[Peace-discuss] Movements and elections

[Ricky Baldwin]

I think reasonable people can disagree on this, but I
also think we are losing sight of the most important
objective.

I may sound like a broken record, but I have to say
that I haven't seen any evidence yet that focussing on
elections will change much (unless you can afford to
buy one).  But I have seen evidence that grassroots
movements can.

Piven and Cloward make a solid case for this in Poor
People's Movements.  The Depression-era movement of
the unemployed, for example, made significant gains -
including relief, policy change and legislation -
before devoting any of its energy to elections or
lobbying.  And after turning to the sacrosanct
American democratic way, they began to lose ground
quickly.  The labor movement, the civil rights
movement and the welfare rights movement of the 1960s
all show the same trend.

(P&C don't argue that voting is irrelevent.  In fact,
grassroots movements find it easier to survive and
succeed when ordinary people do turn out to vote.  And
the hint of change tends to show up first at the
polls.  But the elections themselves seem to have
little effect.)

Jeffrey St Clair made a similar argument about the
environmental movement in the 1990s when he was here
in town recently, promoting his new book Been Brown So
Long It Looked Like Green To Me.  The book is pretty
persuasive, too.

So, the best thing we can probably do is concentrate
on building the anti-war movement, or whatever
movement we prefer.  That's not to say we shouldn't
vote.  Of course we should, but let's keep our
objectives in mind.

And if we want to stop war, voting for Kerrey will
have no effect.  By all means, folks should do so if
they have some other reason (although he isn't much
better on many issues), but to my mind when we go into
the booth, we ought to be doing it as part of a
movement and not just as a thoroughly disgusted
individual.

I think this is entirely separate from this debate
about spoilers, voting conscience, lesser and greater
evils, etc.  I think we need to remember that we do
not directly elect the president in this country. 
Illinois is going for Kerrey, if he even comes close. 
So voting for Nader, or the Greens, will not elect
Bush.  

What it might do is register opposition to the
Tweedledee-Tweedledum factor, and from the left.  I
wouldn't doubt for an instant that the message would
be lost of the professional voting results analysts
that will be going over the results with a
fine-toothed comb.  Even that is, I think, almost
certain to prove less effective than a strategy of
raising hell, counting heads and raising hell again. 
That's the way most of the real progress of the last
century has happened, and that's the way we can make
progress now.


	
		
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