Beyond Politics
Feeding The Beast
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
11/08/08 "The
Nation" -- - If TV
channels are any measure, the U.S. presidential elections, now
less than 4 months away, are the permanent stuff of headlines.
If candidate A sneezes, it's breaking news; if candidate B
hiccups, it's film at eleven.
It's hardly worthy of headlines, but the beast [the media] must
be fed.
For far too many people this news overdose on the elections has
bred a kind of passivity among millions, as they wait in front
of TV screens and computers, like deer caught in headlights.
What happened to anti-war protests?
What happened to housing rights protestors?
What happened to anti-FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act) activists?
People are dulled by the almost sure expectation that the
Democrats will prevail in the next election due to the low
ratings of the Republican Party, and its lame duck President
George W. Bush.
And those dull expectations are based upon the totally unfounded
faith that a Democratic win of the White House really means an
end to the war. (We might ask, which war?)
Millions have apparently forgotten the bitter lessons from the
2006 mid term election, when Democrats prevailed in
congressional elections, formed a slight majority in both
houses, and proceeded to do - nothing.
Peace in Iraq? Off the table. Instead, like lemmings leaping off
a cliff they voted for more and more billions for war.
And what of the recently renewed FISA bill, which legalized the
law-breaking of the Bush Administration - and gave retroactive
protection to phone and communications companies which violated
prior law?
FISA - signed, sealed and delivered: and even the Democratic
candidate (Sen. Barack Obama, D.IL), who blasted the measure,
put his John Hancock on it, voting 'yes.'
The great abolitionist (and women's right supporter), Frederick
Douglass, supported Abraham Lincoln, yet that didn't stop him
from protesting against him, when he moved too slowly, or not at
all. Reading his criticisms are still biting, even though over a
century has passed. And yet, his teaching remains just as
relevant, for Douglass said, "Power concedes nothing without
demand."
If people demand nothing, that is precisely what they will get.
These lessons from history must teach us today, that protesters
must PROTEST.
Elections aren't endings - they are beginnings - and movements
mustn't stop moving; they should protest more!
Mumia Abu-Jamal is an acclaimed American journalist and author
who has been writing from Death Row for more than twenty-five
years. Mumia was sentenced to death after a trial that was so
flagrantly racist that Amnesty International dedicated an entire
report to describing how the trial "failed to meet minimum
international standards safeguarding the fairness of legal
proceedings." The complete report is posted here:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000
Mumia is author of many books, including Jailhouse Lawyers:
Prisoners Defending Prisoners vs. The USA, forthcoming from City
Lights Books.
More By Mumia
Abu-Jamal
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