The fires of our wretchedness

I was telling some relatives how I am now employed fulltime; an achievement not realized in the past four years. It’s a great job. I provide direct service to folks in need. I drive a bus mandated under the American Disabilities Act. Prior to this employment I have been living the issues on the front pages and those not covered. I now have access to healthcare. I have a means over time to climb out off debt. And thanks to the kindness of my ex-wife I am more integrated into our family unit.

This year I learned how to accept kindness from family and friends and from government services. I have needed food stamps, general assistance, and unemployment insurance. These events buoyed my spirit; they still give me energy to press on. This energy is much needed. I truly believed that the progressive movement that pushed centrist Democrats into power in 2006 and 2008 would be given some consideration for their efforts by the leadership of the party. Instead these self-described New Democrats have torn the coalition apart. For most of this year I have pulled back, not just because of my personal struggles, but also that rebuke the progressives received from these corporate Democrats tamped out my desire to act.

It’s my understanding that New Democrat is a term that refers to members of the Democratic Party that are relying the private sector to solve social problems. These folk are more honestly called Corporate Democrats. Their belief is taken from the Reagan era that government cannot do anything efficiently that business can’t do better. While there might have been some traction for that lie in the 70’s and 80’s given the recent meltdown by just those institutions the New Democrats seek for solutions should have turned reasonable folks away from that misconception. It is my view that big government is the means that the people can organize themselves to control the predicable consequences of unrestrained capital.

We are living in revolutionary times as folks at the creation of this country found themselves. The Boston Tea Party, that iconic event the Tea-Baggers are using, was civil disobedience against preference given a royal monopoly, the British East Indian Company. Large capital was given preference over small individual enterprise. Now instead of an unequal tax on tea we have a mandate on our wages of 8 to 20 percent to be paid to the large private insurers who are not required to even provide complete treatment if we need healthcare. As the last congress’ response to the defilement of our constitution by the Bush administration was a four hour hearing in one house committee I did not expect much from the current version of New Democrats.

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration,” not Marx but Lincoln the first great Republican president. A similar analogy can be constructed for the common wealth and private property. Without threatening anyone’s house, gun, or factory, We the People can insist that business enterprise only prospers by contributing to the common good, and not by extracting the life blood out of the folks that labor in their employee.

Not only does our government defer to large business as did the overthrown British royalty, but the institutions of our government treat our heads of state as if they were royalty. Our last administration eviscerated our constitutional safeguards against tyranny and our congress stood by and refused to act. Now this new administration refuses to act against the injustices committed and stands firm in the new executive powers usurped by its predecessor.

“Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” But that gilded door seldom opens now except for the very few.

We need to burn in the fires of our wretchedness in order to change this country. It is our duty, for if we do not our country will destroy the world.

This is our task

My sense of outrage is enhanced by my feelings of inadequacy. It seems that no matter my actions, pleas to legislators, or gatherings with others the course of political forces continues to disfavor “We the People.” George Lakoff has presented California with an opportunity to restore some of state power to the people, yet the California Democratic Party leadership is standing in opposition.

What is particularly aggravating is that California has a vast majority of state legislators from the Democratic Party yet we have a regressive budgetary process. Californians suffer under the tyranny of a one-third minority rule. Our Democrats run their campaigns on fixing education, expanding healthcare, improving the state’s infrastructure and yet they cannot be held accountable when progress is never accomplished on any of these fronts. These leaders gave $2.5 billion in tax breaks to large corporations while they cut $9 billion to state education, and many more billions of cuts in healthcare and other social services. I am now in outright revolt against these leaders.

It is all the fault of the Grover Norquist pledge, we are told. Just over one third of the legislatures in each chamber of state government have pledged not to raise taxes. If any Republican should choose to bargain for the benefit of some aspect of the betterment of California they are immediately stripped of party power and often challenged to a recall or a primary battle.

What the Democratic Party has not done and apparently will not do on its own is to go to the well of its support for political pressure. In fact when now presented with an opportunity to do just such a thing the Democratic Party leadership is trying to stop the ground swell. Californian’s for Democracy has begun an initiative process so clear that it cannot be misunderstood to overturn the tyranny of one-third minority rule. “All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote.”

To its credit, and the reason I remain in the Democratic Party, the majority of Democratic activists are in favor of this proposal. We are the independent contractors that work without benefits yet provide this, the eighth largest economy in the world, with the freely moving talent necessary for innovation. We are the single parent and two working parent families struggling to obtain a decent education for our children so that their futures and that of the state will be prosperous. We are civil rights activists for ethnic and gender equality. We are environmentalist striving to restore a habitable earth for all species.

There are still large controlling interests in the Democratic Party that we need to bring into the effort to raise the standard of living in a sustainable fashion for all Californians. We progressives need to convince them that their path to improved conditions can only come forward when they work along side of the rest of us. This is our task.