[Peace-discuss] Protest Obama

[C. G. Estabrook]

An Open Letter to the Left Establishment

A Call for Active Support of Protest from Michael Moore, Norman Solomon, Katrina 
van den Heuvel, Michael Eric Dyson, Barbara Ehrenreich, Thomas Frank, Tom 
Hayden, Bill Fletcher Jr., Jesse Jackson Jr., and other high profile progressive 
supporters of the Obama electoral campaign.

With the Obama administration beginning its third year, it is by now painfully 
obvious that the predictions of even the most sober Obama supporters were overly 
optimistic. Rather than an ally, the administration has shown itself to be an 
implacable enemy of reform.

It has advanced repeated assaults on the New Deal safety net (including the 
previously sacrosanct Social Security trust fund), jettisoned any hope for 
substantive health care reform, attacked civil rights and environmental 
protections, and expanded a massive bailout further enriching an already bloated 
financial services and insurance industry. It has continued the occupation of 
Iraq and expanded the war in Afghanistan as well as our government’s covert and 
overt wars in South Asia and around the globe.

Along the way, the Obama administration, which referred to its left detractors 
as “f***ing retarded” individuals that required “drug testing,” stepped up the 
prosecution of federal war crime whistleblowers, and unleashed the FBI on those 
protesting the escalation of an insane war.

Obama’s recent announcement of a federal worker pay freeze is cynical, 
mean-spirited “deficit-reduction theater”. Slashing Bush’s plutocratic tax cuts 
would have made a much more significant contribution to deficit reduction but 
all signs are that the “progressive” president will cave to Republican demands 
for the preservation of George W. Bush’s tax breaks for the wealthy Few. Instead 
Obama’s tax cut plan would raise taxes for the poorest people in our country.

The election of Obama has not galvanized protest movements. To the contrary, it 
has depressed and undermined them, with the White House playing an active role 
in the discouragement and suppression of dissent – with disastrous consequences. 
The almost complete absence of protest from the left has emboldened the most 
right-wing elements inside and outside of the Obama administration to pursue and 
act on an ever more extreme agenda.

We are writing to you because, as well-known writers, bloggers and filmmakers 
with access to a range of old and new media, you have in your power the capacity 
to help reignite the movement which brought millions onto the streets in 
February of 2003 but which has withered ever since. There are many thousands of 
progressives who follow your work closely and are waiting for a cue from you and 
others to act. We are asking you to commit yourself to actively supporting the 
protests of Obama administration policies which are now beginning to materialize.

In this connection we would like to mention a specific protest: the civil 
disobedience action being planned by Veterans for Peace involving Chris Hedges, 
Daniel Ellsberg, Joel Kovel, Medea Benjamin, Ray McGovern, several armed service 
veterans and others to take place in front of the White House on Dec. 16th.

Should you commit yourselves to backing this action and others sure to 
materialize in weeks and months ahead, what would otherwise be regarded as an 
emotional outburst of the “fringe left” will have a better chance of being seen 
as expressing the will of a substantial majority not only of the left, but of 
the American public at large. We believe that your support will help create the 
climate for larger and increasingly disruptive expressions of dissent – a 
development that is sorely needed and long overdue.

We hope that we can count on you to exercise the leadership that is required of 
all of us in these desperate times.

Best Regards,

Sen. James Abourezk
Rocky Anderson
Jared Ball
Russel Banks
Thomas Bias
Cheryl Biren
Noam Chomsky
Bruce Dixon
Frank Dorrel
Gidon Eshel
Jamilla El-Shafei
Okla Elliott
C. G. Estabrook
Justin Fielding (aka “Vast Left”)
Norman Finkelstein
Glen Ford
Joshua Frank
Margaret Flowers M.D.
John Gerassi
Henry Giroux
Matt Gonzalez
Kevin Alexander Gray
Judd Greenstein
DeeDee Halleck
John Halle
Chris Hedges
Doug Henwood
Edward S. Herman
Dahr Jamail
Rob Kall
Louis Kampf
Allison Kilkenny
Jamie Kilstein
Joel Kovel
Mark Kurlansky
Peter Linebaugh
Scott McClarty
Cynthia McKinney
Dede Miller
Russell Mokhiber
Bobby Muller
Christian Parenti
Michael Perelman
Peter Phillips
Louis Proyect
Ted Rall
Michael Ratner
Cindy Sheehan
Paul Street
Sunil Sharma
Lambert Strether
Jeffrey St. Clair
Len Weinglass
Cornel West
Sherry Wolf
Michael Yates
Mickey Z
Kevin Zeese

<http://protestobama.org/> - with links