Why I want to rain pissed off people down on Washington

Not just Washington, because getting there isn’t practical for a lot of people. State capitols too, and wherever else a lever would do some good.

Not too long ago I got an invitation to join an email list of progressive movers and shakers. I am the very definition of not a mover and shaker but I joined anyway. There’s limited agreement on what a progressive is but we’re getting closer to a unifying theme. These are some serious people, some of whom I had heard and others I hadn’t. They do serious stuff often involving money and political campaigns and academic things and, to a limited extent, organizing. The general thrust is creating a progressive infrastructure with which to reorient American politics. Which is a good thing.

There are a few labor people involved and some more coming, but organizing in the classical sense isn’t a priority for most of the participants. I think mass actions are among the best tools available to bring about rapid change on particular issues; to bring those issues to the forefront in the minds of our friends and neighbors and to bring some considerable and one hopes eventually unbearable pressure to bear on those Washington insiders of whom we hear so much.

I’ve been told with various degrees of emphasis that mass actions aren’t that great a tool. Specifically, the times aren’t ripe and the ROI is low. Return on investment. Yikes. A few people have said organizing for mass actions is a fine idea but not in isolation. That’s a sentiment with which I agree. There has to be some plan for what to do with people’s attention once you have it. Inviting them to pile on is good but you want to enlist them for the long term.

So a few people, but generally not. In some instances the response was patronizing, and in one or two, borderline vituperative.

A lot of the discussion is about tactics. Somebody recently said something about tactics which I found not really defensible, and other people seconded it, so I wrote an email about it (and got a couple of heartening responses!) which I’m reproducing here because I’m a bit of a narcissist, on good days.

One note Johnny, that’s me.

Somebody quoted Stalin’s one death=tragedy/10 million=statistic as an argument for promoting individual stories of hardship with which people can identify. But Stalin’s 10 million were what eventually drove Communists and Socialists in the US away from support for the Soviet Union. One death, they could have said “It’s only one death; what’s that in the big scheme? Sometimes it’s necessary that people die.” 10 million, and they ultimately said “This is horrible, this is unthinkable; it’s too much murder.” Those deaths on that scale were inescapable and outweighed any lingering admiration for the fight the Soviets put up against the fascists, and any sympathy for their losses in that fight.

Well, one unemployed person struggling is one unemployed person struggling. One unemployed person can be dismissed. “Gosh, that’s so sad.” One unemployed person is not the face of millions, she’s the face of one. When people see her, they don’t see millions; they see her. When politicians see her, they see her. She’s one vote. She’s one constituent. She’s the person constituent services are designed to help. “Don, call the Springfield office and see what they can do for her.”

One unemployed person can be and usually is attacked and marginalized by the opposition. It doesn’t take much to smear one person; it takes a monumental effort to restore her image. One unemployed person can be counterbalanced by one person who lost her job and created her own business. “Losing my job was the best thing that ever happened to me.” That’s what unemployed people do, if they’re worth a shit. They seize the day! They make lemonade out of lemons! It’s the American way! Only losers don’t bootstrap their ways out of trouble. But you’re not going to find 10 million people who say losing their jobs was the best thing that ever happened to them.

This is why I am so keen on organizing. Somebody else–several someones else–mentioned the failure of Democrats and the President to go all carpe diem on the current crisis when the moment to do so arrived. You know what would have helped? A million unemployed people gathered in Washington all telling their stories to their elected representatives at once. A hundred thousand losing their homes and telling their stories to their representatives at the same time. That would still help. But how many buses has Arianna Huffington chartered to bring unemployed people, or people losing their homes, to Washington? I remember her chartering a bunch of buses for that tragic clown show with Jon Stewart but I don’t remember her chartering any buses for a rally of unemployed people or newly homeless or people struggling to stay in their homes. They aren’t going to show up on their own in their isolation.

I remember the Machinists trying to put together that union of the unemployed, but that’s an online effort and so far as I know it hasn’t amounted to much although it’s still in progress. Organizing people requires the laying on of hands. That’s why you have things like Netroots Nation, so you can see each other and shake hands and talk, and see each other’s eyes. That’s what works for political campaigns. Get out the vote efforts are people getting other people to the polls. Knocking on their doors, picking them up in vans. Calling people works, and talking to them in person works even better. Politicians go out to shake hands. Physically touching somebody works. Being in the room works. Looking in their eyes works. That’s why Republicans try so very hard to fuck with get out the vote efforts.

People are dropping off the map every day. People hit their 99 weeks every day. Somebody else brought up the subject of economy-related suicides. No doubt there are a bunch of suicides nobody except friends and family know about. No doubt there are a bunch that the people involved tried to present as accidents so that their life insurance would hold. It’s not as though the people in line behind them can wait around for the success of a generational effort to transform the political orientation of Congress. That effort is a good thing, vital to sustain whatever short-term gains can be made. But.

People. Need. Help. Now. Today, this instant. A lot of them won’t get it before they’ve lost everything. That’s what getting help requires these days. You don’t get Medicaid until you’re destitute. You don’t get welfare money until you’re there. You don’t get food from the food bank until you’re there. You don’t get food stamps until you’re almost there.

One person in isolation gets hysterical or irrational because there’s nobody there. Sooner or later, a lot of people who are unemployed begin to doubt themselves. Maybe I’m just stupid or useless. Maybe I’m just weak. Maybe things will never get better. Maybe suicide really is a workable option. Maybe it’s the best option. Maybe it’s the only option. People feel better when they’re part of a group undergoing the same thing. The larger the group the more assurance they have that they’re not out of work because they’re stupid or weak or otherwise defective. The more support they have, the more energy they have. The more they feel that their anger is justified and shared. The more focused they are.

You don’t get large groups of people together by accident. You just don’t, especially when the people are vulnerable and defenseless and ground down by their circumstances and exhausting themselves trying to keep their faces turned away from the abyss. There are 30 million unemployed and underemployed people in the country now. There are more than 40 million living in poverty; the percentage of working-age people in that category is higher now than any time since the early 1970s when the benefits of the War on Poverty peaked. There’s some overlap of course, but even so that’s a lot of people, and there are still more who are impoverished but don’t slide under the absurdly low poverty line.

That’s a lot of people, and they’re in every community, every gender, every race, every religion. Put them together. Help them feel good. Help them do good. Help them not take no shit no more. Train people in the laying on of hands and then send them out to do it. Put flyers up in shop windows and on telephone poles. Unemployed? You’re not alone. Join us, in the church basement or the union hall. You hate unions? That’s okay, we’ll help you anyway. Knock on doors. Know somebody who’s unemployed? Tell them about us. Unemployed yourself? Here’s a flyer. We’re having a get-together. Little food, little company, a chance to get together with people who know what you know. Share some war stories. We’ll call to remind you, maybe give you a ride if you need it. Maybe we can do something about this.

And etc. Lay on the hands. Not everybody responds to it but a lot of people do.

Anyway. That’s what I’m thinking.