Evidence Of Things Unseen: The Rise of a New Movement

By Tom Hayden, AlterNet October 21, 2003
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17000

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The following piece is adapted from a speech Tom Hayden gave at the Bioneers
Conference on Saturday, Oct. 19, 2003.]

The chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, has said
that "Intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean something is true. That’s
not what intelligence is."

Keep that in mind as I discuss what James Baldwin called the "evidence
of things unseen."

A few weeks ago in Cancun, I watched at the barricades as a South
Korean farmer appeared to shake his fist in militant anger at the
dispossession of his people. I did not see that he was committing
ritual suicide with a knife. As far as I know, neither did anyone
else. Hours later, the WTO issued a press release stating its "regret"
at what it called the "self-inflicted" wound that resulted in the farm
leader’s death. I began to wonder how many other deaths we see but do
not see. Farmers in India poisoning themselves with pesticides.
Farmers in America quietly committing suicide. A rise in suicides
among American soldiers in Iraq.

These unseen deaths should be seen as signs of the times. They are
birth pangs as well. For example, in the past three weeks some 80
Bolivians have given their lives - hardly the first time in their 500-
year-long struggle - but these cocoleros, these sweatshop workers,
these indios, have overthrown the government over globalization issues
and sent their mine-owning, American-trained president packing.

The evidence of things unseen. There is rising a new movement in the
world. It is bigger than the movement of the 1960s. Yet it is barely
seen by the experts and analysts. They look only at the behavior of
institutions and politicians, not the underlying forces that
eventually burst into visibility.

The first strand of this new movement is the global opposition to the
war in Iraq and to an American empire.

One year ago this month, when over 100,000 demonstrators hit the
streets in Washington DC, the New York Times reported that
surprisingly few attended the anti-war march, perhaps out of fear of
the sniper. National Public Radio repeated the story. How could they
not see the 100,000? Apparently because such protests were not
supposed to happen anymore. Both the Times and NPR were forced to
apologize a few days later and report the huge turnout. Then, in
another correction, the Times announced in February that there was a
"second superpower" in the world in addition to the White House, which
was world public opinion. By then 10 million people were demonstrating
globally; two million in Rome, one million in London, 200,000 in
Montreal in 20-degrees-below weather - even a brave few in McMurdo
Station in Antarctica.

The second strand is the global justice movement, which began with the
Zapatistas on the day NAFTA took effect, then surfaced in Seattle in
1999. Those were called isolated events. Then came Genoa, Quebec City,
Quito, Cancun, the world social forums in Porto Allegre. Far from
isolated events, these were the historic battlegrounds of a new
history being born.

Together these movements mount a challenge to an entire worldview. We
are experiencing an enlargement of dignity, an enlargement of what we
consider sacred and therefore off the table, not negotiable. The
purported Masters of the Universe are becoming as obsolete as those
who once claimed the divine right of kings. The earth and its people
are not for sale; the environment is not just a storehouse of
materials for utilitarian exploitation; and cultural identities can’t
be replaced as if they were commodities, whether the treasures of
Babylon or the rainforests of the Amazon. This movement is saying that
diversity will not be looted.

Why is this happening? No one really knows. Movements arise in mystery
at the margins, eventually change the mainstream, are repressed or co-
opted, and return to the oblivion we call official history.

One explanation is that the globalization of US military and economic
power is globalizing an opposition. It’s a dialectic and, as it swirls
and intensifies it can even bring down George Bush.

This new globalization arises, some say, in response to a power vacuum
after the Cold War which the US filled. But contrary to the end-of-
history theorists, the failure and fall of communism did not mean the
dialectic was dead and that the wretched of the earth would quietly go
away.

But globalization was emerging long before the 90s, before NAFTA and
the WTO, the World Bank and IMF. The settling of America itself was an
act of colonization and "development." Then came Manifest Destiny, the
defeat of the Indian tribes, the annexation of the western lands, the
wars with Mexico, the seizure of Hawaii and the Philippines.

For indigenous people the Conquest is not over. Most of our foreign
aid programs and social policies are only efforts to reform the
Conquest, not end its invisible structure of power relations.

For Muslims, the Crusades are not over. We should ask if the Crusades
are over for President Bush. There was the alleged slip of the tongue
when he described the war on terrorism as a crusade. There was his
Inaugural, blessed by Rev. Franklin Graham, who denounced Muslims and
proudly presided over the quadrupling of missionaries in Iraq since
the first Gulf War. This week there is the revelation of another
Christian crusader at the pinnacle of the Pentagon, Gen. William
Boykin.

To globalize and militarize are the two strategies of the US will to
empire, driving our movements toward a unified opposition.

The National Security Strategy of September 2002, which announced the
Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war, also included the free market, free
trade and the FTAA as principles the Pentagon is bound to advance and
protect. So our official national security policy is about more than
terrorism, nuclear proliferation or legitimate military threats; it is
about defending what the document proclaims is a "single sustainable
model for national success."

Or as Thomas Friedman, globalization’s leading defender, puts it: "The
hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist.
McDonalds cannot flourish without McDonnell-Douglas."

Take the example of Iraq today, the complete stripping and
privatization of the public sector (with only oil exempted so far). L.
Paul Bremer, the man who dresses in pinstripe suits and combat boots,
who represents Henry Kissinger’s invisible corporate clients, is very
clear that his mission is to replace sovereign Iraqi control of its
economy with a free-market model controlled by absentee foreign owners
primarily from the US. Helping ourselves to the spoils of war is part
of our national security strategy.

While there is growing opposition in this country to the American
death toll and budgetary costs of the Iraqi quagmire, there is
virtually no debate about our assault on the Iraqi public sector by
the writ of Bremer. Only a deeper joining of the global justice
movement with the peace movement can begin to expose and protest these
policies.

Of course these are not new developments. Halliburton is connected to
Kellogg, Brown and Root, the Texas corporation that funded Lyndon
Johnson’s rise to power. It also built the airstrips in Vietnam, which
became the corrugated metal fences at the US-Mexico border, and which
is today reincarnated as a virtual Dick Cheney subsidiary on the
battlefields of Iraq.

Similarly, the author of the so-called "clash of civilizations"
thesis, Samuel Huntington, is the same policy advisor who invented the
doctrine of "forced urbanization" for South Vietnam, deliberately
turning a 90-percent peasant culture into an urban "Honda culture" in
a decade.

What’s new is the audacity of the drive for an American-dominated
planet. "Empire is coming out of the closet" writes Charles
Krautheimer. "What’s wrong with dominance?" asks William Kristol. And
Max Boot calls for a return to British-style imperialism complete with
"enlightened administrators in jodhpurs and pith helmets."

All this international expansion is seamlessly tied to the homefront.
It not only justifies the curtailment of civil liberties and the
revival of arrogant patriotism among the corporate media, but also
unprecedented increases in military spending, tax cuts and deficits.
These are not overreactions to September 11, or isolated policy
excesses, but part of a pattern of diminishing democratic rights and
defunding democratic government. They are a backdoor assault on the
achievements of the Great Society, the New Deal and before that the
Progressive movement that regulated capitalism at the turn of the last
century. The Republican agenda is to return to a society in which
market values eclipse and replace the role of the public sector in the
economy.

Take for example Grover Norquist, who fancies himself a generalissimo
in the conservative revolution. Under the innocuous banner of "tax
reform," Norquist hopes that enough tax breaks and budget cuts will
"drown the baby in the bathtub."

He’s talking about defunding child care, health care, public schools,
public investment in the inner city, public investment in a restored
environment. He sees government, the public sector, as a failure to be
eradicated, not instead of an institution to protect us from the
failures of the market.

Or take Niall Ferguson, a major advocate of empire and contributor of
many influential articles in the New York Times, who has extolled the
Protestant Ethic as the major difference between America and Europe.
Let me take you through his clever argument on behalf of a WASP
America. First, he notes that Americans attend church services in far
greater numbers than Europeans, evidence that Max Weber’s "protestant
ethic" is alive and well here. As a result, Americans are inspired to
work harder and longer than the Germans, the French, the Dutch and
Norwegians who are "astonishingly idle," "work-shy" and, of course,
"Godless." He says the Protestant Ethic is being replaced in Europe by
"the spirit of secularized sloth."

Ferguson is complaining that German workers are on the job just 1,535
hours a year in comparison with virtuous Americans grinding away at
1,976 hours. That difference of over 400 hours worked is the
equivalent of 62 days a year. Ferguson - and corporate globalization
defenders in general - want to stop Europeans from taking long
vacations with their families and retiring earlier to enjoy the
quality of life. They want to roll back - they call it reform - labor
gains of the whole past century.

Well, I tell you, if Americans learn to read between the lines and
understand what the conflict with the Europeans is about, they will
reject the scapegoating and bashing that comes out of this
Administration.

Instead of looking down our noses at the Europeans, we should be
Europeanizing our approach to work, vacations and leisure time - and
for that matter, Canadianizing our approach to health care. How’s that
for a progressive platform - longer vacations for all!

Instead, because of cultural brainwashing, a recent survey showed that
19 percent of Americans thought they already were in the top 1 percent
income bracket, and another 20 percent believed they would be
eventually. That’s what watching too much television in the center of
empire can do to your head, and why the struggle is a cultural one,
not simply political or economic, but a battle over how images and
demons and fantasies are produced and wired into our consciousness.

But there are unseen resources in our history that can fortify us for
this struggle. Thankfully, historians like Howard Zinn have shown us a
"people’s history" that is just as important to restore as our
cultural and environmental resources.

There were those who opposed the original aggression and broken
treaties against the indigenous on these lands. We honor their
example. There were Americans who opposed slavery, who opposed
annexation, who opposed the wars with Cuba and Mexico, who opposed the
subordination of women. We honor them in our lives today. The Sierra
Club was founded here, the Abolitionists, the NAACP, the Suffragettes,
the Populists, the emigrant workers of Lowell who marched for bread
and roses, they are present here today. We have deep roots in
movements against monoliths, monocultures, monomaniacs and mammon.

Today the converging movements are in sync with the larger body of
public opinion, and spilling over into the mainstream. We see this in
the phenomenal growth of MoveOn.org, the grassroots support for Howard
Dean, for Dennis Kucinich, in the growing fear and loathing of the
Pentagon, the White House and Fox News.

Despite the spin, despite the play on our patriotic feelings, despite
the legitimate worries about terror, a majority of Americans - and a
strong majority of Democrats - are questioning the purpose of Iraq,
the credibility of the administration, the needless deaths, the
unexpected costs, and sacrifice of our domestic needs on the altar of
empire. Dissent has even appeared among military families and GIs on
the battlefield, angry about the callous manipulation of the body
count to justify the President’s pledge that the military mission is
"accomplished." Dissent within the military is a sign that the end is
beginning.

Because public opinion is moving, the Democratic presidential
candidates are changing their themes in a positive direction. Just
last year, the corporate centrists of the Democratic Party were
counseling the candidates to support the President’s war, to divorce
themselves from any allegiances to the 60s, to wait for the Iraq war
to end amidst cheering in Baghdad, and then somehow defeat the
president on incremental issues like prescription drugs for the
elderly. Talk about out of touch.

Now, in response to the public protests and plain questions of
grassroots Democrats, all the Democratic candidates are questioning
the president on Iraq, his trade agreements and jobs. Think of them as
opportunists if you will, but I think of them as a huge speakers’
bureau carrying our questions and themes to millions of middle
Americans.

Each of us may decide to back an individual candidate, and that can
expand our movement. But let’s not let ourselves be swallowed in any
single campaign. When the candidates ask for our time and money, let’s
also ask them to join our movement around a new vision of what America
can be.

As the global forums have insisted, "Another world is possible," words
embraced by the French foreign minister when the US war was rebuffed
at the UN. The vision of another world already is becoming manifest in
local struggles:

- A reform of the global trade system with enforceable standards
to protect sweatshop workers and rainforests, not simply investors in video cassettes
and privatizers of water.
- The re-regulation of crony capitalism, from Enron abuses to public financing of elections.
- A shift from being the world’s leading arms supplier to greater investment in the UN’s
anti-poverty programs. In JFK’s time we spent one percent of our gross domestic product on fighting
poverty; today it is 0.13 percent, little more than zero.
- Resisting the oil, chemical and utility conglomerates from Cheney’s task force to the
Bolivian pipelines, towards energy conservation and renewables.
- Promoting grassroots participatory democracy in decisions that
affect people’s lives, as a vital ingredient in governing.

George Bush can be defeated; even the polls confirm it. But who knows
if the Democratic Party can defeat him? Who knows if we can bridge the
differences between the Democrats, the Greens and Ralph Nader?
Politics is a power struggle, not an exact reflection of public
opinion. But the fear and loathing are out there, building, and with
enough dedication in 2004 we can remove this cloud over our future.

We owe it to ourselves, to our progressive traditions, and perhaps
most of all to the world, to prevent a second term for this president.
The way to assure a democratic future politically is to prevent what
the conservatives conceive as a Second Coming. So I ask your righteous
suspicions about electoral politics, set aside your attachments to any
single candidate, and see this as a powerful convergence of many
campaigns to defeat George Bush. The whole can be greater than the sum
of its parts.

If we do not succeed, we at least will have reached millions more
people with our message and networking, and we will need that public
support in the years ahead. Even if our best efforts fall short,
remember than even those who have the power can be forced to make big
concessions.

SDS burned out and McGovern lost, but Nixon had to retreat from
Vietnam and recognize China. There came the vote for 18-year-olds, the
end of the draft, the creation of the EPA, OSHA, the Clean Air and
Water acts.

Bush won the presidency with the help of his Supreme Court, but the
same Court ruled in favor of the gay-lesbian community against sodomy
laws after 40 years of struggle that began with riots in Greenwich
Village. The recent Court decisions on medical marijuana show the
formidable power of public opinion on the move.

It comes down to recognizing the dignity in all things. Dignity has
intrinsic value, it cannot be violated without a resistance. It cannot
be defeated. Wherever there is life, dignity resists suffocation and
oblivion. That’s the world we want. That’s the world the world wants.
Not an empire, not even a world of great powers, but a world of
democracies based on dignity.

[Tom Hayden is a progressive activist, author and former California
elected official. His most recent book is "Irish on the Inside."]