kent State in Ohio and the murderous events that followed shocking America awake.

Those protestors knew what to do, what to say, what to demand and how to persevere. They drove a spike into the heart of the war and forced two Presidents to listen and act.

And now…not so much. The Occupy Wall St. movement made a lot of noise, attracted national and worldwide media attention as little has for years – and then disappeared without a sound. Their singular message “we are the 99%…” They claimed they were a leaderless movement as that seemed to be a democratic approach. But that claim just showed ignorance because no movement that does something can be leaderless. They did not know how to lead so they did not. And then they disappeared. Anything change? No.

Today noisy and targeted demonstrations triggered by the deaths of two young African American men and the reactions of two white Grand Juries and District Attorneys fill the news. What will come of these demonstrations? Do those disturbed enough by these events to join in marches on highways and in business areas know what they want and how to achieve it? People don’t like what happened in Staten Island and in Missouri but there are no demands for a change in the system that caused these results.

And more importantly – what to make of the countless high school classes in the New York area in which nothing is being said about any of this…as if nothing is going on.

TEACHING THE MILLENNIALS
The essential and ultimate point of public education in America was to prepare citizens to competently govern themselves in a democratic society. What happens to democracy when that preparation is so inadequate – falling so far short of its goal for so many years – that its citizens don’t even know that democracy is gone?

Could it be that the forty year collapse of public education is part of a plan put in place and implemented by the single political party that now completely dominates America – the Power Party? Yes we still have the brand labels Democrats and Republicans but they are but they are just playthings of the powers in control. People say there is no difference at all between the parties. Most believe it – but worse – accept it.

This long-term plan to reduce the knowledge and involvement of Americans – lets drop mandatory Civics and Economics classes in high school – seems to be working on an even more insidious level than a shrinking electorate.

Street demonstrations that lead to nothing after media attention has faltered may be as indicative of the weakness of our democracy as the withering electorate. All the noise of demonstrations and then nothing. All that noise of elections and then no one bothers to vote.

There are some thoughtful people within the Liberal Party reach who make suggestions concerning our newest generation – the millennials – the 18 to late 20 something generation representing the shaky future of America’s return to democracy.

This is a generation which does not understand government through lessons in school but who have grown up in households directly affected by government failing its people. Uniquely they may be rejecting what government represents today even as they seek to restore values that their parents once fought to establish in the 1960’s. They had the education to know what to do; their children do not.

ANSWERING THE QUESTIONS
The Liberal Party’s work includes answering the needs of people and helping them become involved in the process once again.

Here are the challenges on the table:

• Motivating people to participate in government again…even to vote
• Overcoming the doubts about the value of government in an essentially undereducated youth.
• Support the workforce in the war between what the government wants to do and power allows it to do so that we can rebuild the middle class.
• If the millennials are seeing through the smokescreen of government that Power has induced, they must be assisted in breaking through the smoke to the substance and then must be taught what that substance is.
• If not voting is the people’s answer to what they see as a mirage of government, they must be led to a deeper and more involved place if they are to save what we have known as America…in essence, faith must be restored.
• Re-empowerment against the tide of money must occur at all levels of our society.

Every age has had the creativity of technology to lead it forward.

Television turned nations and continents into villages. Social media has turned villages into interconnected neighborhoods. Through social media and technology America can regain the power of its democracy…because our system of public education may take years to become what it once was…the difference between knowing and being lost.

What social media must do is to turn notice of a demonstration into what that demonstration must produce beyond noise.

That step, helped by organized political entities like the Liberal Party devoted to meeting the needs of people, will begin to bring our democracy back.