At the Forefront
By David Glenn Cox



“Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.” (John F. Kennedy)

President Kennedy never had any idea how the seeds planted would someday bear fruit. The money spent for the space program has been returned to us a thousand fold. The world was completely changed forever; we gained new knowledge of computers, metals, life science. The investment in brainpower has incalculable returns, it is the future and it is also the only path forward. The Hubble space telescope has revolutionized our understanding of the universe and our place in it. For the price of one small weapons system, our knowledge of the universe has been vastly multiplied.

The machine that you are reading this on came from the space program, and the companies that built it didn’t exist when Kennedy proposed tossing his cap over the wall of space. So let us follow Kennedy’s thought to where we are today. Kennedy faced a cold war with the Soviets. We face economic turmoil, and an economy that is losing domestic employment and hemorrhaging its vital economic life force. We are shackled by a dependence on imported oil and natural gas. Our very sovereignty is endangered by massive debts owed to less than benign powers.

I have been asked many times, "What, then, is the answer?" To begin with, the departure of Van Jones illustrates the problem. A name on a door and an office in the White House is a symbol and not a program. Part of President Obama’s green initiative spends millions of dollars to help design oil drilling bits for the most profitable corporations on planet Earth.

Condensed, our problems are jobs, fuel and balance of trade. During the last Great Depression FDR put tens of thousands to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority. The TVA changed one of the poorest regions in the country to a center of strength. Cheap electrical power brought industry to the region along with jobs and prosperity.

We have in this country tens of thousands of areas where wind power technology is entirely practical. What we need in this country is a green program not unlike Kennedy’s space program, with the goal of being completely finished with oil by the end of the next decade. The program will cost a great deal of money, yet that will be a pittance when compared with the return. A green revolution for homes cars and industry, developing new technologies and expanding our knowledge and keeping that knowledge proprietary.

The brainpower will come from American universities and equipment will be built with American labor and components. All products will contain 85% American parts and will be assembled in America. The technologies developed under the program will be licensed with the royalties going into a national sovereign wealth fund. In eleven years, thousands of wind power plants and solar plants will generate enough electricity to make coal fired plants obsolete. The new technology will need no fuel; it will not participate in cap and trade because it will have zero emissions.

In 1961 we as a nation had difficulty getting rockets off the ground, but in just nine years we reached the moon. What could this sort of dedicated program do for America’s auto industry? Today the best electric car has a two hundred-mile range, but with innovations such as the Stanford battery, that could multiply ten fold. Our future could be bright if only we look towards it rather than cringe from it. These new products would be exported to the world with export tariffs to let your investment pay the taxes rather than the poor and struggling. The tariffs are only paid by nations that wish to participate in the green wave. Like a lottery ticket, they are a tax only on the willing.

Clean, plentiful and inexpensive electricity will give manufactures a competitive advantage. A tax code that rewards employers and punishes speculators and purveyors of the old way will help to subsidize the cost. This is not a pipe dream or a gee golly I wish that…, this is the only way. The days of oil are numbered and we all understand that. Do we wait for that day wringing our hands? Or do we step boldly forward to avert it? Do we build ever more military systems to control the flow of oil, or do we build systems to subvert the need entirely?

Henry Ford once spent two billion dollars trying to build a rubber plantation in South America. It was a failure as the answer wasn’t in the jungle but in the laboratory with a test tube and at a tenth of the cost. It takes courage to look forward into the future because the future is filled with promise and is a desert of guarantees. Ben Franklin once famously answered a witness to a hot air balloon who asked, “What good is it?”

Franklin responded, “What good is a newborn baby?”

We can run to the future or we can run from it, but either way it is coming to a life near you. These inventions and improvements will be made somewhere, so why not here? Why not a program to put Americans to work building the green infrastructure that we will need in the coming century? Why not build a new system that will devalue the old and make resource wars unnecessary? Why not build a new industrial base of green technologies that will enrich our lives and revitalize our economy?

The space program in its heyday cost every American fifty cents a week. Twenty-four dollars a year. Less than the cost of oil increases. Less than the cost of wars and instead to build something that is uniquely ours, to reclaim our rightful seat as the world’s leader in technology. In 1969 the world watched in awe and admiration; not because we could launch missiles from far away to destroy targets but because we could do something most thought impossible. It was Franklin’s newborn baby taking its first small step.

We have a unique opportunity here. If our economy were prosperous and the job market strong, we would have no chance at achieving the goal. But because we are in need and our economy is weak and our jobs are evaporating, we have a chance to marshal the resources necessary. The profit is in the potential; there is no future for buggy whip makers or home coal delivery or the iceman. The future is coming. Shall we be its servant or its master?

Do we still mean to be a part of it and to lead it? Or shall we see the future governed by a hostile flag? Can we dream the dreams and unleash the power of our minds to build a better future for our children? Or shall we armor those children to fight for the scraps of yesterday’s bread?

Kennedy did not live to see men on the moon, but he was certain that we would arrive there. Just as Ben Franklin was certain that what he was witnessing was but a glimpse of the future. We have a future to be embraced just as a mother holds her child, and not to be feared like a stranger at the door. To release to roam free the most powerful weapon on earth we have under our control, the human mind.

“For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.” (John F. Kennedy)

How can we achieve any of these good things when we have no power? You are describing things that could happen if we did have power.

On the the hand if by "we" you mean those with power, and those of us who identify with them, how does - how could - their success benefit us? All of the social conditions you lament were caused by the success of those few with all of the power.

By linking "America," and some sentimental vision of the country, to "we" are you not in fact linking all of us to the fortunes of the powerful few, and is that not the problem rather than the solution?

Is not the loysalty you are advocating to "America" actually loyalty to the powerful few? They are not loyal to "America," by the way. Are not your examples of JFK and FDR - powerful people who were supposedly good - an excuse and apology for those with power, at the expense of the aspirations and needs of the rest of us? A way to confuse and distract us from talking about power - who has it and who does not? You are saying that since a couple of people in power can be associated with some good things, or at least better things then we have now, that therefore we need not look at who has power and who does not and why and how it is that way.

But it was not FDR and JFK who gave us those good things, the Left fought for them. The people who deserve the credit for the good things you are reminiscing about are the people who were at that time saying the same things, taking the same positions, as those here today with whom you disagree so strongly and stubbornly. JFK coiuld not have gone to the moon without the skilled manpower, and the strength of that came from unions, not management, and the strength of the unions came from the political Left, not the technocrats.

What makes you so sure that the conditions we have right now are not in fact the direct result of the actions of the people you are setting up as heroes? Do you think that we could have these conditions without the contributions of people like JFK, convincing people that somehow the success of the powerful will or could trickle down to the rest of us? It could be argued with some validity that JFK is more respionsible for the miserable conditions we are now enduring than, say, George Bush is. The mere memory of JFK has many people paralyzed and unwilling to organize to challenge and fight back against those with power, and attacking those who are advocating that we do start fighting back. It is that paralysis and confusion that is preventing organizing and fighting back, and that is the root problem, is it not?

How can we possibly "marshall the resources" when we have no control over resources, when that control is in the hands of the few? Of what value is the "power of our minds" in the face of that?

right? We start that by ending the advance of the cults that we do, now...

Using your criteria, we are in affect doomed. We need a perfect world and a perfect utopian vision. With a perfect altruistic leader, perfect in every way and that is just not going to occur.

I’ve had a number of people ask me, well what would you do? How would you fix things?

If I had all the answers I lead a revolution and change the world but I don’t have all the answers.

You can demonize anyone; did you know that Jesus only healed a few lepers and a couple of blind men? That Son of a bitch left others on the roadside to suffer even though he could have cured them with the wave of his hand.

No one is perfect, especially through human eyes. Suppose you were the President and you found out about a death camp would you bomb it? Potentially killing the inmates but destroying the camp? If you bombed the camp wouldn’t the operators move to kill more faster because of the discovery? Or would you bomb the rail lines leading to the camp? Making it harder to move more inmates into the camp?

No matter what decision you make you will be criticized for it.

Do tell, who are the three greatest political leaders of all time

when we have no power?

You keep telling people that. Why do you poo-poo everything and instead of encouraging people to take action, all you do is try to discourage them?

but I don't hang out of forums that call their favorite members 'heros'. That seems a little cult like, don't you think?

My niece and her wife have just lost their house, their car, and both their jobs. Their families are so poor that help is mostly a joke. I really don't care what someone is called on a message board - "hero", "user", or "liar" - it is less than immaterial. We have to try and come to some form of group acknowledgment of the need for mass movement in the country. We can piss and moan about Kennedys and Roosevelts and "I'm good and he's mean" and "she's cruel" and "he called me a liar" and "he called me a racist" and all that crap. It is no more than distractions (hopefully, not intentional). We none of us have to like each other, but we do need to work together toward working class power - if that is really what we all want...

Because they did things that helped working class Americans.
You can disparage them and call them a cult of personality or even say that it is not so that they didn't do those things. But I sight them as examples of what can be done, of programs that have worked in the past and benefited this society.

As I said in my previous post you can disparage anyones record. How then, if we have only humans to lead us do we find our way out of this mess?

I quote FDR all the time. But there would have been no FDR if not for the existence of a powerful political Left. No amount of yearning for an FDR-like leader would have replaced the need for building of a political Left.

I cite Lincoln often. But I am quite clear that the slaves freed themselves, that Lincoln merely reflected at best the work of the everyday people to overthrow slavery. Therefore, if it were the 1850's I would not have been saying "we need a Lincoln" but rather "we need an Abolition movement." With the Abolition movement, Lincoln or not, slavery would have been ended. Without the Abolition movement, no leader, Lincoln or any one else, could have ended slavery. That seems obvious to me and I am surprised that it is controversial or that there is any contention about it.

Because I say "place not your faith in princes?"

I think what you are advocating is future at best, and dangerous at worst.

You are advocating the fuhrerprinzip.

You are saying (in essence) that we are "doomed, doomed!" if some great leader or other doesn't come along and save our helpless little asses. We need to find a "great leader" and put our trust in him and he will save us! Isn't that where we got Obama from? That is what is coming across in your OP. And, again, Roosevelt only put forth programs that he was forced to put forth because of threats from the left. I am not sure what Kennedy did that "helped working class" people - beyond programs that advanced the profit of capitalist interests and that, in turn, created opportunities for wage slavery. The problem is that all these "heroes" are "heroes" of capitalism - the "benefit" that was accrued to the working class was only incidental and repressive in effect...

"If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it."

Abraham Lincoln
"House Divided" speech

Anyone who is discouraged from taking action by a frank assessment of conditions is seeking to preserve a fantasy, is determined to resist change, or is cowering in fear. For most people, being told that we have no power would be a spur to action for the purpose of building power. This was true in the fight against slavery, in the fight to organize the workplace, in the fight for civil rights, and in every other fight for social progress throughout history.

Most working class people already know that we lack power, and this comes as no shock or discouragement to them. I am suspicious of people who try to tell us that this is not true, and that we should continue doing the gentrified and weak activities so loved by the (relatively upscale and deeply conservative, mostly professional, white and suburban) people who dominate and control all organizations and the discussion on the so-called Left - liberals and those liberals who have commandeered the word "progressives" for themselves to disguise their conservativism and authoritarianism and fool people.

You asked me to name leaders.

Sara Grimke, Frederick Douglas, Emma Goldman, A. Philip Randolph, Mary Harris Jones, William Z. Foster, E. V. Debs, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Albert Parsons...

Or are we limited to only naming charismatic white males connected to power and wealth?

"They killed the poor wretches because they, like you, had the courage to disobey the supreme will of your bosses. They killed them to show you 'Free American Citizens' that you must be satisfied with whatever your bosses condescend to allow you, or you will get killed. If you are men, if you are the sons of your grand sires, who have shed their blood to free you, then you will rise in your might, Hercules, and destroy the hideous monster that seeks to destroy you. To arms we call you, to arms."

- August Spies

"American Labor’s political policy directly checks the growth of class consciousness among the workers and retards the intellectual development of the labor movement. The acceptance of the capitalist parties as the political expression of the working class necessarily carries with it also the endorsement of their general capitalist point of view. Logically enough practically the whole battery of our trade union officials and labor papers express almost identically the same social conceptions as the capitalists and join hands with the latter in suppressing all activity tending to give the workers a clear understanding of the class nature of present society. Only when the workers organize politically as a class do they break with capitalist concepts and develop class consciousness."

- William Z. Foster

"Through all these years I was nourished at Fountain Proletaire. I drank deeply of its waters and every particle of my tissue became saturated with the spirit of the working class. I had fired an engine and been stung by the exposure and harship of the rail. I was with the boys in their weary watches, at the broken engine’s side and often helped to bear their bruised and bleeding bodies back to wife and child again. How could I but feel the burden of their wrongs? How the seed of agitation fail to take deep root in my heart?

"And so I was spurred on in the work of organizing, not the fireman merely, but the brakemen, switchmen, telegraphers, shopmen, track-hands, all of them in fact, and as I had now become known as an organizer, the calls came from all sides and there are but few trades I have not helped to organize and less still in whose strikes I have not at some time had a hand."

- E. V. Debs

Dhalgen, You see everything through a perfected lens, you quote academics and polemics who have never actually led anything. You dislike everyone and everything,you bitch about a Prius but if I gave you a pony and a buggy you'd bitch about horse shit and cutting down timber to build the buggy.

You find fault with everything and try to heap guilt on others for simply living in a world we did not construct. So if we talk about changing it you tell us we are wrong. If we mention people who have successfully changed the world you answer "no they didn't! You're just worshiping a cult of personality."

I don't need you to try and make me feel bad about myself I have ex-wives for that.The history of the world goes back for eons but I'm not responsible for anything before 1956. I didn't create the world but I would like to attempt to make it a better place and if I dug holes for a living I would dig holes for progress. If I drove trucks for a living I would drive trucks for progress but I don't dig holes nor drive trucks I write, so I will write for progress.

I would say that we agree on much but I don't know what it is that you believe in besides your own self perceived notion of intellectual superiority and the rantings of aging manifesto's. Progress comes slowly and usually it comes while the nay sayers insist, "That won't work! That won't happen! That won't fly! You can't do that, that's a bad idea! The world is not a crazy eight ball where if we don't like the answers we can shake it up and start all over. This is the world we've got, we must start from right here!

Dhalgen's Motto: Behind every silver lining is a dark cloud

Discuss the ideas.

Never mind who is trying to make you feel this way or that, and never mind analyzing the messenger. Address the message.

Since time began those fighting for social progress have been accused of "finding fault with everything" of "not being positive" and of "making people feel bad" and then analyzed for the purpose of speculating about their supposed personality flaws. You don't want to argue on that side of the issue, do you?

You say "this is the world we've got, we must start from right here" and then get upset when someone describes the conditions - the world we've got - because they are "being negative" and making you feel bad.

I like Roosevelt's actions, but they were not his actions alone - he was forced to do what he did by the people of this country. How is that being a naysayer except as regards the aggrandizement of FDR? It shows, I think, that the people of this country are quite capable of taking matters into their own hands - if they will act and not sit pining for a "great leader" to save them. I am so far from trying to make you feel bad, that I don't even know how to respond to that. This isn't about how you "feel" or how I "feel", it is about what will actually bring about change; and the only thing that will bring change is mass action, the people taking matters into their own hands. This is what we should all be working for. I am not denigrating anyone's heroes, I am saying that heroes ain't what we need. We need the working class to have power (at least that what I think) and we need to be acting, talking and working toward that goal. That's all I'm saying.

I did not mean for any of this to get personal, that was not my intent...

It comes in burst, and it is often messy. The American Revolution, the French Revolution, the American Civil War, the Russian Revolution, nothing slow about that stuff. In this revolution is much like evolution, long periods of quiescence interrupted by all hell breaking loose and great changes happening. The theory of Punctuated Equilibrium bridges the gap between Darwin and Marx.

I like Roosevelt's actions,

"‘The Democrats from FDR on have done nothing but support the oppression of the poor and working classes in this country and around the world. The "Cold War" may have been "real", but it was and continues to be used as an excuse for the oppression of working people all over the world. The Democrats have always been just as oppressive and murderous as have been the Republicans. It is a false juxtaposition to say they differ in any significant way...

How is that being a naysayer except as regards the aggrandizement of FDR?

"You got it all upside down, dave. FDR didn't do any of that. It was the communists and the socialists and the union members and the workers in the streets throwing their bodies on the bayonets - they're the ones who did these things. FDR was just putting out fires for the capitalists..."

It shows, I think, that the people of this country are quite capable of taking matters into their own hands.


"Liberals" have never (as a political group) been against wars of aggression and imperial dominance. Truman, John (and Robert) Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey, Carter, Clinton and now Obama are all in a line of imperial war-makers. I think you are making the label "Liberal" into something it is not. Liberals are for the status quo - just one that is slightly more gentle with the under classes. The very reason that "Liberals" are gentler with the underclasses is so that imperialistic capitalism can continue without interference from the oppressed.

I did not mean for any of this to get personal,

“I am not sure what the efficacy of the Baba Yaga metaphor is. An old witch who eats children and is basically a nightmare? It seems to me that very often the main urge of the untended mind is toward myth."

“I certainly don't believe the story of the grenade wired to a child's hand. Justifications for killing children and other non-combatants are rife and of little weight."

"but using myth and lore to express ideas and concepts that are readily grasped and that your audience is fully competent to understand strikes me as a kind of indulgence...”

We need the working class to have power (at least that what I think)

How do they do that without leaders? What model do the follow without history?
But I forgot according to you Democrats are just as bad a republicans, The New Deal never happened, the civil amendment would have been passed by itself. Who were these union members and communists and workers throwing themselves on the bayonets?
They were liberals and FDR was their leader.

"How do they do that without leaders?"

The question is, should movements be based on a leader, or should leaders serve the movement?

No movement or organization will ever be leaderless for long - can't happen, never does happen. So the "what about leaders? We need leaders!" cry is based on a false premise. There is no such thing as a movement or organization where leaders don't emerge. Or are you saying that FIRST we need leaders, before there is a movement? Leadership evloves from movements, emerges, and we should never be calling for movements based on leaders. As I said, you are advocating the fuhrerprinzip here.

whooping it up that you have discovered fruit...

I do like some of the actions FDR took, but he and all the other Democrats have oppressed people all over the world, including in this country. You think that there is some great and marvelous difference between the Republicans and Democrats - good for you! Am I required to agree with you?
And if you don't see how the Cold War was used as an excuse to oppress and rob working people all over the world, then I hope that "history" thing works out for you.

I see most of your hero-worship of FDR as mostly aggrandizement.

"Liberals" are not "the people" in this country - and thank the gods for that.

The untended mind does move toward myth; I don't believe the story of the grenade wired to the child's hand; and using myth and lore to illustrate a point can be a kind of indulgence. I do not see how any of that is personal.

I do not see how anything that you posted that I have said in the past works as any kind of counter to what I have said today - as a matter of fact, it is fairly consistent. I know you were trying for a real big "Got'cha" moment, but it didn't work.

dave, can't we discuss how we see things differently without falling back on personal affronts, either given or imagined. You have posted a series of OPs in praise of one or another or a group of Democratic political leaders. Are we supposed to just ignore your posts, or should we read them and engage in discussions of them. Must we only praise your work and never disagree with anything you write? Let me know the rules of your OPs and I will try to comply...

"Who were these union members and communists and workers throwing themselves on the bayonets?
They were liberals and FDR was their leader."

That is unmitigated bullshit! "union members, communists and workers" were "liberals"!? Dave, I see now that you do not know what "liberal" is. This makes me wonder about what else you are wrong about.

It is OK, I won't respond to any more of your posts...

Then why in the world did the crazed liberals on this forum decide a coup was in order? This gets better every day.

"Liberals of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your Priuses!"

its the movement not the leader, like its the message not the messenger...

It is getting harder and harder to get around la-la-land, as it keeps expanding. For example, Detroit gets farther and farther way from the rest of the country every day. You can't even find New Orleans anymore - la-la-land had been expanding in the opposite direction for a while now.

That makes a Prius more of a necessity than ever. It is a hybrid. It runs on liberal rhetoric - fortified with a high-octane progressive additive - up to a certain speed, and then the right wing talking point generator takes over. That increases efficiency. If you try to start up from a dead stop with the right wing fuel, you get no traction - you will spin your wheels. If you stayed with the liberal fuel once you were up to speed, you would run out of fuel before you got anywhere. The only drawback is that this makes the car serve to the right, and eventually you just go around in circles.

They are working on all of these problems - or so they say. In any case, you are only supposed to drive them for a couple of years, and then you trade them in on the new and "improved" model. You hardly ever see any Gores, or Kerrys on the road any more, for example.

The Obama model is the latest. It doesn't run any better, but it has all these enhancements for "added comfort." It runs really quiet and you can't hear any road noise. Lots of soothing music and comfortable furnishings, though. And it is stylish and sleek. You can't even tell if you are moving or going anywhere the ride is so smooth. It supposedly drives itself - some sort of "3D chess" computer inside the darned thing that is way beyond our comprehension - so you aren't suppose to touch the controls. Just sit back and enjoy the view and listen to the soothing music.

I see people tripping over this word often and imagining slights when none were meant, or rather the word was used to mean two different things. I could be very wrong but that's what it looks like to me since I had no idea, a decade ago, that liberalism tied into economics. I thought it just meant being left.

Is the problem because it's so easy, so facile, to associate emotions to vague terms like "liberal" and "progressive" without any analytical effort required?

I'm going strictly by wiki here because I'm no theoretician

The impact of liberalism on the modern world is profound. The ideas of individual liberty, personal dignity, free expression, religious tolerance, private property, universal [link:progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=98128|human rights], transparency of government, limitations on government power, popular sovereignty, national self-determination, privacy, "enlightened" and "rational" policy, the rule of law, respect for science, fundamental equality, a free market economy, and free trade


Economic liberalism
Free market

Economic liberals today stress the importance of a free market and free trade, and seek to limit government intervention in both the domestic economy and foreign trade.



This is exactly why some of the most vile characters on the net can call themselves Liberals in good conscience. They're correct. They're liberals. This is why Clinton and Obama are epic Liberals. The Market all the way baby!

How can people complain? People chlamored for a Liberal and Obama, the ultimate Liberal, was delivered.

And thus, a catastrophic marriage with many people defining such an important term differently.

it pulls to the right. The frame ain't bent, just the way it is.

is looking at how the right started recently vilifying the term "liberal." I remember during Reagan, hearing the right barking about the evils of those liberals. The assumption was New Deal liberals, "nanny staters" "entitlements," social stuff.

Right up to today with Fox news and rw talk radio demonizing "liberals."

How brilliant. Convince people on the left that "liberals" must surely be good and righteous if they're the sworn enemy of rw Reagan economics. Goodness, who wouldn't be a liberal?

Even JFK messed with the terminology:

[div class="excerpt"]John F. Kennedy, a self-described liberal, gives two different definitions of liberalism:

“ What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label 'Liberal'? If by 'Liberal' they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer’s dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of 'Liberal'. But if by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal', then I’m proud to say I’m a 'Liberal'.[6]

[/quote]

The "discussions" of "market economies" was just jaw-dropping! One of the gatekeepers said (paraphrase), "Market economy preceded capitalism, because every little village has always had a 'market'!" A produce market in a farming village is what these yahoos was calling a "Market Economy"!! I started a couple of times to go in and explain what is meant by "market economy", but I thought, no, it is more fun to see them trying to make a village market equal a market economy...

I'm reading:
Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement
by Patricia Sullivan

She devotes considerable time to the Association's campaign for passage of federal anti-lynching law in the 1920s-1930s. Of the over 3,000 lynchings, less than 70 people were arrested and less than 20 convicted of the crime.

It was common for local law enforcement to turn over people to the mobs without legal ramifications, thus the need to hold them responsible under federal law. Sullivan writes of the failure to pass such legislation under past administrations, and the new momentum gained from FDR's election. Walter White led the NAACP's effort to pass the Costigan-Wagner anti-lynching bill in 1935. FDR never spoke in favor of the bill and refused to support efforts to end a Southern filibuster of the bill in the Senate.

This was news to me so using the search terms: fdr lynching, I found dozens of reports like this:

"With minor exceptions, until the civil rights movement of the mid-1960s, the South was able to frustrate any national effort to make a dent in America's apartheid. In this climate, it was not even possible to pass so basic an expression of a national commitment to justice as an antilynching bill.

"The NAACP fought for such a law. Walter White was a confidant of Eleanor Roosevelt and, through her, gained access to Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1935, FDR tried to explain to White why he had chosen to sacrifice the rights of black Americans to the economic needs of the country as a whole: 'I've got to get legislation passed by Congress to save America. The southerners by reason of the seniority rule in Congress are chairmen or occupy strategic places on most of the senate and House committees. If I come out for the antilynching bill now, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing.' By 1940, there had been almost 3,500 lynching in the country, mostly in the small towns and rural areas of the South. Between V-J day, the end of the war against Japan, and June 1947, less than two years later, there were twenty-six lynchings of blacks" (16-17)."


Source: Jack Greenberg, Crusaders in The Courts: How A Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution (1994)

This ain't about a leader not being perfect or being able to get things done, it's about how capitalism kills.

Good find to illustrate the arguments being made! I once had an argument with a young, white, southern, christian lady who told me that there had been no lynching, at all. It was all just a bunch of "Yankee", NAACP lies. I brought her tons of reports, with pictures and everything - and she still said it was all just propaganda to make southerners look bad. I told her no body needed any propaganda to make us look bad...

it is important to remember that Roosevelt, the most patrician of our nation's many patrician politicians, did not compete in the 1932 election as the radical reformer that he became. The Democratic platform of that year was a cautious document, dictated by fear itself rather than the boldness that would later be associated with Roosevelt.

What made Roosevelt so remarkable, and so radical?

The results that were tabulated 75 years ago this evening influenced FDR to evolve his policies in a direction that was more egalitarian and democratic -- his critics still use the term "socialistic," and they are not entirely wrong. It was that evolution that redefined not just American politics but America...

... Roosevelt was inclined to move. It was not just the size of the Democratic landslide that influenced him. It was the clear evidence that many American voters were looking to the left of new president and his party for responses to the economic crisis.

On November 8, 1932, more than a million Americans -- almost three percent of the electorate -- cast ballots for presidential candidates who proposed far more radical changes than "a new deal." Socialist Norman Thomas won 884,885 votes, for a 230 percent improvement in his party's total. Communist William Z. Foster won 103,307 votes, for a 112 percent increase in his party's total -- and its best finish ever in a presidential race. And southern populist William Hope Harvey, who had helped manage Democratic populist William Jennings Bryan's 1896 presidential campaign, secured another 53,425 votes.

Roosevelt was conscious of the fact that, in a number of states outside the south, the combined vote for the Socialists and Communists edged toward 5 percent of the total. Shortly after the election, the president-elect met with Thomas, a former associate editor of The Nation, and Henry Rosner, a frequent contributor to The magazine who had authored the Socialist Party's detailed 1932 platform and who would go on to be a key aide of New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.

The new president did not adopt the whole of the Socialist platform. But, as historian Paul Berman observed, "President Franklin D. Roosevelt lifted ideas from the likes of Norman Thomas and proclaimed liberal democratic goals for everyone around the world..." FDR's borrowing of ideas about Social Security, unemployment compensation, jobs programs and agricultural assistance from the Socialists was sufficient to pull voters who had rejected the Democrats in 1932 into the New Deal Coalition that would sweep the congressional elections of 1934 and reelect the president with 61 percent of the popular vote and 523 of 531 electoral votes in 1936 -- the largest Electoral College win in the history of two-party politics.

As for Norman Thomas, he ran again in 1936, conducting what Time magazine would refer to as "a more civilized and enlightened campaign than any other candidate." But he amassed only 187,910 votes, for 0.4 percent of the total.

Thomas would joke that, "Roosevelt did not carry out the Socialist platform, unless he carried it out on a stretcher." That was a slightly bitter variation on the old Socialist's acknowledgment that FDR had read the results of the 1932 election right.

That process began 75 years ago this evening, when Franklin Roosevelt recognized that, while Americans had chosen him as their president, they signaled their intention that America should turn left.

[link:www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/249972|75 Years Ago FDR Read the Results Right, and Took a Left Turn]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fZ1XOkgKuZo/SLsUKOxVJPI/AAAAAAAAAiM/i7MJYu5Y-4Q/s400/g1_u19625_EllaBaker.jpg

"Strong people don't need strong leaders."

http://www.anarkismo.net/attachments/mar2008/ella_baker.jpg

The candidates from the Left garnering 3-5% of the vote had a tremendous impact.

The same people who hold up FDR as a hero, and his administration as evidence to support their "work within the system" and "reform the party" and "find progressive candidates" ideas, mock and ridicule talk of third parties because "they can't win," or claim that third parties "help the Republicans."

Ella Baker

Activist, Civil Rights Organizer, 1903–1986

"In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become a part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed. It means facing a system that does not lend itself to your needs and devising means by which you can change that system. That is easier said than done."

The granddaughter of a slave who was beaten for refusing to marry a man her master chose for her, Ella Baker spent her life working behind the scenes to organize the Civil Rights Movement. If she could have changed anything about the movement, it might have been to persuade the men leading it that they, too, should do more work behind the scenes. Baker was a staunch believer in helping ordinary people to work together and lead themselves, and she objected to centralized authority. In her worldview, "strong people don’t need strong leaders."

After graduating from Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1927, Baker moved to Harlem and began her long career of organizing, helping to establish consumer cooperatives during the Depression. She joined the NAACP's staff in 1938 and spent half of each year traveling in the South to build support for local branches, which would become the foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1946 she reduced her NAACP responsibilities to work on integrating New York City public schools.

Baker was one of the visionaries who created the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, and she drew the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to it. She served two terms as the SCLC's acting executive director but clashed with King, feeling that he controlled too much and empowered others too little.

In 1960 four black students in Greensboro, North Carolina, were refused service in a university cafeteria, setting off sympathetic sit-ins across the country, and Baker seized the day. Starting with student activists at her alma mater, she founded the nationwide Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which gave young blacks, including women and the poor, a major role in the Civil Rights Movement.

Baker returned to New York City in 1964 and worked for human rights until her death. Her words live on in "Ella's Song," sung by Sweet Honey in the Rock: "We who believe in freedom cannot rest."

http://americanswhotellthetruth.org/pgs/portraits/Ella_Baker.php

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