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The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
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Hillary's Real MLK Problem
by Barbara Ehrenreich At first I took it as another -- yawn -- white rip-off of black culture and creativity: the Rolling Stones appropriating the Bo Diddley beat, Bo Derek sporting corn rows, and now Hillary giving Lyndon Baines Johnson credit for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
If you had to give this honor to a white guy, LBJ was an odd choice, since he'd spent the 1964 Democratic convention scheming to prevent the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party from taking any Dixiecrat seats.
By Clinton's standards, maybe Richard Nixon should be credited with the legalization of abortion in 1972.
[Republished at PFP with express Agence Global permission.]
"Change!" It may be this year's Democratic battle cry, but if you
don't know how it happens, you're not likely to make it happen yourself.
But Clinton's LBJ remark reveals something more worrisome than
racial tone-deafness -- a theory of social change that is as elitist as
it is inaccurate. Black civil rights weren't won by suited men (or
women) sitting at desks. They were won by a mass movement of millions
who marched, sat in at lunch counters, endured jailings, and took
bullets and beatings for the right to vote and move freely about. Some
were students and pastors; many were dirt-poor farmers and urban
workers. No one has ever attempted to list all their names.
There's
a problem too, of course, with the conventional abbreviation of the
Civil Rights Movement into two names -- Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa
Parks. What about Fannie Lou Hamer, who led the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party's delegation to the 19464 convention? What about Ella
Baker, Fred Hampton, Stokely Carmichael, and hundreds of other leaders?
The Great Person theory of history may simplify textbook-writing, but
leaves us with no clue as to how change actually happens.
Women's
rights, for example, weren't brokered by Betty Friedan and Gloria
Steinem over tea. As Steinem would be the first to acknowledge, the
feminist movement of the '70s took root around kitchen tables and
coffee tables, ignited by hundreds of thousands of now-anonymous women
who were sick of being called "honey" at work and excluded from "men's"
jobs. Media stars like Friedan and Steinem did a brilliant job of
proselytizing, but it took an army of unsung heroines to stage the
protests, organize the conferences, hand out the fliers and spread the
word to their neighbors and co-workers.
"Change" is this
year's Democratic battle cry, but if you don't know how it happens,
you're not likely to make it happen yourself. A case in point is
Clinton's 1993 "health reform" plan. She didn't do any "listening tour"
for that, no televised town meetings with heart-rending grassroots
testimonies. Instead, she gathered up a cadre of wonks for months of
closed-door meetings, some so secretive that the participants
themselves were barred from bringing in pencils or pens. According to
David Corn of The Nation, when Clinton was told that 70 percent of
Americans polled favored a single-payer system at the time, she
responded sarcastically with, "Now tell me something interesting."
She
could have gone about things differently, in a way that wouldn't have
left 47 million Americans uninsured today. She could have started by
realizing that no real change would come about without a mobilization
of the ordinary people who wanted it. Instead of sequestering herself
with economists and business consultants, she might have met with
representatives of nurses' organizations, doctors' groups, health
workers' unions, and patient advocates. Then she could have gone to the
public and said: I'm working for a major change in the way we do things
and it's going to run into heavy resistance, so I'll need your support
in every possible way.
But she did it her way, and ended up
with a 1,300-page plan that no one, on either side of the aisle, liked
or could even comprehend -- proving that historical change isn't made
by the smartest girl in the room, even if she shares a bed with the
President. Similarly, she ignored the anti-war movement of this decade
and alienated untold numbers of Democratic voters, feminists included.
I'd
like to think that Obama, with his community organizing experience and
insistence on firing people up, gets it a little better. But whoever is
elected President this year, there won't be any real change in a
progressive direction without a mass social movement to bring it about
-- either by holding the president accountable or by holding his or her
feet to the fire.
And a mass social movement doesn't begin at the top. It begins right now, with you.
Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed (Owl), is the winner of the 2004 Puffin/Nation Prize.
Agence
Global is the exclusive syndication agency for The Nation, Le Monde
diplomatique, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Mona
Eltahawy, Rami G. Khouri, Peter Kwong, Patrick Seale and Immanuel
Wallerstein.
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Released: 16 January 2008
Word Count: 730
Rights & Permissions Contact: Agence Global, 1.336.686.9002, rights@agenceglobal.com
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