No More Illusions
Published on Sunday, November 21, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
No More Illusions:
Clear-Minded Thinking about Impediments to Political Change in the USA
by Fran Shor
In the aftermath of the acquittal by an Oxford, Mississippi federal jury in
December 1963 of five defendants responsible for jailhouse beatings of civil
rights activists, one of those activists, Lawrence Guyot, denounced the fraudulent
verdict. Ella Baker, the inspiring godmother of numerous civil rights organizations,
counseled Guyot to “look beyond this foolishness. Don’t let it stop
you.” Guyot and others in the Mississippi freedom struggle went on to build
the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and other grassroots organizations
that transformed the environment of racial injustice in the South. Although
encountering constant setbacks and lethal white resistance, the civil rights
movement changed the course of US history.
For many activists engaged in trying to defeat George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential election, it seems that the result is also a decision open to charges of fraud. Certainly, with 60 million votes lacking any paper trail and significant incidents of massive statistical anomalies in key states, such as Ohio and Florida, the electoral “foolishness” is yet to be fully investigated or explained. While it may not yet be time to “look beyond this foolishness,” we need to be clear-minded in our analysis of the illusions and impediments confronting us as we try to sustain ourselves in the future in order to make significant political change.
One of the most pernicious illusions is the simple- minded belief that we have a democratic political system based on “one person, one vote.” As in the civil rights period, the right to vote has necessitated periodic intervention in order to make the franchise more inclusive. Such inclusion is still incomplete as long as large numbers of citizens, primarily ex-felons, are prevented from voting. It is estimated that close to 13% of all African-American males are denied voting rights because of their criminal record. Although efforts at the state and federal level have been mounted to enfranchise these permanently excluded voters, the status quo remains in place.
In addition to the lack of full enfranchisement, there are fundamental inequities in the apportionment of votes. One of the most egregious examples is the apportionment for US Senators. For example, Wyoming, with a population of around 500,000, elects the same number of US Senators as California with a population of 35,000,000. That’s a 1 to 70 disproportion! Even in the more “democratic” House of Representatives, there are continuing apportionment inequities that favor smaller, whiter, and less urban populations. Added to this are disparities between congressional districts that reflect biased gerrymandering and the marginalization of racial minorities, as in the recent efforts by Republicans in Texas to redistrict the map in favor of their constituencies. Hence, the Republican political machine is adding its own malevolent policies of redistricting to an already antiquated and antidemocratic model of representation.
Beyond the retention of the arcane and unrepresentative Electoral College, the US political system refuses to take into account fair and democratic representation. Countries like Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand have institutionalized proportional and preferential voting in order to guarantee that representation is as fair and inclusive as possible. As long as there is a “winner- take-all” political system in the US, political alternatives (and with it, fundamental political change) will be lacking. Certainly, third parties historically have helped build pressure for political changes when the two-party duopoly felt threatened by the loss of key constituencies. Nonetheless, without fundamental electoral change, including when and how people vote, the system will continue to preclude real political change on a national level.
Beyond the impediments built into the political system, progressives continue to listen to the siren songs of those whose ideological illusions often substitute for clear- minded analysis. One example in the recent 2004 election was the insistence by Michael Moore that all those young and alienated voters could turn the tide towards progressive change. While Moore mounted his own Herculean efforts to turn out the vote, his sense of who the alienated were was rather blinkered, especially in a national election. Certainly, young people did vote in large percentages against Bush. However, their transitional situation makes reliance on them to be just a short-term strategy. Without building communities of resistance for the transition to middle age, young people will be all too easily de-radicalized. Furthermore, to believe that the alienated are the natural allies of the left is to disregard the awful history of demagoguery and nationalism in modern mass politics. It is not surprising that Bush rallied evangelical Christians and others around a nationalist melodrama of the “war on terror.”
Another illusion is perpetrated by rationalist radicals like Noam Chomsky in their arguments that setting forth the truth will eventually convince people to make rational choices. Not only does this discount the politics of resentment and irrationalism that political critics like Thomas Frank have pointed to, but it also neglects the way in which the semiotic environment has been degraded to simulated and hyper-real events. Rational thought and reality-based thinking are prisoners of imperial and infotainment circuses. It will take a lot more than truth to set people on the road to political change and fundamental freedom.
One final illusion that appears to have as many lives as a cat is the idea of taking over the Democratic Party. While there are progressive elements in the Democratic Party, its function as a collection of interests is towards a para- state institution, that is, a legitimizer of limited reforms at best that will help the overall system function more smoothly. Although working to pull the Democratic Party to the left is a vital task, it is also based upon the illusion that the Democratic Party would listen to the left before it would perform its legitimizing role. A hardheaded review of Clinton’s real impact on African-Americans or Kerry’s awful concession speech should put to rest the belief that the Democrats will advance the progressive agenda.
Without eschewing working will Democrats and their progressive allies, such as MoveOn, we need to recognize that fundamental political change can only come about through a coalition of struggle. This cannot be built through electoral politics, but outside of and prior to such politics. Moving people to make change means engaging them in real political struggle. Studs Terkel tells of a compelling transformation that occurred to a KKK member who was forced to work with African-American women at his work site to change terrible conditions confronted by all. In the midst of working to make those changes, the Klan member outgrew his prejudiced views of blacks and jaundiced view of politics.
If we are to move beyond all the “foolishness” that continues to impede the road to radical reform in the United States, we need to realize that this tragic journey will not be easy or without setbacks. While it may be that, as Dr. King put it so eloquently, “the arc of the universe bends towards justice,” we will have to bend our own wills towards justice without illusions and with all the intelligence and imagination at our command.
Fran Shor teaches at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. His e-mail address is: f.shor@wayne.edu
Copyright © 2004, Fran Shor. All rights reserved.