Real Democracy in the Belly of the Beast
1 September 2001
Friends,
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said there are three pillars that hold
up the current system of domestic oppression: poverty, racism and
militarism. In order to have real democracy, economic justice,
peace and a unified society, we have to both envision our own
liberation in our time and take back our history, power and moral
integrity.
The reason Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. King were both loved and hated,
both followed and murdered had to do with their use of "satygraha"
or truth force and "ahimsa" or nonviolent harmlessness. These
powerful tools moved them outside the control game that has
secured privilege for a few over millenia. These systems of
privilege, which are the real, deep violence of society, cannot be
challenged or defeated using their own violent methods. Nor can
they be changed by substituting a new elite in the seat of power,
or by reforming them.
As I see it, the crucial steps that must be taken now to stop the
current trend to global corporatization, fascism and
genocide/ecocide/ethnocide include the following, here in the
belly of the beast:
* Replace the "virtual democracy" of the current and obsolete
"representative" system with direct, participatory decision
making on issues by referendum. Repeal the oppressive laws,
recall the politicians, and reclaim the "organ" that will
enunciate and empower the will of the people as a whole.
* Do this at all levels -- community, city, state and national.
Think globally when acting locally and think locally when
acting globally. Real democracy is a system where ALL the
people affected by a decision make that decision and those
not affected do not.
* Design this system so that it cannot be corrupted by the
existing privileged few, including universal voting
registration, automatic referendum rights, rotating citizen
councils to poll for monthly issue debates and decisions, and
a limit on advertising.
* End the corporate monopoly stranglehold on the commonwealth
of the electronic means of communication. These are now just
as important to control as the means of production, if not
more so. Begin by taxing the corporate licensees in air time
to allow full and open debate on the local, national and
international issues to be decided.
* Do not allow new means of communication to be controlled by
entrepreneurs or corporations.
* Educate the young in real democracy, and open the educational
institutions to a full flow of ideas and information. Hold
referendum in schools and other community places and include
the young in decisions that affect their lives. Build models
of participatory democracy and informed decision-making to
create new citizens for the democratic future.
* Teach human values and living skills before teaching
corporate skills or science without conscience.
* Enfranchise people by creating community models at every
level, open and inviting organizations, and easy access to
information and debate of ideas. The problem is not apathy
but a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness that is
encouraged by the privileged few to divide and defeat the
majority of people.
* Disenfranchise the false "people" called corporations by
limiting their lifespans, ending their legal immunity, making
their dealings transparent, and putting them under popular
control instead of private. Do not accord them the rights of
persons or citizens, for they are not.
* Address the cancer of militarism that has gouged social
services, health, education and general welfare for decades,
and that continues to assign the vast majority of taxed
dollars to past, present and future wars and preparations for
war. Standing armies do not stand.
Militarization of all social functions continues apace,
including police, education, social services, and even
humanitarian efforts abroad. Instead of humanizing the
military, this serves to militarize humanity. The military
must become a transparent and democratic organization whose
purpose, size, presence, operational limits, and personnel
matters are decided by open and participatory debate by GI's
and citizens alike, not behind the closed doors of the
Pentagon and the national security state. Honor veterans --
no more wars. Stop arming, funding, researching and
facilitating genocide worldwide.
* Open the secrets of the society by declassifying the millions
of existing records and ending further classifications or
records and all electronic intelligence gathered by satellite
or other means.
* Encourage this openness and the end to denial and lies at the
family and community and job level as well as nationally.
Transparency facilitates accountability. Reclaim the history
of our lives that has been stolen by the national security
state. Come clean, and discover our real histories and
herstories.
* Put an end to decisions made in secret by "experts" with
"clearances" to privileged information. There can be no
democracy without a free flow of information. Jefferson said
that given a choice between a government without a newspaper
and a newspaper without a government, he would always choose
the latter.
* Break down the layers of fear and mistrust that are encouraged
by the privileged and their propaganda arms of entertainment
and "news" and in their institutional behavior, that
perpetuate racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and all
the other divisions and prejudices that splinter society and
work against community and democracy.
* Make the standard for "representation" not popularity of the
few but diversity of the whole, not (s)elective but
demographic. Encourage and make space for dialogue between
communities as well as joint projects and organizations that
are inclusive.
* Change the tax structure to focus on profit-making
corporations, not on the people underemployed by them. Charge
a small percentage of corporate gross income annually
instead, which would far outstrip the amount now taxed from
the menial salaries and wages offered to the labor that made
the profit possible. Whether or not people are taxed, they
should have a direct say in how those taxes are spent.
* Allow direct, participatory allocation of all taxes collected
by polling the people themselves annually and creating
budgets based on their decisions. This would be taxation with
real representation.
* Change the methods of economy, and move away from profit as
the motive for activity. Alternative, small scale,
cooperative economic methods and models exist. Money is only
credit, and that can be issued in other ways, without
privilege. The current system allows tremendous concentration
of wealth, and then power in a system of "one dollar, one
vote" that serves the increasingly privileged few. The more
local and self sufficient and community-based the economy,
production and exchange is, the better.
The more centralized, profit-based, unaccountable, and global
the economic model is, the worse it is in effect and
execution.
* Move away from money as the motivator of human interaction to
systems that seek and support the real talents and dreams of
community members shared for the common good in a rational
and informed system of operation that takes into account real
needs, real resources, the environment and ecology, the
long-range impact locally and otherwise, and the support that
the activity provides for the community as a whole.
* Decentralize power and globalize the access to information
and transparent operations worldwide. Local decisions must
take both regional, national and global concerns for
resources and impacts into account, and decisions made on a
larger scale must take the local impact into account as well.
As wealth and power have concentrated, so has society around the
centers of such activity or its routes of transportation and
expansion. This centralization, homogenization and replication of
function and control has left large sectors of the society without
self-sufficient means of survival.
The "efficiencies" of such centralization do not outweigh its
disastrous potential for damage to that same survival on all
levels. Cultural, biological and personal diversity are all
threatened to the point of extinction under the current model.
We have the information, resources, knowledge and technology
available to comfortably house, clothe, feed, transport, educate,
keep healthy and entertain all the people of this earth, and to
sustain the ecology, renewable resources.
We do not have the wisdom, moral integrity, or vision to do so
because we are trapped in our consciousness and our conscience by
the demands of a system of profit instead. We exist in a deadly
pyramid of power, privilege and control, with 6% of the population
of the earth consuming 60% of its produced goods, and within that
6% of privileged people, only 2% of them control over 80% of the
real wealth generated by the work and production of the remaining
98%.
The poorest 80% subsist on 20% of the wealth generated. The
average salary of two-thirds of the world's people is less than $2
a day, and the privileged one-third that remain have an average
salary of $70 a day.
Within that average, some are billionaires that skew the average
upwards -- most make far less each day. 470 billionaires control
wealth equal to the combined salaries of two-thirds of the people
alive. And the gap continues to accelerate, as does the mortality
rate of those left at the bottom, especially children, the elderly
and people of color.
The only answer is real democracy, where the people reclaim the
power to inform themselves and to decide how the resources of the
world are used and how the created wealth is distributed in a
direct and informed way.
This will release an untapped potential of human creativity, love
and talent that can transform the world into a global community
that supports life instead of a system of privilege that promotes
death to the planet itself. When profit, not people, drive the
decisions, when privilege not justice is protected and fought for,
then the rights, hopes and liberation of all species is
endangered.
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of
society but the people themselves. And if we think them
not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a
wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from
them but to inform their discretion."
--Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson did not envision his model as the final one by any
means. He despised political parties and recognized that there are
really only two political divisions in any social order: those who
wish to invest power in an elite few (Aristocrats), and those who
wish to decentralize power into the hands of all people
(Democrats).
He felt there would have to be revolutions every 20 years to keep
power from concentrating again. And he knew that the government he
created, while a vast improvement on monarchy, would not
necessarily serve the next generation, any more than a tattered
coat should be forcibly passed down from a parent to fit her
child.
He supported any mechanism that checked power, privilege and abuse
and that preserved democratic control. He saw self-sufficient,
agricultural and decentralized communities as the backbone of
democratic society.
He was still blind to issues of race and gender for the most part,
though he did wish to end slavery. But he envisioned liberation
within the confines of his own time and experience, and his ideas
still drive the democratic ideals and hopes of much of the world.
He challenges each of us to do the same: to define our own liberty
and its technology, and to secure the blessings of that liberation
to all.
There are many brilliant people and communities thinking about,
practicing and expanding these ideas and actions that are the
answer to the current global dilemma. If you are inspired, if you
wish to share your vision of them, if you want to learn more,
please contact us:
Real Democracy
P.O. Box 772
Washington, DC 20044
P.S. See Michael Schuman's book "Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant
Communities in a Global Age" (1998) for a review of
decentralized alternatives that I have been promoting for 40
years now - JJ
REAL DEMOCRACY
Referendum the decision making Decentralize the decision-making
Repeal the oppressive laws Directly allocate the taxes
Recall the "representatives" Debate the issues and open access
to information