Tuesday, October 17, 2017
“Taking the Knee” and Beyond
The recent fervor over athletes “taking the knee” has brought important issues to the surface. One of the things that gets my goat is the reaction by many that these high-paid players are “employees” who, some think, have no right to protest or express political opinions “on the job.” This gets to the heart of a deep contradiction in our society. There is a widely held notion that employers are free to express opinions and that corporate heads can, should, and do run for and hold political office while those they employ – the vast majority of us – have no right to speak; that expressing opinions publicly, on or off the job, can reflect on the company you work for. This may result not just in your being fired but, in the computer age, with your inability to find other work, being in effect, blacklisted. This runs counter to the ideals of an open society and to our basic guaranteed constitutional rights.
This is why many who voice opinions online use aliases if they are not retired or business owners. I've experienced the very real results of this myself, having been fired for “speaking out against the war,” even using an alias. The poet Adrienne Rich once wrote, “Everything you write will be used against you.” She was right, if we allow and support that.
The truth is that we cannot be both slave and free. That you cannot live in a dictatorship and a democracy simultaneously. Yet, that is what we have come to with devastating results as a country. If this had been true historically we would still be living in the conditions prevalent in the late 19th century working twelve hour days, six and a half days a week with no workplace protections, no minimum wages and no benefits. Women would still be less than citizens, Blacks locked in severe oppression and Gays still living fearfully in the closet.
The recent “taking of the knee” is a protest against rampant police violence against Blacks, too often acting with impunity. This is something we all should be protesting rather than focusing on the symbolic protest itself, especially with the rise of empowered racism, the further militarization of police and their encouragement to violent abuses by no less than the head businessman and Sociopath-in-Chief.
Aside from the misguided condemnation of athletes willing to put their careers on the line to make a statement against institutional racist violence, there have been numerous and growing efforts to reduce our freedom to speak out – and not starting with the Trump administration.
We need to remember the reason for the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. It isn't about cursing out loud or threatening people with bigotry. It is a guarantee that citizens can object to public policy, that we can criticize elected officials and the government without fear of persecution. Along with, and inseparable from the freedom of the press, it protects the dissemination of information, because a democratic representative republic requires informed citizens who are free to speak. Yet since around 1980, the embedded corporate press has increasingly become a propaganda tool for a CIA run “deep state,” complicit in pushing official narratives, agendas and lies even leading to war. We have seen laws written to limit press freedom and citizen protest. We have “ag-gag” laws against investigating and exposing corporate abuse. We have seen repression of “whistle blowers” and truth-telling journalists along with the growing citizen surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden.
There have also been recent attempts to falsely link alternative journalism critical of the corporate state and of official narratives to Russia. As Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and public intellectual Chris Hedges writes, “The ruling elites, who grasp that the reigning ideology of global corporate capitalism and imperial expansion no longer has moral or intellectual credibility, have mounted a campaign to shut down the platforms given to their critics. The attacks within this campaign include blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of 'fake news.' No dominant class can long retain control when the credibility of the ideas that justify its existence evaporate. It is forced, at that point, to resort to crude forms of coercion, intimidation and censorship. This ideological collapse in the United States has transformed those of us who attack the corporate state into a potent threat, not because we reach large numbers of people, and certainly not because we spread Russian propaganda, but because the elites no longer have a plausible counterargument. The accusation that left-wing sites collude with Russia has made them theoretically subject, along with those who write for them, to the Espionage Act and the Foreign Agent Registration Act, which requires Americans who work on behalf of a foreign party to register as foreign agents.”
“The latest salvo came last week. It is the most ominous. The Department of Justice called on RT America and its “associates”—which may mean people like me—to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. No doubt, the corporate state knows that most of us will not register as foreign agents, meaning we will be banished from the airwaves. This, I expect, is the intent. The government will not stop with RT. The FBI has been handed the authority to determine who is a “legitimate” journalist and who is not. It will use this authority to decimate the left. This is a war of ideas. The corporate state cannot compete honestly in this contest. It will do what all despotic regimes do—govern through wholesale surveillance, lies, blacklists, false accusations of treason, heavy-handed censorship and, eventually, violence.”
Voter suppression is also a limitation on freedom of speech -- maybe where it can count the most. Much voter suppression, from purging voter lists and limiting machines and poll access to the dumping of ballots happened in the last election. As the civil rights and economic justice activist Rev. William Barber points out, “We had 868 fewer voting sites in the black and brown community in 2016. Twenty-two states passed voter suppression laws since 2010. That’s where 44 senators were represented, over nearly 50 percent of the United States House of Representatives. And at least 16 or 17 seats in the Senate, probably would not be where they are if it was not for voter suppression. Today is 1,562 days—1,562 days since the Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Now, Strom Thurmond only filibustered the Civil Rights Act of ’57 for one day. This Congress, under McConnell and Ryan, has filibustered fixing the Voting Rights Act for 1,562 days. We talk about Trump winning in Wisconsin by 20,000 or 30,000 votes. There were 250,000 votes suppressed in Wisconsin. In North Carolina, we had over 150 fewer sites doing early voting.
Denying the right to vote to ex-felons has long been a way to limit Blacks from voting and the driver of racist system of injustice resulting not just in disenfranchisement but massive incarceration, human rights abuses and entrapment in poverty – not limited to Blacks. The partisan gerrymandering of voting districts and the added requirements for the privilege of being able to vote violate our constitutional rights.
In my own past, I was active in the anti-Apartheid movement. One of the most powerful tactics in ending the system of racist Apartheid in South Africa and the freeing of Nelson Mandela was the international boycott, divestment and sanctions movement aimed at that country. Nobody threatened us with prison at the time for supporting that boycott. There have been recent attempts to criminalize that same tactic in the case of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) effort aimed at ending Israeli apartheid and the brutal oppression of Palestinians.
As Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters stated in an interview on DemocracyNow!, “There is a bill before Congress, S 720, which seeks to criminalize support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, which is a nonviolent international protest movement to protest the occupation of Palestinian land that’s been going on for 50 years. And they want to make it a felony to support BDS, as far as I understand it, with criminal penalties that are, in my view, absurd. Somebody like me, for instance, if the bill was passed in its current drafting, would be subject to a fine of between $250,000 and $1 million and a term of imprisonment of up to 20 years—for peaceful, nonviolent political protest on behalf of basic human rights for a beleaguered people, which is absurd. . . . I mean, I’m somewhat critical of the current administration in a satirical and playful way, I like to think. But my show is all about the idea that if this—if this race, the human race, is to survive even the next 50 or 100 years, we need to start looking at the possibility of the transcendental nature of love, and we have to start looking after one another and recognizing our responsibility to others, which is what BDS is about, really.”
Waters gets to the heart of the matter when he states that we, as humans, have a duty to look out for each other and that the BDS movement is essentially free speech protected by the First Amendment. I also agree with him about the need for a transcendental love which I've referred to as “the big L,” if we are to move beyond barbarism and survive the coming decades.
What we buy and how we spend our money is a vote of support for the seller. There are legitimate reasons to support BDS as an effective pressure tactic to address brutal oppression – and not just in Israel. There is an ongoing genocide happening in Myanmar. Saudi Arabia brutally oppresses dissent, women, and anyone seen as a heretic. The Philippines is experiencing a bloody repression against suspected drug users with rampant death squads and mass murder. China is hardly a utopia of human rights. And then there is our own country. We have the largest number of citizens in prison, a system of “justice” heavily tainted by racism and classism. We also remain, as Dr. Martin Luther King observed, the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet, with bloody interventions, orchestrated coups and perpetual war. Given the threats voiced recently by Trump at the UN and our own poor human rights record, it is time for the civilized countries of the world to consider a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement aimed at pressuring us, the U.S. to honor international laws and civilized norms.
As for our power as citizens and our freedom of speech in this dangerous moment, activist and film maker Michael Moore, in a recent interview on Democracynow! put it this way, “ . . .you know, we’re told from the time we’re kids that we really – you can’t fight City Hall. You know, why knock your head against the wall? It’s not going to do anything. That’s the big lie, that we’re nobodies from nowhere and we can’t effect change. The truth is, that we’re all somebody. We’re all from somewhere. And the thing that the wealthy elite establishment is afraid of is that if we ever figure out that there’s more of us than there are of them, they’re in big trouble. They know that, because the thing they must hate about this country --the rich – is it’s still – at least on paper, in spite of the voter suppression, in spite of the gerrymandering, it’s still one person, one vote. That hasn’t been changed. And there’s only so many of them. There’s a hell of a lot more of us. And if we take that power in our hands, they’re in a boatload of trouble.”
He continues, “We all have to do everything. We are in the French resistance. Everybody has to have that attitude, that, you know, you’ve got to get the kids to soccer practice, but the kids can walk, for the next year, 'til we get rid of Trump. You know, you've got couples therapy at 4:00. You know, get along with your spouse for just one more year. We have to got to get rid of Trump. I mean it seriously. I hate to put it this way, but we – I just – you know, I have a fire lit under me, I guess. And I’m doing whatever I can do. And I think some people are doing what they can do. We just have to reach out and continue to get more and more people involved in this, 'til he's gone. We have to at least discombobulate him to the point where he’s so obsessed about all the things that are going to keep him from focusing on the really bad things that he’s going to do. He will take us to war. We will be in a war with this man. I need everybody to commit that we have to stand up immediately. Don’t even stop to think. If Trump is taking us to war, you have to automatically assume this is an insane idea from an insane man, it’s a lie we’re being told.”
Freedom of speech – and any kind of citizenship that matters – is our to lose or to keep. Like anything else, if you don't use it you'll lose it. I have at times wanted enforcement of laws against the dangerous incitement of public hate speech. Given the reality of the corporate state – that those with the power to limit abuse of free speech use that power to limit truth-telling and valid political speech, I have changed my mind. It is up to all of us to oppose hate speech en masse, whether it is by nazis or by the state department and their media machine, in demonizing others and supporting wars of false premise. In defending the right of professional athletes to express their opinions, we support our own freedom to speak and to act together in our own and each other's behalf.
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