Yesterday, in response to one of our articles about another secret Bush White House memo indicating purposeful violation of federal law and the Constitution in order to spy against Americans, one of our readers challenged us. What are we going to do but complain?
Complaint, of course, is doing something. Free speech and freedom of the press are protected in the first amendment to the Constitution because the people who crafted the Bill of Rights knew how powerful open criticism of an unjust government could be. We here at Irregular Times focus on media activism, creating our own outlet for getting out information on issues that we think are important. If media weren’t important, then the right wing wouldn’t be working so hard on projects like Fox News.
That said, our reader has a point. Free speech, unaccompanied by other forms of action, does not accomplish enough.
For that reason, I want to spend today focusing on opportunities for activism. Let’s call it Action Friday.
81 percent of Americans now agree with the statement that “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track” in the United States. All across the USA, people are fed up, and a lot of fed up people are taking action every day. You won’t see news about these protests on your cable TV news, because CNN thinks that stories like “Wackiest yard products” will sell more advertising (yes, they’re really running that story today), but the protests are going on nonetheless.
Here’s a start, for those of you who live in New York City. Yesterday, Jim talked about a blockade of the IRS by the War Resisters League.
You could join their ranks. You could decide to stop paying your taxes, so that the product of your work does not go toward supporting war.
Between 2:00 and 4:00 on Sunday, the New York City War Resisters League will be holding an introductory workshop on war tax resistance.
The meeting is at the Muste Room, 339 Lafayette St. at Bleecker St.
For information, call 718-768-7306.
Poll: 81 percent think US on wrong track
from Yahoo this morning. So where’s the massive citizen uprising? By this time common people are happy just to have a job, let alone one that pays well. Just making ends meet has become somewhat harder, and its steadily getting worse. People should come to the conclusion sometime soon that all the tax money they’re handing over to Washington is being misspent, mismanaged, and results in NO net change for the better as far as they are concerned. If we just stop paying our income taxes they’ll pay attention to what the 81% say. 40 or 50 million workers (in ever diminishing numbers) do this and Washington would notice. Unless they’re prepared to arrest everybody, chances are this would get their attention.
Why isn’t Washington changing its course?
81 percent think America is seriously on the wrong track, but 90 percent of that 81 percent just sit on their hands, shrug their shoulders, and say that there’s nothing they can do. They’ve learned to be passive, unfortunately. I want to take today to show them that there are opportunities to take action, and that if they sit and do nothing, it’s because that’s what they want to do, not because there’s nothing they can do.
That said, I don’t think that all government money is misspent. The work of NOAA, for example, is extremely important, and can’t be replicated in the private sphere.
Well, the administration isn’t paying attention to the NOAA reports, so how important is it? Right now Bush is trying to allow logging and mining in our national parks, among other resource wasting policies. It’s another corporate give away.
It’s important because the information is available to the rest of us so that we can know that the Bush White House isn’t on the right course. To have opposition in ignorance is not a strong position.
i was the anonymous (i forgot to sign in).
Yes, but being informed and having a clear majority think THEIR government is going in the wrong direction but REFUSES TO CHANGE COURSE is close to meaningless!