A General Strike nationwide needed now to get impeachment to happen?...

[cascadiance]

Is that what it takes? It is SO frustrating to see daily reports of basic violations of this country's laws and constitution, and each time this happens, it becomes more and more not the America we grew up in. Our leaders, whether Democrat or Republican, seem to not have this on their radar that AMERICA is

PISSED!

at the abuse and lack of regard for a majority of American people that these people in power seem to be more brazen about exhibiting each day.

About the only thing left I think we have is to basically shut the WHOLE THING DOWN! Shut it down! Those of us near DC, and other big cities, all go downtown to protest. Damn the protest permits, etc. They aren't going to grant them for those kind of protests for a full national general strike like this.

The main question is how to organize it. How to do it so that it devastates industry and government function, but doesn't harm the health and well-being of our fellow man out there!

I think perhaps this might be the only way to show them that WE are the boss and they need to be afraid of US, not us afraid of them!!



Maybe we should shoot for September 15th when the planned impeachment protest is going to happen in DC, though that might be a bit soon to get massive participation. Any ideas on how we could get the numbers we'd need of people all just joining us out on the street? Do WE need a pearl harbor event? Not talking about terrorism of course like 9/11, but something to galvanize those of different political stripes to do the right thing.

We basically continue to stay on strike until we hear Nancy Pelosi's filed articles of impeachment in the House for a vote!

[BlackHawk706867]

1. I agree, now you need some "Big Name Leaders" to get this to happen...

If a big name would step forward and get this thing started, it would mushroom like a wildfire IMO... Please someone big come out in support of this before it's to late.

ww

[cascadiance]

5. What scares me is when folks like Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders both try to dismiss it...

When one might argue that on a normal day they would be at the front of the line leading this sort of thing. I have a feeling that there is some heavy pressure going on underneath the surface that we know nothing about, and that if we did, we might be totally floored at how extreme and dangerous it is.

I wonder how many out there would seek to stand up to whatever might be being threatened now. It's going to take some awful courage to do so. Kucinich seems to be the only one doing it now. And from an earlier post here, it looks like he already has faced an assassination attempt in his earlier political life too, so maybe he's become philosophical about such threats in ways others still can't.

I have a feeling unfortunately that we all might have to face the dilemna Natalie Portman faced in the film V for Vendetta, where at some point we have to all stop fearing death itself for this all to work. It might just come to that. I hope not, but it may.

[KAT119]

17. Bingo!!! calipendence, trying to find a way to handle what could be

a very dark fascist future, and I agree w/ you and the movie V for Vendetta...thanks for the insight, a true and needed lesson for this time.

[NotGivingUp]

25. yeah, i couldn't believe it when i heard bernie sanders say don't impeach. nt

[malaise]

2. Until Americans take the streets this shit will continue

Planning demonstrations for weekends makes no sense. Lock it down.

[TahitiNut]

11. Agreed. The opposite of love isn't hate - it's apathy.

We've become apathetic. Until people are passionate about our self-governance we'll be subjects, not a free people.

[NotGivingUp]

26. totally agree. nt

[ThomWV]

32. Agree!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. My husband said the same thing

That it will take a nationwide strike to get something done.

[cutlassmama]

4. Is there a way to contact Sean Penn? He seems to understand

what BS the BA is pulling. I'm sick of it too. Let's DO something!

[bdamomma]

20. Tim Robbins is another one.

[CK_John]

6. Dream on. Over 50% do not know who is VP, over 75% do not know their House Rep,

95% do not know who is CJ. I think a good percentage don't know who * is. We are very, very, uninformed country and we have the government we deserve.

[emilyg]

12. I agree.

Uninformed and lazy.

[eggman67]

14. On that note

http://www.jibjab.com/originals/what_we_call_the_news

[blues90]

7. Perhaps we need a movie to promote this idea .

People seem to go to movies , maybe if done right this will generate the rage and desire needed . I can't think of another way , no one seems willing in great numbers to hit the streets and stay there , many have not lost enough yet to feel threatened . Right now this would be like the revolt of the homeless .

[cascadiance]

9. I think that's what V for Vendetta tried to be...

I guess that just points out that it can't be allegorical. It has to hit this problem directly in the head, perhaps to being a documentary/informercial, if not a docudrama of what's happening now. The problem is how to produce something on the scale needed (and get those to allow one to do so), and also to find ways of distributing it. You'd need someone like Michael Moore behind it to have any chance at any kind of mass distribution.

[BlackHawk706867]

15. I think perhaps you need a massive door to door campaign to inform the ...

masses as to what they really face.

ww

[seemslikeadream]

8. I think they're just f'ing scared

everything is such a mess, they don't want to deal with it all

[cascadiance]

10. Perhaps it will take something like a Kent State, or something bigger...

Where they can SEE that it is the government behind it, and not something nebulous that MIGHT have been the government like 9/11.

That kind of fear would get many of us on the street I think. The question is how to expose what they are doing, since as some have said on Thom Hartman's show (like Paul Craig Thomas, etc.), Bush and his cronies are likely trying to get their "Pearl Harbor" to justify such a takeover. We need to be able to be prepared to expose it the minute it happens. Perhaps its a MASSIVE grass roots information/media gathering campaign where we have every corner where such a thing could happen monitored. And if we see something that can later expose their attempt at a "pearl harbor" event as an act of theirs and not terrorists, THAT I think would have us all breaking down the doors of the White House and the Capitol Building, even if they had a lot of security around it.

[liberal renegade]

13. it's a losing battle......

nobody sticks together and nothing sticks to the crooks in charge....

Quite honestly, I'm flabbergasted at whats happened since Bush was anointed King of the world.

Not a G' Damned thing is ever going to happen to these sorry motherfuckers. They have literally ruined this country in 6 short years
and nobody has the cojone's to stop them....

It just blows my fucking mind, I tell ya.....

[bdamomma]

21. Denial is a bitch.

but it will bite them on the ass. Remember it took one woman Rosa Parks to start the Civil Rights Movement, a meek woman who did not give up her seat to a white man. It only takes one person, but when Cindy stood up, everyone started to slap her down. Just my opinion.

[BeHereNow]

16. That is what Paul Craig Roberts said in his interview- however, he also said

It aint gonna happen.
I tend to agree.

The only way to stop the wheel that is crushing us all, is for
a large percent of the population to
become a huge stick, stuck between the spokes for a very long time.

Look around you, the next time you are
shopping at the local market or mall-
Do the people around you even begin to
exhibit what it would take to become part of
that stick?

No way, no how, not where I live anyway.
The people I see out there in public
just want to get home to see the
next episode of their favorite TV show.
They have no consciousness of the
danger around them, nor do they want to think about it.

BHN

[seemslikeadream]

18. We Seem to Be Approaching An Age of the Gross

http://www.aminibigcircus.com/chalkdust.html


This bridge ain't goin' nowhere
Are you high?
Are you full of Bourbon liquor?
Are you a hunter or a digger?
Well I guess you got snotty
When you went back west
It ain't a big surprise
Those folk in California
Keep it close to the chest
No one grows up
No one grows old
No one ever dies

Spit chalkdust at your mother
Spit chalkdust at you pa
Spit chalkdust at little sister
My mouth is full of powder
But I can not swallow it all

Mr. Man are you on fire?
Today?

Are you a taker or a giver?
I ain't got closer yea to where you are
With your parental side
Never gone far
Nobody ever gonna die


Spit chalk dust at your mother
Spit chalkdust at you pa
Spit chalkdust at your little sister
My mouth is full of powder
But I can not swallow it all

Is it little blues is that you callin'?
Stay away
Are you looking for one more sucker?
Are you a fighter or a fucker?
You're shovin' my head in the oven
But still you're hummin' that tune
I feel like I'm gonna die
The ache in my bones
it won't end soon
Man that don't mean nothin'
I ain't ever gonna die

Spit chalk dust at your mother
Spit chalkdust at you pa
Spit chalkdust at little sister
My mouth is full of powder
I can not swallow it all


HAD THE ROCKS NOT BEEN THROWN
THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO CHANCE OF THE KILLING

PLEASE

PLEASE FORGIVE ME

PLEASE

PLEASE FORGIVE ME

PLEASE

PLEASE FORGIVE ME

PLEASE FORGIVE ME

PLEASE

PLEASE FORGIVE ME

Now remember what to do friends?
What are you supposed to do when you see the flag?


DUCK AND COVER


Holy By Their Guns

[BeHereNow]

22. Cool web site and band- how did you find them? "Age of Gross"- perfect description.

Example-
Yesterday as I was leaving my house, I happened to
glance down the street from my house.
There were two teen aged girls approaching-
giggling and waving an ear of corn they had just
stolen from my neighbor who plants it every year
on the parkway in front of her house.
Clearly, they felt no remorse or shame.

I waited until they were near and sternly asked them,
"Did you just steal that corn from my neighbor?"
They looked surprised, but again, not a twinge of
remorse or consciousness of having done anything wrong.

"Shame on you." I said in the serious voice I use
on my high school students.

They stopped in their tracks and finally
looked somewhat ashamed.

"Shame on you..." I repeated.

They giggled sort of nervously and
kept walking.

"Gross" is a good description for the
consciousness, or lack of, of the average American these days.
Completely unconscious with a mega egotistical
sense of entitlement and lack of
respect for others.

I know my neighbor eats her corn-
no one on the street would dream of
touching it.

These girls had no intention of eating it-
they simply stole it because they thought it
was funny.
Disgusting and yes, gross.

BHN

[bdamomma]

23. Take those "toys" away and see how fast people act.

what would happen (not to say it would) if they shut down sites like this, would people then say that is enough, shit, they are listening to our conversations, torture chambers around the world and they have taken away Habeas Corpus and the list goes on and on, we must stomp out this cancer, and surgically remove it.

[NotGivingUp]

27. you are sooo right. i know plenty of people who don't give a shit and don't want to hear about it.

they just want to keep playing their games and watching reality tv. they're like a bunch of zombies....and they don't want to be awakened!

[warren pease]

43. But there are these weird little signs of consciousness I keep noticing...

For instance, today I was picking up some cat food at a pet store in a pretty affluent area south of Portland. A middle-aged couple came out of a dentists office, accompanied by the dentist or a dental tech, and the three were talking about the Little Lord's colonoscopy. First they were discussing the horrors of having Cheney as acting president for even an hour or two, saying he might take the opportunity to start another war. Then one of them actually said, regarding the procedure, "I suppose that's where they have to go to find Bush's brain." And they got into their Lexus SUV and drove away.

Now, I won't pretend that I expect these people to pick up arms and join the struggle, but they're not going to turn their neighbors in for seditious thoughts, either. And I'll bet everything in my wallet (which might buy a couple of double decaf lattes no fat double shots no extra cream blah blah blah) that they voted for the bastards in 2000 and maybe even 2004. Probably not last year, though, as it takes awhile before preferences on a secret ballot turn into a public exercise of free speech.

I'm not much of a pollyanna when it comes to the general population's ability to see beyond mass media's disinformation campaign; it's just that I have certain expectations of the upper middle class and when they step outside the bounds of those expectations, I find it noteworthy.


wp

[bdamomma]

19. We need to believe in ourselves get off our asses and do something

ENOUGH. This is our country, not Rove's, not Cheney's and not that SOB *. Let's stop walking with our tails between our legs, let them be very afraid of us. Power in Numbers!!

[lonestarnot]

28. Fill the fucking freeways with signs.

It's cheap, and if it can't be escaped anywhere while driving, they will get the message and so will everyone else that drives.

[NotGivingUp]

24. that's the way to do it. nt

[bdamomma]

29. a silent campaign of slogans all over the US.

interesting, and people walking around with ENOUGH t shirts on.

[lonestarnot]

30. Sounds good to me. Did we start yesterday?

[hughee99]

31. I think the chances of getting impeachment proceedings started...

are much better then the chances of ever seeing a general strike. In a country where a majority of the people don't even care enough to vote, it's hard to believe they'll care enough to strike.

[cascadiance]

33. I'd like to think so too. As intelligent folk, I think that's what we've focused on...

The question is though, if you even have people like Feingold and Sanders backing off from helping lead on this action, to me it smells like Bushco is pulling out all stops to prevent this from happening. It might not be obvious to us from the outside, and that it feels obvious that impeachment is the way to go, but from some on the inside's point of view, they feel trapped and unable to pursue this with some pretty heavy consequences being threatened if they do.

One would hope that this gets exposed and that we can follow through with impeachment, but if we don't and some of the other things Bushco seems more and more likely to start trying to have happen according to people like Paul Craig Roberts, then it seems we need alternative strategies and finding ways that even they can't stop. If there's any way we can mobilize the masses that they can't stop, that's something we need to threaten again, so that we, like both V for Vendetta and Sicko have said to us can happen where "Government is afraid of its people", and not "People are afraid of the government".

I think at this point it is more that "people don't care about their government", feeling that their life isn't affected by it at the moment. They WILL care once some things are taken away from them, but they won't realize until after its too late that there's any thing they can do about it. I think what I'm saying is finding some way of having them all wake up sooner if we can.

In a way its kind of like saying that we need *OUR* Pearl Harbor event as well, that points to those in government as being responsible for a catastrophe or something like that that affects everyone. Then we'd have everyone on the street, and if we had some ways of leading them, I think we could get them to do a nationwide strike. THAT is something that Bushco couldn't stop.

The challenge is, short of engineering such an event, which we should NOT really be doing, how does that happen.

I'm thinking that more people and more people carry digital cameras, etc. with them every day, and record every suspicious event that happens around you. I'm not talking about any sort of militant set of vigilantes or anything like that, but basically a huge radar screen so that we can put together information that we would normally rely on our government and media to do (but who aren't because they are working complicitly against our interests).

If they try to pull of this big sort of "terrorist event" like what Paul Craig Roberts describes, then if we have some folks on the streets with video proof that this was an internally generated fraud instead of real terrorists coming out against us, or that this government allowed/helped these terrorists to do what they are doing, that to me would be our Pearl Harbor event. Then we have some sort of plan that can immediately be deployed to do a nationwide strike, which I think at that point might have a lot of willing participants.

I think it would be hard for the government to claim that we are working against their interests by recording everything that happens, as they are touting that we should try all to "fight terrorism", and would have a hard time rationalizing us not recording what we are seeing, though I'm guessing that they're going to try and play the national security card on certain areas/events that will be where the damage is being done. Still us being around with cameras will be what also helps whistleblowers feel confident that they can break away from any such conspiracy that might be happening that is trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes.

The other thing is to try to find a way to make sure we get this information nationally broadcast as soon as possible if we do find it. That is a challenge now with the complicity of the media today versus what in so many times and movies in the past was the ticket to stopping a conspiracy (was to get the local news station to broadcast it and then have coverage of it magnified through the chain of news media, which now is more of a myth than it was then).

[Lilith Velkor]

34. No, but it will take a general strike to get national healthcare

Impeachment can be done well before it comes to that.

on edit: please look up the definition of "general strike," it looks like the OP is confusing it with a protest march.

[cascadiance]

36. No, I'm actually advocating that BOTH be done at the same time....

I'm saying that by leveraging one also doing protest marches at the same time, you heighten the sense that people should not work everywhere else as the reasons for them striking are made that much more visible in a way that's harder for the mainstream media to hide (if there are masses of people out on the streets also protesting at the same time).

My concern with impeachment isn't whether it should be the proper way to do things. In a perfect world, I would prefer that method too.

But like I said earlier in this thread, when I see people like Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders both say that "they aren't supporting impeachment" along with what Nancy Pelosi has been doing, it tells me that there are forces at work there in Washington that we don't understand or see, and don't understand how they are enforcing consequences on what could happen if some of these folks tried to get serious about impeachment.

Without knowing what those consequences are, and whether there's anything we as people can do to stop them or not from levying those consequences, I was suggesting that we have another alternative strategy in the wings, so that hopefully this administration sees them staying in power as a no-win situation at some point. That might be what it takes to force them to see impeachment as perhaps even a preferable outcome than what might happen if we do have a mass uprising/general strike that might happen if they stand in impeachment's way somehow.

[Lilith Velkor]

38. I see your point

I just don't think it's gonna happen over impeachment. But it very well might for healthcare...

[cascadiance]

39. Perhaps healthcare can be the draw, but having impeachment should be the goal!

I agree that health care is what affects everyone daily, and is more likely to help mobilize people than many other issues now, especially with the work Michael Moore has thankfully done with Sicko.

The problem though is that this administration is the central thorn that stands in the way of ANYTHING getting done, and with what's starting to become more and more visible and obvious, it might not be just "nothing getting done" that is the big concern of allowing them to stay in power, but taking away our very Democratic system that could be used later to help us solve issues like health care, the environment, and so many other issues.

My contention is that it isn't about "priorities" that the Democrats is having them publicly state that impeachment isn't a priority for them. That's a load of spin they are providing us to rationalize not doing impeachment. What we're really talking about is a whole conspiracy going on behind the scenes that is producing such an atmosphere of fear or state of inaction, that we even have those who we KNOW would support impeachment pulling back from those committments. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark ('er Washington DC)...

[Lilith Velkor]

41. It seems a lot of people just want to wait out the rest of *'s term

I don't think that's a wise choice, but 18 months is a long time in political dog years, and anything could happen between now and then.

[BurtWorm]

35. Americans don't do strikes.

You'll get a handful of people who won't have any effect at all on the process.

A massive march on Congress would be more in order anyway. Sit ins in Congressional offices.

Want impeachment? Don't sit on your ass. Take direct action.

[cascadiance]

37. The problem with masive marches is that they come and go and have been ignored...

Look at even the women's march a few years back on reproductive rights. How much of the general public realized how massive that was. I didn't until I saw the documentaries of that march.

The problem is that with the limited attention span of Americans, you might get their attention for a week or so, but it tends to die down as the MSM finds some other "big Paris Hilton story" to distract people with, and they feel no consequences of tuning out and going back to what they were doing before.

You need both the TEETH of having basically infrastructure being shut down around people as well as things like a protest march, etc. at the same time to make people aware of WHY this infrstructure is shutting down to force change I think.

If we can't solve this through impeachment, we may have to do something like this to force these people out of office and restore our Democracy.

[IDemo]

40. Agreed, but little do I know, apparently

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1388527&mesg_id=1388527

[dkofos]

42. The people in this country won't even protest let alone strike.

But they need to!!

[Zorra]

44. I'm down with that. n/t