One of the hallmarks of our age is a generalized sense of powerlessness. Many of you, in response to my post yesterday questioning the wisdom of a U.S. attack on Syria, said there was nothing you or anyone else could do to avert it, or prevent America from being drawn into another quagmire in the Middle East. Others have responded in similar ways to the scourge of widening inequality in America and the diminishing prospect of equal opportunity: You say you feel powerless to reverse it, because our politics is so corrupted by big money that our democracy has ceased to function. I understand your feeling of powerlessness. And yet isnt the March on Washington whose 50th anniversary we celebrated yesterday evidence of the opposite? In that instance, many blacks who at the time lacked even the power to vote came together with others, and with whites morally offended by segregation and Jim Crow, to overcome the powerlessness through peaceful and tenacious mobilizing and organizing -- leading to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. Or consider the Vietnam War, about which many of you (myself included) made such a ruckus that Johnson had to resign and Nixon was forced to bring it to a close. Yes, those were different times. But in many respects these opposed to change then were more entrenched and powerful than they are now, and the proponents of change less powerful at the start. My point is this: Powerlessness can be a self-fulfilling prophesy. There is much that is wrong with America. But it will only be made right only if we force change to occur. Today, for example, low-wage workers in fast-food outlets across the country are going on strike to demand that their meager wages be raised to $15 an hour. They are among the most powerless people in our society. The rest of us should support them -- and also mobilize and organize, and make a ruckus, against an economic machine that continues to disregard of the needs of countless Americans, and an American war machine that appears close to wreaking havoc once again.
Posted on: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 16:36:24 +0000
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