“Amnesia is as much a disease for a nation as it is for an individual, in both cases a heavy handicap for current conduct.”
Daniel Singer in the November 11, 2003 issue of The Nation
Hope is a funny thing. Humans find hope from any number of sources; from faith in their fellow man, from the teachings of their religions, from the guidance of leaders, even from desperation. Hope is a powerful force, to be sure. What the progressive hopes for is a world which some may dismiss as utopian, but which many know in their hearts is achievable. It is the hope that another world is possible. A world where basic human needs are met and human developments are nurtured. A world where greedy corporations do not help write environmental policy, resulting in pollution, disease, and the depletion of natural resources. A world where nations do not enter wars needlessly. A world where money is not the end-all-be-all of society. It is easy to lose faith as we work toward this world, and this is why hope is necessary. Because hope is one commodity no one could do without.
I am only seventeen years old. My generation is on the verge of inheriting a world which is, for lack of a better word, broken. Millions starve every night in countries throughout the world. Oligarchy and despotism reign in many nations. My own nation is needlessly allowing men not much older than myself to die in Middle Eastern deserts for unclear reasons. Yet, I truthfully have hope. After all, as one of Ceaser Chavez’s supporters once told a journalist “hope dies last.” A world were human life is more valuable than profit and were the workers control their own lives is possible.
History has many valuable lessons to teach us about hope. Examining our past is the only way to fully understand where we are and how we have arrived at this point. History is also a source of countless examples of inspirational figures and events. The study of the past better prepares us for changing the future. It is important to follow one professor’s instructions to his students, not just to study society but to “change it.” However, just as one cannot begin building a house without knowing the foundation, one cannot start meaningful change in today’s society without looking at movements from our past. Our past tells us the story of human spirit. This spirit is the bases of any movement and the bases of any hope for a better tomorrow. We live in what Bill Moyers once called “an anxious age of agitated amnesiacs,” but we cannot afford to forget the nature of past movements.
It is all too simply to become convinced that society cannot be changed and it is easy to lose sight of the accomplishments of grassroots organizers in the past. However, it is intellectually dishonest to say the task of improving society is too grueling after all, if others had backed down from their tasks, what kind of society would we have? If those faced with racism, brutality and hate did not back down in the past, it is the mark of a coward to want to give up now. Jim Hightower, with his trademark wit, reminds us “of course it’s hard to battle the bastards! So what is new? History -and especially the history of our country- is the story of people struggling.” Refusing to fight is a betrayal of that struggle.
“We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot box, the legislatures, the congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench.” That statement could have been made at any meeting of disenchanted individuals today, however, it in fact dates back to the People’s Party’s platform delivered on July 4, 1892. The People’s Party (better known as the Populists) was fighting back against what they saw as government sponsored inequality. Indeed, this was the era of William McKinley and his advisor Mark Hannah, a man who once remarked he wished to see Washington ruled by “bankers, railroads, and public utility corporations” The Populists, mainly rural men, were angered by this corporate looting of their cherished country, and wished to gain back some of the power for themselves. Their goals were simple ones. They wished to halt the buying of our political system by self-serving businessmen. They wished to improve the conditions of the impoverished. As Democrat William Jennings Bryan, who had roots in the Populist movement, famously said “you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorn. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” The Populist candidate, James B. Weaver won over a million votes in 1892. This would be the height of their popularity and, as is often the case with grassroots movements, the party disbanded. The Populists may not have succeeded in creating a viable third party in America, but their causes did indeed become law. Theodore Roosevelt and other progressives would press through much of the Populist Party’s ideas in the early 1900’s. The popular election of Senators, one of their major issues, is now law. FDR would use many Populist ideas in his New Deal. If the spirit of McKinley and Hannah are alive and well today, so must be the spirits of Bryan and Weaver.
The Populists were hardly the first, or the last, common individuals to change the course of history. Shay’s Rebellion comes to mind. Shortly after the Revolution, a group of armed workers rose up to demand more rights in the new America. While the rebellion was crushed, their ideas were not. Thomas Jefferson would say of the uprising, “God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.”
For the most part, we have been lucky enough to have relatively peaceful rebellions. During the turn of the century, Big Bill Haywood, The Wobblies, Mother Jones, and Eugene Debs fought for labor rights. They were seen as radicals. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Lucy Stone, and their fellow suffragettes wished for women to have equal say in our society. Their ideas were seen as utopian. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and other civil rights leaders spoke out against segregation. They were told their dreams would not be achieved. Yet these revolutions all were won. They may not have been bloodless, we may have lost martyrs like Joe Hill and MLK, but their goals were reached. Improvements have been made for workers, and blacks and whites can sit at the same tables. More work still needs to be done in their names, but their voices live on to guide us.
Still, despite these peaceful rebellions, society as it can be has yet to be achieved. According to the Census Bureau, there were 45.8 million Americans without health insurance in 2004. America has among one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. Our education system is severely under-funded. Millions are wasted on needless wars. These are the symptoms of a nation swept up in a fervor of blind capitalism, demagoguery, and nationalism. A nation on the slope toward oligarchy. Certainly the spirit of McKinley and Hannah are lose in the land again. Once again, the worker is asked to bare a crown of thorns and carry a cross of gold. So were are the Populists of today to confront these problems?
In the book Standing Up to the Madness, Amy and David Goodman introduce us to many such people working to combat these problems. In these pages are soldiers who protest the Iraq war, drama teachers taking stands for the first amendment, scientists combating corporate censorship, and community leaders working in post-Katrina New Orleans to rebuild. Amy and David Goodman, just like other brave journalists before them, give us a look at the faces that make up a movement and give the reader hope that the movements can succeed.
It is not hard to draw parallels between modern protestors and the protestors of old. It is hard, looking at organizations like Iraq Veterans against the War not to think of those vets who, returning from Vietnam, made it their mission to end the war. It is hard when seeing groups like Students for Peace not to think of those students who Daniel Singer once wrote about for The Nation, European students fed up with their government. Students who carried signs reading "De Gaulle, Franco, Salazar" or "Nous sommes de plus en plus enrages," as they marched through French streets.
Hope comes from those students, both past and present. It would do Singer’s heart good if he could see the recent protests in France. Some 1.5 million people took to rallies in France to protest a law allowing “employers to end job contracts for under-26s at any time during a two-year trial period without having to offer an explanation or give prior warning.” The law was rewritten following the riots. The students’ battle was one for workers everywhere. For we are all connected in a goal to improve world society, to move toward that “utopia” we are warned we shall never achieve.
The grassroots movements of today are certainly benefiting from tools not available to their predecessors. The internet allows information to be more easily passed. Bloggers often report faster than major news organizations, and give an insight to the mind of ordinary people. The spirit that has historically helped the worker, the spirit that guided Bill Haywood, Martin Luther King, and Cesar Chavez, is still alive and well.
It is easy to forget that the labor movement is not without leaders, even today. I think of the late Bill Coffin, the antiwar reverend who once reminded us “we refuse to ratchet up the cycle of violence that brings only ever more death, destruction and deprivation.” Coffin, reminding an audience of the importance of civil disobedience once reminded them of the Fugitive Slave Act, a law many willingly broke in order to lead their fellow man to safety. Coffin himself often ran afoul of the law wile working against segregation and against war. Coffins example is important to those who wish for a better world. It tells us not to be afraid of standing up to government.
While making a speech about the cruelty that is world hunger, Eli Wiesel said that while he would not compare any situation to his experience in the Holocaust, “I do have a right to invoke the past.” Indeed, we have more than a right to invoke the past. It is our responsibility. Invoking the past is the only way to know how to fix the present. As my generation stands poised to enter the future, it pays to keep one eye to the past. The amnesia that Singer warns about in the quote at the beginning of this essay is a very real force. If we continue to suffer from it, we shall continue to suffer the status quo. It is no secret that the triumphs of yesterday inspire the triumphs of tomorrow. The people lined up at the Berlin Wall as it fell were singing “We Shall Overcome,” the same hymn that was once sang by those leading the fight against segregation here in the United States. If we are to overcome, we cannot forget the fights won by others in the past.
I have little doubt that my generation will be remembered as one that has lived through a dark passage in American history. However, I know that this period shall end, just as others have. Just as generations that grew up with McCarthyism, or during World War Two, or the Palmer Raids all saw their respective threats to liberty and a peaceful existence fail. This age of terrorism and unreason, of economic uncertainty and government incompetence, of Machiavellian schemes, cronyism, intelligent failures, and propaganda campaigns, will soon come to an end. The politics of fear and separation are going out of style. I may be a member of a disenchanted majority, but we are still the majority. We shall overcome. If only because we owe it to those who came before us.
