WHAT THE 30s & 60s CAN TEACH PROGRESSIVES TODAY

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HOWARD ZINN, PROGRESSIVE - Is it possible to get together with friends
these days and avoid the subject of the Presidential elections? The very
people who should know better, having criticized the hold of the media
on the national mind, find themselves transfixed by the press, glued to
the television set, as the candidates preen and smile and bring forth a
shower of cliches with a solemnity appropriate for epic poetry.

Even in the so-called left periodicals, we must admit there is an
exorbitant amount of attention given to minutely examining the major
candidates. An occasional bone is thrown to the minor candidates, though
everyone knows our marvelous democratic political system won't allow
them in. . .

I'm talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election
madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two
minutes-the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting
booth.

But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be
spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the
workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be
to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that,
when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the
White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of
war and social justice.

Let's remember that even when there is a "better" candidate (yes, better
Roosevelt than Hoover, better anyone than George Bush), that difference
will not mean anything unless the power of the people asserts itself in
ways that the occupant of the White House will find it dangerous to
ignore. . .

In 1934, early in the Roosevelt Presidency, strikes broke out all over
the country, including a general strike in Minneapolis, a general strike
in San Francisco, hundreds of thousands on strike in the textile mills
of the South. Unemployed councils formed all over the country. Desperate
people were taking action on their own, defying the police to put back
the furniture of evicted tenants, and creating self-help organizations
with hundreds of thousands of members.

Without a national crisis-economic destitution and rebellion-it is not
likely the Roosevelt Administration would have instituted the bold
reforms that it did.

Today, we can be sure that the Democratic Party, unless it faces a
popular upsurge, will not move off center. The two leading Presidential
candidates have made it clear that if elected, they will not bring an
immediate end to the Iraq War, or institute a system of free health care
for all. They offer no radical change from the status quo.

They do not propose what the present desperation of people cries out
for: a government guarantee of jobs to everyone who needs one, a minimum
income for every household, housing relief to everyone who faces
eviction or foreclosure.

They do not suggest the deep cuts in the military budget or the radical
changes in the tax system that would free billions, even trillions, for
social programs to transform the way we live.

None of this should surprise us. The Democratic Party has broken with
its historic conservatism, its pandering to the rich, its predilection
for war, only when it has encountered rebellion from below, as in the
Thirties and the Sixties. We should not expect that a victory at the
ballot box in November will even begin to budge the nation from its twin
fundamental illnesses: capitalist greed and militarism.

So we need to free ourselves from the election madness engulfing the
entire society, including the left. Yes, two minutes. Before that, and
after that, we should be taking direct action against the obstacles to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

http://progressive.org/mag_zinn0308

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