[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [SRRTAC-L:7005] Speaking truth to power (fwd)

[Al Kagan]

>Delivered-To: akagan at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu
>Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 23:08:41 -0500 (CDT)
>From: Dale Wertz <dwertz at mc.net>
>To: SRRT Action Council <srrtac-l at ala.org>
>Cc: PLGNet-L at listproc.sjsu.edu
>Subject: [SRRTAC-L:7005] Speaking truth to power (fwd)
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>Reply-To: srrtac-l at ala.org
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>Status:  
>
>	How's this for a book review?  Arundhati Roy's articles regarding
>the US/UK aggression against Afghanistan suggest that _Power Politics_
>could be an informative and interesting book.  dw
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 07:21:48 EDT
>From: Endsanctions at cs.com
>To: Endsanctions at cs.com
>Subject: [iac-disc.] Speaking truth to power
>
>I write with urgency to say to the learned people of the United States:
>educate yourself about the world, and start immediately, because it is our
>ignorance that has led us onto the path of war.
>
>I have just begun to read "Power Politics" by Arundhati Roy, and in it, I
>have finally found the book that I must recommend to all my friends who want
>to know what is going on in the world right now.  By reading this book, we
>can move beyond fear of the world, and especially fear of the people and
>movements arising out of the Middle East and Central Asia that oppose the
>development model imposed by modern globalized capital.  In place of this
>fear that is so counterproductive, we can substitute knowledge.  Out of
>knowledge, we can adopt what Roy terms an "embracing dissent."
>
>In "Power Politics" Roy poses an alternative to complacency and ignorance and
>fear and insecurity, the ’Äòbusiness as usual" that is the only response the
>Bush administration can recommend to the fearful people he so unwisely rules.
>  Everyone knows that war is no time for business as usual, but no one has
>effectively answered the question: what else can we do?  Roy tells us that we
>can adopt a politics of opposition.  But I have practiced the politics of
>opposition within the United States for my entire lifetime, and especially
>intensely for the past three years, and I have not been successful in
>building a politics of opposition, and this has felt very discouraging much
>of the time.  As one of my favorite political activists recently told me,
>insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and looking for a
>different result.  I understand the discouragement felt by many who see so
>clearly that the US has been a very bad actor in the world for a long time,
>but this war has taken all the discouragement out of me and replaced it with
>a zealous energy.  We needn’Äôt think it is insane to again tell 
>people what we
>have been telling them all along, because it’Äôs a new world now, a world at
>war and teetering on the edge of blowing up.  We have a huge new opportunity
>to speak truth to power, and we must seize it.
>
>However, merely to advocate a politics of opposition is clearly not enough. 
>To be politically effective in creating a politics of opposition, we must
>offer to people sources for the truths that will empower dissent.  If people
>do not understand something clearly, if they can’Äôt put it in their own words
>to make sense of it, they cannot make that truth a power in their lives. 
>Because I am a book reader, I find truth in words, and it is from this source
>of power that I urge people to read "Power Politics," which I believe Roy
>wrote to put into my hands, so that I can now become the effective advocate
>for change that has so sadly eluded me up to now. 
>
>Besides my friends, the person I most want to get "Power Politics" into the
>hands of is Oprah Winfrey.  If Oprah Winfrey reads "Power Politics" and tells
>her audience to read it, she might also decide she should become active in
>the politics of opposition.  My disappointment with the lack of politics of
>American black intellectuals would become a moot point, and two powerful
>narratives of oppression could finally be joined: that of the struggle of the
>slave to be truly free from the chains of slavery and that of the struggle of
>the peoples of the world to gain control over the economic conditions that
>overburden their lives.
>
>Locally, I wish Trudy Rubin would read "Power Politics."  If after reading
>it, she still supports George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld in their "war on
>terrorism," I would like to publicly debate her.  I will be addressing the
>audience who attends the October 27 anti-war demonstration called by the
>A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition.  While I am not a member of the coalition, I strongly
>endorse this demonstration and hope to see all of Philadelphia there.  I
>intend to build on the insights of "Power Politics" and talk about how we can
>speak truth to power and stop these wars.
>
>The Seattle WTO protest was so correct in pinpointing the forces of
>globalization as the soul of an enemy that chews up the people of the world,
>both in the US and beyond the US.  But the Seattle protests and those that
>flowed from it have been unable to express clearly, from a broad
>understanding of world history and world experience, exactly how the forces
>of modern globalization have gone so wrong.  When I explored more deeply into
>the cause of anti-globalization, I found the writings of the "enemy,"
>especially Thomas Friedman’Äòs "The Lexus and the Olive Tree", more 
>informative
>and more powerful in analyzing the negative sides of modern US-style
>capitalism than any of the stuff on globalization that is promoted in The
>Nation. 
>
>Unfortunately, the books that I had read before discovering Roy’Äòs "Power
>Politics" that have been truly insightful into world economic developments
>require the reader to take on the difficult task of reading a hard book.  Our
>American culture has not encouraged the reading of hard books, especially if
>they are long, and so telling people to read Marx has seemed hopeless, but
>even telling people to read Daniel Singer’Äôs wonderful "Whose Millennium:
>Theirs or Ours?" has proved to be too much of a challenge for most people,
>because it opens with chapters that require knowledge of modern history
>beyond the command of most readers.
>
>What Roy offers us in "Power Politics" is a gem, a beautifully written,
>passionately argued, clearly imagined and carefully stated polemic on her
>experiences with Indian politics, experiences which are unique to India but
>still typical and highly revealing of how the forces of globalized capital
>have oppressed the people of the world.  This book allows us to draw the
>critical connections between the wars we now witness, the causes for
>conflict, the opportunities for opposition, and the critical call to dissent.
>
>My only fear is that this book is such a powerful witness to me, personally,
>because of what I especially know, and that some of its power may be lost on
>those who are starting at ground zero as they struggle to comprehend the
>world they have ignored for so long.  But this doesn’Äôt worry me too much,
>because I see that people are hungry for knowledge, and so, no matter what,
>reading this book will start people on the right path.  And it will be such a
>good experience for more people to read a beautifully written piece of
>political history.   This book is definitely NOT depressing, nor is it
>difficult to read.
>
>  Like Roy, I am a writer and an activist, and like Roy I believe the highest
>call of art is to look clearly at the world and make it real for people,
>through whatever artistic talents I may possess.
>
>And so Arundhati Roy becomes my first 21st Century heroine, and I adopt her
>model by writing to you.  I will also adopt her model by going out into the
>world, with this letter and with copies of the book, ready to hand it out to
>people, for free if they cannot afford it.  I will draw on my intellectual
>and economic capital, a source of wealth to which I am indebted to the
>sacrifices of all the working people of the world, to create an oppositional
>politics in Philadelphia. 
>
>I do believe the truth will set you free, if it’Äôs a humane truth.  The truth
>of the corruptive power of capitalism, that some people will become venal or
>evil or conspiratorial when they are exposed to a lifetime of materialism and
>the values that underpin it, is a truth I know only too well.  But it is a
>condemnatory truth, not a liberating truth.  A liberating truth shows us how
>to move forward in as united a formation as possible, not poised to attack
>each other from across class or race or sexual or religious lines. 
>
>  A liberating truth will allow us to draw on our collective strengths, take a
>deep breath, and stop the wars that are raging.
>
>Out of a liberating truth we can find the courage and the power to stop the
>Bush administration, for I believe many, many people do not trust the
>government that is bombing the people of Afghanistan.  We do not trust the
>government that sells weapons to all the bad people and the badly ruled
>nations of the world.  And we know from personal experience that the US
>government is capable of doing very bad things, because we know about Vietnam
>and we know about Richard Nixon. 
>
>Somehow we don’Äôt know about the Gulf War, which is too bad, because the Gulf
>War was just as bad as Vietnam, in terms of moral accountability.   But the
>spin-doctors were up and running during the Gulf War, and they gradually
>gained strength throughout the eight years of the Clinton administration, for
>Clinton was the expert at spin. (George W. Bush has obviously tried to master
>some of the lessons of spin, but I assure you his international audience is
>not fooled.) If there was one US value that got a tremendous boost from the
>example of Clinton (other than lechery), it was the value of spin, where the
>quick look became a substitute for deep understanding.
>
>Clinton encouraged us to cling to the illusion that the US is a "progressive"
>force in the world.  Under the influence of US imperialism, the world is
>quickly going backwards in the opportunities it no longer affords to the poor
>and underprivileged to better themselves.  The US is a progressive force only
>to the extent that it has contributed to the creation of people like
>Arundhati Roy, who can now speak truth to power better than we can, because,
>as an Indian woman, she has seen it so much more clearly.
>
>So I urge you to read "Power Politics," pass the book on, and get on to the
>hard work of doing oppositional politics.  Do not stand quietly by as George
>W. Bush commands the US government’Äôs war drive.  Do not stand quietly by as
>US warplanes drop food as they drop bombs.   Do not stand quietly by as the
>US government tries to censor the only source of uncensored information in
>the Arab world, the television station broadcast from Qatar (a tiny Arab
>nation that juts out into the Persian Gulf from the tip of Oman), al-Jazeera.
>  And do not allow Donald Rumsfeld to again appear on al-Jazeera to cynically
>assert to his Muslim and Arab audience that the US is not at war with the
>people of Afghanistan.  The US is not winning the hearts and minds of our
>moderate Arab and Muslim "friends," because they knew the horrible truth that
>even we in the US know, if we face up to it, a truth that screams out: the US
>is at WAR against the PEOPLE of Afghanistan.  The broadcasting of this
>cynical lie throughout the world has only increased anti-US sentiment and
>more good people become convinced that the US simply cannot see their faces,
>their dead bodies, much less hear their voices as they demonstrate in the
>street to tell us to stop these wars.
>
>Kitty Bryant
>5 Awbury Road
>Philadelphia, PA 19138   (215) 438-4181

-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu