Activist David Swanson recently appeared at Kutztown University in an event hosted by the Kutztown Democratic Club as part of a book tour to promote his new book, Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. I found David’s commentary to be compelling in many areas, but liked especially the part on why you should continue your activism. I hope you find reading his lecture as intriguing as I did hearing it. We still have copies of Daybreak for sale from David’s Kutztown appearance. Proceeds after costs will benefit the Kutztown Democratic Club. If you’re interested send $20.00 to: David Swanson Book P.O. Box 304 Kutztown, PA. 19530.

David Swanson:

It’s interesting. When my book was first published, I asked everyone to hurry up and go out and buy it so that it goes up to the top of the charts. Because at the top of the charts was a book called Common Sense by a guy named Glenn Beck. And he puts a cover like Tom Paine’s cover and plagiarizes Tom Paine and pretends he’s Tom Paine. Of course, Tom Paine talked about the separation of church and state and here’s a book telling us that the church can solve all our problems. Plus all sorts of other racist, bigoted destructive and distracting nonsense with only little bits of sanity spaced through the book to hold people and turn their anger towards immigrants and Muslims. And black people and gay people.

There’s a better, I think, use of Common Sense which is a website here called CommonSense2. Which everyone should be reading and supporting and building along with other similar good media outlets.

I’m here to talk about the general themes of my book. I can’t touch on everything but during question and answer discussion you can talk about whatever’s on your mind. Let me start by asking a general question that I’ve been asking everywhere. Let’s see whose been doing their homework.

David on the Constitution

David: What is Article one of the United States Constitution about?

Someone in the crowd shouts: Congress!

David: Congress! Smart crowd. Yes. I’ve heard the president. I’ve heard the military. Free speech, etc. But it’s about Congress. It’s the first 60% of a very short document. It is the first branch of our government. It is the branch to which goes every power they could dream up. Very limited power goes to the Executive in Article II, and limited power to the Judicial branch in Article III. Congress was overwhelmingly the seat of power in our government. And above all the House of Representatives. The Legislature is the branch that had to be divided into two chambers, and the House of Representatives was to be the part of our government closest to us. The most representative of us and therefore the part of our government that should initiate any bills. They should have the power of impeachment over the other branches. The seat of our government’s power.

It’s useful, I think, to write books and to read books. And to attend institutions of learning like this one. Because I think, when it comes to the question of whether we’re going to do anything about something like torture, we have basically two choices. We have the choice of getting the videos and photos public. And we have the choice of teaching Americans to read. Because it’s all there in words in black and white. All the evidence. All the crimes. It’s not enough. We have to see the photos and the videos. Obviously, it would be much easier to get the photos and the videos than to teach Americans to read. In the long run we have to do both.

Imperial Power on the March

David: We have to make it clear to the public what was meant to be. How our executive power has gone beyond limits. Rules and laws are supposed to be initiated by the House of Representatives. Presidents now make laws with signing statements. When signing a bill into law they write a statement, sign it—that’s a new law. Our new president gave beautiful speeches opposing that practice when he was a candidate for president. Now he engages in it. He keeps Bush’s signing statements around. He says maybe he’ll take them on one by one if any of these issues come up. He’ll decide which ones to throw out. Presumably the next guy will decide which ones of Bush and Obama’s signing statements he wishes to throw out. Is that a nation of laws or a nation of men? It’s not terribly clear anymore. We have executive orders involving major policy without any pretense of Congressional involvement. We have presidents making laws through secret memos. Ask a lawyer to write a secret memo legalizing a blatant crime, and that’s all.

Torture, aggressive war. The current president is not going to prosecute that. Not going to prosecute those who did it. He’s not even going to consider it. I say that because the president tells the Justice Dept. what to do. We’re going to consider prosecuting people who stray from the illegal activities of the secret memos. If this goes unchallenged, If this goes uncorrected, a future president can tell a lawyer to legalize any crime and it’s legal.

Imagine if you had that power. To hire a lawyer, at public expense, don’t worry about what it costs, and ask him to write you a secret memo that you can keep in your pocket legalizing your crimes. You can’t do that. I can’t do that. But we think it’s okay for a president to do that. Or rather we don’t. The American public is not behind these kinds of policies, but we aren’t doing what it takes to change them. Congress has no interest in changing them on its own unless compelled to. Congress doesn’t want any powers. That’s what’s different now from past presidential abuses, other than the height and extent and extremity of these abuses. It’s no push-back from Congress.

The power to make war is clearly now in the hands of the president. Congress wants it there. The military and industry want it there. Everybody wants it there. Except us. We oppose these wars. The president and Congress say I’m going to ignore public opinion polls. And people say thank you for being so principled and ignoring us. We’re supposed to be a democracy. Congress is supposed to have the power to decide when and where we have wars. It is very clear. The president is supposed to be the Commander of the military during a war set by Congress. That’s not the way it works anymore.

What we’re doing in Pakistan certainly looks like a war to the people who are on the ground in Pakistan. We don’t even call it that. In some cases, at best, you get a vague authorization to use force. Lies are told to the Congress and an authorization to use force as a last resort loses all relevance. Endless occupation over the years. We aren’t still pretending to look for the weapons of mass destruction…and so forth. Yet the wars go on. We have presidents spending money on wars without Congress. Bush used money appropriated for Afghanistan to begin a new invasion of Iraq. Congress knows this and does nothing about it. Money goes into secret budgets—already massive and growing secret budgets.

Secret budgets provide the power to spend money on such things as Wall Street bailouts. Trillions. Presidents make treaties with the consent of Congress. Bush made a treaty with the government he occupied in Iraq for three more years of war. He abused his power to put in a treaty without asking the Senate to ratify it. You had some senators including a guy named Obama who were quite upset about this. You had a senator named Biden who put up a bill saying we won’t fund the occupation of Iraq anymore unless you bring this to the Senate to be ratified. Now, it’s their only fig leaf to legalize an occupation that they are continuing. They’re not going to leave by the end of 2011, it’s pretty darn clear. Yet, we think we’ve got a good treaty and we should just sit back and accept that because it says that they’re going to end the war someday. We have no control over this treaty. We have no way of stopping them from replacing it with a new treaty to extend the war. Last week the Congress said they approved of this end date in this treaty they weren’t asked about. As if anybody cared. Of course, they did also require that the Pentagon give monthly reports on progress towards that complete withdrawal by the end of 2011. That would be a useful thing, assuming they get the reports and assuming they’re honest. Also assuming that if they’re not suggestive of a future withdrawal that Congress will do something about it. And there are things that Congress can do.

Presidential Power Grows

David: There are some additional powers. The power to make appointments without Congress. Bush managed to do this in times of recess including people that had already been rejected. The power to operate in enormous secrecy. More and more of what our government does, especially in the Executive branch, is secret. The power of pardons is something that a president is supposed to have. But when you pardon or commute a sentence to just short of pardoning a crime committed by Scooter Libby that was obstruction of justice, when the justice obstructed was aimed at Bush and Cheney, then you are pardoning a crime that you authorized. Raise your hand if you think Dick Cheney forgot what he did 72 times. Then you are drastically abusing the pardon power. Congressmen like Jerold Nadler from New York who were pushing back hard against the idea that Bush might listen to Cheney and pardon everybody of all the crimes they ordered. He didn’t want him to do it but he claimed that he could if he wanted to. That has to be changed. And what about immunity? We’re giving immunity for crimes without naming the criminals. Without specifying the crimes. This immunity is worse than pardons.

There’s the power to spy without warrants. The power to imprison people without charge. Without legal process. To put people in prison for life without habeas corpus—something that’s been developed over centuries. People have killed themselves in Guantanamo. When you lock someone up without charge, without explanation, without hope, this will happen. We’re supposed to be the hope mongers. The power to rendition. Our current White House, like the past one and the one before it, claims the power to kidnap people, put them on an airplane, fly them to another nation where they are tortured. One of our airplanes that was frequently used for this, was spotted making an exchange in England recently. We don’t know the details but we know that the White House claims the power to do this.

Legalizing Torture

David: The power to torture. The director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, and White House adviser David Axelrod are people who have gone on television and made clear that they believe that the president has the power to torture. He just chooses not to use it at the moment. That’s just lovely: He chooses not to use it. He put out an executive order ending torture. Except that torture was illegal. So the whole pretense of the last several years of banning torture, having Bush sign a statement making an exception for the CIA and all the rest of this nonsense was meaningless. It was already illegal. It’s illegal. It’s in the U.S. Code. It’s a felony. Any act of complicity in torture, even before Bush came to Washington—and still is if we are going to treat laws as laws—is illegal. But now there seems to be an effort to turn laws into policy decisions. In order to torture you need to be asking that our laws not be enforced. We’re supposed to elect Democrats and hope that they torture less than Republicans. That’s not a nation of laws.

Democrats Running in Fear

David: The power to operate without fear of impeachment or prosecution. We have a class of people who make the laws and are not subject to them. The rest of us who are subject to the laws have very little to do with making them. You see the Obama White House and the Eric Holder Justice Department going to enormous lengths to protect Bush and Cheney and their colleagues to beat their crimes and keep their secrets hidden and protected. We’ve even cut off intelligence sharing with England. They’re claiming that phone companies are part of the Executive branch of our government when it comes to keeping secrets. Appealing and re-appealing and re-appealing any case that would expose anything about the torture or our complicity. They claim the power to shut down entire cases because of state secrets. They’re making claims that Dick Cheney never even dreamed of making. That’s what we have been made to think of as the other team. These are the people we helped get into power. Republicans love to protect Democrats on small stuff, not on presidential power. Not on war crimes. Democrats love to run in fear from Republicans. The real teams are the people with all the power and the rest of us.

Rendition

David: Rendition is an interesting one because of what’s happening in free countries. You know, there was a Canadian citizen who had done absolutely nothing wrong, who made the mistake of flying into JFK airport in New York. We picked him up. Kidnapped him. We sent him to another country to be tortured. He was brutally tortured. Canada has apologized to him for having something to do with this. They compensated him with nine million dollars from the Canadian treasury. The United States judicial system yesterday ruled that he has no claim against the United States. He was not kidnapped—he was renditioned. There is no precedent for treating such a thing. No crime for which he should be compensated. He was perceived as a danger to national security. Dissenting opinions in the ruling said that the majority opinion was abject subservience to the Executive branch of our government. As it was. Italy convicted 24 U.S. citizens and one member of our military and 22 members of our Central Intelligence Agency for kidnapping a man in Italy and sending him to a third country to be tortured. So it turns out that kidnapping is still a crime in Italy. Here, if you or I kidnapped anybody, it’s a crime. But if it’s rendition it’s a license to kidnap. If it’s rendition it’s not a crime in the United States. And neither is anything else that a President does. We’re giving them immunity. The Justice Department has announced that they’re not going to prosecute these people. They’re not going to prosecute the higher-ups. The excuse that foreign courts have used through the years is that they won’t go after the Bush-Cheney gang because the world court should handle it. Any excuse Congress might have had for not acting is gone. No one else is going to handle it. Congress has an absolute responsibility to be stepping up and forcing the Justice Department to do its job. Congress needs to do its job of holding other branches accountable. Congress needs to check the abuses of power of the Executive branch.

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There’s a Hunger Out There

David: I got an email two days ago from Congressman Alan Grayson. It said that Dick Cheney is still on the loose. Dick Cheney’s not behind bars yet. Dick Cheney must be held accountable. Send me money! People sent him over 1/2 million dollars. Ordinary people. Small donations. Because they’re thrilled that he’s getting on cable television and he’s saying colorful things. Saying direct, aggressive things about his political opponents. Refusing to apologize and back down and cower. As far as it goes, that’s a good thing. But I was actually excited about this email. And I asked what it was they were going to do to hold Dick Cheney accountable and put him behind bars. And I found out what it was that Congressman Grayson was going to do. Does anybody know? He’s going to go on TV and call Dick Cheney a vampire. You know, I hate to say it like this, but this is an idea that has no teeth (laughter). It doesn’t do a God-damned thing! There is no future Vice-President that’s going to worry about committing crimes because in the future some guy might call him a vampire. It just doesn’t have an impact. You know, when you’re dealing with members of Congress, it’s such a low bar. Nobody does anything right, including just rhetoric. You’ve got to encourage them and tell them to play offense. Just don’t play defense. I’m not necessarily opposed to supporting Alan Grayson, but for God’s sake try to get some actions behind the words.

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Impeachment

David: Please stop promoting the idea that the Republicans matter. We gave the Democrats all the power in Washington. We’re waiting for them to use it. So denouncing the Republicans in colorful and in less than important but straight-forward terms is great, but it’s not actually the most needed thing. So what would I actually have wanted and still would like? Starting tomorrow, Congressman Grayson and your Congressmen and women, what would I like them to do? Because there are things that they can do. The number one power that Congress has is impeachment. Without impeachment Congress doesn’t exist as a branch of government with any way to push back against either of the other branches. If there’s sex involved, if it’s a Democrat or not a member of the Executive branch, we still have impeachment. It’s a procedure that doesn’t traumatize a nation - you just do it. It takes a week. It’s done. You don’t need to wait until the courts convict the guy first. If it’s a member of the Executive branch or a former member of the Executive branch, or a right-winger and there’s no sex involved, then there’s no more impeachment! There’s a a guy names Jay Bybee who is a judge for life just below the Supreme Court on the Court of Appeals. They won’t impeach him even though his name is at the bottom of secret memos legalizing torture. His crimes are in black and white, spelled out, with his signature at the bottom. They won’t impeach him because Fox News wouldn’t like it. This is the number one reason John Conyers gave above all reasons that he wouldn’t impeach Bush or Cheney. Fox News wouldn’t like it.

When Alberto Gonzales resigned and left, there were committees on both sides of the Hill that had hearings bringing him in to make him look like an idiot. There was a bill put into the House of Representatives by one Congressman, who had never been any particular leader to my knowledge. It was a one sentence bill—I didn’t think you could do that. It said: The House Judiciary Committee should consider whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales committed any impeachable offenses. Substitute Jay Bybee, introduce that bill, start getting co-sponsors on it. It would give us something to work with. We’d have something that scares the Justice Department into a little bit of justice. At an impeachment hearing you get the secret memos, you get the testimony and you get anything you want. It’s a privileged hearing. You cannot say no to an impeachment hearing. And there’s not a question about the crimes here. It’s a question of the will to do it. And to do it in a way that we set the guys to squealing on each other and bring the whole thing down. Which is, of course, why they won’t do it. Because it would be too easy to make that happen.

It seems we won’t impeach anybody until there’s sex and unless they’re a Democrat.

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Pretext, Posturing and Pandering

David: Why can’t they subpoena somebody? In the Congress that took place so disastrously in 2007-2008, there were dozens of subpoenas issued that nobody complied with. Condoleeza Rice said, ” You know, I’m not really inclined.” Dick Cheney said, ” No. Not going to do that.” They just didn’t comply. They haven’t been re-issued. New ones haven’t been issued. In fact, to my knowledge, not a single subpoena has been issued in the new Congress. At least not to the Executive branch or former members thereof. It was a game. It was a pretext for two years. Pretending that they wanted to hold some of these people accountable. There was a majority of the American public screaming for impeachment. Congress did nothing on impeachment. Congressman Conyers’ staff on the Judiciary Committee spent most of their time writing books about Bush and Cheney’s impeachable offenses. When they were at work and not writing the books, they held hearings. They held dozens of hearings. They laid out the crimes and impeachable offenses. People defied subpoenas—just didn’t show up. And by the way, any committee of Congress has the power to enforce subpoenas with the Capitol Police Force. I know the Capitol Police Force. I say things out of line on Capitol Hill and they arrest me. They put me in one of their many jails. They just haven’t put Dick Cheney in one. Through the better part of U.S.history this is how things are done.

They hold hearings, endless hearings on the blatant crimes of the Bush-Cheney administration. Make no mistake about it Congress has the power to act upon the results of those hearings or not. They have the power to enforce their subpoenas and compel testimony. No one stopped the Democratic-controlled Congress from acting. They choose not to. They didn’t even compel testimony from the heads to have them testify, “Yes, we do commit these abuses and we’re proud of them.” By last summer the push for impeachment had grown so strong that Nancy Pelosi told John Conyers that he could hold a pretend impeachment hearing (and he had to ask her permission for that). They announced ahead of time that nobody would be impeached no matter what we hear at the hearing. We’re going to lay out the smorgasbord of impeachable offenses and bring in experts who support impeachment. Everyone will feel better, and it will be bad press for the Republicans. And then we’re not going to do anything about it. And that’s what they did. And Conyers opened this pretend impeachment hearing by bragging about the 35 hearings he held already laying out the impeachable offenses. What they want to do is what Congressman Grayson expects money for. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. They want to be consultants. They don’t want to do anything. They don’t want to exercise power. They’ll pass laws. But they won’t assert power. Enforcing their own contempt citations, their own subpoenas, through most of U.S. history was something that Congress talked about as self-preservation. Contempt power is inherent in the U.S. Congress preserving its existence.

When we look back at it it looks sort of comical, like people who have duels to protect their honor. Or they lock somebody up until he apologizes for offending the dignity of Congress. In those days, Congress was thought of as something that had dignity. It was sort of comical in some ways. But the thing is, they cared. At least they wanted to exist. At least they wanted to have power, not just talk. You or I can go on TV and call Dick Cheney a vampire. That doesn’t involve power. Doesn’t save any lives. Doesn’t change anything.

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Congressional Health Care Roulette

David: On Friday, the latest I hear, there’s going to be a vote in Congress on Medicare For all - Single Payer. Health care for everybody. Join the civilized world. Do like every other wealthy nation in the world and give people health care. Save lots of money, eliminate these predatory parasites that we call health insurance companies. It’s going to fail. They haven’t held a single hearing on it. They haven’t done a budget study of it. No discussion. No debate. No mark-up. There will be no amendments. It will be a throw-away vote. It will look very similar to a pretend impeachment hearing. This will be the pretend health care effort. Now, if the other health care bill goes down and we have a round two, it will be a good thing that they had this vote. The more yes votes there are on it, the better. But I have talked to Congress members who have told me to my face that they want to have this vote, and they want to vote yes on it so they can go home and brag about that. They’re convinced it will fail. The president and the leadership in Congress are insistent that it fail. It is guaranteed to fail. It is very, very difficult for Congress members to go against the will of their party. And in the background, what these same Congressmen have told us to our face is that they don’t want anyone to pay any attention to an amendment that was in the health care bill that they’ve now stripped out that is intended to make it easier for states to provide their residents with health care with a single-payer system.

So here we are in a situation where the best chance at actually saving lives is in the state capitals. In Pennsylvania, California, Ohio and a dozen other states there are bills moving. Canada did it this way. Canada did a province first. They quietly strip out that amendment. All the activist groups and unions who have reversed democracy and are taking their orders from the same people they intend to lobby and talk about only this God-forsaken public option. They won’t say a word about the Kucinich Amendment to let states have a better shot at single-payer because that would change the subject. It would be too complicated. Truth is, they don’t want us to. Obama opposed this amendment. Even those in Congress who supported single payer in the past now oppose this amendment because they are taking their orders from the president. They want that amendment gone. The insurance industry wants it gone. The insurance companies know that if we had a real health care system in Pennsylvania and California and the rest of the country started moving to those two states, the United States would get a civilized health care system. They know that and they fear it. So instead, we’re going to have a vote on Friday.

In July, 57 members of Congress wrote a letter saying that if we don’t have a public option tied to Medicare rates, it’s not good enough and we are not going to support it. Well, they don’t have that in the current House bill much less the Senate. And all Republicans are going to vote no on any health care bill. And if some Democrats vote no, well then forget it. It dies. If 40 of the 57 who wrote the letter vote no, it dies. And if 20 Blue Dogs vote no because the bill’s not bad enough, then they’ll only need 20 to vote no for the right reason. It stops. It doesn’t pass. It dies. Well, that’s kind of a hard thing for 57 people to deal with when their constituents are up in arms about it. But what if they get the vote for single-payer Medicare for all bill and it goes nowhere and then they vote for the lousy bill with the insurance company bullshit version of a public option which at best is going to reach 2% of us. Then they can go home and say, ” Well I tried, I really tried my hardest. I voted with the most sincere yes I could on that good bill and then I had to vote yes on the bad one because that was as good as we were going to get. Much easier, much easier. Who’s being played. We are being played (See Dorothy Reilly’s Tough Love). Like suckers. We are being played by these people. So that’s my short take on health care.

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What Should Activists Do?

David: So what do I think we should do? Well, there are a lot of angles we can work. But in terms of us going after Washington, it has to be those members of the House. Forget the preposterous idea of being able to influence a president. And probably a Senator. Organize and strategize about how you can influence your member in the House. You can do it. You can talk to them face-to-face. They have offices in your district. They have offices with staffs there when they’re not there. You can lobby. You can shut those offices down with a volume of phone calls and faxes. You can go there and sit down and not leave. Call the media. Don’t be afraid. Be informed. If you feel the need, get legal advice. Know whether it’s a federal building and so forth. It’s not traumatic. It’s not dangerous. Go. Take a few hours and sit there. Do not leave. Bring polling that shows where the constituents of that district are on the issue you’re there for. But I would say we have to be there for issues that are not even on their radar screen. Not just health care. Questions like where power sits in Washington. Find out your rep’s excuse why we can’t get a one-sentence bill on impeaching Jay Bybee.

Organize groups that organize democratically with a small “D”. You have activists and labor unions out of Washington that are taking their talking points and issue stands from the very people they’re trying to influence. Protest and organize within those groups or drop them and create better groups. Work with local groups, like here at the Kutztown Democratic Club. Work with groups like the PDA; Democrats.com. Go to my web site AfterDowningStreet.org. There are groups that listen to their members while trying to influence elected officials.

I’ve been doing this activist stuff for going on 5 years. Up until the past 6 months I never got a particular kind of question. I get it at every single event now. And I’ll get it even though I’m going to pre-emptively answer it. It is basically why don’t we all kill ourselves question? Should we die? Isn’t it the corporations? Isn’t it the media? Isn’t it the secret permanent government? Isn’t it hopeless? If anybody did any thing good, wouldn’t they be killed? Why do we bother? You know: that question.

Well I have three different answers that I don’t think are contradictory. One is yes, you’re right. Things are really, really awful. It’s worse than you think. I wrote a book to explain to you how bad I think it is. Probably something in there that you didn’t even know how bad it was.

The second answer I have is that as bad as everything is, there are a lot more good points that you might be aware of. If you have a television and never watch it, please throw that thing away. Please unsubscribe from corporate newspapers. If you look at the polling and if you look at Chapter 22 in my book, you’ll see that the polling by the same media outlets that are constantly portraying us as crazy leftist fringe groups show that the vast majority of Americans supports single-payer health care, supports taking money from the military and wars and putting it into schools, overwhelmingly supports green energy and jobs. Most issues. Our relationships with the rest of the world. Our transportation systems. You name it. Americans are far wiser, more sophisticated, more generous than you think. On most issues you’re a part of a big majority. Most of whom think they’re part of a little minority. That’s important to remember. Not always are we a majority. Gay marriage lost in Maine yesterday. That’s what the majority voted, at least those who bothered to vote. But on most issues we’re far, far ahead of where we’re told that we are.

There’s also a lot more activism than you think. Incredibly insufficient, disgracefully insufficient, but far more than you imagine. How many people have heard of Franklin Mills Mall? It’s a big shopping mall not too far from here, in an area where the U.S. Army has shut down one of its regular recruiting stations. Instead, they put a theme park, killing Muslims is fun, and for 13 year-olds—real tanks, real weapons. Video game arcade with Army recruiters milling around. There have been a series of effective protests there. There has been a great deal of negative press in the area, to the point where the Army has said they’re probably going to shut it down. Of course, the protests have to continue until they do. We need to stop them from building these at shopping malls across the country. These protests have given them such bad press that the whole thing hasn’t been effective for them. It hasn’t been worth the cost. People have gone to jail in Philadelphia protesting this thing. The website is shutdowntheaec.net. If you know people who need to see success before they become active, be sure to drag them to the AEC (Army Experience Center) protests. There’s a good chance they’re going to be shut down, and when that happens we’ll also have to shut down the Army’s talking points about why they shut it down and we need to claim success very noisily. Because there are people who won’t get involved unless they perceive success. My point is that there are lots of successes at the local, state and national levels.

Stick it Out: Remain an Activist

David: There’s a fundamental answer to why you should continue your activism:

“The people who brought women the right to vote never saw women vote. The people who sought an end to slavery never saw slavery end. The people most responsible for every huge social justice cause in this country or any other simply did their moral duty with their colleagues and enjoyed it till the day they died. It’s not that they didn’t want to succeed, but they didn’t have to know that they were about to succeed in order to do it. Just as we can’t listen to a song that’s longer than 2:15, doesn’t mean we have to be told we’re going to win this month in order to get involved. Logically, it should be the opposite. Logically, you should get involved when you’re most needed, not when you’re least needed. So, I understand that temptation and that inclination. When we go around moaning and whining, it’s contagious. It’s worse than the flu. People have dropped out because we moan and whine about not winning. That stuff is contagious and self-indulgent and we have no right to do it. Let’s save our pessimism for better times. There’s no excuse for it.”

(Here a question came up from the audience where the questioner, an activist, said she was hopeless because nothing ever changes and we never win. She ended her question with, “I don’t know if I can wait until after I’m dead to achieve victory.”)

David’s answer: Well, I don’t know if you can either. But I do know that you coughed the germs of defeatism over all of us. It’s not that I’m unsympathetic. It’s not that I don’t understand. It’s not that I’m unaware. But I don’t find anything helpful about complaining. I am honored by the idea that I’ve got some sort of magical answer that’s going to cheer you up. That’s very flattering. I appreciate it. But it’s an intense, personal and persevering brand of defeatism. A lot of it for people is just the accumulation of years and years of doing things and not having really succeeded in what you wanted. But for a lot of people it’s the belief that we did something in November that was supposed to transform the world and it didn’t.

Elections alone have never changed anything. Never will. If they did they would be banned. And to expect them to is to ask to be disappointed. And then to expect the election of a president, not the first branch of our government, but the Executive, to change everything. If it did that would be very, very bad news for the future of our country and the world. To expect that it would, adds a whole level of self-delusion. And lack of history.

Activism has to begin the night the election ends. And the next day and the next day and the next day. Within that first day we have Rahm Emmanuel put in charge of the White House. Some people wanted to give him a year. Some people wanted to give him six months. Some people wanted to give our new shiny dictator a couple of weeks. Just giving him a day ruined everything.

It’s not that things aren’t hard. It’s not that we haven’t been trying. People older than I with more experience have been trying for decades before I was born and are still trying. They are sick and disgusted and want to go to sleep. It’s certainly a mess out there. The really despondent people don’t even come out. They just stay home. You guys are the people interested in doing things. So if you’re going to do things, then do the most strategic things we can. A lot of activist organizations are telling you to call the White House and write the White House and lobby the president. There is no possibility that you are going to influence the president. It is the most remote possibility imaginable. We have not been able to influence presidents up until now. What is it that would have changed that? So think about what you can most usefully do and try to do it.

David’s Great Philosophy of Activism

The great I.F. Stone said: “The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you’re going to lose. Because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose until someday somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win a major fight, a lot of other people have got to be willing for the sheer fun and joy of it to go right ahead and fight knowing you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. In fact you enjoy it.”