Howard Zinn: Are We Politicians or Citizens?

[babylonsister]

http://www.progressive.org/mag_zinn0507

Are We Politicians or Citizens?
By Howard Zinn

May 2007 Issue

As I write this, Congress is debating timetables for withdrawal from Iraq. In response to the Bush Administration’s “surge” of troops, and the Republicans’ refusal to limit our occupation, the Democrats are behaving with their customary timidity, proposing withdrawal, but only after a year, or eighteen months. And it seems they expect the anti-war movement to support them.

That was suggested in a recent message from MoveOn, which polled its members on the Democrat proposal, saying that progressives in Congress, “like many of us, don’t think the bill goes far enough, but see it as the first concrete step to ending the war.”

Ironically, and shockingly, the same bill appropriates $124 billion in more funds to carry the war. It’s as if, before the Civil War, abolitionists agreed to postpone the emancipation of the slaves for a year, or two years, or five years, and coupled this with an appropriation of funds to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.

When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them.
We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.

We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.

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[MuseRider]

1. Wow.

"Timetables for withdrawal are not only morally reprehensible in the case of a brutal occupation (would you give a thug who invaded your house, smashed everything in sight, and terrorized your children a timetable for withdrawal?) but logically nonsensical. If our troops are preventing civil war, helping people, controlling violence, then why withdraw at all? If they are in fact doing the opposite—provoking civil war, hurting people, perpetuating violence—they should withdraw as quickly as ships and planes can carry them home."

How long until we see Zinn/Kucinich "traitors"?

[Cleita]

2. Howard Zinn is my hero.

My question is why can't we withdraw now? We don't need $124 billion to do that.

[WillyT]

3. Bravo Howard !!! - K & R !!!

:bounce::applause::yourock::applause::bounce:

[ixion]

6. second that

:applause: :bounce: :applause: :woohoo:

[nealmhughes]

4. Damned Zinn! You and Kucinich and Waters, Puritans the lot of you!

You lack only the bowl haircuts! Next you will have us believe that the Court protocol is no longer to be followed!

Don't you lot, you Root and Branchers, realize that we can make a middle ground with both the upper gentry and the nobility as well as the common rabble and please the King -- oops! -- President, simultaneously?

You may get called names! You may not get a donation from the Marquis of Martin-Lockheed!

:sarcasm:

I love 'em for sticking to their guns.

[yurbud]

8. Marqus de Martin-Lockheed, that's good.

that's essentially what we are dealing with except instead of the divine right of kings myth, we have to break through the democracy "myth"--that we actually have a democracy. We essentially have two business parties, one with taliban window dressing, and one with secular window dressing.

They take positions on gay marriage or gay burning to get our votes, then once in office, do what they are told by the Chamber of Commerce. In New Zealand, people figured out that their Labor Party had been co-opted by big business, so they had to split off and form a new one, which of course meant they were LESS likely to take the reins for a while.

[bonito]

5. Its one thing if you lose by not getting enough votes

Its another thing all together not trying because you think you can't win.

[yurbud]

7. great slavery analogy: vote to postpone emanicipation but more funds for fugitive slave law

[minkyboodle]

9. I thought so as well

those pesky traitors! Great article by a man who I've
admired for many years.

[yurbud]

10. "we encourage end of Jim Crow in the South by increasing funding for making white and colored signs

for drinking fountains and bathrooms."