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writing for godot

Breaking Big Money's Grip on America: The Great American Challenge

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Written by Bruce Berlin   
Tuesday, 22 September 2015 09:52
Are we willing to stand up to the power of Big Money, risk the consequences, and demand our right to democratic self-governance?


Today’s great American challenge is: can we eliminate Big Money’s control over our government before the United States becomes a full-blown plutocracy, a nation ruled by and for the very wealthy? If we, the people of this nation, do not aggressively confront this current defining political issue and reverse Big Money’s dominance, the American experiment in democracy will soon fail. While some individuals would argue that climate change or income inequality are the great challenges of our time, the chances of our successfully resolving them, or any other major problem, are virtually zero unless we break Big Money’s grip on our government.1 In fact, according to one bipartisan political organization, 74 percent of all voters agree that it is necessary to fix our broken political system first, before anything can be done to solve other important national issues.2
Big Money’s goal is accumulating wealth and power regardless of the detrimental impact on the nation, the environment, or the people. Big Money has virtually no conscience and, unimpeded, will continue to exert its powerful influence over government for its own ends with little or no consideration of the consequences. Therefore, breaking Big Money’s grip on our government is critical to reviving democracy in this country and improving the lives of most Americans.


America’s History Holds the Key to a Solution


While breaking Big Money’s grip on our government may appear to be an almost impossible task given how deeply embedded corporate America is in our political system,3 America’s history holds the key to a solution. Time and again when vested interests have constructed seemingly insurmountable barriers to the people’s demands for a more equitable society Americans have come together and overcome the obstacles to a more just and inclusive nation. The most effective method that Americans have consistently employed to create dramatic shifts in society to improve people’s lives is mass movements. From abolitionists who fought to end slavery to women suffragists who struggled to establish women’s right to vote, from labor activists who attained the eight-hour work day to civil rights marchers who succeeded in outlawing segregation, from Vietnam War protesters who helped end that war to environmentalists who gained many protections for the natural world, people’s movements have repeatedly confronted the ruling powers and succeeded in making our country a more equitable place to live for millions of Americans.

Today, the issue is democracy itself. We, the people, are quickly losing our right to self-governance. To prevent this loss from occurring, we need to come together and form the next great mass movement: the Democracy Movement. Such a movement would work to eliminate Big Money’s control of our government and place that control in the hands of the people, where it rightly belongs.


Protecting Our Right to Self-Governance


To gain insight into Big Money’s daunting opposition to the American people’s right to self-governance, it is useful to reflect on a recurring theme in the history of the United States: the people’s right to self-determination and desire for a truly representative government. Self-determination is the fundamental right of a people to decide their political status as well as to pursue their own cultural, economic, and social development without interference.4 Big Money’s extensive control of governmental policies has severely limited the American people’s ability to freely pursue these aspects of their lives. But our history has shown that self-determination is not a right we can take for granted. Rather, it is a right that requires continual protection and reaffirmation because it has been constantly under attack by Big Money and corporate America.

Some historical perspective can help us understand the need to protect and reaffirm the right to self-determination in light of our current predicament. On December 16, 1773, before the founding of the United States, the Sons of Liberty dumped 92,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor to protest the British East India Company’s monopoly on the sale of tea in the American colonies, which the British government had sanctioned. The American colonists’ rebellious action became known as the Boston Tea Party. Determined to have a voice in how England governed the colonies, they famously demanded, “No taxation without representation” and refused to pay the duty imposed by the British government.
Less than three years later, on July 4, 1776, the founders of our country declared their freedom from Great Britain. In the Declaration of Independence, they stated that “all men [and women] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” and “(t)hat to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….” Our nation’s founders asserted that the people are the source of the government’s power. No longer would the colonists tolerate a distant king controlling their lives. Consequently, they went to war against the British Empire to gain the right to self-governance.

Almost a century later, in 1863, when the unity of the nation was at stake in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln traveled to the bloody battlefield of Gettysburg and pleaded that Americans “take increased devotion” to the cause of democracy. Lincoln prayed that “these dead shall not have died in vain,” that the United States “shall have a new birth of freedom ... and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”5 More than 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War to preserve the lofty aspirations of our nation and to establish the right to self-governance for African American people as well.

In the twentieth century, our right to self-determination and representative democracy was threatened by Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire during World War II. Along with many other nations, the United States fought to maintain its freedom from foreign domination. Tens of thousands of Americans lost their lives and many more were injured to protect our democratic way of life.

Now, in the twenty-first century, we have a new challenge to our right to self-governance and representative democracy, one that is perhaps not as obvious but just as great as those of the past. As with the Civil War, the current threat comes from within and is of our own doing—the control of our government by Big Money. But the American people have not yet fought back against Big Money as it has steadily taken increasing control of our government.

Reflecting on our history, surely the colonists, revolutionists, and other Americans who engaged in subsequent battles did not fight and die so that giant multinational corporations could one day rule our country. Those brave Americans did not sacrifice their lives so that a powerful oil industry could gain a nearly total monopoly on automotive fuel and make $100 billion dollars in profit in 2013, while millions of average Americans struggled to heat their homes and fill their gas tanks.6 Neither did thousands of America’s family farmers fight and die in those wars so that Monsanto and other agrochemical corporate giants could prevent their descendants from saving seeds from their own harvests to sow the following year unless they paid an annual “rental fee” for them.7 Nor did Americans make the ultimate sacrifice in those wars so that Wall Street banks and other financial institutions could make fortunes creating risky, unregulated mortgage instruments that led to the bursting of the housing bubble and millions of people losing their homes and jobs in the Great Recession of 2008. Something is terribly amiss in our country when we allow such gross injustices to exist and do little or nothing to correct them.

The Curse of Unbound Capitalism


It is the curse of unbound capitalism that America’s factory workers, farmers, housewives, machinists, shopkeepers, and others have toiled to build, or fought to preserve, democracy in our country only to have the economic elite reap disproportionate financial benefits while tens of millions of Americans barely get by, many others are homeless, and more than one out of every five children lives in poverty.8 This curse of unbound capitalism actually goes beyond the tremendous financial disparity between the economic elite and the rest of society. The fact is we live in a country that is largely run by and for the very wealthy—a plutocracy. As we will see in the coming chapters, the huge amount of money that this small, privileged group pours into election campaigns and lobbying in Washington, as well as in states all across the country, produces laws and regulations that overwhelmingly favor them. In the last thirty to forty years, Big Money’s influence in crafting our country’s electoral laws and campaign procedures has greatly restricted the average American citizen’s ability to have any meaningful role in the political process.

Consequently, if we, the people of this nation, want to have a significant voice in the policies that affect our lives and the future of our country we must join together and develop a way to break Big Money’s grip. Otherwise, the super wealthy and corporate elite will strive to increase their already firm hold on our government, keeping most Americans’ lives and fortunes under their thumb.

The American Spirit

When the founders of the United States pronounced their independence from Great Britain, they were declaring their right to be free of control by a mighty foreign power. They firmly believed that they were “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”9 Their faith informed them that a higher authority, one greater than themselves or the British Empire, mandated their right to independence. Today, it is imperative that we declare our right to be free of control by a mighty domestic power—Big Money—and to exercise our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Deep inside we instinctively know what is right and just, not from books or teachers but from that place within us that connects to that which is greater than our individual beings. Some would call it “spirit.” Though we may or may not believe in God or a Supreme Being, most of us sense this spirit, which infuses us with life and is part of a greater energy that keeps the planets spinning around the sun and maintains order in the world. This spirit demands that we be self-respecting, independent beings and leads us to believe that we have the right to self-determination.

The story of Rosa Parks illustrates how spirit can give us courage and move us to do what we know in our hearts is right, despite potential dire consequences. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, boarded a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and sat down near the front. When the bus driver ordered her to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back of the bus as was the custom, Parks refused. Her action, insisting that she had the same right and dignity as a white person, ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a pivotal event that triggered the civil rights movement. Parks’s courageous decision to oppose the dominant white Southern society and demand equal treatment helped to fundamentally change America.10

We each have that same ability to demand our right to equal treatment as Rosa Parks did. But do we have the courage and commitment to oppose the dominant force in our society making the rules that undermine our self-determination? Luckily, we have something that Rosa Parks did not have when she sat down by herself in that Montgomery bus. We have each other. We, the American people, cannot forget that what personally affects some of us impacts all of us. When our neighbor is robbed, our security is at risk as well. When employers do not pay their workers a living wage, our tax dollars go to support low-income earners with government benefits like food stamps. When corporations that greatly benefit from government programs do not pay their fair share in taxes, the government lacks funds for projects like the maintenance of roads and bridges, resulting in our cars incurring greater wear and tear and more of us becoming injured or dying in accidents.

At one time or another, we all have moments in which spirit speaks to us. We may experience such moments while praying, hiking, meditating, or simply breathing in the cool fresh air on a sunny afternoon. It gives us a feeling of being connected to others or our surroundings and, when we are really open, to the entire world and universe. In these critical times, we have the opportunity—actually, the responsibility—to embrace that sense of connectedness as Americans so that we can gain a better perspective on how to once again pursue self-determination and democracy in our nation.

We Are All in This Together

By nature, we are communal beings. We naturally create communities, both locally and nationally, for comfort, security, and a number of other purposes. As a national community, we have a common bond that we affirm when we pledge allegiance to our flag: “One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Underlying that pledge is our spirit of unity—we are all in this together. It is our sense of connectedness as Americans that has given us the strength and courage to win world wars and overcome other great difficulties.

In the late 1960s, I felt this spirit of connectedness while marching in New York City against the Vietnam War. Hundreds of thousands of Americans had come together: young and old; black, white, Hispanic, and other ethnicities; Republicans and Democrats; executives and laborers; veterans and peaceniks. Even though I knew only the few friends who were protesting alongside me as we marched to the United Nations Plaza, we were all united in our resistance to the war and shared a desire for peace and a love for humanity. I knew in my heart that what I was doing was right and felt a higher authority guiding us.
It is with this same spirit that Americans can come together in the Democracy Movement. We can put aside our differences of political affiliation, class, culture, and race for the sake of reviving our democratic way of life. In fact, if we do not join hands soon and break Big Money’s grip on our government we will become a nation of worker bees in service to the economic elite now taking control of our country. Consequently, we face not only a monumental political issue but also a moral and spiritual test. As an American community, can we rise up and break Big Money’s grip on our government?

Will we answer the call to revive our democracy for our own protection and self-dignity, as well as for the sake of our children and future generations? This is the great American challenge of our time.

Notes

1. http://bit.ly/1aVqQ5A.
2. Patrick Caddell, et al., "Americans Consensus: Fix the Corrupt System," PopularResistanceOrg, July 5, 2014, http://bit.ly/1zNKGX1.
3. http://bit.ly/1Kz7AHF.
4. http://bit.ly/1OfKZWw.
5. http://bit.ly/1bFJewr.
6. “Don’t Let Big Oil Rig the Debate,” http://bit.ly/1DPX3pl.
7. Richard, Schiffman, “Evil Monsanto Aggressively Sues Farmers for Saving Seeds,” Alternet, http://bit.ly/1K6wAWC.
8. Valerie Strauss, “New Census Data: Children Remain America’s Poorest Citizens,” Washington Post, September 17, 2013, http://wapo.st/1DPYeoI.
9. http://1.usa.gov/1gpivYT.
10. “Rosa Louise McCauley Parks,” Montgomery Bus Boycott RSS, http://bit.ly/1DPXUGr.
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