Ferguson is a suburb of Detroit …

… and oh yeah, Detroit is a suburb of Gaza

So I read the news today, oh boy. The police of Ferguson, Missouri had just won the war.

Meanwhile, the media has been howling about the murder of another young Black man at the hands of an out-of-control police department, after reporters from the Huffington Post and the Washington Post, were rousted, after Al Jazeera’s news team was gassed. It echoes to the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald and LA Times to New York’s Daily News and Post and every small-town paper in between.

Now, amid what has become an international crisis — or at least scandal — the forces of order (control) are moving on. Surrounded by his fellow Black Democratic officials and basking in the praise of Barack Obama, Missouri Governor Nixon (D) defended his police while putting the Missouri Highway Patrol in formal charge of his local SWAT teams. Asked repeatedly to comment on recent events, he yesterday insisted, “We are looking forward, not behind,” while tut-tutting that “we allow peaceful and appropriate protests,” while laying the burden of maintaining peace and justice on the backs of the community. Then County Chief of Police Belmar lamented that his officers had responded with “an incredible amount of restraint.” As I write, people have been marching down the streets of Ferguson in peace, the police mainly off-camera, and we are shown that American democracy still works. Except that it doesn’t, and people know it.

It’s sort of like bouncing down a steep flight of stairs. Crash. Bounce. Aargh. Bounce. Kersplat. Bounce. Eek! …

But it seems now like equilibrium is being re-established.

Still, what we have is the dirty deed done, and done dirt cheap. The out-of-control police have unilaterally committed murder and are going to get away with it. Did I say “out-of-control”? Guess I did. Did they go out-of-control on the night of the murder? No, they’ve been out-of-control for a long, long time.

Ouch, dammit!

We’ve just bounced down another step. Ouch, dammit! Problem revealed. Enter crisis mode. Hit then bounce. While we are mid-bounce, the powers-that-be in the media (already recovering from their initial shock) and halls of government proclaim “Crisis resolved! Averted! Over! Another isolated incident.” But each bounce is higher than the last, ensuring that the next step will be hit even harder.

How many of our communities are already out-of-control right now? Did things go out-of-control in New York after Staten Island cops murdered Eric Garner. No? (“Whew! We got away with it” prays Democratic Mayor Bill DeBlasio.) Al Sharpton is channeling the people’s anger into peaceful protest while DeBlasio is wagging his finger at the community and chiding them “don’t resist arrest.” Here’s a clue. Things have been out-of-control in New York for a long, long time.

So as much as they try to portray events as a series of random, isolated incidents (“nothing to see here, keep moving”) one would have to be blind to not see that the protests in Ferguson are at least in part a response to the murder of Eric Garner.

Don’t forget the Motor City!

Or do I show my age? Perhaps better to point out that Detroit (pop. 1.5 million in 1970, 43% Black, now pop. 700,000, 82% Black) USED to be called the Motor City. Now it’s not called much of anything. Detroit has been Gazified, put under the dictatorship of an appointed Emergency Manager. According to Huffington, “An emergency financial manager is an official who is appointed by the state of Michigan to take over cities facing financial emergency. Under a new law, Public Act 436, which goes into effect on March 27, an emergency manager has the power to dismiss elected officials, abrogate labor contracts, sell off public assets and impose new taxes on residents without a vote.”

Back in May 24, 2012 Bloomberg News, reported, “40 percent of the 88,000 streetlights are broken and the city, whose finances are to be overseen by an appointed board, can’t afford to fix them.” Chris Brown, Detroit’s chief operating officer, stated, “You have to identify those neighborhoods where you want to concentrate your population. We’re not going to light distressed areas like we light other areas.” Concentrate them? Did I hear that right?

Last year, with the city sweltering, the city’s Emergency Manager shut off electricity to parts of a sweltering city after residents didn’t heed warnings to shut off electricity on their own.

The latest horror is the city moving to shut off water to impoverished residents who can’t pay their water bills. myFoxDetroit.com states that Detroit says, “50 percent of all residential accounts are more than 150 dollars behind … or 60 days past due … the city of Detroit can only thrive going forward when its able residents pay their water bills and pay them on time. All residents of Detroit must be responsible and contribute to building a city that works.”

The result has been low-level guerrilla warfare, with crafty residents figuring out how to turn their mains back on, or pouring cement into the access ways to prevent it being shut off, harassing Homrich Wrecking Inc., the company the city is paying to do the shutoffs. The city has issued a moratorium to buy time to separate out who are the “truly needy” and who are the deadbeats. The shutoffs are scheduled to resume at the end of August. Choose, food for your children, or water to bathe them.

Detroit Water & Sewerage Department hosted a “Water Affordability Fair on Aug. 2 to explain options available to those facing financial hardship.” DWSD warns, “dehydration becomes an immediate threat to Detroit residents. A lack of clean and drinkable water on a scale of this size can affect not only the person but the entire city almost immediately. The onset of dehydration is 1-2 days, which, if left untreated can result in death in as little as 5-14 days from the onset.”

I’ll bet the residents of Gaza can relate to that.

So just as the residents of Ferguson (whose own economy was devastated after Ford and Chrysler plants in that region closed down) are aware of the Eric Garner case in New York, the people of Detroit are certainly aware of the events in Gaza, where an entire out-of-control country, Israel, has unleashed an out-of-control army (the IDF) to slaughter the children of Gaza, proudly flouting any feeble attempt to invoke international law. Oh yes, that crisis is over for now, staggering from truce to truce amidst negotiations going nowhere with the world’s leaders tut-tutting that pictures of dead Palestinian babies are making their own natives a bit restless.

An aside:

Now that we are all bouncing so merrily, we are hearing pious mouthings about how senseless all this militarizing of the police is.  Bureaucracy gone mad, you know.  But that may not be the perspective of our rulers, who might be seeing the approaching storm somewhat better than the popular wisdom (so-called) would entertain.  Suppose the people of Detroit held a referendum on taking back their city (without sanction, of course), and then the people of Detroit took over the Water Works to keep the city’s life blood flowing.  Might not this heavy weaponry be thought useful, no, scratch that, essential in certain ruling circles?

“Cry havoc! and let slip the dogs of war”

Iraq and ISIS. Ukraine and Russia. Take your pick. Out-of-control is an understatement. ISIS comes nearer to Jordan and Jordan borders the West Bank of Israel, and oh yes, Syria borders on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Russia has nukes, and Ukraine is run by fascists of the old-fashioned ilk, while the Europeans are having buyer’s regret for having imposed U.S.-ordered sanctions against Russia, since Russia is no longer buying European foodstuff and could likely cut off Europe’s gas supply this winter. Used to be, you had to invade Russia like Napoleon or Hitler to get your fill of the Russian winter, but now Russia may be in a mood to make it their number one export.

“The whole world is festering
With unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans,
The Germans hate the Poles

“Italians hate Yugoslavs
South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don’t like anybody very much”

— The Merry Minuet
by the Kingston Trio

Obama goes on the tube, a desperate man. “No excuse for violence against police … all of us need to hold ourselves to a high standard of conduct.” Investigations, that’s what we need.

Sharpton, an all-too-loyal Democrat, is in his glory (“four years after the Bastille fell, he still recalls the old battle yell”). “No one has the right to take their child’s name and drag it through the mud because you’re angry. To become violent in Michael Brown’s name is to betray the gentle giant that he was. Don’t be so angry that you distort the image of who his mother and father told us he was.”

But another headline proclaims, “As the situation in Ferguson, Missouri continues to roil, some are turning their anger on President Obama and MSNBC host Al Sharpton.” Enough ouch! Now we bounce.

The chillout may work for a while, it always does or so it seems, but it won’t work forever. There is a growing sense that at the bottom of the stairs is not a comforting concrete floor (such is comfort in 2014), but a yawning abyss. Mind you, it is not the case that misery automatically generates protest, crisis generates action, problems generate solutions. A look at the historical record would even indicate that they more often generate despair, numbness and paralysis.

Then take a harder look at the left (masses are rising up, yadda, yadda, yadda, we hear), not just in absolute terms, but measured against the scope of the crisis we face. From that angle, it doesn’t look so good.

Our crisis of democracy …

As peace and harmony are portrayed as prevailing in Ferguson, as we enjoy a story book ending of police and community marching arm-in-arm, as the media pretend we have come full circle, we cannot forget that we are now just on another bounce (so far, so good?), and the pains as we hit the next step down the staircase are coming closer together with each hit.

The common thread in all these stories — Ferguson, Detroit, Gaza — is the collapse of democracy. In 1977, Samuel Huntington wrote a piece for the appallingly bipartisan Trilateral Commission called the “Crisis of Democracy.” In it, he warned:

“At the same time that the expansion of governmental activity creates problems of financial solvency for government, the decline in governmental authority reduces still further the ability of government to deal effectively with these problems. The imposition of ‘hard’ decisions imposing constraints on any major economic group is difficult in any democracy and particularly difficult in the United States …

“Al Smith once remarked that ‘the only cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.’ Our analysis suggests that applying that cure at the present time could well be adding fuel to the flames. Instead, some of the problems of governance in the United States today stem from an excess of democracy.”

Obviously, that advice has since been taken to heart. Democracy suspended in Michigan, crushed under jackboots in Ferguson. Slaughtered in Gaza. It all comes together.

Col. Pat Lang, in his highly-respected blog Sic Semper Tyrannis, quotes Max Blumenthal: “Having been schooled in Israeli tactics perfected during a 63 year experience of controlling, dispossessing, and occupying an indigenous population, local police forces have adapted them to monitor Muslim and immigrant neighborhoods in US cities. Meanwhile, former Israeli military officers have been hired to spearhead security operations at American airports and suburban shopping malls, leading to a wave of disturbing incidents of racial profiling, intimidation, and FBI interrogations of innocent, unsuspecting people. The New York Police Department’s disclosure that it deployed ‘counter-terror’ measures against Occupy protesters encamped in downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park is just the latest example of the so-called War on Terror creeping into everyday life. Revelations like these have raised serious questions about the extent to which Israeli-inspired tactics are being used to suppress the Occupy movement.”

Col. Lang adds, “I have many times seen Israeli police and troops engaged against Palestinian civilians. Maximum threat of violence, intimidation, use of rubber bullets that can kill, dogs, the readiness to use ‘ball’ ammunition if necessary; these are all standard Israeli methods for dealing with an occupied people. These are the same methods that were used by St. Louis County police in response to street demonstrations.”

So what can a poor boy do …

Still, democracy is what we have, but we have to understand it better to utilize it. So first of all, democracy is not just a set of documents and laws or bylaws. Democracy is an activity, people working together to collectively determine their lives. Although democracy has been formally suspended in too many places, that doesn’t mean it is dead. It doesn’t mean that the people of Ferguson and Detroit and Gaza can’t or don’t exercise it. Marching the streets of Ferguson, and harassing the Water & Sewerage Department agents in Detroit, and working to rebuild Gaza amidst the death and destruction are all exercises of democracy to the extent that they are activities of self-determination.

The corollary, of course, is that not every protest is an act of self-determination, even with a cast of thousands, not every protest is necessarily an act of democracy if it is canned and processed and reduced to a sterile exercise in bus ride logistics.

Let us again invoke Huntington and his Crisis of Democracy, as he offers us a partial answer. In the 60’s:

“The spirit of protest, the spirit of equality, the impulse to expose and correct inequities were abroad in the land. The themes of the 1960s were those of the Jacksonian Democracy and the muckraking Progressives; they embodied ideas and beliefs which were deep in the American tradition but which usually do not command the passionate intensity of commitment that they did in the 1960s. That decade bore testimony to the vitality of the democratic idea. It was a decade of democratic surge and of the reassertion of democratic egalitarianism.”

He saw it. He saw it as a problem, but he saw it. Karl Marx would add, “theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses.” Our problem, as posed above, is our collective lack of “passionate intensity of commitment.”

There are those who would argue that electoral politics are passé. We must take to the streets. But even as the left cries “once more unto the breach!” the demonstrations dwindle, their spirit sapped by a gnawing recognition that they have reached a dead end. (Use the Monsanto demonstrations as a thermometer.) Few on the left question their overriding strategy: demonstrations on Sunday, Democratic Party on Monday. Thus their Sunday Socialism is turned into one more prop for those in the Democratic Party who collaborate Monday through Friday with the Republicans to destroy our communities, destroy our lives, destroy our souls. Consciously collaborate? They would beg to differ. But collaborate by accepting the “terms and conditions” of American politics as handed to us by the two-party system? Guilty as charged.

But what are the alternatives? I mean politically? Look at yesterday’s big press conference. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon (D), flanked by County Police Chief Jon Belmar, Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson, Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), who represents Ferguson, St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley (D), and Ferguson Mayor James Knowles, and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay. The “community must act responsibly” dog and pony show featured a Who’s Who of Black Democrats. But turnout for Ferguson’s mayoral and city council election was just 12.3% of eligible voters. Could there be a correlation between living under undeclared military occupation and low turnout?

Trilateralist Huntington points to our greatest untapped resource, the desire of the American people for democracy. Muted, to be sure. A desire very hard to express, perverted into a crass lesser-evilism.

Imagine!

Let us take the risk of seeming ridiculous. Suppose the protestors in Ferguson all registered Green, and turned the city into an outpost of the Green Party. That would be noticed. And Michigan’s 7 million voters, all Green? Okay, that’s a bit of a stretch. But even asking that question, asking it far and wide, has potential force. Marx again: “Material force must be overthrown by material force.” But “theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses.”

Can “Michigan’s 7 million voters, all Green?” become reality? I don’t see the path. I don’t believe it is even seeable. Immediately striving to make that leap would be a leap too far, and thus getting the Green Party to set that as an actual goal would be so daunting as to kill it in the cradle. But could the IDEA of “Michigan’s 7 million voters, all Green?” be seized by the masses? Is that conceivable? I believe so. And in Ferguson? In Florida — St. Petersburg, Miami, Tampa, Gainesville, Panama City, Palm Beach, Jacksonville? The discussion becomes more interesting. But I’m asking too many questions here. Let me venture a few answers:

(1)  The Green Party cannot do it as the Green Party currently is. It must transform itself.
(2)  Such transformation would entail uniting with the Black and Latino communities of this country.
(3)  Doing so means not simply trying to attract Black and Latino leaders to what we are doing, but rather grasping their issues, (a) within the scope of electoral politics, but (b) outside the parameters of the two-party system.

That last one is admittedly a real bear. Without either (a) or (b), it fails.

Further discourse on democracy

Recall “democracy is not just a set of documents and laws or bylaws. Democracy is an activity, people working together to collectively determine their lives.”

Those who argue that electoral politics, in the face of brute force such as we have seen in Ferguson and Detroit and Gaza, is a tragic trap, leading the people to the slaughter, should not be taken lightly. But I would answer that such an argument accepts the notion that democracy is “a set of documents and laws or bylaws.” To the extent that it is only such, a single match, a single blast from a flamethrower, can put an end to it in seconds.

Democracy as an activity is so much more. Democracy “seized by the masses” is also a source of legitimacy, and in legitimacy rests tremendous power. So even today, with things increasingly out-of-control, the strength of our system is that it still retains a declining but resilient legitimacy. Without that legitimacy, there are not enough bombs and tanks to hold it together. Yes, you can kill Gaza. But to kill America, well, it’s ultimately the assertion of legitimacy, by the Green Party or its partners or its successors that makes it possible to prevail against the very brute force that we must render illegitimate as it is proving in Gaza, Detroit, Ferguson and [fill in your own home town here].

So this piece ends at a beginning.

— submitted by Jeff Roby
08/15/14