A Green State of Mind

In the election of 2008 Barack Obama became a commodity sold to voters as an agent of change, regardless of his status quo platform, that spoke volumes about the mediation of human desire into instruments of control.

It can not be denied that on the election night of 2008 there literally was dancing in the streets. This phenomenon illuminated the fact that the past eight years was in many ways a time of immense darkness. In possibly no other time in the history of the United States was the country so close to an actual dictatorship as it was during the George W. Bush administration. There were concrete cases of a centralization of power within the executive branch, and especially within the office of the president and vice president. The Patriot Act, sanctioning of torture, increased internal surveillance, and the detaining of suspects without filing of charges all eroded the protections found in the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights. These decisions all did lasting damage to the idea of the United States as a representative democracy. Unfortunately, this centralization of power was the culmination of other actions taken by previous presidents during times of war. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, Wilson enacted the Alien and Sedition Act with the Palmer Raids during WWI, Roosevelt interned Japanese-Americans during WWII, and Nixon used COINTELPRO and an enemies list during the war in Vietnam. All of these men were gravely wrong, but what distinguished the Bush administration was the creation of an artificial state of emergency after Sept. 11th, 2001 that lead to a fabricated war for hegemony in the Middle East. Therefore, there were reasons to celebrate the election of a new president, one who was considered a real agent of change.

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The following is my presentation at the 2009 Green Fest.

We are gathered together, both here and within the Green Party overall, because we want to engage in the great political work of the day. It is a day that is truly benighted where peace, civil liberties, communities, and our own environment is threatened by a comprehensive system of power. If we are to fight this power then there is the necessity to understand its operation, how it functions and consolidates its influence to such a degree that at first blush it seems impossible to oppose it. This is where theory comes in as a supplement to political action. I will give some examples of what theory can do to enrich our work, and illustrate that theory is not only an embellishment or flavoring to action, but a vital binding agent that makes our actions sensible.

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The following is part three of a series that explores various current economic aspects in a way that illustrates the possibility for new alternatives rather than mapping out detailed new plans.

The cooperative is the epitome of economic democracy, as well as the direct alternative to the corporation. The corporate model has existed for so long, since the creation of the British East India Company in 1600, that it has firmly entrenched itself into the unconscious of humans living within capitalism. Corporations have subsumed attempts to fight it throughout history and has incorporated a false language of freedom without any structural background behind it. The cooperative, in contrast, may at first appear utopian or idealistic. But the cooperative, as the expression of economic democracy, is a working assemblage of a principle that empowers humans much more than being mediated by undemocratic corporations and a commodified culture. To understand the importance of a particular cooperative in a community, it is vital to understand the relationship of economic democracy to the idea of democracy in general.

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