[Peace-discuss] [OccupyCU] "The Progressive Movement is astroturf beholden to the rich elite…"

[Ricky Baldwin]

You might convince someone who wasn't there that this is what happened to AWARE, but the reality was much more banal.

You put AWARE's name on a leaflet that was explicitly rejected by the group, then at subsequent meetings you finally pushed over the edge people who were already on the brink of not being able to tolerate your belligerent behavior during meetings.

At the time you claimed some farcical "tyranny" of politeness or some such, but now it's cooptation by some abstract "Progressive Movement" and then-Sen. Obama, who hardly ever even spoke with any of us-- never, to my recollection, except in one argument while we demonstrated outside his speech.  It's hard to see how he coopted members of AWARE who despise him, some who have written quite a but about his evil -- less hard to see that the group "split" in a very similar fashion to your own political campaign.  Looks like a pattern from here.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE DROID


"C. G. Estabrook" <carl at newsfromneptune.com> wrote:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21768668

What these tapes tell us is how influential the active anti-war movement of 45 years ago was, and how right Obama was to be afraid of its revival, as he reveals in The Audacity of Hope.

The principal strategy of Obama's presidential campaign(s) was the co-optation of the anti-war movement, and in that they were successful.

(In Champaign-Urbana, it was co-optation by this 'Progressive Movement' - in the person of the state's junior senator - that split 'AWARE' in 2005: <http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/09/29/illinois-anti-warriors-and-the-attractive-senator/>.)

--CGE

On Mar 16, 2013, at 4:06 PM, C. G. Estabrook <carl at newsfromneptune.com<mailto:carl at newsfromneptune.com>> wrote:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/15/the-progressive-movement-is-a-pr-front-for-rich-democrats/

"...in early 2007 ... the truly dark and cynical agenda of the professional Progressive Movement and the Democratic Party revealed itself. Under Pelosi the Democrats could have cut off funding for Bush’s unpopular wars and foreign policy. Instead, with PR cover provided by MoveOn and their lobbyist Tom Matzzie, the Democratic Congress gave George Bush all the money he wanted to continue his wars. For the previous five years MoveOn had branded itself as the leader of the anti-war movement, building lists of millions of liberals, raising millions of dollars, and establishing itself in the eyes of the corporate media as leaders of the US peace movement. Now they helped the Democrats fund the war, both betting that the same public opposition to the wars that helped them win control of the House in 2006 could win the Presidency..."