lumpen 91 part 3

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I work for an NGO in Brazil. I submitted a proposal to the World Bank Devel-opment Marketplace last summer and it was selected as a finalist. To my surprise,I was given free roundtrip airfare and lodging to Washington D.C. for the fir s tweek in December.

I have never been much of a fan of the World Bank, or any of the Breton Wo o d sinstitutions. I’ve lived in Brazil for 8 years and see the damage that the Wo r l dBank and IMF caused through their forced economic restructuring which gaveBrazil the world’s highest interest rates and keeps the mi ni mum wage flu c t u a t i n gbetween $70 and $90/month. I felt like a hypocrite, but I went because I wantedto get funding for the cooperative and it’s hard to turn down a free airline ticketback to the states. Anyway, I told myself, it would be interesting to see how thingswork inside the belly of the beast.

The Development Marketplace is a competition that happens every two years.The Bank awards several million dollars to around 50 innovative social projects.It is basically an event to make the Bank feel good about itself, despite that factthat it has fucked over most of the world in the last 30 years. This year’s themewas “making services work for the poor”. 200 finalists were selected, and we allset up booths in the lobby of the Bank. The Bank’s development marketplace sta f fare all young people, mainly women - beautiful, intelligent women from placeslike India and Kenya. As one woman showed me to my display area I asked herwhy she worked here.

“Because I don’t trust governments. In my country the politicians stole all the moneythey got for social projects, and this program gives money directly to the people.”

“Do you really believe this?” I asked.

“Of course. That’s why I work here.”

The lobby filled up with finalists and visitors. My NGO sent a guy down fromCanada to back me up. I strolled around looking at other projects. There were alot of interesting people from around the world. One project was designed to pre-vent farmers from slaughtering Elephants in Zimbabwe. Apparently, Elephantslike to trample farmer’s crops. This project proposed to encourage farmers to sur-round their crops with hot pepper bushes and help them market hot sauce to theEuropean Common Market. Apparently elephants don’t like hot pepper, and itkeeps them out of the fields. Another project involved training rats to detect landmines – killing two birds with one stone.

Lunch was fantastic. The World Bank cafeteria has food stations from di f f e r e n tregions around the world. Internet stations were set up around the lobby for us.I sat at a computer next to a French woman who was wearing a blue Philipinopeasant blouse. “You know,” I said, “I wanted to write an article ripping the Wo r l dBank based on my experience here, but I am having a good time.”

“ Ye s ,” she answered, “Zey are buying your soul.”

Over the course of the three day event, I made friends with a Turkish engineerwho had designed earthquake resistant housing for the poor, a pretty Lebanesewoman who was leaving the NGO field to work for a big tobacco company, anda charming, Oxford educated Pa l e s t i nian who was trying to get funding for edu-cation initiatives in refugee camps.

Two panels of judges were scheduled to visit my stand. The first panel was sup-posed to ask basic questions like ‘where is your project located’ etc, and the sec-ond panel was supposed to ask the hard, technical questions. I spent the ni g h tbefore judging day being grilled by my Canadian coworker and figured out howto work the phrase “free rider constraints” into my spiel.

The hard, technical judge looked like a typical business executive, his amplebelly sticking out from his open Brooks Brothers’ suit.

“ S o ,” he said, “it says here that there are 50,000 people living in this nei g h b o r-hood, right?”

“ Yes, that is correct.”

“ Well. Where did they all come from?”

I tried to steer the subject towards the viability of the project, pointing out thatwe had a signed affidavit from the ci t y ’s largest paper company pledging to buyall the pressed paper and cardboard collected by the cooperative.

He said, “Well I can’t read that. I don’t speak Spani s h .”

You would think that a judge for an international, mu l t i - million dollar competi-tion would at least know what language is spoken in the world’s fifth largest coun-t r y. He seemed annoyed when I corrected him.

James Wolfensohn, the president of the bank, came by my booth and told me hethought the project was excellent. I found it hard to dislike the guy. He is a 70year old Australian Jew who used to be a champion fencer and enjoys playing thecello. He made a point of going up to my Pa l e s t i nian friend and telling him howmuch he respects Yassir Arafat.

Queen Narr from Jordan come by and spent half an hour chatting with theLebanese woman.

On the final day we gathered in the atrium for the awards ceremony. Wo l f e n-sohn, who I now affectionately referred to as the Wolf Man, was 20 mi nutes late.F i n a l l y, he came up to the microphone, dressed in slacks and a sweater.

“I hate it when people are late,” he said, “and I apologize. But I have two goodexcuses for my ta r diness. First, I was on the phone. I made a few calls and raisedanother $2 million dollars for you guys.” Applause. “Secondly, I am late becauseI spent the morning jamming with Bono and Yo - Yo Ma -I am going to get on sta g ewith them toni g h t .” More applause. They started giving out the awards and I real-ized I wasn’t going to win. Granted, many of the projects were better than mi n e .You can’t, for example, complain about projects helping AIDS orphans or detect-ing land mines. But there were a lot of crappy projects that got selected too.

I was happy to see that my Turkish friend was awarded over $100,000 for his archi-tecture project. Later he told me, “I was happy to get the award but I was so sadto be sta n ding up there, waiting for you to join me, and see that you didn’t win”.

That night, a group of us went out drinking in Dupont Circle to drown our sor-r ows/congratulate the winners. A couple white Africans were under the impres-sion that Jim Beam was a good whiskey, so I turned them on to Wild Tu r k e y.Then it started to snow. They had never seen snow before and ran outside for apathetic tiny snowball fight. I sat inside with the others. The Pa l e s t i nian went offon how I didn’t know how to dress.

“Americans can’t dress”, he said, “look at those shoes, you cheeky basta r d .” ThenI opened up my shirt, revealing an Al Capone T-Shirt I bought on Maxwell Street.

“Oh my God”, he said, “you have to give me that. I love it.”

“ Wait a second. First you’re telling me Americans don’t know how to dress, nowyou are begging me for an article of my clothing?”

“Ok, Ok, I take it back, but you must give me that T- s h i r t .”

At that moment, the Africans and an Indian guy decided to go to the strip clubnext door. They even invited the women who were with us, which the Pa l e s t i n-ian and I thought to be unclassy. We decided to stay with the women. A few mi n-utes later the white Africans returned and told us that our friend Khalid had justbeen arrested. Apparently the bouncer at the strip club didn’t want to let themin. When they complained, he called over to a group of police officers who weres ta n ding on the sidewalk and, completely ignoring the white guys, they piled onthe middle easterner, slamming his head on the sidewalk, cuffing him and arrest-ing him for no apparent reason.

“ We l l ,” I said, “we got to go bail him out.” Everyone was afraid. “Yo u ’re Ameri-c a n ,” I said to one guy, ” let’s go.”

“I can’t, he said, “I’m Irani a n - A m e r i c a n .” Finally, one of the Africans, who wasalso an English citizen, agreed to go with me.

“After all,” he said, “Tony Blair is a fascist bastard. They probably appreciate that.”After three hours of threatening, pleading, arguing with the police, and almostgetting arrested they finally released our friend. We arrived back at the hotel at 3am, and everyone was in the lobby waiting for us. After hearing everyone saythings like, “I can’t believe it. This would never happen in Lebanon,” one guysaid, “you know, this is my first time in the United States. I never really had ano p i nion either way about it. You see good and bad things about it in the news,you know. But after tonight, I really hate this place.”

Tales from the World Bank Brian Mier

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Anyone working a job at the low end of the service/retail industry ladder - fromshoe fitters to coffee bar attendants to cashiers and price checkers and producestockers - can probably relate to Adrian’s irritated thoughts about her job at ad ow n t own Chicago bookstore. The numbers, too, are growing; an increasingarmy of folks have doted on customers or filled up the shelves at some point, orp oints, in their working lives. Predatory big box chains hawking books, mu s i c ,groceries, building supplies, tools, clothing - the detritus and wares of our con-sumer economy - exploded during the 1990s, theoretically offering a bevy of newemployment and jobs. Turnover in the retail world, as many of us know fir s t -hand, is high; these jobs offer low wages, and only occasionally do they offer anybenefits. And whatever the management-theory-speak currently in vogue aboutemployee empowerment, the “team concept,” and work-group autonomy, pow e ron the job remains concentrated in management. Being an “at-will” employeemeans you can be fired at any time, for any reason, with little or no recourse.

And what about those all-powerful, all-knowing managers, Adrian? “They wouldtrain us to be belligerent with the customers. Reiterate sales points, press them untilthey say yes or no. It’s like preschool. We get these little exercise sheets called ‘skillb u i l d e r s .’ You miss a sales qu o ta and you have to do exercises with the manager.”

“It’s very patronizing.”

The question is: does it have to be?

The answer, in short: No. If a number of recent retail union organizing drivesare representative of a broader mix of retail workers, a trend might be in the off-ing for a lot more workers to ask the above question and act on it by starting thearduous process of organizing a union at work.

Arduous, by the way, might be too weak an adjective to describe what workers, reta i lor otherwise, go through to organize a union on the job. The legal framework foru nion organizing is at a low ebb because of bureaucratic management by govern-ment agencies allegedly neutral in their supervision of the organizing process. Andt h a t ’s not even factoring in employer resistance. Workers starting new campaignsoften face harassment, surveillance, arbitrary di s cipline, firings, and more.

During a standard organizing drive, after thirty percent of workers have signedu nion authorization cards, a petition for an election can be filed with the Nation-al Labor Relations Board, which will then set a date for voting by secret ballot.Majority wins. In the meantime, it’s company versus union at work, at home,through the mail, by phone. Any number of legal, political and bureaucraticdelays can and will complicate the process, but those are the basic contours. Itcan be petty. As related by a poster to bordersunion.com (a website started byB o r d e r ’s workers), one tactic management tried at an Ann Arbor store when fac-ing an organizing drive was “alienating the cafe from the rest of the group. Theylater began doing this by first telling everyone in the cafe they couldn’t accepttips because the rest of the staff didn’t think it fair.” The other store employeesresponded with a petition for the cafe workers to get their tips back. They did.

It can get pretty ugly. H&M, purveyor of hip clothing for the cheap-fashion set, isb u r ning through the whole handbook of methods of intimidation, endless anti-uni o nharanguing and spy-tactics after its mostly Latino immigrant workers at the di s t r i-bution center in New Jersey started organizing with UNITE. The Swedish compa-ny recognizes the right of workers to organize at home and throughout uni o n - f r i e n d-ly Western Europe, but obviously is quickly picking up a new set of rules sta t e s i d e .

Even winning a Labor Board election doesn’t guarantee a union contract. Cor-porations continue fighting the union after employees have voted to organize bystonewalling and using attrition, turnover and harassment to keep the uni o nfrom establishing itself. A recent retail example: grocery clerks at the WholeFoods Market in Madison, WI voted to organize, defied whole teams of corpo-rate execs flown in for intimidation, and built commu nity support- but could notforce the company into a contract. In November of last year, after seventeenmonths of stonewalling, Whole Foods Market unilaterally announced that itwould “no longer recognize” the union. The CEO of Whole Foods, by the way,compares unions to herpes.

Chris Conry, an organizer for Local 789 of the United Food and CommercialWorkers in Minneapolis, offered a few thoughts on the process. Local 789 is cur-rently organizing workers at Target and Border’s in Minnesota, among othercampaigns, building the committees and links for unions and contracts at bothcompanies.

“ O r g a nizing is about pow e r. You win when you have more power than the otherguy. With much of mainstream retail being owned by fewer and fewer peopleyou need more and more power to win anything,” Chris wrote. “In terms of tra-ditional labor organizing (i.e., shooting to get a collective bargaining agreement),organizing Wal-Mart is not like organizing the corner grocery store. Goliath isbigger than he’s ever been.”

W h a t ’s the first step in the organizing drive then, especially with Goliath breath-ing down workers’ necks?

“Step number one is conversation. You have to say the words using your mouthto another person, in person. You have to get to know your co-workers. It startsin conversation.” And questions. Lots of questions. What do you think of yourjob? What’s a typical day like? What are the issues? What about the pay? Are thehours arbitrary? Benefits accessible? Boss bugging you?

One place where conversation became organization was Ann Arbor Border’s #1,the flagship store of the entire chain. Workers there voted 51 to 4 on December6th of 2002 to sign up with the Food and Commercial Workers. After months ofgnawing away at the store’s workers through illegal firings and fruitless negotia-tions at the bargaining table led by Jackson Lewis, one of the biggest uni o n - b u s t-ing (or, in their words, “union avoi di n g ” ) l aw firms in the country, nineteen work-ers struck in November of last year. On December 30th, they voted 20 to 12 toapprove their first contract. The deal raised the base pay for new hires and work-ers are no longer at-will employees - modest gains, sure, but the victory hastremendous import for the next round of retail organizing. Wal-Mart, Borders,Barnes and Noble, Target, Home Depot, Starbucks and the rest of the pantheonof corporate America are targets - organizing targets. For all the other critiquesof these companies, the basic equation of worker-management relations at theirstores might be the crux to put them on their heels.

Chris Conry, one more time: “Organizing is about power and it’s about policyeventually. You need to have a direction and a vision of what you want, but pro-grams don’t succeed without people that are pissed off.”

It’s about time, then, to get pissed.

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online w w w. yo u a r e wo rt h m o r e . o r g // w w w. b o r d e r s u n i o n . c o m // w w w. w h o l e wo r k e r s u n i t e . o r g // w w w. t a r g e t u n i o n . c o m // w w w. r e t a i l wo r k e r. o r g

offline UFCW // JWJ // IWW // Vermont Workers’ Center // UE

Retail Revolt? Mica and Al

As a seasonal temp for the holidays, I made $7.00 per hour. Now I’m in a per-manent part-time postion. I still make $7.00 per hour. No benefits. The onlytime I get overtime is when I work on the holidays.

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Tell us a little about the project.

Folks will be able to click on a map and see all of the events around issues thatinterest them in an area. Folks will be able to volunteer their car and driving serv-ices to their favorite candidates on election day to ensure voters make it to thepolls. The idea is to shift the edge from cash flow to resource flow, and then makesure the resources indeed flow.

But the major idea of the League is that people who’ve never voted before, evenshunned voting, will be able to add electoral organizing to their lives through thework we do. We aren’t just telling people to vote but telling folks to tap in to pow e r ,that this power is accessible and belongs to them already; it’s just time to use it.

With the Nader campaign in 2000, there was a huge surge in interest in inde-pendent candidates and third parties, which seemed effectively put to rest bysubsequent events. How would you define an Independent Voter in 2004?

The independent voter is always someone who is voting for what’s best for them-selves and their community, not according to party but according to principles,values and strategy for what will sustain them and their community. But to beclear, we are not associated with an ‘independent’ party, but rather with the ideaof independence in power and decision making.

T his seems like a great way to get people empowered to roll back the far-rightagenda that is dominating our economic and foreign policy, and to be informedand active locally. At the end of the day, though, especially at the Fe d e r a llevel, that means driving more votes toward the Democratic Pa r t y. This is,perhaps appropriately, a complete reversal from the progressive strategy ofthe last election. How do we keep the Dems accountable?

We keep Democrats accountable by tracking their constituency and show i n gthem what a large truly progressive base is out there, to whom they need to bea c c o u n table. And I think its crucial to look seriously at folks like w w w. w e c o u n t . o r gwho are talking about progrssive coalition building between Dems and otherprogressive bodies such as the Greens. Making conscious decisions about thePresidential Administration, who should strategically run where, stop steppingon each other’s toes and fighting for constituency but rather building on the ideathat we are stronger when we really respond to what the people want—the Demsand the Greens for example in the last election could have had a more pro-gressive outcome at the Federal and Local level. Instead the presidential elec-tion left a massive rift between the parties—everyone’s casting blame at every-one else instead of recognizing that there was no strategy there, no sense thatthere are many levels of engagement but right now there are really only twoschools: conservative, progressive. The Pe n tagon released a report this week thatwar over basic resources will be our number one security threat in 2020 due tothe environmental decisions of this administration. We have to present a unitedprogressive front to the conservative onslaught NOW or we will not have enoughtime to recover. We should be seriously talking about electoral reforms like Insta n tRoll-off Voting as well that help us pool our power without sacrificing our rightto choose the candidate who speaks to our truest intentions for policy.

There is a lot of concern this time around about the Federal election beinghanded to Bush anyway, whether by 2000 methods or the convenient “mal-functioning” of Diebold voting machines. In the case that great numbers ofpeople are mobilized to stop Bush and the Republicans, where does the strat-egy go when and if such a thing occurs? Will people lose interest or will therebe more of them to make more noise this time around?

If people aren’t involved beyond the powerless feeling of individual voting tobegin with then yeah, I think people do lose interest and feel it’s all poi n t l e s s .T h a t ’s why we’re saying we have to move in blocks, en masse, we have to be seri-ously engaged. We can’t complain that the country’s going to shit when we aren’twilling to do anything about it, and the admi nistration knows that, they knowit’s just complaining and we can’t stop them because we aren’t organized top tobottom. It goes against the leftist nature to have that hierarchal militant organi-zation to their work, historically. Well its time for that and that’s hard to do with-out a strict doctrine, we’re so used to being the disheveled stylish underdog andwe have to let that go. What matters more—being able to say you never evercompromised on anything or getting to hold a child in your arms who will notbe jobless, fighting peers for water? Already we are more organized as a body, weare already realizing how crucial our prioritization is in the long run, so pro-gressives are all over the voting machine issue, all over web-organizing, crisismanagement—cause what happened in Florida was a crisis and we had noresponse mechanism—we are thinking as hard as we can about how to reallyrock the power structure so it rolls in our favor this time.

How do you see local campaigns and voting blocks forming? How does thei n t e r n e t ’s potential for networking over large areas translate to neighborhoods?

Well the League has an affiliate structure so that folks operating on their ow ncan tap in and learn how to organize a group, lead a group, have a collective—whichever model works best—and then how to identify crucial commu ni t y - w i d eissues to focus on for voting blocks. The internet is a marvelous resource, butonly as we’re able to combine it’s reach with the methods of outreach and com-mu nity building that pre-date computers—person to person contact builds trust,not black words on a white page. But what we’re doing is organic; the sameprocesses that make people become friends and roll to parties together is theprocess we’re tapping to put people on the path to power.

I think its important to realize that stuff is already happening at the local levelin so many places but often folks don’t know what all is happening, we want toexpose the reality of the progressive world. The league is not a colonial organi-zation, it’s not about everyone making a league chapter everywhere. It’s aboutchanging the way everyone interacts with the electoral world. We want folks torealize across the country that they could reach out and touch change, the wallthat they see between them and the jobs, education, healthcare and foreign pol-icy they want is not made of cement and brick but of ideas and debate and pol-icy and words and it can be impacted, shifted and completely broken down ifi t ’s hit the right way. And we know that special touch, we’ve gathered the suc-cess stories from the masters—the normal people who are all self-made mas-ters—and that’s the book, that’s integral to this whole game: How to Get StupidWhite Men Out of Offic e comes out in March. If you’re serious about doing thiswith us, go sign up at www.indyvoter.org.

The League of Independent Votersinterviewed by Dakota Brown

The full launch of Indyvoter.org later this month will provide a new tool for educating and organizing on all kinds of important

election issues from your local school board and city council to the presidential race. Combining the utility of evites and mes-

sage boards with Fr i e n d s t e r and M e e t u p-like functionalities, Indyvoter works to encourage opportunities to “build, meet, party,

share information, and share resources.” Lumpen spoke with Adrienne Brown of The League of Independent Voters to talk

about progressive voting strategies for the presidential elections and beyond.

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Unmasking U.S. Empire Inc.

“If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that anempire can rise without his aid?” This was Benjamin Fr a n k l i n ’s argument to theConstitutional Convention of 1787 that each day ’s session should begin with aprayer. Franklin lost the debate but his quote made it into the history books.

Fr a n k l i n ’s quote surfaced again late last year in an unexpected place—Vice Presi-dent Dick Cheney’s Christmas card. NY Ti m e s correspondent Elisabeth Bumi l l e rwrote that the quote was suddenly apt due to the controversy that had surroundedone of Cheney’s canned pheasant shoots. Ironi c a l l y, neither she nor anyone else inthe mainstream media addressed the real signi ficance of the quote that neoCongodfather Dick Cheney was boasting about the Bush admi nistrations imperial inten-tions on his Christmas card. Sure, we knew they were pompous and over confid e n tbut talking about empire on their Christmas cards—isn’t that just a bit ta c k y ! ?

Over the last century of American expansion the United States has invaded count-less countries. The rhetoric may have varied but in general the reasons have beenthe same—access to resources and markets, expanded mi l i tary control and eco-n o mic domination. In other words the pursuit of empire. A century ago, riding onthe coat tails of manifest destiny and the openly imperialistic Spani s h - A m e r i c a nwar, the U.S. government was very overt about empire, but as the 20th centuryprogressed the world’s would-be rulers got better PR advice and began sugar coat-ing their imperial pursuits with euphemisms and rhetoric. The Great game of con-quest and control has been given many names: the war against commu nism, theNew World Order, the responsibilities of being the sole super power, the war againstdrugs and of course the current favorite—the war against terrorism.

But now something strange is happening. Increasingly the word “empire” is yetagain entering the U.S. political lexicon, appearing in newspaper headlines,book titles and Pentagon briefings. The Neocon propaganda campaign of fearmongering and saber rattling is pushing its story of America the reluctant empire.This is no surprise when we examine how heavily the Bush admi nistration is

shaped by a small cartel of American supremacists from the Project for the NewAmerican Century and the American Enterprise Institute. These power hold-ers—Cheney, Rumsfield, Wolfowitz, Pearle, Eliot Abrahams , Jeb Bush—havemade clear their belief in a 21rst century manifest destiny of American militaryand economic domination of the planet.

The basis of this campaign to promote the American empire is rooted in peo-ple’s sense of security. Bush exploited the tragedy of 9-11 to justify the pre-stat-ed imperial plans. His efforts to undermine and ignore the U.N. are an effort toconvince a shocked, frightened and historically colloquial American public thattheir only protection against terror is the projection of American might aroundthe world. With their framing the tragedy of 9-11 has become the origin mythof the new American empire—where the only way for America to be “safe” is toproject military power around the world.

Already there is an U.S. mi l i tary presence in over 150 countries around theworld—from fighting “terrorists” in the Philippines to protecting U.S. oil instal-lations in Colombia. At the same time the war at home is escalating—from mil-i tarizing the police and undermi ning civil liberties, to racist scapegoating ofimmigrants to slashing social spending to pay for war and occupation.

This is a critical time for the peace and justice movement in the U.S. Millionsof Americans are qu e s t i o ning the Bush admi ni s t r a t i o n ’s motivations for the Iraqinvasion and ongoing occupation. As the weapons of mass destruction excuse getsabandoned and there is still no evidence of links between Saddam Hussein and9-11, more and more people are realizing they were lied to. Meanwhile, as U. S .and Iraqi casualties mount and the occupation’s billion dollar a week price ta gthreatens cross-sector budget cuts, Bush’s corporate cronies are making mi l l i o n sprivatizing occupied Iraq. The time has never been better for us to explain thatyou can’t understand U.S. foreign policy without using the words “oil” and “empire.”Iraq is the perfect case study of how corporate globalization and U.S. mi l i ta r i s mare working hand in hand to create a deeply unstable and undemocratic world.

Democracy - a political system based on dignity and freedom in which the peo-ple rule; a vision of people having control over the basic issues that affect theirlives from political decisions to economic factors to the state of the world wehand off to our children.

Empire -a system of global control (accelerated by the Bush administration)combining 1) U.S. military dominance 2) globalized corporate power 3) regres-sive domestic policies that undermine civil liberties, promote fear and racialscapegoating while transferring wealth from the majority of working Americansto large corporations and the wealthy.

Beyond Voting: Building a Real Democracy in the Age of Empire

Patrick Reinsborough

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Beyond Anyone But Bush to Defining The Un-Bush

George Bush’s policies of empire-building and permanent war have helpedturned him into one of the most hated and feared men in history. His policieshave been a naked attack on workers, communities of color, the environment,international law, democracy and the basic human rights of people around theworld. A massive ground swell of grassroots activism is growing to challenge hisbid for re-election.

In this context we enter the 2004 presidential election cycle—the grand specta-cle at the heart of America’s watered-down Democracy-Lite. Unfortunately regard-less of who the Democrats nominate (at this point its looking like Kerry) their cri-t i ques of the Iraq invasion will not challenge the fundamental frame of Ameri-can imperial pow e r. At best a Democrat president will return America to a Clin-t o nian neoliberalism of unchecked corporate globalization and excessive mi l i-tary power legitimized by international rubber stamping. Those who do vote andget past the personality driven “image politics” of presidential races will be givena choice between Bush’s Neoconservative American empire and the Democrat’sneoliberal Global Corporate State. Certainly there are relevant differences butultimately both fall into the same theme of elite domination of the planet’s resourcesat the expense of local commu nities, ecosystems and future generations.

So what are concerned people to do? Clearly Bush is the more immediate threatand we need to prioritize ending his electoral coup. But how can we do so with-out just becoming dupes of the Democrats? How can we build a real grassrootsdemocracy movement in the United States that contests the imperial agenda ofwar, corporate control, racism and internal repression?

Due to the fear that Bush has engendered among many liberals and progres-sives, 2004 is probably not the year for Democrat bashing or deep critiques ofthe ideology of representative democracy. However, we can be creative aboutt u r ning a crisis like George Bush into an opportunity to expose the system’s impe-rial logic and Define the Un-Bush. Bush has ripped the veil off the empire andgiven us a chance to expose what his administration real agenda. If we can suc-cessfully articulate appealing alternatives we can either forces the Democrats topay lip service to fundamental social change or leap-frog over their complicityand apologism. This requires building a grassroots mandate to assert democrat-ic rights inside the U.S. and roll back the imperial framework of U.S. militaryand economic domination of the planet. This mandate can be used either tohold a Democrat president accountable for a policy U-turn or in the case of aBush victory, to have undermined his legitimacy such that there is a massivebase in the U.S. for campaigns of mass non-cooperation.

Democracy is More than Just Voting

At the center of America’s political malaise is the myth that voting equals democracy.

Electoral politics monopolizes the political imagination of mainstream Ameri-can culture. Elections are the frame through which Americans are encouragedto direct our political attention span. Thus we get a politics of perception wherepersonality is emphasized over policy and rhetoric trumps real equations forchange. This ethos shapes each election cycle, as candidates jockey for moralauthority over their adversaries, and position their political agenda to co-opt thevalues of strategic constituencies. Meanwhile the big money spectacle masksthe mis-framing of important issues by both the candidates.

The time has come for a clear grassroots action and media campaign to exposethe truth: America is NOT a democracy. Regardless of whether people acceptthe awful truth that America was NEVER a democracy , Bush’s policies are mak-ing more and more people realize the America cannot be both an empire anda democracy.

What if people from all walks of life were to unite to run a simple idea campaigncontrasting the difference between an empire and the potential for a truly dem-ocratic society? To do so we must show that there is more to democracy than justvoting. We need a campaign that can frame democracy—not as a choice between2 political parties that despite some significant differences have a great deal incommon—but rather as the power and responsibility of local commu nities toorganize for control of their own destiny.

The opportunity and challenge over the next year is to proactively define democ-r a c y. What does democracy look like in our commu nities? In our daily lives?What does it mean to those who think we had, it to lose it? What does it meanto those who know we never had it, to create it? We must begin by showing peo-ple the truth that America is becoming less and less of a democracy and that itsup to “We the People” to build a real democracy from the ground up. We musthelp people recognize that we must not only vote at the ballot box but we mustvote with our voices, our time and our feet as we educate, organize, and march.We must vote with our hands as we build sustainable community alternatives,and vote with our imaginations as we show that a better world is not only possi-ble but that it is our responsibility to create it.

The People’s Primary the Beyond Voting Campaign

One innovative effort that is trying to address this issue is the Beyond Vo t i n gcampaign which was launched in mi d - J a nuary in the lead up to New Hamp-s h i r e ’s Primary. The campaign kick off began at an event called the Pe o p l e ’s Pri-mary ( w w w. p e o p l e s p r i m a r y. o r g ) which brought 150 organizers from student,peace and justice, environmental and pro-democracy networks representing over30 local, regional, and national organizations together to share skills and strate-gize about how to confront the empire. The People’s Primary culminated in amarch through the town of Concord, NH which visited each of the candidate’scampaign headquarters and ended at the Bush campaign office. At each stopthey made it clear that the world says no to empire and that Americans demanda real democracy. Then at high noon they converged at New Hampshire’s repli-ca of the Liberty Bell and with a combination of sleigh bells, pots & pans, andpledges to organize locally against empire, kicked off a year of action to go BeyondVoting in order to build a real democracy.

The idea of a Beyond Voting/Reject empire campaign is to create an over arch-ing narrative of democracy versus empire which can act as an umbrella to uniteand magnify our diverse voices of opposition and demands for real change. Theintention is to create a political space for different movements to unite. Natu-rally the organizing work may look different in different communities but as theZ a p a t i s tas have eloquently shown us uniting around a single “No!” doesn’t com-promise our diversity of a thousand different “Yeses!”

The idea of a Beyond Voting campaign has now been endorsed by San Fr a n-cisco’s anti-war coalition Direct Action to Stop the War and a number of othergroups around the country.

There is a growing crisis of confidence in the American electoral system. Whetherit’s big money’s undue political influence, the two party monopoly, the blatantcorruption of Florida 2000, or concerns around the Diebold touch screen vot-ing machines, many people are uni quely open to deeper messages about sys-temic flaws in the U.S. political process. What better way to channel this grow-ing frustration than by mobilizing people to go beyond merely voting to build-ing a grassroots movement for real democracy.

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The day after the Election: Super Wednesday!

One of the big lessons from the anti-war actions was the power of the “psychicbreak”. A mass psychic break is a point where you can predict a significant per-c e n tage of society is going to have their basic assumptions about the system chal-lenged by events. This was one of the core organizing principles of SF-basedDirect Action to Stop the War’s (DASW) “Day After” action to respond to theinvasion of Iraq with mass civil disobedience to shut down the financial district.By publicizing an opportunity for meaningful action at a moment of predi c ta b l emass psychic break—the beginning of an illegal pre-emptive invasion—DASWgot 20,000 people—who might otherwise have been home alone yelling at thei rtelevisions—to join them in the streets.

The attempted election of George Bush is one of the next easily predi c table masspsychic breaks in America. If Bush “wins” again, a sizable number of people willfeel as though the system has failed, there has been another right wing coup andthat justice cannot be served through the ballot box. Thus the Beyond Vo t i n gcampaign is calling for people to organize events for “Super We d n e s d a y ” —November 3rd the day after the election.

In the context of the growing concerns about electoral corruption there exists areal potential for a Beyond Voting Mobilization to capture the imagination of acritical mass of the electorate. By mobilizing the day after the election we areopening up a new political space to define democracy as grassroots and partici-patory in direct contrast to the framework of empire. The mobilization couldprovide an umbrella for a wide range of events. Different commu nities will organ-ize differently but some ideas could include showcasing more democratic mod-els of commu nity engagement like Latin American style popular assemblies,educational events, community festivals, street parties or actions against corpo-rate criminals.

By framing itself as commu nity based expressions of a true democracy, the mobi-lization can easily adapt to the political circumstances and provide an immedi-ate response to whoever “wins” the election. If Bush “wins” the election, mi l-lions of people around this country will be filled with shock, rage, and perhapsd e s p a i r. Super Wednesday could be a vehicle to harness massive outrage andchannel it into proactive organizing for a better world. If there is electoral frauda-la-Florida in 2000, a Day After mobilization would lay the groundwork for agrassroots response that is unbeholden to the Democratic Party machine andtherefore can’t be called off like the protests in Florida 2000.

And if a Democrat does succeed in beating Bush, the November 3rd mobiliza-tion will be a massive outpouring of grassroots democracy, to show that democ-racy is more than just voting. We need to organize to claim the un-election ofBush not just as a symbolic handing of power to the Democrats but as a true vic-tory for the global grassroots. Defeating Bush is just the first step towards stoppingthe war, challenging corporate rule, healing the planet, and taking a U-turn aw a yfrom Empire and towards a free society of di g nity and direct democracy.

Ending the Age of Empires

It is clear is that global civilization is on the brink of dramatic changes. Theseare times of both urgent crisis and great opportunity. The Bush administration’sp o l i cies have brought wide spread public attention to systemic problems withimperial (super)power, the global economy and U.S. domestic policies. A cre-ative “Beyond Voting” campaign that integrates organizing, action and medi astrategies in order to successfully inject new ideas into the election year politi-cal discussion could have a massive impact on the future of American politics.This type of campaign will supplement efforts for electoral change by linkingand strengthening grassroots movements for democratic change. Ultimately thiswork can help re-define democracy within its historical context of grassrootsstruggle and help people see beyond the limiting monopoly which our currentflawed electoral system has on the American political imagination.

A slogan from the first Rio Earth Summit in 1992 re-emerged at the 10th anni v e r-sary follow-up held in 2002 in Johannesburg: “What Are We Going to Do aboutthe United States?” Given the massive levels of consumption, the tendencyt owards violent unilateralism, and the increasing withdrawal of the U.S. gov-ernment from international law and mechanisms for accountability, this ques-tion helps frame the global crisis. The world is anxiously awaiting social move-ments within the U.S. to stand up for our democratic traditions and to demon-strate our solidarity with a hopeful, just, peaceful, ecological sane future bydemanding fundamental change. By framing the issues that America faces as aclear choice between empire and democracy, we can take a step towards thelong term goal of building a powerful U.S. wing of the global democracy move-ments that are standing up against empire.

In times of crisis, we have an obligation to act creatively to address the issues thataffect us all. What could be a more important unifying issue than the lack ofdemocracy in the most powerful rogue nation on the planet? Together we mustthink big, because our times demand it. Together we can help history turn a cor-ner and put to rest the age of empires once and for all.

Patrick Reinsborough is the co-founder of the smartMeme Strategy and TrainingProject. (www.smartmeme.com) If you are interested in helping to make the BeyondVoting/Reject Empire campaign a reality contact smartMeme at 415-255-9133 orsmartmeme@riseup.net.