( – promoted by buhdydharma )
From Mario Savio’s UC Berkeley Sit-In Speech
Sproul Hall Steps, December 2, 1964
“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious – makes you so sick at heart – that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”
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That’s not just directed at you, Edger. I really mean it. What’s everyone here doing to change this world we’re so quick to complain about?
Personally, I am:
-blogging a bit (although in reality that does next to nothing)
-helping the Green Party of Philadelphia to organize for 2011 and beyond in any way I can
-organizing students around an organic garden/farm at my high school and pressuring administration to keep it student run and organic
-working with the Amnesty International chapter at my high school (I’m officially a co coordinator for it) in various ways, including getting them to pariticpate in the anticapitalist charity Food Not Bombs (h/t to Cassiodorus on that one)
-just making some lifestyle changes, like riding a bike to school (again, doesn’t do much in the long run, although it does more than blogging)
That’s all I can think of for now. There are also protests, but I haven’t gone to one in a while and won’t be going to one until at least the day after Christmas.
…on Thom Hartmann’s show today:
Gather up all our favorite dems, you know the ones, the ones who are as frustrated as we are: Russ Feingold, Alan Grayson, Sherrrod Brown, (certainly all those who voted nay on cloture of Bernie Sanders), although not a dem — Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich, Raul Grijalva, Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, and many more.
These truly progressive dems, should split from the old, tired, dead Democratic Party and form a new third party. The Democratic Progressive Party, perhaps, or just the Progressive Party.
Think about it. This makes sense. It’s not like forming a third party out of unknowns.
I’m out of time, so I must leave you with just the suggestion
Frederick Douglass did it his way. And long after, Langston Hughes did it his way. In the 60’s, I did it my way. And here we are today, 160 years later. For some it’s a long time, for others it’s like yesterday. And the million bodies in the weeds of Fredricksburg, Gettysburg etc. were just born at the wrong time. But they believed it was the right time. Children nearly all.