social movements

So it appears the privatization of France isn’t going quite as smoothly as planned. As I assume you are aware, for over a month now, the gilets jaunes (or “yellow vests”), a multiplicitous, leaderless, extremely pissed off, confederation of working class persons, have been conducting a series of lively protests in cities and towns throughout the country to express their displeasure with Emmanuel Macron and his efforts to transform their society into an American-style neo-feudal dystopia.

What do Argentinian protesters have in common with French protesters?  They both strongly dislike their governments, and their leaders (sic).

For the first time in the history of humanity, the technical means are at hand to eliminate poverty if resources were not diverted to making war. World hunger could be abolished with only a small diversion from military budgets.

Rally at No US-NATO Bases Conference in Dublin, Ireland on November 16, 2018. Photo from Margaret Kimberly Facebook page.
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Press Communique of the First International Conference Against US/NATO Foreign Military Bases

Alarm, fear, panic, hysteria, dread are loose in Washington DC. Here are sample headlines which sum up why our lawmakers have emptied the shelves of smelling salts in the local apothecaries:
Commission:  U.S. could lose wars with Russia, China

I’ve often wondered about the limits of activist’s reach and the lack of coherent, organized progressive social movements in the US. Does it come down to the precarious nature of our jobs, the stress, strain, and exhaustion caused by the realization of being a paycheck away from penury? Or is it all the fault of our monopolistic media, with the puppet strings controlled by their advertisers, the corporate giants and multinationals? Is it geographic distance from Europe where socialism advanced far broader and deeper into society?

Washington, DC — The No Trump Military Parade coalition of 250 organizations is holding a Peace Congress in place of the Trump Military Parade, which they helped to stop. In a historic show of opposition to the glorification of war and waste of millions of public dollars, the coalition went beyond traditional peace group to include anti-poverty, housing, the environment and more.

Throughout history it has been hard for progressives and leftists, in the U.S. and outside the country, to get excited for U.S. elections. For a lot of progressives and leftists, the United States represents the biggest imperialist threat to real progress around the world, a role the country has had since the start of the Cold War.

I was at a city hall meeting in Beaverton, Oregon, the other day when a few questions I had for the presenters dropped jaws. We’ll get to that later, the jaw-dropping effect I and those of my ilk have when we end up in the controlled boardrooms and chambers of the controllers – bureaucrats, public-private clubs like Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, and both political operatives and those who liken themselves as the great planners of the world moving communities and housing and public commons around a giant chessboard to make things better for and more efficient in spite of us.