[Peace-discuss] Thinking Outside the Voting Booth, this Sunday at 2pm

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Joshua Frank and Jeffrey St. Clair, editor of CounterPunch.org, will be in C-U 
this weekend to give a talk at the Illini Union Bookstore, Sunday at 2pm, on the 
topics of their new books.  Details below.  Here's an example of Frank's views, 
from a column in CounterPunch this spring.  There's more where this came from. 
Come and join the discussion.  --CGE]

	April 30, 2008
	Thinking Outside the Voting Booth
	Election Season Piffle
	By JOSHUA FRANK

This is what it has come to.

Hillary Clinton seems poised to damage Barack Obama so badly in the Democratic 
primary that he will end up flopping around like a suffocating trout in the 
general election when he faces John McCain. From the progressive left, the Green 
Party, totally strapped for cash and lacking an effective platform, seems intent 
on running former Democrat Cynthia McKinney for president, known in mainstream 
America only for her ugly spat with Capital Hill police. And of course there is 
Ralph Nader who is running another quixotic campaign on sound issues and moral 
fortitude, but with absolutely no grassroots base to form a rebellion against 
the powers that be -- a campaign that will inevitably become mired in expensive 
ballot-access battles that will drag on far beyond the election itself.

It’s a dismal time for electoral politics indeed.  Candidates that oppose the 
Iraq war, Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the oil cartel, the banking 
industry, the PATRIOT Act and the death penalty, are shoved to the political 
margins, starved for cash, lacking an organized movement and ignored by the press.

Back in 2000, during Nader’s most spirited presidential run, anti-globalization 
sentiment, fueled by the WTO protests, was coming to a head. Nader spoke 
forcefully about the concerns of the activists that took to the streets of 
Seattle one year prior, addressing the corporate takeover of our natural 
resources, the exploitation of labor in developing countries and the fallacies 
of neoliberalism at home. For many, Nader’s candidacy was less about Nader the 
persona and more about what his campaign represented. Sadly, the reality today 
is much different than it was eight years ago.

Unless Hillary Clinton somehow pulls out the Democratic nomination, Nader’s 
struggling campaign will likely draw only a fraction of the support it did in 
2004 despite what a few cherry-picked polls are saying about his chances. Barack 
Obama has all but sealed up the progressive vote, riding on his airy rhetoric of 
“change” and “hope”. This no doubt will deflate Nader’s campaign even further.

Nader often speaks of the role third parties have played in past social 
movements. But what “party” does Mr. Nader speak for now?  What movement is 
pounding the pavement day in and day out in support of his candidacy? What 
stadium will be sold out to hear him speak later this summer? What election is 
he going to spoil?

This is where Barack Obama steps on to the scene. The fact that Obama has been 
able to mount a battle against the Clinton controlled Democratic Party, throwing 
Bill and Hillary into a few tizzies along the way, is deserving of respect. No 
Democrat has dared challenge the duo’s control these past two decades, and those 
that have been silenced and marginalized. But that’s right about where my 
respect for Obama stops. While the senator from Illinois claims to oppose the 
war in Iraq, he has nonetheless voted numerous times to continue funding its 
continuation. He supports the death penalty, nuclear power and “clean” coal, 
believes Israel has a right to occupy Palestine and promises to bully Iran with 
the threat of warfare. All-in-all Obama is a candidate caught in the same old 
empty cul-de-sac, and progressives ought to jump off his wobbly bandwagon at the 
next stop.

The Green Party, or what’s left of it, isn’t a much better alternative. Just 
last December the GPUS was forced to borrow over $6,000 from its members in 
order to send out a direct mailing. The party is dead broke. Or maybe just dead. 
If the GPUS were a corporation they’d have filed for bankruptcy years ago. It’s 
also hard to tell what party their leading candidate Cynthia McKinney is exactly 
working to build -- is it the Greens or the Reconstruction Party?

As a former Democrat, how loyal will McKinney be to the Green Party? Is she, as 
a few Green loyalists have expressed to me privately, just using the Greens for 
her own gain in order to help build the new Reconstruction Party? Regardless, it 
probably doesn’t matter all that much as to where her allegiance resides, for 
neither party is likely to amount to anything significant in the end.

All this may lead one to a state of electoral despair. Who is then to challenge 
John McCain’s 100 year war and the corporate takeover of the planet? Barack 
Obama isn’t going to put on the breaks on American empire; in fact, if elected, 
it’s likely he’ll face less opposition than Bush has during his two terms.

But don’t fret. Opposition to grave social injustices is most effective when it 
takes place outside the presidential election racket.

Activists on the ground fighting to stop the conveyer belt execution industry of 
Texas, organic farmers battling Monsanto in North Dakota, Native Americans 
challenging the federal government over ancient land rights, unionists fighting 
for a fair wage, environmentalists working to hold polluters accountable for 
their actions -- all of these activities will rage on under the radar despite 
who is in power in Washington. And these are the campaigns that we ought to be 
supporting.

So don’t worry too much if the left seems dead in the water this year. It may 
well be, but grassroots activism is alive and well across the land in some of 
the most remote, forgotten places you could imagine. Jeffrey St. Clair and I 
chronicle a few of the more vibrant local movements in our forthcoming Red State 
Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland. People in our own 
backyard are fighting over the essentials of life: water, food, human liberty. 
And while up against tremendous, insurmountable odds, many are steadily gaining 
momentum.

This election season surely won’t sidetrack their valiant efforts. Nor should it 
your own.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An Afternoon of Revelry and Rebellion featuring Joshua Frank & Jeffrey St. Clair
-- Sunday, June 22 at 2 PM Illini Union Bookstore!

Jeffrey St. Clair, editor of the political newsletter CounterPunch and the
website <counterpunch.org>, will be talking about his new book, "Born Under a
Bad Sky: Notes from the Dark Side of the Earth," and the book he has edited with
Joshua Frank, "Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the
Heartland," at the Illini Union Bookstore at 2pm on Sunday June 22.

Of the latter book, Kathy Kelly, of Chicago's Voices of Creative Non-Violence,
has written "The stakes are high, in the so-called 'Red States,' as corporate
America, the defense establishment, and an array of minions battle against the
biodiversity of 'the heartland.'  Here’s your invitation to join the rebellion!"

Joshua Frank has written "Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush"
(2005); Jeffrey St. Clair's most recent book was "Been Brown So Long, It Looked
Like Green to Me: The Politics of Nature" (2003).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Please forward widely.  Thanks.

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