Making history in Bab Al Shams

Diaries: Live from Palestine

Abbas Sarsour
The Electronic Intifada
15 January 2013
130115-bab-al-shams.jpg

The establishment of Bab Al Shams is a direct action against Israel’s settlement enterprise.

A group of local activists, Palestinian and international, informed me of a protest camp we would set up to help community members in Jericho and give support to the surrounding areas. We were told to be prepared to face armed Israeli soldiers. But even so, the instructions were vague. None of us knew exactly where we were going.

At 5am on Friday morning, 11 January, 50 activists took a bus to an area we called Bab Al Shams. One of the group leaders of the camp told us that we were on private Palestinian land termed by Israel as “E-1.” Israel was planning on constructing settlements here, he told us, and our mission would be to camp out in defiance of the occupation forces.

He told us that we were all informed that we would be heading to Jericho, but this was only meant to keep the plan as secretive as possible. “If you’d like to stay, you can. If not, we understand, and you can return with the buses,” he told us after explaining the risks associated with what we would soon be doing.

We started to build tents. After a few hours, four more busloads of activists arrived at the scene. Together, we erected even more tents. By noon, after finishing with the tents, we held Friday prayers for the first time in Bab Al Shams.
Eviction notices

Not long after, we were met by Israeli border police and soldiers who arrived at the location to hand out eviction notices to the residents of this new village. Bab Al Shams, having been founded just hours earlier, had already posed a risk to the Israeli government. The police threatened to return and demolish the tents shortly if we didn’t take them down ourselves. Needless to say, we stood our ground.

Luckily, we had already been prepared for such an occasion. We petitioned against the threatened demolitions to the Israeli high court which then issued a warrant delaying any eviction or demolition for six days. The court would use this time to further assess the situation there. It is important to remember, though, that Bab Al Shams was erected on private Palestinian land.

So there it was. The village of Bab Al Shams with a Palestinian flag standing tall at the highest point of the village.
Lockdown

But the village was quickly put under lockdown. Nothing was going in and nothing went out. We were short on mattresses, blankets and food. Everybody understood the situation and shared whatever they could with one another.

The night was cold and people were freezing in their beds. Thank God for the paramedics who were on site to help us. We also our own security guards in the village who stayed up all night protecting everyone and making sure nothing happened. Bab Al Shams was looking more and more like a village.

The second day, a little after noon, some of the activists who were feeling unwell made the decision to return home for treatment and rest. They walked to the nearest streets where Israeli occupation forces quickly escorted them away from Bab Al Shams. But at the same time, another hundred or so activists arrived from another set of buses to bolster our presence. They brought with them supplies and helped renew our spirits in the cold weather.
Encircled

As the population grew in size, so did the imminent threat of an Israeli raid designed to stop all activity in Bab Al Shams. At 11pm on Saturday, more than 500 Israeli forces — soldiers and police — surrounded the village. We could see them approaching from all sides as they aimed their bright lights at us.

The armed Israeli forces climbed the hillside up to us and completely encircled us. They were ordering us to leave. Many of the activists tied themselves to the tents. Others put their hands together and sat down in the middle of the small village while chanting in Arabic, “With soul, with blood, we’ll protect Palestine.”

We were outnumbered. Plus, we could see the soldiers burning various items in the village. Soon enough the Israeli forces began their assault on us specifically. Everyone in the village was rounded up and arrested. Many were hit with the butts of Israeli weapons. Others, including myself, were dragged through the sand and dirt and thrown back onto buses.

The buses started their engines about an hour after they were filled. We didn’t know where we were going but we assumed we were going to an Israeli prison.

But we later found that Israeli hummers were escorting the buses to the Qalandia checkpoint, where we were greeted by other Palestinians and activists in high spirits. We had made history with Bab Al Shams and we continue to refuse to let Israeli construct settlements on Palestinian land.

Abbas Sarsour is a 21-year-old Palestinian from Ramallah currently living in the United States. He is active in various student and community organizations dedicated to Palestinian rights. He can be followed on Twitter at @iFalasteen.
Tags: Bab Al Shams E-1 Israeli settlements settlements

Bab al Shams, turnabout is fair play

Palestinian activists have set up their own "settlement" in the West Bank area known as "E1." Israel had announced its intention to build more illegal colonies on this land to consolidate and extend its stealing of Palestinian land east of Jerusalem. Unlike the Israeli government sponsored settlements, Bab al Shams is actually legal and involves the legitimate inhabitants of the region. --RC


By Haggai Matar
|Published January 12, 2013
Army closes in on Palestinian outpost, activists promise to resist evacuation

Less than two days after the new Palestinian outpost-village, Bab Al-Shams, was set up in the E1 area outside Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered authorities to evict the activists and dismantle the tents.

Following Netanyahu’s order, police forces arrived on the scene and told activists that the High Court warrant actually only protects the tents from dismantling, but does not forbid eviction of their residents. The activists, who were warned to leave before force would be used against them, vowed to stay put, stating that they would resist eviction non-violently. The state is also expected to ask the High Court to reconsider its temporary warrant, on the premise that the land where Bab Al-Shams was erected is privately owned by Palestinians, and that the village is meant to serve as a tourist attraction which teaches visitors about Bedouin culture. The court is likely to look into the case tomorrow.

Furthermore, journalists have been barred from entering Bab Al-Shams by Israeli security forces. Haaretz is planning to appeal the decision to the High Court of Justice.

Bab Al-Shams has been at the center of the news in Israel– an event which is quite out of the ordinary considering the Israeli media’s treatment of Palestinian popular non-violent resistance. Netanyahu’s swift call to action on the matter has also gained much attention, and has been described by critics as racist due to the government’s ongoing support for settlement building.

Facebook persona John Brown has illustrated the bias inherent to Israel’s official policy by posting [a] picture, with following caption: ”Today: PM orders to evict the Palestinian outpost in E1. Tuesday: PM visits illegal ‘Rachelim’ outpost after legalizing it to compensate settlers for another theft gone wrong.”



At around 10:00 p.m. security forces were reportedly assembling outside Bab Al-Shams. Activists fear a nightly attack.

"Five Broken Cameras" story of Palestinian village's struggle against the apartheid wall

Is Oscar-nominated 5 Broken Cameras an Israeli or a Palestinian film?
Submitted by Asa Winstanley on Fri, 01/11/2013 - 16:45

The film 5 Broken Cameras has been nominated for a Oscar in the best feature-length documentary category, it was announced yesterday. I reviewed the feature, the product of years’ worth of footage of demonstrations shot by Palestinian filmmaker Emad Burnat, for The Electronic Intifada back in October.

As a film, 5 Broken Cameras works on both an artistic and a political level. It’s a deeply personal film to Burnat in many ways, while also being a chronicle of the struggle of his village, Bilin, against Israel’s apartheid wall and policies of dispossession.

In a press release from the production company, Burnat responded to the news: “This is one of the happiest moments of my life. The village of Bilin is celebrating because of international support of my film. As a child I remember watching the Oscars on TV … I don’t recall seeing films about Palestine, the occupation or our struggles. Times have changed.”
Israeli appropriation

But despite being a deeply Palestinian story about a collective Palestinian struggle, told by a Palestinian, the Israeli press almost immediately began referring to it as an “Israeli film,” along with some US media, and boasting of it almost as a national product.

Even the Israeli embassy in Washington tweeted out a headline from The Forward claiming Burnat’s effort as an “Israeli film”:
Embedded rich on Twitter

Embassy of Israel

✔

@IsraelinUSA

Two Israeli films are among the five nominated for best documentary for the Academy Awards jd.fo/oBX via @jdforward
11 Jan 13

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But Burnat today denied this. On his Facebook page, after being alerted as to how the Israeli press is describing it, Burnat said it was actually a “Palestinian film … My story, my village story, my people’s story, seven years I was working on the film.”

Guy Davidi, the film’s other director, said in a statement released on his Facebook page that “it’s first and foremost also a Palestinian film,” as well as an Israeli film. In the statement (which you can read in full below), Davidi reflects on some of the complexities surrounding the film – which did receive some Israeli funding. (Davidi has also told me that a report about him and the film by Israel National News was totally invented, and they had not even spoken to him.)

Expanding on this point Davidi told me in an online chat: “the film is considered a Palestinian-Israeli-French production since there is finance from these countries and I’m Israeli, Emad is Palestinian, personally I don’t think films should have citizenships.”

In some ways, this debate recalls the Academy’s spurning of Elia Suieiman’s Divine Intervention over a decade ago, on spurious grounds. But this time with a different result.

As far as the Oscars go, however, the two cases are different, because 5 Broken Cameras has been nominated in the documentary feature category, not the foreign language category. In the latter, in-country committees formally nominate films on behalf of the country. So in this case, that issue does not arise in a formal sense – unlike the issues around funding, talent and “nationality” (if films even have one).
Boycott?

The fact of Israeli funding may, for some, raise of the specter of boycotting this Palestinian film. Indeed, last year celebrity academic Norman Finkelstein once again attacked the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for “flagrant hypocrisy” for not calling for a boycott of 5 Broken Cameras.

But this is just another sign of Finkelstein’s sad degeneration, with more frequent attacks on the solidarity movement in recent years, including slandering the BDS movement as a “cult.”

In fact, the movement has strict, detailed and specific criteria for applying the cultural boycott, and 5 Broken Cameras does not meet them. According to the official cultural boycott guidelines published by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI):

Individual cultural products that receive [Israeli] state funding as part of the individual cultural worker’s entitlement as a tax-paying citizen, without her/him being bound to serve the state’s political and PR interests, are not boycottable

Before I wrote my review of the film, I wrote to PACBI and the Palestinian BDS National Committee to confirm my reading of the guidelines that this applied to 5 Broken Cameras. Both confirmed it was the case, and that the film is not boycottable as part of the BDS movement.

Activists in Arab countries may, however, apply a stricter standard than this as part of anti-normalization campaigns.

But PACBI cautioned that certain showings of the film “could be boycottable if it is sponsored by any brand Israel type funding,” citing the film’s screening at the Canadian Hotdocs festival last year, which had received money from the Israeli consulate.

Davidi responded that Hotdocs had made a request for this funding without his knowledge. “The festival got sponsorship, not us. The whole thing happened without us knowing so I found that only after the showing,” he explained.

The festival indeed appears to have hushed up this funding, as it does not appear on its website sponsors page, nor on copies the page made at the time.
Guy Davidi’s full statement

I wanted to write a few words for this very complex day. When a film succeeds, you’re supposed to sit back and enjoy, but when a film like 5 Broken Cameras succeeds, a whole box of complex challenges opens up. Every side immediately has its interpretation of the filmmakers or the film. Some are Israelis who immediately appropriate the film for national pride or pride over the national arts, but obscure or completely omit the fact that it’s first and foremost also a Palestinian film. Not that a film should have a citizenship at all. On the other hand, there are also activists who are in turn offended by this appropriation and expect harsh statements in response; the kind of statements that would obliterate the possibility of having the film connect with a slightly broader audience. There are dear Israelis, some of them also inside the establishment itself, who supported and lifted up the film, such as the New Fund for Cinema and Television, who were the most incredible and supportive partners for the making of the film, and who are facing an established system that is threatening their existence and independence. And there are the Palestinians and the Arab World, for whom this detail makes it difficult to accept the film, and the film can’t even be screened there because of that.

There is a nonviolent struggle that faces challenges not only from the Israeli occupation but also from within, and the portrayal of partnership with Israelis is a complex challenge, and a Palestinian director may find himself under attack for that. And then there are journalists and headline editors who are looking for half a sentence, a quarter of a sentence that they can wave around, and situate the left wing director in a provocative and nonthreatening space, and the Palestinian director in a nationalistic and nonthreatening space. And then there will be lots of talk-backs for a short while, and the whole matter will be forgotten and the audience will be happy that there is nothing new under the sun and they can continue their lives without disturbance or worry. And in that place, any achievement that was reached is crushed. This is a day with joy and sadness. Joy – it’s clear why, but sadness – about the ability of a delicate and complicated conversation to come ou

Isn't this what Marx wrote about capitalism's endpoint?

Dixiefication
By Karl Wilson
OpEdNews Op Eds 1/8/2013 at 10:21:02
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(cross posted at Bluehawaii)

I am pleased, if that is the right word, to see a growing chorus of criticism about not just the direction this country is headed, but the very specific reasons why. Some point to the eroding infrastructure, and characterize it, too vaguely I believe, as "economic decline." It is, but without detailing why such decline is happening, such assertions have limited utility.

Others are closer to the point when they talk of the US becoming "third world." They don't mean a lack of technology or development, but instead point to economic inequality and a political economy dominated by a well-entrenched landed-gentry-cum-oligarchs; e.g., an aristocratic overclass.

Those who know their American history, the history we did not learn in high school, are well aware this country was built on cultural fault lines from the very beginning. Talk of secession was in the air, and has remained there, from the earliest days of the Republic. If you didn't hear much about secession growing up, and thought it was just that one flare-up called the Civil War, it's probably because you were not born in the south, or in Texas.

But this is not about secession; it's about southern economics, or Dixiefication. A recent article by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times takes an important leap in fleshing out what has gone wrong in the US in the last 30+ years.

Kristof writes of the last 30+ years of conservative influence as a "failed experiment."

...In upper-middle-class suburbs on the East Coast, the newest must-have isn't a $7,500 Sub-Zero refrigerator. It's a standby generator that automatically flips on backup power to an entire house when the electrical grid goes out.

In part, that's a legacy of Hurricane Sandy. Such a system can cost well over $10,000, but many families are fed up with losing power again and again...

...the lust for generators is a reflection of our antiquated electrical grid and failure to address climate change. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave our grid , prone to bottlenecks and blackouts, a grade of D+ in 2009.

Kristof notes that demand for household generators has surged. Most of them are being scooped up by upper-middle class families that can afford the generator and the gas that goes with it.

That's how things often work in America. Half-a-century of tax cuts focused on the wealthiest Americans leave us with third-rate public services, leading the wealthy to develop inefficient private workarounds.

But our political system is dysfunctional: in addressing income inequality, in confronting climate change and in maintaining national infrastructure.

Indeed it it dysfunctional. But government is not a mess because people do not know what to do. We are being purposefully pushed in one direction because of deeply held ideological beliefs and the policies that reflect that ideology. That belief system is familiar to those raised in the deep south. It is based on class, race, hierarchy, tribalism, and an obsequious allegiance to authority. The result is that the plantation mentality of the colonial south, where cruel slave masters from Barbados established themselves far from the prying eyes of Yankee do-gooders, and created a feudal society dominated by a privileged few. In other words, a society much like the old one they left behind in Europe, one structured on wealth, privilege, and class. Democracy and equality before the law had nothing to do with it. Mouth breather Ted Nugent, who appears increasingly unstable these days, epitomizes this brutally undemocratic attitude when he says that poor people and those on welfare should be denied the right to vote .

Slavery may be gone, but much of the rest of Dixie model not only has remained, it has spread to other states, mostly in the Midwest and Appalachia. A sense of where I am coming from on this can be found in Democracy Heading South: National Politics in the Shadow of Dixie, (2001) and Dixie Rising: How the South is Shaping American Values, Politics, and Culture, (1996) by Peter Applebome. A study I have mentioned before, Colin Woodward's American Nations, provides an invaluable historical backdrop to explain how we got this way.

A sense of that Southern model, what I am calling Dixiefication, can be seen in a litany of examples. Kristof provides a few:

So time and again, we see the decline of public services accompanied by the rise of private workarounds for the wealthy.

Is crime a problem? Well, rather than pay for better policing, move to a gated community with private security guards!

Are public schools failing? Well, superb private schools have spaces for a mere $40,000 per child per year.

Public libraries closing branches and cutting hours? Well, buy your own books and magazines!

Are public parks -- even our awesome national parks, dubbed "America's best idea" and the quintessential "public good" -- suffering from budget cuts? Don't whine. Just buy a weekend home in the country!

Public playgrounds and tennis courts decrepit? Never mind -- just join a private tennis club!

I'm used to seeing this mind-set in developing countries like Chad or Pakistan, where the feudal rich make do behind high walls topped with shards of glass; increasingly, I see it in our country. The disregard for public goods was epitomized by Mitt Romney's call to end financing of public broadcasting.

You got it, Kristof. At its core, Dixiefication means disdain for the public sector, but also low wages, low regulations, and low taxes. It calls for a dominant class run by corporations, the modern version of the plantation's boss man; land owners and sharecroppers, feudal overlords and a peasantry.

Recent data shows just how badly the middle class has been squeezed. As CNNMoney just reported (my emphasis):

Corporate profits hit their highest percentage of GDP on record in the third quarter.

Just four years after the worst shock to the economy since the Great Depression, U.S. corporate profits are stronger than ever.

In the third quarter, corporate earnings were $1.75 trillion, up 18.6% from a year ago, according to last week's gross domestic product report. That took after-tax profits to their greatest percentage of GDP in history.

But the record profits come at the same time that workers' wages have fallen to their lowest-ever share of GDP .

Welcome to Dixie.

Can we find compassion for Israelis in 2013? by Illan Pappe

The Electronic Intifada
4 January 2013

(Illan Pappe is a more forgiving man than I am, but...this is a very good article--RC)

I have just spent the last few days of 2012 in the city of Haifa. Accidentally, I met a few of my acquaintances who in the past deemed me at best as deluded and at worst as a traitor. They seemed more embarrassed today — almost confessing that mine and my friends’ worst predictions about Israel’s future seemed to be materializing painfully in front of their very eyes.

In fact, our predictions came very late in the day. Already in 1950, with unsettling accuracy, Sir Thomas Rapp, the head of the British Middle East Office in Cairo, foresaw the future. He was the last person sent by London to decide whether or not Britain should establish diplomatic relations with Israel. He approved but warned his superiors in London:

“The younger generation is being brought up in an environment of militarism and thus a permanent threat to the Middle East tranquillity is thereby being created and Israel would thus tend to move away from the democratic way of life towards totalitarianisms of the right or the left” (Public Record Office, Foreign Office Files 371/82179, E1015/119, a letter to Ernest Bevin the Foreign Secretary, 15 December 1950).

It is the totalitarianism of the right which is going to be the hallmark of the Jewish state in 2013. And some of the liberal Zionists who were once willing to devour me and like-minded Jews in Israel now realize we, like Sir Thomas before us, may have been right. And maybe because of their more benign attitude I would like to reciprocate by attempting, for a very short while, a different approach in 2013.
Compassion towards Israelis?

Those of us who write frequently for the Electronic Intifada have shown in the past — and will undoubtedly continue to do so in the future — our utmost solidarity with the Palestinian victims of Israel’s existence and policies. But can we, and should we, show compassion to the Israelis themselves? Obviously, one cannot ask the Palestinians to do this while the dispossession continues in full force. But maybe we who belong, ethnically at least, to the victimizers can ponder for a moment in the beginning of the New Year about our compatriots.

Let me begin with a more personal touch. During this visit I had the opportunity to watch my former colleague, the historian Benny Morris on television and to read some of his interviews. His anti-Arab and anti-Islamic racism is now of the rawest kind possible: a naked and rude discourse of hate, venomously spat out in the most disgusting way possible. So why show any empathy? Because his first book on the refugees was an eye-opener for me and others. It was not a great history book, but it was an eloquent survey of the truth to be found in the state archives about the 1948 Israeli crimes.

Yet his transmutation into an arch-racist is not surprising — it follows the same trajectory of many of the so-called liberal Zionists in Israel. He and his friends had an epiphany in the 1990s: discovering the immoral foundations of the state. This could have opened the way to a genuine reconciliation but it was also a frightening moment that demanded brave personal decisions. Most of them opted instead to deny the truth and the guilt, covering it up with a born-again Zionism of a far more extreme and obnoxious kind. This particular group of Zionists are not likely to go through another epiphany, but maybe their children will. One can only hope.
Israel’s Arab Jews

Compassion of a kind can be shown also toward the Arab Jews of Israel. I noticed during this visit how many of them are wearing — almost crouching under the yoke of — huge Star of David medallions of a size I have never seen before. They are frightened that the police or members of the public might mistake them for “Arabs,” hence these huge pendants that cry out: I am a Jew, not an Arab, even if I look like one! (As if any of us living between the River Jordan and the sea look that different from one another.)

This is sad and pathetic but maybe the academic Ella Habiba Shohat was right when she asked us to recognize Arab Jews as victims of Zionism as much as the Palestinians were. It is hard however, with the risk of generalization of course, to buy into their victimization for too long as they have by now endorsed wholeheartedly the formula that the more racist their anti-Arabism would be, the more Israeli they would become.

Back in the 1970s, Arab Jews rebelled against their discrimination. The right-wing parties in Israel capitalized on this frustration to build an electoral base that brought theLikud party to power and associated Arab Jewish politics of identity with anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian positions. But if there is any future for the Jews in Palestine, it will have to go through the organic and intrinsic connection of these Jews to the region, its past, its civilization and future. There are still enough among them who may show the way for the European settlers to learn to reconcile with whatever season the Arab world would happen to be in.

My third message of compassion is for the ultra-Orthodox Jews. The idea of a state in Judaism is a travesty – they know it best. There is no foundation in Judaism for a state based on the religion. So they opted either for clear anti-Zionism, for which they are persecuted, or embarrassingly spearheading Zionism by colonizing the West Bank and leading the racist choirs in the state. For a moment one should empathize with their predicament — they are a sizable part of the Jewish population and could be part of a new and better Palestine and the Middle East.
Cultural ghettoes

My fourth flickering moment of compassion is directed towards the Russian Jews (many of whom I see praying piously in the Orthodox churches all over Haifa and the north). They are a first generation of settlers in a colonialist project that still goes on. They are aliens in this country — as were the early Zionists — and they are lost. So they either create cultural ghettoes, or like the Arab Jews they try to integrate by offering to be the signifiers of the most fascist and racist pole of the Israeli political scene. Either way, this must be very unpleasant and unfulfilling.

My final sense of empathy is directed to the Jewish students in the West who still insist on acting as Israel’s ambassadors on university campuses. Here too, the pathetic human condition triggers the compassion. They could have played a vanguard and leading role — as their predecessors did when they spearheaded the struggles for equality in the United States and the movements against apartheid in South Africa and imperialism in Vietnam — in one of humanity’s greatest campaigns for peace and justice: the solidarity movement with the Palestinians. But they find themselves confused and disoriented, representing the oppressor, the colonizer and the occupier. The end result is parroting slogans prepared by the Israeli diplomacy that make little sense I suspect even to those who chant it unconvincingly along with hysterical allegations of anti-Semitism and terrorism.

I thought of adding the aging Zionist veterans of 1948 who opened their secrets to filmmaker Eyal Sivan and myself (their testimonies were exhibited on a special displaywe put on in the heart of Tel Aviv at the end of 2012) and told us bravely about the crimes they committed against the Palestinians during the Nakba. But that would have been too much.

Maybe when peace is nearer I could follow the in the footsteps of Desmond Tutu and show compassion of the kind displayed in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee. But until this time comes I will try to keep an open door for the others in the settler colonialist society I belong to and with which the Palestinians hopefully will one day build a democratic and free Palestine.

The author of numerous books, Ilan Pappe is professor of history and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter.

The Left is Moving Right. What to do?

By Rob Kall (about the author) Permalink
OpEdNews Op Eds 12/28/2012 at 13:15:14
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The left has been moving further and further right and it has to stop. Here are some thoughts.

Australian Salvatore Babones has written a thought provoking article, There Is no American Left. He writes,

"Over the past forty years America has become much more politically correct with regard to gender and sexually...

On every other issue America -- or at least American politics -- has swung violently to the right. The more social class is involved, the further to the right America has swung. Poverty was once a social disease to be cured; it is now an individual crime to be punished. Put it down to individualism, conservatism, neoliberalism, or whatever -ism you want, America is now the world's greatest reactionary force.

Unfortunately, all the evidence is that the rest of the world is following America down the road to perdition. Nowhere are national health-insurance schemes, access to free education, and old-age pensions being expanded. Nowhere is the world moving forward. Everywhere the social gains of the twentieth century are either being eroded or destroyed."

Babones is correct. American is sliding, and dragging the rest of the world, into a corporatist pit that puts corporations before people-- which looks sort of like conservatism, but is really a collection of lures and attractions that move the remaining voters-- since so many have been lulled and disgusted into non-voting-- to vote against their own self interest.

People keep voting in Democrats who, ten or twenty or thirty years ago would have been to the right of the average Republican.

And the two party system is also a big part of the problem, of course. It offers up next to no choice. The last election was a prime example. The GOP presidency was basically sold to the highest bidder. Fortunately he, Romney, was a loser. And the Democratic party is run by a handful of the most powerful. Obama beating Hillary was an anomaly, but now, things are back to normal-- no Democracy, no decisions made by the people.

There was talk, close to ten years ago, of the need for progressive think tanks like the right has-- organizations that support progressives when they are out of power, that feed the echo chamber and generate policy ideas and strategies that support ideology. The answer was the Center for American Progress (CAP.) it had Soros backing and a more than $10 million budget. CAP's problem was it was headed by DLC John Podesta, former Bill Clinton Chief of Staff. CAP does some good work, but it is a purely pro-democrat, Democrat enabling org that does not challenge or push the Democrats. We still, ten years later, need a truly progressive organization-- a policy promotion tank, not a think tank-- pseudo-progressive liberals have plenty of THEM.

So we are almost on our own.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on solutions-- on what we need to do to turn things around.

I have a few thoughts.
1- call a spade a spade-- people like Rahm Emanuel are fascists, not liberals or progressives. The Democratic party is one of two corporatist parties. Liberals are enablers of Democrats who are enablers of corporatists.

2-Find some serious money, committed for the long haul, to create a true progressive policy envisioning and promotion organization, like there are dozens of on the right. Surely there must be a few Billionaires and very wealthy millionaires who are not right wing sociopaths and who can see that what the left has is not even close to enough.

3- define a vision of a progressive future, something that we can aim for-- and we should aim high, so high that people call us unrealistic, because there are always compromises along the way.

And think outside the box-- coming up with ideas that people call crazy and unrealistic, because the best ideas are described that way until they are discovered to be brilliant, revolutionary and life changing.

For example:
-single payer healthcare for all

-free college education for all

-end corporate personhood. Establish death penalties for corporations. Establish laws that lead to prosecution and incarceration of corporate leaders who violate laws.

-equal rights and equal pay for women and all minorities

-marital rights for all

-legalize Marijuana and stop release all marijuana related prisoners from jail with a clean record.

-protect the commons in all aspects-- make privatization much harder and more costly to do, with no profit motive.

-teach activism in schools, at all grade levels. Establish university departments that study and support activism, like the arts and science are supported.

-fund protests. Yes. Protests keep democracy healthy. Invest in supporting all kinds of protest. And protect protesters-- from police, homeland security.

-Fund investigative journalism-- at least $100 billion-- and develop a way to do it so those funded are not unduly influenced by those who provide the funds.

-end lifelong appointments to the supreme court

-end gerrymandering and make congressional districts as compact and uniform in size as possible.

-end the Fed

-public banking for every state, for the federal government and major cities and counties.

-Shrink the most out of control part of big government-- Cut the US military budget by 70%

-withdraw troops from 80% of the locations we now have them based.

-shut down and end our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan NOW.

-Re-assess all aspects of government and cut it in half-- while beefing up regulation of corporations and support for citizens.

-include the costs of damage to the environment in all products

-publicly finance elections-- take all money out of politics

-pass strong whistleblower protection laws that reward and support whistleblowers

-destroy all electronic voting machines and require recountable paper ballots. Re-establish the US voting and election system as the gold standard for the world.

-allow on-site voting registration for all elections

-criminalize vote corruption, criminalize intentional voter disenfranchisement

-make it so it costs more to live if people don't vote. Charge higher taxes to those who pay taxes. Give less social security or medicare or medicaid or VA aid, or food stamps to those who don't pay taxes-- with reasonable outs for those with health excuses.

-re-instate bank regulations like Glass Steagall and others. Support local banks over centralized ones.

-apply bottom up, non-hierarchical, de-centralized approaches to as many aspects of government and funding as possible. Use the Cash for Clunkers project as an example of how to spend large amounts of money from the bottom up. Require big money contracts to be bottom up-- with disbursement to local, decentralized recipients, not directly to top-down organizations.


-cancellation of legislation making it a crime to protest

-legislation that makes it a crime to treat or characterize protesters as terrorists.

-elimination of homeland security and other funding that has encouraged turning police into robo-cops and a police state


-cancellation of legislation making it legal to spy on citizens without cause.

-return to a tax system like we had under Eisenhower

-make it illegal for billionaires to exist

-tax exotic purchases at the 50% 95% level-- homes over $2 million, art over $2 million, cars over $100,000, pleasure boats over $50,000, dresses and suits over $2000, shoes over $500, cosmetic surgery that is not medically necessary, exotic travel, private jets,

-make it illegal for corporations to get too big to fail

-eliminate all corporate welfare

-fund research and development that supports finding ways to keep companies small.

-make it illegal for any corporate executive to make more than 10 times what any worker makes-- base policies on Mondragon... or tax corporations that pay executives massive salaries.

-give tax breaks to genuine worker owned cooperatives.

-fund research and development on how to bring neighborhoods and communities back to life

-eliminate the policy of measuring economic health based on growth and consumption and switch to one based on sustainability

-take aggressive steps to reverse global warming

-lower the retirement age, reduce hours worked per day and week, increase weeks of vacation-- all to open up more jobs so more people can find meaningful work.

-tax digital outsourcing.

-require all companies outsource work outside the US to declare the contracts visibly and in easy to see and find ways.
-invest heavily in diagnosing and treating the mentally ill, including identifying causes like violence in media and games, pharmaceuticals that create dangerous patients.

-Ban automatic and semi-automatic weapons. Limit magazines to six rounds.

-put liberal arts back into the school curriculum-- art, music, dance.

-bring back media ownership restrictions that we used to have that prevented massive media conglomerations
from forming.

-End all existing global trade agreements-- they are designed for multinational corporations, not people.

-require competition for drug pricing for medicare

-require the educational system to build compassion, so Americans embrace the value that we are as good as the way we care for the weakest and most vulnerable-- that could include showing how Ayn Rand's ideas are very wrong for America.

-re-write the history books ala Howard Zinn and describe how pre-literate tribal people are just as good and wholesome and natural and maybe more so than those of us in the "civilized"world. Teach the values of tribal culture as a way of seeing how people in real communities treat ea

ch other and function with integrity.

-research and devise ways to change our economic model so it optimizes work opportunities for all, rather than profits for corporations.

-add measure of intelligence that reflect Howard Gardners model of multiple intelligences... and add one for awareness of the world-- not delusions like Fox News produces-- but actual awareness of facts.


I'll stop there. I'm leaving a lot out. Some of the ideas are far outside the box. Please add to the list in your comments. Dream big. We really need it now.