The people are standing up to the corporations across America, and the corporate state is on the rampage, trying to contain them. The situation appears bleak, but the people also have the opportunity to take the next step forward in their fight to break the corporate stranglehold on America.
Evidence of the corporate assault—and the resistance to it—is everywhere. The U.S. Supreme Court recently refused to hear a challenge to Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act, which permits the military to seize U.S. citizens and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers without due process. We live under the most pervasive surveillance and security apparatus ever created. And as journalist Chris Hedges has pointed out, the corporate state can order the assassination of U.S. citizens, has abolished habeas corpus (the right to have a court hearing to secure your release from unlawful detention), and it uses secret evidence to imprison dissidents.
People are murdered routinely by the police, who are in the service of the corporations. Those who show up in the streets to demonstrate—whether against police violence or for immigrant rights or the right to food, clothing and shelter—are typically arrested and sometimes tear-gassed, pepper sprayed and beaten.
In Michigan the state has placed “emergency managers” in charge of certain cities to overturn the authority of local elected officials and directly impose the corporate dictatorship. The ongoing fight against the emergency manager system and the corporate dictatorship has been especially pronounced in Benton Harbor, Mich., where the state is once again attacking Rev. Edward Pinkney, trying to imprison him for up to 25 years for false “vote fraud” charges. Another Benton Harbor resident, James Cornelius, is also falsely charged with vote fraud.
Rev. Pinkney’s “crime” was leading an effort to recall Benton Harbor Mayor James Hightower, a puppet for Whirlpool Corporation, which controls Benton Harbor. We have reached the point in America where we cannot even challenge our own elected officials without fear of being arrested and imprisoned.
The whole Michigan battlefront is significant because it’s in the heart of the Rust Belt—the section of America that once prospered based on the old system of industrial production using lots of human labor. Today, labor-replacing technology has wiped out the jobs and driven down wages. The corporations can no longer offer the people prosperity, so instead they have substituted repression, from the national level on down.
That the corporations are resorting to such severe repression shows their weakness. They have nothing to offer the people—no jobs, no safety net, no future. They know that the millions of us who have no future under this system are forced to fight for a new society where everyone’s needs are met. They know we are a threat to their ownership and control of the economy. That’s why they attack us.
The people must go on the offensive and build a mass movement for a new society. Whether it is defending our leaders in Michigan, confronting police violence in Albuquerque, demanding our needs be met through the Moral Mondays demonstrations, or the occupy gatherings, we must confront the ruling class without flinching. Our message: We will build a new society controlled by the people and free of oppression, violence and poverty, and no power on earth can prevent this.
The Corporations vs. the People: What Will it Take to Win?
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If the general population is so easily divided and manipulated that they attack each other, when it comes to politics, how in the world do you propose to unite the dumb masses that keep voting for the two corporate owned & operated political parties? The bi-partisan debacle IS a huge obstacle.
What is a plan, to unite people on issues, to establish the power of the people? It seems obvious to me, if a corporation is uniformly boycotted by millions of people, or all employees went ib strike at same time, the corporation would change, or die. A win either way. Future corporations would change the way they do business not to repeat past mistakes, knowing that a united people could do the same again.
And this goes for controlling politicians too – imagine how many heart attacks there will be in Congress when a million or two or more people show up peacefully on the same day, to express a unified position? A few hundred thousand people peacefully assembling around Mayors’ offices in major urban areas.
The question for ya’ll is, how to overcome the “selfish, separate, scared” message being broadcast and promoted by the establishment? How do you motivate and unite the masses?
I’ve found that people only respond when something significant is taken away, or something is going on ‘in their backyard.’ The other is a short term response, based on emotional reaction, a tipping point of anger, outrage, sympathy.
Also, keep in mind, corporations are not good or evil – they are like programmed code, or software written, and being tweaked, for the sole purpose if generating and increasing profit. Corporations do not necessarily hate people.
Take a look at Annie Leonard’s videos.
This means with pressure from a United People, corporations can be easily manipulated and controlled. Kind of like training a dog.
One final point – the cops cannot arrest 100,000 people, anywhere. Big cities might have 10,000 to 15,000 cops on the payroll, split up between 3 shifts, and a big number of them are desk jockeys.
There are far more of US, We the People, than all the politicians, cops, and their mercenaries.