I very much liked "the gap between what we know should be done and what is actually done is large. And the reason for that isn’t a lack of knowledge or a lack of shared goals. It’s a lack of political will." I agree. So if we are in agreement that political will is the crux of the problem. We must come to an understanding of what shifts political will. It seems to me, by the general unfairness in spending on older Vs. younger generations in most government budgets, that the politicians understand very much that it is the older (historically larger) segment of the voters that they want to please. They are confident that these people will be returning in droves to the polls and they are happy to keep them more than comfortable in their retirement at the expense of younger and future generations. The older people attend political events, they call their MPs and MLAs, they organize against the high rise buildings in their cherished neighbourhoods. Politicians, as Generation Squeeze has always said "respond to those who organize and show up". We have to find a way to convince people to organize and SHOW UP!! And showing up is more than just voting. The university students, the single moms without childcare, the 30 year olds who can't afford to move out of their parents' home; What will convince them to use their voice? Because when you talk to those people they are frustrated to no end yet doing very little to advocate for their needs and the needs of their children.
The unfairness has been widely felt written about since the Thatcher, Reagan... Mulroney neoliberalism captured the scene with a deregulated corporatism that led to what Sheldon Wolin called inverted totalitarianism. I call it Corporate Totalitarianism where people are reduced to consumers rather than citizens. It’s not total totalitarianism, yet. There is still space for the public to organize to protest-engage. Public space was merely filled by corporatism because we became a consumer society that vacated public space for consumerism over civics. Corporations-corporate power was merely filling that space we left vacant because we valued the ease and comfort of consumerism over civics. As a consumer society we lack the knowledge of civics-the time and inclination for civics and the skills at civics. We are left as passive consumers complaining rather than a society of citizens with knowledge of civics and skills as activists actively engaged in civics. Astra Taylor did not have three graduate degrees...but was rich with insight from experience-civic engagement. She became part of organized protests and created the Debtors Collective. Where are the young people out from behind their screens protesting for universal access to education and universal housing for all? Their message could be as simple as “We are not asking for utopia but to merely have what other Western social democracies have.” The space for civics is still there but gets smaller and smaller as we are less and less inclined and skilled at using it. Corporatism will naturally fill space left vacant by the public. Corporatism is what’s squeezing out the interests of the public. There is only so much we can do writing ever so eloquently and insightfully behind our screens. Most of it is reinventing the same wheels of more equitable policy- describing the same wheels of misfortune described decades ago by scholars. That’s why I found urgency in telling Generation Squeeze to listen to Astra Taylor’s Massey Lecture’s she placed emphasis on activism-civic engagement out from behind our screens. ASK NOT what older people can do for you but for them to join you already out there collectively organized in large numbers. You, the most oppressed must be seen and felt demonstrating your WILL first. Like in all movements against oppression it the oppressed that first must be seen out protesting in the streets. That’s not happening, and it may never happen if enough people are satisfied with their success from the clawing- scraping to get by and doing better than the worse off...in getting that second or third degree behind their screens siloed off technically well connected. Because we lack understanding of civics but are merely reactionary consumers, we are set with the high possibility of having two neoliberals lead North America one highly illiberal fascistic in Trump the other Poilievre's sloganeering pitched perfectly to consumers who are indeed too dumb for democracy and too stupid for civics. I too have graduated from university 3 times and my most valuable lessons-insights came outside of schooling but on the streets gaining experience interacting face to face with people.
More clarity: Most of it is reinventing the same wheels of more equitable policy- describing the same wheels of misfortune described decades ago by scholars who saw the evils of neoliberalism’s letting the market decide public policy. It’s just that now 40 years of neoliberalism- corporatism has grown to squeeze out public policy making-public space-public housing policy so we had almost no public housing policy and certainly not a comprehensive coordinated public housing policies like in Western Europe.
Evidence of using the space left for protest well are the students at universities protesting something far worse than lack of affordable housing-Genocide. These students in spite of risking their degrees-in spite of their own plight of having to face a world where so much is unaffordable to them, they protested and they did indeed get results as Robert Reich points out today “ students protesting deaths of upwards of 34,000 residents of Gaza so far, most of them women and children. And to oppose America’s complicity in those deaths.
In this respect, student protesters this week achieved a small but significant victory.
On Wednesday, President Biden said he would not supply offensive weapons that Israel could use to launch an all-out assault on Rafah — the last major Hamas stronghold in Gaza — over concern for the well-being of the more than 1 million civilians sheltering there. In an interview with CNN, Biden said that if Israel goes into Rafah, “we’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells used.” His threat to hold up artillery shells expanded on earlier revelations that the U.S. was going to pause a shipment of heavy bombs. Biden also acknowledged that “civilians have been killed in Gaza” by the type of heavy bombs that the U.S. has been supplying. It was the first explicit validation of what administration critics have been loudly protesting, even if he still stopped short of taking responsibility." This shouts out at me get off your couches, get out from behind your screens and demand universal affordable housing...affordable higher education...better climate policies if you REALLY WANT THEM, IF YOU CAN BE BOTHERED TO ORGANIZE FOR COLLECTIVE ACTION.
Riech wisely concludes: "Prior to the student protests across America, Biden felt very little domestic pressure to stop supplying Israel with offensive weapons and bombs. Had there been no student movement against the war in Gaza, I doubt Biden would have reached the point he did last week."
It’s not the technocrats in academia or think tanks that caused change-the end to the Vietnam war- gains in civil and women’s rights... Nothing wrong in seeking technocratic tweaks, for many its all they know. But academia and think tanks are very much part of corporatism as well described by John Ralston Saul in his 1995 Massey lectures: The Unconscious Civilization. Most effective way to make substantial social change is the collective pressure of engaged civic activists- protestors who caused inconvenience on the private corporate property of Universities who risked their futures- careers rather than building their careers on writing about inequity. The lack of professors protesting the corporatism of universities reflects both the lack of academic freedom we have and the apathy and blindness towards corporatism.
Bertrand Russell the mathematician and philosopher wrote many books on the unnecessity of gross inequality, and they sold very well. He protested often, was arrested and fired from more than one university for being politically incorrect. At nuclear arms protest he was asked “why aren’t you home writing another book”-his quick response was “if I don’t protest nuclear arms, I fear there will be nobody left to read my books.” But Bertie knew better. He knew that a solid collective protest movement could do more good than all of the eloquent books he had written. More than all the policy advisors could dream of. Bill McKibben (often called the father of American Environmentalism-people forget Rachel Carson) and David Suzuki place Greta-the rude little girl who addressed adults “inappropriately” about climate change in the highest of regard. They know that this little girl who skipped school to protest climate change did more for climate activism-climate awareness than all the scholars added up. So, the moral of my story is we need fewer people getting degrees on inequality-making a living off of inequity-suggesting policy tweaks and FAR MORE activists, skipping school, up off their assess and practicing participatory democracy at its grass roots reality based... community-based activism.
I very much liked "the gap between what we know should be done and what is actually done is large. And the reason for that isn’t a lack of knowledge or a lack of shared goals. It’s a lack of political will." I agree. So if we are in agreement that political will is the crux of the problem. We must come to an understanding of what shifts political will. It seems to me, by the general unfairness in spending on older Vs. younger generations in most government budgets, that the politicians understand very much that it is the older (historically larger) segment of the voters that they want to please. They are confident that these people will be returning in droves to the polls and they are happy to keep them more than comfortable in their retirement at the expense of younger and future generations. The older people attend political events, they call their MPs and MLAs, they organize against the high rise buildings in their cherished neighbourhoods. Politicians, as Generation Squeeze has always said "respond to those who organize and show up". We have to find a way to convince people to organize and SHOW UP!! And showing up is more than just voting. The university students, the single moms without childcare, the 30 year olds who can't afford to move out of their parents' home; What will convince them to use their voice? Because when you talk to those people they are frustrated to no end yet doing very little to advocate for their needs and the needs of their children.
The unfairness has been widely felt written about since the Thatcher, Reagan... Mulroney neoliberalism captured the scene with a deregulated corporatism that led to what Sheldon Wolin called inverted totalitarianism. I call it Corporate Totalitarianism where people are reduced to consumers rather than citizens. It’s not total totalitarianism, yet. There is still space for the public to organize to protest-engage. Public space was merely filled by corporatism because we became a consumer society that vacated public space for consumerism over civics. Corporations-corporate power was merely filling that space we left vacant because we valued the ease and comfort of consumerism over civics. As a consumer society we lack the knowledge of civics-the time and inclination for civics and the skills at civics. We are left as passive consumers complaining rather than a society of citizens with knowledge of civics and skills as activists actively engaged in civics. Astra Taylor did not have three graduate degrees...but was rich with insight from experience-civic engagement. She became part of organized protests and created the Debtors Collective. Where are the young people out from behind their screens protesting for universal access to education and universal housing for all? Their message could be as simple as “We are not asking for utopia but to merely have what other Western social democracies have.” The space for civics is still there but gets smaller and smaller as we are less and less inclined and skilled at using it. Corporatism will naturally fill space left vacant by the public. Corporatism is what’s squeezing out the interests of the public. There is only so much we can do writing ever so eloquently and insightfully behind our screens. Most of it is reinventing the same wheels of more equitable policy- describing the same wheels of misfortune described decades ago by scholars. That’s why I found urgency in telling Generation Squeeze to listen to Astra Taylor’s Massey Lecture’s she placed emphasis on activism-civic engagement out from behind our screens. ASK NOT what older people can do for you but for them to join you already out there collectively organized in large numbers. You, the most oppressed must be seen and felt demonstrating your WILL first. Like in all movements against oppression it the oppressed that first must be seen out protesting in the streets. That’s not happening, and it may never happen if enough people are satisfied with their success from the clawing- scraping to get by and doing better than the worse off...in getting that second or third degree behind their screens siloed off technically well connected. Because we lack understanding of civics but are merely reactionary consumers, we are set with the high possibility of having two neoliberals lead North America one highly illiberal fascistic in Trump the other Poilievre's sloganeering pitched perfectly to consumers who are indeed too dumb for democracy and too stupid for civics. I too have graduated from university 3 times and my most valuable lessons-insights came outside of schooling but on the streets gaining experience interacting face to face with people.
More clarity: Most of it is reinventing the same wheels of more equitable policy- describing the same wheels of misfortune described decades ago by scholars who saw the evils of neoliberalism’s letting the market decide public policy. It’s just that now 40 years of neoliberalism- corporatism has grown to squeeze out public policy making-public space-public housing policy so we had almost no public housing policy and certainly not a comprehensive coordinated public housing policies like in Western Europe.
Evidence of using the space left for protest well are the students at universities protesting something far worse than lack of affordable housing-Genocide. These students in spite of risking their degrees-in spite of their own plight of having to face a world where so much is unaffordable to them, they protested and they did indeed get results as Robert Reich points out today “ students protesting deaths of upwards of 34,000 residents of Gaza so far, most of them women and children. And to oppose America’s complicity in those deaths.
In this respect, student protesters this week achieved a small but significant victory.
On Wednesday, President Biden said he would not supply offensive weapons that Israel could use to launch an all-out assault on Rafah — the last major Hamas stronghold in Gaza — over concern for the well-being of the more than 1 million civilians sheltering there. In an interview with CNN, Biden said that if Israel goes into Rafah, “we’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells used.” His threat to hold up artillery shells expanded on earlier revelations that the U.S. was going to pause a shipment of heavy bombs. Biden also acknowledged that “civilians have been killed in Gaza” by the type of heavy bombs that the U.S. has been supplying. It was the first explicit validation of what administration critics have been loudly protesting, even if he still stopped short of taking responsibility." This shouts out at me get off your couches, get out from behind your screens and demand universal affordable housing...affordable higher education...better climate policies if you REALLY WANT THEM, IF YOU CAN BE BOTHERED TO ORGANIZE FOR COLLECTIVE ACTION.
Riech wisely concludes: "Prior to the student protests across America, Biden felt very little domestic pressure to stop supplying Israel with offensive weapons and bombs. Had there been no student movement against the war in Gaza, I doubt Biden would have reached the point he did last week."
It’s not the technocrats in academia or think tanks that caused change-the end to the Vietnam war- gains in civil and women’s rights... Nothing wrong in seeking technocratic tweaks, for many its all they know. But academia and think tanks are very much part of corporatism as well described by John Ralston Saul in his 1995 Massey lectures: The Unconscious Civilization. Most effective way to make substantial social change is the collective pressure of engaged civic activists- protestors who caused inconvenience on the private corporate property of Universities who risked their futures- careers rather than building their careers on writing about inequity. The lack of professors protesting the corporatism of universities reflects both the lack of academic freedom we have and the apathy and blindness towards corporatism.
Bertrand Russell the mathematician and philosopher wrote many books on the unnecessity of gross inequality, and they sold very well. He protested often, was arrested and fired from more than one university for being politically incorrect. At nuclear arms protest he was asked “why aren’t you home writing another book”-his quick response was “if I don’t protest nuclear arms, I fear there will be nobody left to read my books.” But Bertie knew better. He knew that a solid collective protest movement could do more good than all of the eloquent books he had written. More than all the policy advisors could dream of. Bill McKibben (often called the father of American Environmentalism-people forget Rachel Carson) and David Suzuki place Greta-the rude little girl who addressed adults “inappropriately” about climate change in the highest of regard. They know that this little girl who skipped school to protest climate change did more for climate activism-climate awareness than all the scholars added up. So, the moral of my story is we need fewer people getting degrees on inequality-making a living off of inequity-suggesting policy tweaks and FAR MORE activists, skipping school, up off their assess and practicing participatory democracy at its grass roots reality based... community-based activism.