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CounterPunch
February
1, 2003
Porto Alegre
to the United States:
Restrain the
Empire!
by ROBERT JENSEN
Last week at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre,
Brazil, I talked with dozens of people from around the world.
I learned a lot about the struggles for justice in their countries,
but the most important lesson I brought home was about my own
country.
The question I thought people at the
Forum would ask me is, "Why does the U.S. government follow
such brutal policies of economic and military domination around
the world?" I thought they would want me to explain the
United States to them. But they didn't -- because, I came to
realize, they already knew the answer to the question.
In one session I listened to a man who
works with the MST, the landless movement in Brazil that is widely
considered to be the biggest and most important social movement
in the world today. He told us that the people he works with
often are lucky if they get a fourth-grade education; many are
illiterate. "But I don't have to tell them about imperialism,"
he said. That they understand. They live with it.
The question that people in Porto Alegre
did ask me was simple: What are people of conscience in the United
States -- what am I -- doing to stop the U.S. government, especially
in its mad drive to war in Iraq?
Those of us organizing in the United
States are in a strange situation. Our task is to work to educate
the people of our own privileged and affluent culture about what
the rest of the world already knows: The United States is an
empire, and -- as has been the case throughout history -- empires
are a threat to peace and life and justice in the world. There
is no such thing as a benevolent empire.
It is crucial that we in the United States
who have so much unearned privilege that comes with living in
the empire face their question: What are we willing to do to
stop our government? What are those of us in the heart of the
beast doing to tame that beast?
The United States is preparing for a
war in Iraq that virtually the entire world opposes. No matter
how brutal the regime of Saddam Hussein, the world understands
that even more threatening is the empire unleashed and unrestrained.
The cynical among us say that it is clear
that Bush and his boys want this war, and that the war will come.
That may be true; there's no way to see the future. But I know
that no matter what will come, our task is clear:
We are the first citizens of the empire.
In the past, empires had subjects. But we are truly citizens,
with freedom of expression and rights of political participation
that aren't perfect but are real. With those freedoms comes a
responsibility, to use them to stop our government from pursuing
a war that will kill and destroy innocents while further entrenching
U.S. power in the Middle East and U.S. control over the strategically
crucial oil resources there.
We have a choice. We can hide from our
responsibility. Or we can stand up, speak up, organize, and join
the people of the world in movements to challenge the powerful,
to resist the empire.
It may seem safer to avoid that choice,
to hide from that responsibility. But I learned one other thing
in Porto Alegre: The people of the world do not accept the American
empire. All over the world there are movements for social justice
that are strengthening, gathering support and challenging power.
They are the future. History is not on the side of the empire.
To take the side of the empire is to
give into our fear, to cast our lot with the past. To resist
the empire is to grab onto hope, to cast our lot with the future.
It is literally a choice of empire and death, or resistance and
life. This is not about liberals v. conservatives or Republicans
and Democrats; both parties are on the wrong side of this struggle
right now. This is about a far more fundamental choice.
There is much work to be done on many
fronts. One thing we can all do is come out on Saturday, Feb.
15, when people in New York City, Austin and around the world
will rally to oppose the U.S. drive to war. Information is available
at http://www.unitedforpeace.org/
If you doubt the importance of this,
think back to September 11, 2001. On that day, we got a glimpse
of what it will look like if the empire is dismantled from the
outside, if the empire continues to ignore the world. But we
have a choice. We, the first citizens of the empire, can commit
to dismantling the empire from within, peacefully and non-violently,
in solidarity with those around the world struggling for justice.
Let me leave you with one image from
Porto Alegre, from the floor of the arena in which the closing
ceremonies took place. As the conveners of the World Social Forum
delivered a final declaration and stood on stage, the sounds
of John Lennon's "Imagine" came over the loudspeakers,
and the 15,000 people in the arena stood, held hands, moved with
the music and sang of a world with no countries, a world living
life in peace, a world without possessions and greed.
When the song was over, I turned to an
older man sitting next to me. I had told him I was from the United
States and we had exchanged nods and smiles throughout the event,
but he spoke little English and I spoke even less Portuguese.
At that moment, language mattered little. I extended my hand
to him. But he rejected it.
Instead, he reached out, grabbed me and
enveloped me in a hug as big as that song, as big as Brazil,
as big as the world.
"Peace," he said. "Paz,"
I replied.
We are Americans, but if we choose to
resist we are not the American empire. And if we do resist, there
is a world we can join, a world that is waiting for us.
Perhaps I am investing too much symbolism
in one simple hug. But that moment with that man, that hug in
Porto Alegre, was for me the promise of life outside the empire.
It was the feel of a future that we can all imagine. It is easy,
if we try.
Robert Jensen
is an associate professor of journalism at the University of
Texas at Austin, a member of the Nowar Collective, and author
of the book Writing
Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream
and the pamphlet "Citizens of the Empire."
He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
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