Washblog

....you might be accused of being "DLC-Lite" for not spelling his name "Ray-gun".

I'm with Obama

by willisreed on Fri Sep 29, 2006 at 03:36:29 PM PST

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Though grief is a natural response --- our national integrity screwed with, people held for years secretly and with no charges and tortured and killed, a lawbreaker in charge of the government now exonerated and free to make more torture happen, Americans ready to give up their liberty, our soldiers corrupted and maimed and killed, the electorate sleeping.  

Mike Riley, running for State Senate as a Republican here in the 47th was just outside my door, campaigning a few minutes ago.  What do you think of the suspension of habeus corpus in the US, I asked.

It's troubling, he said, but it won't stand for long.   Liberals (Democrats? maybe he said?) like you will make sure of that.

You see the fix as wholly electoral?  Isn't there something wrong with our society that this could happen -- something that goes beyond electoral politics -- that underlies the electoral mess, as well?

by noemie maxwell on Fri Sep 29, 2006 at 04:10:42 PM PST

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to be told to to buck the fuck up even as I was trying to determine whether the DU legislation I'd worked 19 months on had survived Conference Committee. I'm told it did. I'm now waiting for final language to see if we lost anything (for example, the one-year reporting requirement that Sen. Cantwell wisely inserted in the Senate version).

I believe I've been at this longer than you and your friend Nigel have been alive. I understand the need, in myself, to grieve from time to time. But I also understand, in myself, the need to get back to work. And Neal is correct when he says that this is a decades-long project. I would add that maybe it's a lifetime project that has to be handed down from generation to generation. When, in fact, is the work of an activist done? It won't be done, I assure you, with the next election.

I've long argued that there is an American activist tradition we're working in. One of the interesting things we've been discussing in my graduate class is what counts as knowledge. It's entirely political, in my view, that students don't really learn enough about American activist traditions in their US History classes. But I would argue that such traditions constitute vital knowledge kept from American students for the purpose of keeping them docile. I see teaching these traditions as counter-hegemonic, and I think that each and every one of us has a duty to help our young people understand these traditions.

I've been sleeping 35 hours a week for the past month. I've been working like a fiend to do what I consider to be important work. Do you think you can keep up with me? Who needs to buck the fuck up?

by DWE on Sat Sep 30, 2006 at 09:02:42 AM PST

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  The recently passed unconsitutional law will still be the LAW for at least the rest of Jeb's brother's term. The earliest (unless real extraordinary circumstances) that it will be before SCOTUS is 2009. Plenty of time for mischief by the various players in charge to continue to consolidate POWER.
  Electing Democrats and taking back Congress is our only choice short of revolution. I don't have enough ammunition for the later, I'll work within the system and work for the former.
  I'll vote for Peter Goldmark and Maria Cantwell and our local Democrats.

Dave Gibney Pullman

by gibney on Fri Sep 29, 2006 at 11:49:02 PM PST

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Someone posted halfway down that he doesn't have enough ammunition for revolution.  He clearly hasn't read Ray Raphael's "The American Revolution: A People's History".  Most of our earliest rebellious acts were committed by folks with axe handles and sticks, raising hell, overturning oxcarts, tearing down rich people's houses.  It was a people's rebellion before any Provincial Governor decided to put together an organized army.  We the People ought to begin laying the groundwork for a truly organized resistance movement.

The people of Oaxaca in Mexico are doing just that, sending a strong message to their "leaders" that they have demands that simply must be met - no discussion.  People deserve good jobs with good pay and benefits, and they deserve them right now.  That's revolution, and though it may be scary, it has worked in the past, and is working in Oaxaca right now.

We should follow their example by building networks of support in the event of such a concerted action.  We the People have powerful weapons that have nothing to do with firearms.  They are a) the General Strike, and b) Mass direct action.

And as we have seen in our past, these weapons work wonders.

Check out The American Peoples' Congress for a group that is willing to prepare for the future, dark as it may be.

by Tahoma Activist on Sun Oct 01, 2006 at 07:32:02 AM PST

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