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CounterPunch
December
28, 2002
Convergence,
Education & a Human Future?
A Meditation
on the Nature of "Evil"
by TOM STEPHENS
Taking a walk on a snowy white Christmas morning,
kicking up powdery snow and watching it settle on the white surface,
seeing your shadow and footsteps moving on the face of the earth
in the traditional season of peace and good will. Wondering about
the inner journey to realize the meaning and finite trajectory
of our life. Realizing it's an essential part of being human,
this yearning and spiritual hunger for meaning. This soul, God,
psyche or whatever it is.
But some People manage to avoid it. The
Boy Emperor George W. Bush says he isn't paid to "nuance."
His job militarizing the petroleum economy and the political
ecology of terrorism is too important for him to indulge in any
serious self-reflection. Dubya shows no signs whatsoever of ever
pursuing an actual thought outside the narrow confines of Karl
Rove's power points, or beyond anything Dick Cheney tells him
he should do. The dynamics around Bush's drive for World War
IV with the Axis of Evil echo World War I, where the leadership
of the imperial European powers slaughtered millions in the name
of "democracy," "the war to end all wars,"
and Belgian sovereignty. Bush is deprived of the essential human
need for authentic spiritual understanding. Nothing else corresponds
to the psychic evidence of Bush's born again "dry drunk"
mental and verbal gaffes, combined with his bellicosity and clumsiness
in foreign affairs, his utter ignorance of history (inability
to comprehend People's history), and meanness in his economic
policy. Bush is evidence of what happens to a person deprived
of self-knowledge. In his terms, he becomes a tool of "evil."
Meditating on the nature of evil, as
illustrated by Bush's atomic/petroleum empire and the next big
war with Iraq, it's easier than ever to see the power connections
between corporate globalization, institutionalized racism, and
beggaring workers; between the war on terror consuming resources,
ethnically cleansing politics, and killing Third World Peoples
living in strategic regions; and between Bush and evil. Virtually
everything Bush's officials say in public is a blatant psychic
projection of their own infantile desires: US weapons of mass
destruction, lies, terrorism and domination. They all flow from
Washington, DC, the power center of the corporate global empire.
The intellectual, moral, and physical resources of bin Laden's
rancid and murderous fundamentalism flow from fundamentalists
in Virginia and throughout the US, massively perverting Thomas
Jefferson's ideals. The Mobilization for Global Justice stands
in the noble shoes of the American revolutionaries, abolitionists,
populists, labor, civil rights, feminist, peace, environment,
GLBT, handicap and other social movements holding out alternatives
to horrible policies. Education is almost always a crucial part
of the answer to the question of what must be done. But education
about, by and for what?
One of the strengths of the Mobilization
for Global Justice has been its idea of "convergence"
between movements, issues, communities, and Peoples. This continuing
international grassroots "movement of movements," growing
out of the protests and advocacy against corporate globalization
and corporate-managed "free trade" policies, had its
spectacular coming out party in the streets of Seattle in November
1999. It has largely succeeded in changing the subject of public
discussions from "free trade" to global justice. But
its roots and branches go much deeper and spread much wider than
that. And they are still growing. In January 2003 many of them
will convene in Porto Alegre, Brazil for the third annual World
Social Forum (WSF), an inspiring new institutional expression
of international grassroots democracy in the 21st century. If
progressive Democrats who were humiliated by their leadership's
spineless performance in the 2002 midterm congressional elections
can grasp the importance of Global Justice as a message, and
find ways to help the international social movements run with
it, this movement has the potential to change the balance of
power in America and the world.
The slogan of "Teamsters to Turtles"
doesn't even begin to capture the historic grandeur of this convergence.
It brings together union rights with environmental justice; opposition
to sweatshops with support for international law as a guarantor
of basic minimum environmental and labor standards; a spectacular
array of activist organizations and movements throughout the
Global South, with Washington, DC-based groups such as Public
Citizen's Global Trade Watch and the AFL-CIO. Since September
11 it has reached out to other important US allies, like the
living wage movement, the police accountability movement, and
the peace movement. Mainstream corporate critics want to see
only confusion. But the truth and the historic significance of
convergence, which the corporate media "spins" as mixed
messages, operates on multiple levels of politics, psychology,
and culture. The Mobilization for Global Justice is today blazing
the trail forward toward justice, human freedom, and democracy.
Engaging the broadest possible range of People in this urgent
conversation about power, resources, race, class, equity, survival,
and hope must be a high priority for anyone concerned about finding
a way out of the mess that corporate and US military and economic
power have made of the world today.
Where power is so spectacularly unbalanced,
public education must be a prime objective. We may not be able
to change the systematic conditions of structural injustice,
institutionalized racism, and undemocratic decision making that
plague our world in the short run. But by taking responsibility
for creating and expanding this historic multi-level dialog,
we can mobilize many, many People and raise the costs of the
US corporate empire. We can aspire to even further changing the
subject of public discussions from "free trade" to
global justice. We can change the world, if we dare to dream.
Tom Stephens
is a lawyer in Detroit, Michigan. He can be reached at lebensbaum4@earthlink.
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