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BEYOND
JUST PROTEST
by ROBERT WICKE I feel a definite need to end the pseudo rebellion of the protest march, one that will not go away. I don't mean that I am going to give up and stop protesting. It is not a question of giving up, but one of reexamining the value of what I call "polite parades," complete with either manufactured, neat looking or hand-made signs. That is, the marches that take place generally on Saturday, so as to not interfere with business as usual, often on one or another of the coasts, in locations that should be able to raise the hoped for numbers by themselves. It includes, in my view, those long sleepless bus rides that in turn include rest stops, where sleepy eyed people may purchase industrial food and drink. Unless, that is, they had the presence of mind to bring something else. I think history will judge these marches to have hit their effectiveness limits at least by February of 2003, in which millions marched against the impending war in Iraq. And, the progress of the planned invasion never hesitated, never wavered, but went on just as if we had not been there. Maybe, these limits were hit in the 1963 March on Washington, when John Lewis's speech was censored, before he could be heard, being as what he had to say might offend some (powerful) people. I know we were well past those limits when, unlike the 1963 march for jobs in Detroit, the one in 2010 turned out from 3,000 to 5,000 estimated numbers of people who yawned their way through a "rally" in which the speakers had to frequently beg for applause. The march for jobs in 1963 turned out 125,000 people and decided itself when to make expressive sounds. On one level, I guess I could be characterized as calling for more imagination. It is true that 350.org drummed up an international action on 10/24/09 that showed that there are people who get it on the climate emergency, showed it much better than a bunch of people in polite parades ever could. World wide, involving many countries, activists created scenes that depicted the number, 350, the ppm of CO2 that James Hansen and other NOAA climate scientists said was the maximum with which the world could avoid the worst aspects of climate change. Photographs were taken of these depictions of the number, 350, put on the web site and the marquee in Times Square. My favorite was a dramatic one of officials of the Maldives, an Island group in the Indian Ocean, four feet or so above sea level. They were signing a letter to COP 15, asking for action on climate change; signing it underwater. That made the point real well, I thought. Maybe, we should try a more imaginative approach. We could, for example, demonstrate against the plans to cut social security, by having people appropriately garbed in funeral clothing bury their social security cards at various places around the nation. And, take photos or maybe even video. Maybe we could have people out for real health care reform, dressed as doctors, nurses, and patients burying some removed from the market pharmaceuticals, and, certainly, their insurance company membership cards. It would be perhaps better, but it might still not make the point quite well enough. I know that's so, if the issue is jobs, as it is today. Unfortunately, there will not be anywhere near enough jobs. The "race to the bottom" and the advance of worker-replacing technology will go on, for the very simple reason that this is how the business people in the upper layers of such figure such things as productivity and growth. They are anxious to cut costs for the sake of their bottom lines, which are all that matter to them. Productivity is how much you produce with x number of workers and can be increased most surely by lowering how many workers are employed. It may be avaricious and greedy, but, above all, it is business. If we congregate one million people in Washington, D.C., it will still be business. And, Calvin Coolidge's old adage that "the business of the country is business" is no less true today than it was back in the twenties. The only way to create jobs beyond that limit is to do the obvious: break the link between employment and commercialism, at least temporarily during the downturn, and perhaps permanently at some point. People will have to get jobs based on their ability and willingness to do what the country needs done, whether it has commercial value or not. Some of those jobs may obtain a commercial link down the road some place, but at the time they are put in a place they will not have demonstrated commercial returns. One possibility is speeded up, quality upgraded repair of the infrastructure. The Obama administration's recent $50 billion proposal for infrastructure repair is a humorless joke. The American alliance for manufacturing estimates the value of the American infrastructure at $8.2 trillion. It is in shreds, from water mains, to gas lines, to bridges and over-passes, to the electricity grid, to school buildings, to other public buildings, which even in the fairly unique event they are completely sound, could use some retrofitting for the sake of the planet. And, they think $50 billion will take care of it! I was listening a while ago to the C-Span broadcast of the One Nation Working Together rally at the National Mall in Washington DC. Van Jones was speaking on what we could do, how we could do two things at once with green jobs, begin the long overdue battle against catastrophic climate change and put people to work. Van Jones said almost exactly the same thing as he said in his book, The Green Collar Economy, published in 2008. Why did he repeat himself? He did so, for the very simple reason that we still have not heard him, evidently. Oh, there are some green jobs out there, but nothing like what we need. Why is that? It's because investment will be determined mostly by what the business community wishes, which will be what will help in the next quarter, not the long run and the devil take the unemployed and the commons as well. The remaking of the economy stops at the edge of what is necessary to end the present economic downturn and to put the economy on a solid footing. That would require public investment, and the business class does not approve of public investment, unless it goes to either the pentagon or to Wall Street. Former oil man, T. Boone Pickens. backed out of putting up what would at the time have been the world's biggest wind farm in Texas. He decided not to build it, because it would require upgrading the electrical grid transmission wires, which would have been considered by some people to be just too expensive to accomplish. I don't recall what the estimate was for the cost, but this is another one of possible moves that would do two things at the same time. The electric grid needs upgrading and repairs anyway. Every time there is a storm, thousands of people go without power, because of downed power lines and other problems, but with the smart grid, for the most part, those people would still have power, because the load could be shifted by electronic means. The electric grid is another part of our infrastructure that we have not seen fit to invest in. But, it's really worse than that, isn't it? What we really seem to be locked in a battle about is whether the upper business class can get along without most of us first or whether we will finally wake up to what we have to do, which is learn how to lessen our dependence on the system. Or, really on the upper business class. We need to learn how to build community at the local level, how to broaden our skill base, and how to share with each other on a realistic basis. In the face of the oncoming oil peak and in the face of the various emergencies that climate change most probably will bring to us. In the US, we are, in many cases, generations away from local self-reliance; until we close the gap, our chances of survival in an uncertain future are open to question.
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