 |
| Ghana's Electoral Commissioner, Charlotte Ose |
By Kobina Welsing
The
Assistant Head of Communications at the Electoral Commission, Alhassan Ayuba
has dismissed claims that the commissioners of the Electoral Commission are at
loggerheads and do not trust each other.
According
to him, the commissioners relate well and have a good working relationship.
The
allegation of mistrust was contained in a report by a Special Committee of
Parliament.
According
to the report, the high level of mistrust among the key officials at the
commission is impeding the smooth discharge of their duties.
The
revelation came to light during the debate in Parliament ahead of the approval
of the 2017 budget estimate for the commission.
Head
of the Special Budget Committee of the House Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu advised the
commissioners to learn to trust each other since it is critical for the
organisation of elections in the country.
“The
general observation from the committee was that the commissioners are not on
good terms. It cannot be good for the conduct of elections. For instance, when
they appeared before us and we asked the whereabouts of the chairman, the
deputy commissioner said: ‘My information is that she has travelled outside’
without informing the others,” the minister in charge of Parliamentary affairs
said.
But
Mr. Ayuba in an interview on Citi FM, stated that claims of mistrust and an
unhealthy working relationship are strange.
“The
Commissioners relate well with each other. I don’t know where that information
is coming from,” Mr. Ayuba said.
He
added “it is an institution governed by rules and there are structures and they
work cordially among themselves. Last two weeks they had a meeting and all of
them attended. So I am stating emphatically that what I know is that there is a
very cordial relationship between the Commissioners.”
Source:
Starrfmonline
Editorial
TRANSPORTATION
In this edition of The Insight is the story of some countries planning to
introduce “air taxis” as a means of improving internal transportation.
Elsewhere
in the world underground trains have moved heavy traffic from the face of the
earth into tunnels.
It
is indeed sad that Ghana remains relatively backward when it comes to
transportation.
Since
the rains began, potholes have reappeared on major roads throughout the country
worsening traffic congestion and increasing the wear and tear of vehicles.
When
will Ghana begin to construct roads which last and when will our leaders become
visionaries when it comes to transportation?
Local
News:
Ghana woos investors for renewable energy
By
Pius Amihere Eduku
The
Ministry of Energy is optimistic of meeting its ambitious ten percent target of
installed renewable energy capacity by 2020, with the completion of the
relevant policy and regulatory framework.
At
present, renewable energy accounts for only one percent of all installed
capacity despite the enormous potential existing in the country.
The
high initial cost has also been blamed for the low patronage of renewable
energy sources.
But a
Program Coordinator at the Energy Commission, Frederick Kenneth Appiah said the
right policies would also attract investors into the manufacturing sectors to
reduce the burden on hydroelectric power.
“Ghana’s
access to electricity is among the highest across Africa since most of them are
below sixty percent so there is also a potential market. As a result, we would
like to use our country as a hub base to develop renewable energy technologies
which could be deployed to our neighbouring countries or the regional market,”
he stated.
Frederick
Appiah was speaking ahead of Ghana’s participation in the Astana Expo in
Kazakhstan between June and September this year.
The
expo is among others expected to open up the existing opportunities to foreign
investors to increase the country’s renewable energy capacity.
According
to him, the country’s local content policy should also open up local companies
to the opportunities in the renewable energy space.
“We
currently have a local content policy which seeks to promote local
participation in all these things which is very key; not that every time the foreign
participation will be unmatched but I can team up with local investors and
partner them to develop the sector.”
The
Energy Commission has since embarked on a National Rooftop Solar Project to
assist households that are opting for solar in meeting their power needs.
It is
also against the backdrop that the cost per kilowatt hour for solar (11 cents)
is cheaper than the cost of thermal per kilowatts hour.
“Government
wants to meet you halfway by taking care of some of the cost so if it is
hundred percent, the project is taking care of almost thirty percent,”
Frederick Appiah further stressed.
The
Expo is on the theme, “Future Energy” while Ghana is participating on the
theme, “Ghana-Haven of Renewable Energy Resources”.
Source:
citibusinessnews
Technology:
TAXIS IN THE AIR
 |
| Flying taxis in the Fifth Element movie |
Uber
is taking its service to the skies, with the car-sharing firm announcing plans
to begin testing flying cars by 2020.
The
company had revealed it would pursue urban air travel last year, but used the
three-day Uber Elevate Summit in Dallas on
Tuesday to provide further details on its so-called UberAIR service.
Five
aircraft manufacturers, Bell Helicopters, Aurora Flight Sciences, Pipistrel
Aircraft, Embraer, and Mooney, have been tasked with the monumental challenge
of building an economical, four-passenger, electric vehicle capable of flying
itself.
Helicopters
are the “closest equivalent” to the vehicle Uber has in mind, however the
aircraft will be much quieter while flying above residential areas. Uber
believes the vehicles will be capable of vertical takeoffs and landings and
small enough to fly into small city airports, known as ‘ventiports’.
Uber
is selling “urban aviation” as a solution to the problems presented by
medium-length commutes in metropolitan areas. For example, a trip from San Jose
to San Francisco by air can cut a 90-minute drive in rush hour to a simple
15-minute commute.
While
Uber’s end goal is to turn all its vehicles into self-driving machines, the
company believes customers will need time to adapt to the self-flying notion,
and so plan to employ pilots in the first phase.
The
project is still in its early stages so details like cost, wait times and
future cities are all yet to be determined.
Reports suggest Uber aims to
begin testing the flying cars in Dallas by 2020 and is hoping to showcase an
UberAIR vehicle at the World Expo in Dubai the same year.
Africa:
Sub-Saharan
Africa Fast Becoming Hotbed of Unemployment
In the Photo: (Right) Men hold placards offering temporal employment services in
Glenvista, south of Johannesburg
By
Njiraini Muchira
Sub-Saharan
Africa is fast becoming a hotbed of unemployment, vulnerable jobs and poor
workers, a reality that is making the aspiration of most countries to transform
into middle-level economies a mirage.
Despite
massive investment in infrastructure to drive economic growth, research has
shown that sub-Saharan Africa is not only grappling with run-away unemployment
but the majority of the jobs are in the informal sector and the few employed
people are actually living in poverty.
The
International Labour Organisation (ILO) reckons that the informal economy
contributes 50-80 per cent of gross domestic product, 60-80 per cent of
employment and 90 per cent of new jobs.
Worse,
about nine out of 10 workers in both rural and urban areas hold only informal
jobs, leaving the majority of the population living from hand to mouth.
The
informality of employment is exerting pressures on economies because only a few
people can afford vital services like medical cover or saving for retirement.
The
problem of poor quality jobs is endemic in sub-Saharan Africa, where over 70
per cent of workers are in vulnerable employment against the global average of
46.3 per cent.
“In
sub-Saharan Africa, poor-quality employment – rather than unemployment –
remains the main labour market challenge. This problem is compounded by rapid
population growth, specifically growth of the working-age population,” states
the ILO’s World Employment Social Outlook 2017 report.
It
adds that across most of sub-Saharan Africa, the lack of productive
opportunities for the youth and adults alike mean that 247 million people were
in vulnerable employment in 2016, equivalent to around 68 per cent of all those
with jobs.
Over
the next four years, the region will pump an additional 12.6 million youth into
the same precarious labour force market.
Working poverty
The
reality of vulnerable employment is worsened by working poverty, considering
that 33.6 per cent of all employed people in sub-Sahara Africa were living in
extreme poverty — that is living on less than $1.90 per day — in 2016.
An
additional 30.1 per cent were living in moderate poverty at between $1.90 and
$3.10 per day, which corresponds to over 230 million people living in either
extreme or moderate poverty.
The
rate of moderate working poverty is rising and is projected to be 30.5 per cent
in 2017, representing an increase of approximately five million people in one
year.
The
challenge is particularly dire for youth considering that almost 70 per cent of
them in 2016 were in jobs characterised as working poverty.
“The
fact that the informal sector is the one creating jobs is dangerous for the
sustainability of the economy,” Jackline Mugo, Federation of Kenya Employers
chief executive told The EastAfrican.
Worsening crisis
She
added the crisis in the job market is bound to worsen as long as countries fail
to generate quality jobs and people who are employed continue to clamour for
more wages.
East
Africa is a study in contrasts as there is rising economic growth amid massive
job losses and a growing informal job market.
According
to Kenya’s Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i, a skewed education
system that has been glorifying university degree instead of focusing on
technical courses is largely to blame.
The
CS contends that the assumption that Technical Vocational Education and
Training (TVET) programmes are less prestigious is contributing to the growing
informal market because university graduates, the majority of them in arts and
humanities, cannot secure decent jobs.
“We
need to graduate more students from TVET institutions,” he said.
The
challenge of unemployment and low quality jobs is worsening in East Africa
despite the region’s being expected to post economic growth of 5.4 per cent in
2017 against a continental average of 2.5 per cent.
In
Kenya, there are over 520,000 students enrolled in public and private
universities while only about 80,000 students are in TVET institutions.
Data
by the World Bank show that the youth unemployment rate in Kenya currently
stands at 17.3 per cent but at six per cent in both Tanzania and Uganda.
In
recent months, the five East African Community countries have been hit by a
spate of job losses as companies resort to job cuts to rein in rising operating
costs and shrinking profits.
The
financial services and manufacturing sectors have been the worst hit. Commercial
banks like Bank of Africa, Equity Bank, Co-operative Bank, Standard Chartered
and KCB which have regional operations and companies like Sameer Africa,
Eveready East Africa and Cadbury have shed hundreds of jobs.
In
Kenya, it is estimated that over the past 12 months at least 10,000 people have
lost their jobs. Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda are no better.
According
to the ILO report, sub-Saharan Africa’s unemployment rate is forecast to stand
at 7.2 per cent in 2017, unchanged from 2016.
The
report says while the unemployment rate remains stable, the numbers of the
unemployed are expected to increase from 28 million in 2016 to 29 million in
2017.
Source:
All Africa
Michael Bennett
boycotts trip, says he won’t be used by Israel
 |
| Micheal Bennet |
An
American professional football player has pulled out of a sponsored trip to
Israel, accusing its government of trying to use him for PR purposes and citing
sympathy for the Palestinians.
Seattle
Seahawks defence lineman Michael Bennett’s last-minute decision came as an
embarrassment to the Israeli government, which has invited a group of players
to visit this week on a mission aimed at improving the country’s image.
Israeli
Cabinet minister Gilad Erdan had earlier noted the “great importance” of the
visit, saying it would counter “the false incitement campaign that is being
waged against Israel around the world.”
Erdan
leads the ministry for strategic affairs and public diplomacy, which works to
boost Israel’s image and counter the influence of an international boycott
movement. His ministry declined to comment Sunday.
Tourism
Minister Yariv Lavin had boasted that the players would become “ambassadors of
good will for Israel.”
But
in a letter posted to Twitter on Saturday, Bennett wrote: “I will not be used
in such a manner.” He said he still intends to visit Israel, but only on a trip
that includes stops in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to meet Palestinians.
Citing
the example of Muhammad Ali, and the late boxing legend’s support for the
Palestinians, Bennett said he too wants to be a “voice for the voiceless.”
“I
cannot do that by going on this kind of trip to Israel,” he said.
In
a separate Twitter post, Miami Dolphins receiver Kenny Stills indicated he also
will skip the trip.
The
delegation, which includes Bennett’s brother Martellus of the Super Bowl
champion New England Patriots, is to arrive Monday. Martellus Bennett is among
a group of Patriots who say they will not join the team on a victory trip to
the White House.
The
visit will include stops at a hospital, the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and a
meeting with the “Black Hebrews,” a community of African Americans who live in
southern Israel.
Other
players in the delegation include the Seahawks’ Cliff Avril, Delanie Walker of
the Tennessee Titans, Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Mychal Kendricks,
Cameron Jordan of the New Orleans Saints, Calais Campbell of the Arizona
Cardinals, San Francisco 49er Carlos Hyde, Dan Williams of the Oakland Raiders
and Justin Forsett of the Denver Broncos.
Source:
Sportsnet
Has the pan-African
hour come? A review of The Making of the Africa-Nation
Book
review of The Making of the Africa-Nation: Pan-Africanism and the African
Renaissance. Edited by Prof Mammo Muchie. Published by Adonis & Abbey,
London.
President
Thabo Mbeki and the Ethiopian professor, Mammo Muchie, are conjoined by similar
concerns. They are aligned by their strong preoccupations with notions of the
African, the African-Nation, pan-Africanism, African renaissance and African
transformation. Perhaps not since Kwame Nkrumah have we had a systematic focus
on pan-Africanism and its possibilities for articulating a broad range of
African identities, including Diasporan ones under a unified force. And both
Mbeki and Muchie are very serious about their common project.
Africanism
as an ideology of transcontinental liberation was formally established in 1900
when Henry Sylvester Williams, a Trinidadian law student, hosted the Pan
African Congress. In those days of triumphant colonialism, it certainly was a
very revolutionary gesture as it projected an anti-colonialist stance as well
as ideology and also because it undermined established colonialist stereotypes
of the African as being incapable of meaningful though and action.
Pan-Africanism
was an important ideological response to centuries of racism and cultural and
sociopolitical disempowerment. Muchie’s project is one that attempts a
resurrection of pan-Africanism as an ideology of liberation and agency in the
era of contemporary globalisation. His work in this regard connects with
Mbeki’s political role as one of the most important supporters of pan-Africanism
today.
Muchie’s
introductory chapter is entitled “Has the Pan-African Hour Come?” From the look
of things, pan-Africanism is definitely high on the African political agenda.
For instance, in October 2014, the first meeting of intellectuals of Africa and
the Diaspora took place in Dakar, Senegal, Present at the event were the heads
of state of countries such as Nigeria, Cape Verde, Mali, Uganda, South Africa
and the host nation, Senegal.
The
conference discussed, among other things, pan-Africanism in the 21st century;
the contribution of intellectuals of Africa and the diaspora to the deepening
and strengthening of African integration in the context of the 21st century;
African identity in a multicultural context; Africa’s place in the world; Africa’s
relations with its diaspora; and science and technology.
These
are all themes that are given prominent attention in the Muchie edited volume.
He agrees that the question of a single African idea or identity for the entire
African continent is usually problematic.
The
author, V. Y. Mudimbe’s major work, The Invention of Africa (1988), is one of
the most famous interrogations of the problematic status of Africanity. Paulin
J. Hountondji, the Beninoise philosopher, has also debunked what he termed “the
myth of unanimism” in relation to the question of African identities. By
extension, there are indeed very significant moments in contemporary African
philosophy that attest to the continent’s heterogeneity.
Muchie
concurs that there are many African identities but he argues that this should
not prevent Africans from forging a collective vision for the continent just as
the Indians have been able to do. Contemporary pan-Africanism, in other words,
should not be a platform for ethnocentricism.
Instead,
Muchie argues that it can be reconfigured as an ideology of agency in the face
of the multiple disjunctures of the global moment as they affect the generality
of Africans. Interestingly, Thabo Mbeki often stresses the point that he works
for a nonracialised South Africa which in a significant way undermines charges
that pan-Africanism and African Renaissance are masks for identity
inflexibility.
Muchie
asserts that “the right to the universal or the African does not have to
challenge the right to remain different, speak different languages and worship
different deities. It can complement it and in fact it can enrich it, provided
that the dialectic between specificity and universality is resolved in favour
of producing the national nucleus for creating a sustainable unification of
Africa”.
I
have concentrated on Muchie rather extensively because he alone has five
chapters in the volume. Apart from theoretical reflections on pan-Africanism,
there are also chapters that depart from this trajectory. In her chapter,
Silvia Bercu argues that pan-Africanism requires a new humanism while Chen
Chimutengwende calls for a redress of economic inequality and another struggle
for liberation in order to make contemporary pan-Africanism more meaningful.
Not
all the contributors are favourably disposed to pan-Africanist ideology. Messay
Kebede, an Ethiopian philosopher based in the United States, argues that
pan-Africanism has complicities with colonialist discourse and is often
transformed into a political tool for narrow interests by African elites. New
African editor Baffour Ankomah says there is no such thing as a free press,
free from national interest. Li Xing explains how pan-Africanist ideology can
profit from the Chinese revolution. Steven Friedman, on his part, argues that
processes of democratisation in Africa have failed because they are
disconnected from many significant contexts. First, there is a disconnection
between the rulers and the ruled in Africa and also he suggests there is a
contextual disconnection within African experiments with democracy.
The
relations between pan-Africanism and pan-Arabism are also explored. Akram Hawas
navigates the contours and history of those relations in the light of efforts
by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Libya’s Muammar AlGathafi. Part of
AlGathafi’s approval of pan-Africanism, Hawas points out, comes from his
dissatisfaction with Arab nationalism.
B.
F. Bankie’s contribution identifies the Arab complicity in the Atlantic slave
trade as a possible obstacle to cooperative Arab-African relations. For those
relations to be cordial, he advocates a revisitation of the trauma that the
slave trade was for purposes of atonement. Jacques Hersh explores the
connections between Afro-pessimism and Afro-optimism and it is interesting to
note that these issues have been important preoccupations in Gallic
intellectual circles.
Finally,
Mammo Muchie looks into the aims of the New Partnership for Africa’s
Development (Nepad) and concludes that the project would only be viable if the
problems of financial indebtedness to the Bretton Woods institutional order and
general dependency are addressed.
By
putting together this volume (and by his wide-ranging contributions to it),
Muchie has positioned himself as probably the most assiduous theorist of
pan-Africanism of the present. The volume obviously has many values; it is
first of all a theoretically engaging tome that takes on, with a great deal of
confidence, an important ideological configuration in the evolution of modern
Africa. It can also serve as the intellectual manifesto of President Mbeki’s
engrossing continental project.
If
we are truly concerned about African agency and subjectivity in the age of
contemporary globalisation, then we ought to take The Making of the
Africa-Nation very seriously.
Review
by Sany Osha.
SPEAKS OUT ON PLIGHT OF PALESTINIAN PRISONERS
 |
| Israeli parliamentarian Marwan Barghouti in handcuffs |
Letter
from the imprisoned Palestinian leader and parliamentarian Marwan Barghouthi to
his fellow parliamentarians around the world on the "Freedom & Dignity"
hunger strike.
Dear
fellow parliamentarians,
If
you are receiving this letter it means that Israel has chosen to continue down
the path of prohibited collective punishment against Palestinian prisoners and
incitement rather than meeting their legitimate demands. It means that I was
placed yet again in solitary confinement along with my fellow hunger strikers.
But we will not be silenced or surrender.
Hunger
strike is a legitimate and peaceful means to protest the violations of our
basic human rights as prisoners, as guaranteed under international law. Palestinian
Prisoners may be at the mercy of the occupying Power, and that is why they are
protected under international humanitarian law, but they are not powerless. We resorted
to this hunger strike after months of efforts to have our legitimate demands
addressed. These demands are related to the mass arbitrary arrest of
Palestinians, torture and ill-treatment, punitive measures against prisoners,
deliberate medical neglect, family visits and contacts with our loved ones and education,
these are human rights in their most basic form.
Dear
colleagues, dear friends,
I
salute your solidarity with your imprisoned Palestinian colleagues and the strong
support of Parliaments around the world for the rights of the Palestinian
people, including their right to self- determination, and to the end of
occupation and the achievement of just and lasting peace based on international
law.
I
was the first parliamentarian to be arrested in 2002. Since then, Israel
arrested 70 parliamentarians, more than half of the Palestinian legislative Council.
13 remains imprisoned today. This is an insult to Parliamentarians everywhere, to
democracy everywhere, to human rights everywhere. This is an insult to freedom
and justice, and it must be answered.
The
fate of the Palestinian parliamentarians is a reflection of the fate of the
people they represent. In 50 years, Israel, the occupying Power, has arrested hundreds
of thousands of Palestinians, the equivalent of 40% of the male population in
the Occupied Palestinian Territory, 6,500 languish in Israeli jails today. For
Israel, we are all guilty and our unspoken charges are that we desire freedom, are
hungry for freedom, strive and sacrifice for freedom.
Israeli
laws authorize colonialism, collective punishment, discrimination and
Apartheid. Shouldn't those who vote in favor of such laws be held accountable?
Some Israeli parliamentarians have advocated our arrest. They are sitting among
you, while we are unable to. As for the Israeli courts, they are part and
parcel of this colonial and military occupation which aims at annexing our land
and further displacing and replacing our people. Israeli military courts have a
conviction rate for Palestinians that has ranged in recent years between 90 and
99 percent! I say it yet again: this is a judicial apartheid whereby Palestinian
existence and-resistance is criminalized, while Israelis committing crimes
against Palestinians enjoy impunity.
 |
| Marwan Baghourti |
I
was convicted by one of these illegitimate courts. I refused to recognize the court,
even more so as an elected representative of the occupied people. I was sentenced
to 5 life sentences and 40 years by the courts of the occupying Power for
terrorism in what was denounced unanimously by international observers as a political
show trial. Not a single country on earth accepted this verdict. This has been
the fate of the leaders of liberation movements around the world and across history.
The Rivonia Trial which condemned Mandela to a life sentence did not delegitimize
him or his struggle; it only further delegitimized the Apartheid regime
prosecuting him.
This
is why the companion of Nelson Mandela and anti-Apartheid icon Ahmed Kathrada
launched the Free Marwan Barghouthi and all Palestinian prisoners’
international campaign, as he had launched the Free Mandela campaign before
spending 26 years in Apartheid jails himself. This is why he did it from the
cell of Nelson Mandela on Robben Island. This is why 8 Nobel Peace Prize laureates,
120 Governments and hundreds of parliamentarians, leaders, academics, artists,
intellectuals, and civil society organizations have joined the campaign. This is
why two Nobel Peace Prize Laureates and parliaments and parliamentarians have
nominated me for the Nobel Peace Prize as an expression of support to the Palestinian
people's struggle for freedom.
Palestinian
prisoners have always suffered from injustice and violations of their rights.
But in recent years, Israeli occupation authorities have even deprived us of
rights acquired through prior hunger strikes. The escalation in punitive and inhumane
measures against prisoners and their loved ones could not remain unanswered. We
decided to go on hunger strike because we were left with no other choice.
Palestinians suffer and sacrifice to be able to enjoy the rights they are
entitled to and yet deprived of, Palestinian prisoners are no exception.
We
dubbed this hunger strike "Freedom & Dignity". These are words
that resonate deeply in the hearts of our nation which has been struggling for
70 years for their realization. But also words that resonate around the world,
as part of universal history, and the Struggle against all forms of oppression
and servitude. The values that are at the core of humanity and that are indispensable
to the achievement of peace. There is no peace possible between the oppressor
and the oppressed, as oppression and peace are mutually exclusive. There is no
peace possible between the prisoner and the jailer. Freedom is the way to
peace.
I
call on you to speak up for those Israel is trying to silence. I call on you to
stand up for those thrown into dark cells to be forgotten. I call on you to
support the legitimate demands of the Palestinian prisoners' movement and to
uphold international law. I call on you to support the freedom and dignity of
the Palestinian people, so peace can prevail.
Some
may believe that this is the end of the story, and that I will perish here in
solitary confinement. But I know, even in this forced solitude, that we are not
alone. I know that millions of Palestinians and many more around the world stand
with us. We shall meet soon, in freedom.
Trump, a Symptom of
What?
 |
| President Donald Trump |
You
could hear the deep sadness in the preacher’s voice as he named
“the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own
government.” With those words, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.,
launched a scathing indictment of America’s war in
Vietnam. It was April 4, 1967.
That
first antiwar sermon of his seemed to signal a new high tide of opposition to a
brutal set of American policies in Southeast Asia. Just 11 days later,
unexpectedly large crowds would come out in New York and San Francisco for the first truly massive
antiwar rallies. Back then, a protest of at least a quarter of a million
seemed yuge.
King
signaled another turning point when he concluded his speech by bringing up
“something even more disturbing” — something that would deeply disturb the
developing antiwar movement as well. “The war in Vietnam,” he said, “is but a
symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.”
Many
of those who gathered at antiwar rallies days later were already beginning to
suspect the same thing. Even if they could actually force their government to
end its war in Vietnam, they would be healing only a symptom of a far more
profound illness. With that realization came a shift in consciousness,
the clearest sign of which could be found in the sizeable contingent of countercultural
hippies who began joining those protests. While antiwar radicals were
challenging the unjust political and military policies of their government, the
counterculturists were focused on something bigger: trying to revolutionize the
whole fabric of American society.
Why
recall this history exactly 50 years later, in the age of Donald Trump?
Curiously enough, King offered at least a partial answer to that question in
his 1967 warning about the deeper malady.
“If
we ignore this sobering reality,” he said, “we will find ourselves… marching…
and attending rallies without end.” The alternative? “We as a
nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.”
Like
many of my generation, I feel as if, in lieu of that radical revolution, I have
indeed been marching and attending rallies for the last half-century, even if
there were also long fallow periods of inactivity. (In those quiet times, of
course, there was always organizing and activism going on behind the scenes,
preparing for the next wave of marches and demonstrations in response to the
next set of obvious outrages.)
At
this very moment 50 years ago, a movement resisting a brutal war of domination
in a distant land was giving birth to a movement calling for the creation of a
new consciousness to heal our ailing society. Will the resistance movement of
2017 head in a similar direction? (Photo: Ben Alexander/flickr/cc)
If
the arc of history bends toward justice, as King claimed, it’s been a strange journey, a bizarre
twisting and turning as if we were all on some crazed roller-coaster ride.
The
Trump era already seems like the most bizarre twist of all, leaving us little
choice but to march and rally at a quickening pace for years to come. A
radical revolution in values? Unless you’re thinking of Trump’s
plutocrats and environment wreckers, not so much. If anything, the nation once
again finds itself facing an exaggerated symptom of a far deeper malady.
Perhaps one day, like the antiwar protestors of 1967, anti-Trump protestors
will say: If the American system we live under can create this atrocity,
there must be something wrong with the whole thing.
But
that’s the future. At present, the resistance movement, though as
unexpectedly large as the movement of 1967, is still focused mainly on
symptoms, the expanding list of inhumane 1% policies the Republicans
(themselves in chaos) are preparing to foist on the nation. Yet to come up are
the crucial questions: What’s wrong with our system? How could it produce a
President Trump, a Republican hegemony, and the society-wrecking policies that
go with them both? What would a radically new direction mean and how would we
head there?
In
1967, antiwar activists were groping their way toward answers to similar
questions. At least we have one advantage. We can look back at their
answers and use them to help make sense of our own situation. As it happens,
theirs are still depressingly relevant because the systemic malady that
produced the Vietnam War is a close cousin to the one that has now given us
President Trump.
Diagnosing Our Deep
Sickness
The
Sixties spawned many analyses of the ills of the American system. The ones that
marked that era as revolutionary concluded that the heart of the problem was a
distinctive mode of consciousness — a way of seeing, experiencing,
interpreting, and being in the world. Political and cultural radicals converged,
as historian Todd Gitlin concluded, in
their demand for a transformation of “national if not global (or cosmic)
consciousness.”
Nor
was such a system uniquely American, they discovered. It was nothing less than
the hallmark of Western modernity.
In
exploring the nature of that “far deeper malady,” Martin Luther King, for
instance, turned to the European philosopher Martin Buber, who found the
root of that consciousness in modernity’s “I-It” attitude. From early
childhood, he suggested, we learn to see other people as mere objects (“its”)
with no inherent relation to us. In the process, we easily lose sight of their
full humanity. That, in turn, allows us free rein to manipulate others
(or as in Vietnam simply destroy them) for our own imagined benefit.
King
particularly decried such dehumanization as it played
itself out in American racism: “Segregation substitutes an ‘I-it’ relationship
for the ‘I-thou’ relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of
things.” But he condemned it no less strongly in the economic
sphere, where it affected people of all races. “The profit motive, when it is
the sole basis of an economic system,” he said, “encourages a cutthroat
competition and selfish ambition that inspire men to be more I-centered than
thou-centered… Capitalism fails to realize that life is social.”
Another
influential thinker of that era was a German-American philosopher, Herbert Marcuse. (Some radicals even marched in rallies
carrying signs reading “Marx, Mao, Marcuse.”) For him, the dehumanization of
modernity was rooted in the way science and technology led
us to view nature as a mere collection of “things” having no inherent relation
to us — things to be analyzed, controlled, and if necessary destroyed for our
own benefit.
Capitalists
use technology, he explained, to build machines that take charge both of the
workers who run them and of aspects of the natural world. The capitalists then
treat those workers as so many things, not people. And the same hierarchy —
boss up here, bossed down there — shows up at every level of society from the
nuclear family to the international family of nations (with its nuclear
arsenals). In a society riddled with structures of domination, it was no
accident that the U.S. was pouring so much lethal effort into devastating
Vietnam.
As
Marcuse saw it, however, the worst trick those bosses play on us is to
manipulate our consciousness, to seduce us into thinking that the whole system
makes sense and is for our own good. When those machines are cranking out
products that make workers’ lives more comfortable, most of them are willing to
embrace and perpetuate a system that treats them as dominated objects.
Marcuse
would not have been surprised to see so many workers voting for Donald Trump, a
candidate who built his campaign on promises of ever more intensified
domination — of marginalized people at home, of “bad hombres” needing to be destroyed abroad, and of
course, of nature itself, especially in the form of fossil fuels on a planet where the very processes
he championed ensured a future of utter devastation.
One
explanation for the electoral success of Trump was the way he appealed to
heartland white working-class voters who saw their standard of living and sense
of social status steadily eroding. Living in a world in which hierarchy and
domination are taken for granted, it’s hardly surprising that many of them took
it for granted as well that the only choice available was either to be a
dominator or to be dominated. Vote for me, the billionaire businessman (famed
for the phrase “You’re fired!”) implicitly promised and you, too, will be one
of the dominators. Vote against me and you’re doomed to remain among the
dominated. Like so many other tricks of the system, this one defied reality but
worked anyway.
Many
Trump voters who bought into the system will find themselves facing even
harsher domination by the 1%. And as the Trumpian fantasy of man dominating
nature triggers inevitable twenty-first-century blowback on a planetary scale, count on growing
environmental and social disasters to bring disproportionate pain to those
already suffering most under the present system. In every arena, as Marcuse
explained back in the 1960s, the system of hierarchy and domination remains
self-perpetuating and self-escalating.
“The
Long and Bitter But Beautiful Struggle for a New World”
What’s
the remedy for this malady, now as lethally obvious at home as it once was in
Vietnam?
“The
end of domination [is] the only truly revolutionary exigency,” Marcuse wrote.
True
freedom, he thought, means freeing humanity from the hierarchical system that
locks us into the daily struggle to earn a living by selling our labor.
Freedom means liberating our consciousness to search for our own goals and
being able to pursue them freely. In Martin Luther King’s words, freedom is
“the opportunity to fulfill my total capacity untrammeled by any artificial
barrier.”
How
to put an end not only to America’s war in Vietnam, but to a whole culture
built on domination? King’s answer on that April 4th was deceptively
simple:
“Love
is somehow the key that unlocks the door… The first hope in our inventory must
be the hope that love is going to have the last word.”
The
simplicity in that statement was deceptive because love is itself
such a complicated word. King often explained that the Greeks had three words
for love: eros (aesthetic or romantic
love), philia (friendship), and agape (self-sacrificing
devotion to others). He left no doubt that he considered agape far
superior to the other two.
The
emerging counterculture of those years certainly agreed with him on the
centrality of love to human liberation. After all, it was “the love
generation.” But its mantra — “If it feels good, do it” — made King’s rejection
of eros in the name of self-negating agape a non-starter
for them.
King,
however, offered another view of love, which was far more congenial to the
counterculture. Love unites whatever is separated, he preached. This is the
kind of love that God uses in his work. We, in turn, are always called upon to
imitate God and so to transform our society into what King called a “beloved
community.”
Though
few people at the time made the connection, King’s Christian understanding of
love was strikingly similar to Marcuse’s secular view of erotic love. Marcuse
saw eros as the fulfillment of desire. He also saw it as anything but
selfish, since it flows from what Freud called the id, which always wants to
abolish ego boundaries and recover that sense of oneness with everything we all
had as infants.
When
we experience anyone or anything erotically, we feel that we are inherently
interconnected, “tied together in a single garment of destiny,” as King so
eloquently put it. When boundaries and separation dissolve, there can be no
question of hierarchy or domination.
Every
moment that hints at such unification brings us pleasure. In a revolutionary
society that eschews structures of domination for the ideal of unification, all
policies are geared toward creating more moments of unity and pleasure.
Think
of this as the deep-thought revolution of the Sixties: radically transformed
minds would create a radically transformed society. Revolutionaries of that
time were, in fact, trying to wage the very utopian struggle that King summoned
all Americans to in his April 4th speech, “the long and bitter but beautiful
struggle for a new world.”
50 Years Later: The
Thread That Binds
At
this very moment 50 years ago, a movement resisting a brutal war of domination
in a distant land was giving birth to a movement calling for the creation of a
new consciousness to heal our ailing society. Will the resistance movement of
2017 head in a similar direction?
At
first glance, it seems unlikely. After all, ever since the Vietnam War ended,
progressives have had a tendency to focus on single issues of injustice or
laundry lists of problems. They have rarely imagined the American system
as anything more than a collection of wrong-headed policies and wrong-hearted
politicians. In addition, after years of resisting the right wing as it won
victory after victory, and of watching the Democrats morph into a neoliberal
crew and then into a failing party with its own dreary laundry lists of issues
and personalities, the capacity to hope for fundamental change may have gone
the way of Herbert Marcuse and Martin Luther King.
Still,
for those looking hard, a thread of hope exists. Today’s marches, rallies, and
town halls are packed with veterans of the Sixties who can remember, if we try,
what it felt like to believe we were fighting not only to stop a war but to
start a revolution in consciousness. No question about it, we made plenty of
mistakes back then. Now, with so much more experience (however grim) in our
memory banks, perhaps we might develop more flexible strategies and a certain
faith in taking a more patient, long-term approach to organizing for change.
Don’t
forget as well that, whatever our failings and the failings of other past
movements, we also have a deep foundation of victories (along with defeats) to
build on. No, there was no full-scale revolution in our society — no surprise
there. But in so many facets of our world, advances happened nonetheless. Think
of how, in those 50 years just past, views on diversity, social equality, the
environment, healthcare, and so many other issues, which once existed only on
the fringes of our world, have become thoroughly mainstream. Taken as a whole, they represent a
partial but still profound and significant set of changes in American
consciousness.
Of
course, the Sixties not only can’t be resurrected, but shouldn’t be.
(After all, it should never be forgotten that what they led to wasn’t a dreamed
of new society but the “Reagan revolution,” as the arc of justice took the
first of its many grim twists and turns.) At best, the Sixties critique
of the system would have to be updated to include many new developments.
Even
the methods of those Sixties radicals would need major revisions, given that
our world, especially of communication, now relies so heavily on blindingly
fast changes in technology. But every time we log onto the Internet and browse
the web, it should remind us that — shades of the past — across this embattled
Earth of ours, we’re all tied together in a single worldwide web of relations
and of destiny. It’s either going to be one for all and all for one, or
it’s going to be none for 7.4 billion on a planet
heading for hell.
Today
is different, too, because our movement was not born out of protest against an
odious policy, but against an odious mindset embodied in a deplorable person
who nonetheless managed to take the Oval Office. He’s so obviously a symptom of
something larger and deeper that perhaps the protesters of this generation will
grasp more quickly than the radicals of the Vietnam era that America’s
underlying disease is a destructive mode of consciousness (and not just a bad
combover).
The
move from resisting individual policies to transforming American consciousness
may already have begun in small ways. After all, “love trumps hate” has become
the most common slogan of the progressive movement. And the
word love is being heard in hard-edged political discourse, not only
on the left, but among
mainstream political voices like Van Jones and Cory Booker. Once again, there is even talk of “revolutionary love.”
Of
course, the specific policies of the Republicans and this president (including
his developing war policies) must be resisted
and the bleeding of the immediate moment staunched. Yet the urgent question of
the late 1960s remains: What can be done when there are so many fronts on which
to struggle and the entire system demands constant vigilant attention? In the
age of a president who regularly sucks all the air out of the room, how do we
even talk about all of this without being overwhelmed?
In
many ways, the current wave of regressive change and increasing chaos in
Washington should be treated as a caricature of the system that we all have
been living under for so long. Turn to that broader dimension and the quest for
a new consciousness may prove the thread that, though hardly noticed, already
ties together the many facets of the developing resistance movement.
The
largest mobilization for progressive politics since the Vietnam era offers a
unique opportunity to go beyond simply treating symptoms and start offering
cures for the underlying illness. If this opportunity is missed, versions of
the same symptoms are likely to recur, while unpredictable new ones will
undoubtedly emerge for the next 50 years, and as Martin Luther King predicted,
we will go on marching without end. Surely we deserve a better future and a
better fate.
Ira
Chernus is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of
Colorado at Boulder and author of the online ” and the book, “American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea.”
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