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anti war
It Isn’t ‘The System’ That’s Holding Visionary Activists Back From the World We Want
A new book by Mark Satin—Up From Socialism: My 60-Year Search for a Healing New Radical Politics—makes a powerful case that the real answer lies within.
Nov 10, 2024
As administrator of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, I have spent decades trying to usher visionary, regenerative, and decentralist ideas into the American body politic. So have many of my counterparts in organizations across the country. But sometimes I think we’re no closer to making a difference on a national scale now than we were in the 1970s. What is holding us back?
The usual answers are “capitalism” and the two-party system. But the more experience I’ve gained, the more I’ve come to believe that those are just excuses, and the real answer lies elsewhere.
Mark Satin’s new book—Up From Socialism: My 60-Year Search for a Healing New Radical Politics—makes a powerful case that the real answer lies within: We visionary activists have been so internally divided, and so driven by ego and unexamined personal pain, that we’ve never been able to harness the life-giving ideas of people like Jane Jacobs, Ivan Illich, Hazel Henderson, David Korten, Kate Raworth, and E.F. Schumacher himself (all of whom turn up in Satin’s book) to a viable national political organization.
The last page reveals the “moral” of the book: “Only by becoming kind people can we create a kind world.”
Satin’s book reads like a novel, and it is admirably, some may say shockingly, specific. It spends a lot of time on activists’ parental, collegial, and love relationships, not just on their political organizing. And Satin finds all of it wanting. (He is as tough on himself as he is on anyone, which gives the book a feeling of heartache rather than blame. And there is redemption at the end!)
To stick to the political organizing—the first part of the book tries to demonstrate that the New Left of the 60s was an inadequate vehicle for us. Satin shows in devastating detail that the leading members of his Mississippi Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee group were more interested in Black nationalism than in integrating the local schools. He shows that the older student leaders of his campus Students for a Democratic Society group were more interested in promoting socialism than in listening to the emerging ecological, decentralist, and humanistic-psychology ideas of younger students. And he shows that the leaders of the Toronto Anti-Draft Program (North America’s largest draft-resister assistance organization) were more interested in fomenting a Marxist revolution than in providing practical help to the resisters.
According to Satin, these and similar experiences led to the collapse of the New Left—and to the rise of thousands of independent feminist, ecological, spiritual, appropriate-technology, etc. organizations. In addition, two visionary organizations arose that aimed to synthesize such ideas and bring them into national politics.
The first of these, the New World Alliance, drew its Governing Council from a wide range of professionals, educators, businesspeople, and activists. It included three future Schumacher Society participants, Alanna Hartzok, John McClaughry, and Kirkpatrick Sale. But it fell apart after four years of constant bickering over policies, processes, and fundraising, often caused (Satin seeks to show) largely by personal jealousies and rivalries. At one point, spiritually oriented Planetary Citizens president Donald Keys accused McClaughry of being in league with the Devil! Some of the scenes in this chapter are so tragicomic that they’d work as skits on Saturday Night Live.
The chapter on the U.S. Green Party movement, though, is pure tragedy. By the mid-1980s, America was yearning for a major third party. Amazingly well-connected people were waiting in the wings to help the Greens get off the ground. But, instead, the principal organizers of the Greens—a spiritual feminist, an anarchist, a socialist, and two bioregionalists—created an organization in their own narrow image. As Satin sees it, this was a classic case of the organizers and their cohorts preferring to be big fish in a small pond. The resulting Green “movement” then engaged in phenomenally ugly infighting over the next decade—what happened to three Green women is truly sickening to read—and the Greens emerged in the end not as a major beyond-left-and-right political party capable of spearheading a regenerative economy and culture, but as a minor far-left protest party.
In more recent years, Satin found hope in what he calls the “radical centrist” or “trasnspartisan” movement—people and groups that are more interested in fostering cross-partisan political dialogue than in providing Correct Answers. He felt this would be an excellent way to insert the views of visionary thinkers into the national dialogue—and to win support for all kinds of local and regional experimentation. But he notes that the track record of radical-centrist groups like New America and No Labels has so far been disappointing. They’re as internally divided as the Greens and a lot snootier. What Satin really wants, he confides to us, is a new political movement of committed listeners, bold beyond-left-and-right synthesizers, and savvy organizers.
A powerful conclusion urges visionary activists to live more like ordinary Americans, in order to decrease arrogance and deepen understanding. The last page reveals the “moral” of the book: “Only by becoming kind people can we create a kind world.”
When E.F. Schumacher wrote his famous book Small Is Beautiful, he entitled his chapter about political economy “Buddhist Economics.” Later he must have had second thoughts about characterizing his ideas in such an oppositional way, for his later book, A Guide for the Perplexed, makes it clear that his ideas are consistent with the beliefs of all the great religions, including of course Christianity. When Satin argues that we visionary activists cannot move forward unless we (a). learn to be kind to self and others, and (b). listen to and learn from all engaged Americans, he is following in Schumacher’s footsteps. We should listen to him.
Mark Satin, Up From Socialism: My 60-Year Search for a Healing New Radical Politics (New York: Bombardier Books, distributed by Simon & Schuster, 2023), 380 pages, $21.95 pbk, $12.95 eBook.
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They’re Arresting the Wrong People Inside of Congress
While they are arresting peace activists for exercising First Amendment rights, they are making plans to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a war criminal with an actual arrest warrant request.
Jun 12, 2024
I was arrested again inside of Congress for speaking out against U.S.-backed genocide. Myself and others were brutally tackled and carried out of the room by Capitol Police. I was charged with “crowding, obstructing, or incommoding” for speaking out and holding a sign as the secretary of state and the secretary of defense testified in Congress for more money for the endless U.S. war machine.
While they are arresting peace activists for exercising First Amendment rights, they are making plans to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a war criminal with an actual arrest warrant request from the International Criminal Court.
The real criminals are the ones we are protesting against—the ones literally sitting directly in front of us inside the hearing room—and they should be the ones arrested, charged, and found guilty.
For decades, people following CODEPINK’s lead have been protesting inside the halls of Congress. The year before October 7, there were a handful of us protesting the bloated military budgets and the U.S. warmongering. I was arrested several times on my own, but since October, dozens of us have been arrested in Congress, hundreds in D.C., and thousands across the U.S. and the world for Palestine.
The sustained energy and activism are the result of the nearly 40,000 of Palestinians murdered; millions being starved and displaced, their land, water, and air poisoned; and neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, and refugee camps demolished.
The real criminals are the ones we are protesting against—the ones literally sitting directly in front of us inside the hearing room—and they should be the ones arrested, charged, and found guilty for the war criminals they are funding and supporting and the war crimes they are committing.
Any of us speaking and acting out on the side of justice know we are taking risks. We see it as our duty as people in the U.S. in solidarity with and inspired by the Palestinian people facing and resisting this horror.
As I await my court date, I think of the people I spent the night with at the D.C. detention facility. Just this year, there have been five deaths inside the D.C. jail. The dozen or so women in there reminded me that poverty is a policy choice and our carceral, systemically racist state perpetuates harm and cycles of violence.
According to the U.S. Center for Palestinian Rights in Washington D.C., for this year alone (before our additional billions of aid were sent), the $3.8 billion allocated for Israel’s weapons could instead fund 451,735 households with public housing, free or low-cost healthcare for 1,322,199 children, 41,490 elementary school teachers, solar electricity for a year for 10,818,505 households, and debt cancellation for 100,563 students.
The fight against U.S. militarism is one that the climate, feminist, Indigenous, economic, and racial justice movements are all uniting around right now. And as it deepens and strengthens, we must become more organized as we escalate while we continue to make those in power uncomfortable.
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Can Biden Learn From 1968 Before It’s Too Late?
In order to get the necessary turnout among young people, minorities, and progressives to prevent a Republican victory in November, the Biden administration needs to change its policies, and soon.
Jun 09, 2024
The year 1968 may be repeating itself. The United States is again experiencing an incumbent Democratic administration supporting an unpopular war, disruptive protests on college campuses, police repression against nonviolent demonstrators, a Republican challenger promising to restore law and order and, to top it off, a Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
It is axiomatic in politics not to alienate your base in an election year. Yet, this is what U.S. President Joe Biden and congressional Democratic leaders are doing. While polls show that 83% of Democrats support a permanent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the Biden administration and the Democratic leadership continue to oppose it. Only a minority of Democratic voters agree with Biden’s continuous unconditional military assistance to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government. And, despite Biden’s angry denials, a full 56% of Democrats say that Israel is committing genocide with only 22% believing otherwise.
A poll published in March shows that nearly three times as many Democrats believe that “Israel has gone too far and its military actions are not justified” as those who believe that “Israel is defending its interests and its military actions are justified.” While that number has almost certainly grown in light of subsequent Israeli atrocities and condemnations by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, the Democratic administration and the vast majority of Democrats in Congress continue to say just the opposite.
Whenever there is such a huge gap between public opinion and government policy, the legitimacy of the entire political system is called into question, prompting disruptive protests.
Despite 62% of registered Democratic voters supporting a suspension of military aid to Israel, the Biden administration, along with all but three Democratic Senators and 173 out of 213 House Democrats, approved nearly $18 billion in additional unconditional military aid to Israel in recent weeks. Even though Biden suspended one shipment of particularly lethal ordnance in April, he has continued to approve additional arms transfers despite ongoing Israeli violations of U.S. and international law. This could have a real political impact, as a more recent poll shows that a majority of Democrats would prefer a presidential nominee who does not support military aid to Israel.
More significant to the outcome of the presidential race, a recent poll shows that 20% of voters in five swing states are less likely to vote for Biden because of his support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Biden’s policies are particularly damaging with core constituencies, such as Arab Americans, who compose a large enough percentage of the voting population to affect the outcomes in swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Virginia. Close to 60% of Arab Americans supported Biden in 2020 while only around one-third supported Donald Trump. This year, a recent poll of Arab American voters in those swing states shows that, as a result of the war in Gaza, Biden’s support has dropped to only 20%.
Other minorities in the Democratic coalition are becoming alienated as well, with growing evidence that support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza by Biden and congressional Democrats could negatively impact electoral support among Black and Latinx supporters.
Perhaps the most dramatic shift is among the country’s diverse base of 2.5 million Muslim voters, 86% of whom supported Biden in 2020. That support has now dropped to 36%.
But it is with young voters that support for Israel’s war could have the biggest impact for Biden and congressional Democrats. Recent elections have shown that when youth turnout is high, Democrats win. When it is low, Democrats lose. All indications suggest that the Gaza war will depress the youth turnout and lessen the enthusiasm necessary to recruit the army of young volunteers to canvas and get out the vote. Nearly three-quarters of voters under the age of 30 oppose Biden’s policy in Gaza, a higher percentage than opposed George W. Bush on Iraq, Ronald Reagan on Central America, or even Richard Nixon on Vietnam.
Whenever there is such a huge gap between public opinion and government policy, the legitimacy of the entire political system is called into question, prompting disruptive protests. There have been more than 8,000 anti-war and pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the United States since October, attracting more than 1,000,000 people, with particularly high numbers of younger Americans taking part. Even College Democrats of America, the official student organization of the Democratic Party, has not only called on the President to support a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, but has endorsed the protests as well.
Despite 97% of campus protests being completely nonviolent, the crackdown against student demonstrators have been far more repressive than comparable pro-divestment protests targeting South Africa during the 1980s, with more than 3,600 arrests and hundreds of injuries from police assaults, and hundreds of student suspensions. Notably, the colleges and universities with the most arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters have been in cities led by Democratic mayors and located in states led by Democratic governors.
Such repression, along with ongoing atrocities in Gaza by U.S.-backed Israeli forces, is leading to greater anger and more militant protests, with massive demonstrations planned this August at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The New York Times and others have noted how this can play into the Republican narrative, as it did in 1968, enabling them to give the impression that, under Democratic leadership, the country is falling apart and things are getting out of control, thus requiring a strong Republican leader to restore order.
Using Nixon’s playbook, Biden has tried to depict the anti-war movement by its most extreme elements. In his nationwide address on May 2, Biden reiterated the right to peaceful protest, but implied that the majority of protesters were engaged in such practices as “threatening people, intimidating people, [and] instilling fear in people” as well as “vandalism, trespassing, [and] breaking windows”—in spite of the fact that such incidents have been extremely rare among the more than 130 encampments that sprung up in colleges and universities across the country. Biden even blamed demonstrators for “forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations” even though these were decisions made by school administrators and were not being advocated for by the protesters.
A recent poll shows that only 41% of registered Democrats approved of Biden’s response to the protests.
The Biden administration has falsely claimed that a popular slogan calling for a democratic secular state in historic Palestine and the use of an Arabic word traditionally connoting civil resistance are antisemitic hate speech. Congressional Democrats have joined Republicans in an effort to codify a definition of antisemitism so broad as to make it possible to suppress pro-Palestinian activism under civil rights statutes.
Democratic politicians have also joined Republicans in attacking anti-war and pro-divestment protesters as “pro-Hamas,” “pro-terrorist,” and “antisemitic,” citing incidents involving a tiny minority of extremists within the ranks of these protesters as somehow being representative of the entire movement and even portraying peaceful demonstrators as violent mobs who have threatened the physical safety of other students. Some Democratic officials, using language reminiscent of the 1960s, have also insisted, without evidence, that protesters were outside agitators paid by foreign authoritarian interests.
All of this will only fuel the resentment and cynicism of Democratic-leaning young voters angry at being slandered by Democratic politicians, having their anti-war organizations banned, and seeing Democrat-led city governments bring in cops to beat and pepper spray them.
As a result, for many young Americans, this election has gone well beyond Israel and Palestine. They see it as a question of democracy—showing that Democrats are not only willing to ignore the vast majority of their constituents in pursuing what they see as a fundamentally immoral policy of aiding and abetting a far-right government engaging in war crimes on a massive scale, but also attacking international legal institutions and human rights organizations seeking accountability, supporting corporate interests profiting from an illegal war and occupation, and actively suppressing dissent.
In order to get the necessary turnout among young people, minorities, and progressives to prevent a Republican victory in November, pointing out how Trump would pursue even worse policies in regard to Israel and Palestine—and how his election would threaten American democracy itself—is not enough. The Biden administration needs to change its policies, and soon.
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