On Creating a Culture of Revolution

"No revolutionary movement is complete without it's poetical expression. If such a movement has caught the imagination of the masses, they will seek vent in song for the aspirations, the fears, the hopes, the loves and the hatreds engendered by the struggle. Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the most distinctive marks of a revolutionary movement. It is the dogma of a few, not the faith of the multitude."

James Connoly,
1907.

It has become fairly obvious to anyone who concerns themselves with such things, that the main stream media in the US has been neutralized as a force for change. 95% per cent of the media in this country is owned and controlled by one of five multinational corporations who are primarily concerned with profit at the expense keeping the electorate informed. These two goals are often at loggerheads and a multinational can always be counted upon to favor the bottom line. If you control the medium, then you control the agenda. That is why the conservative right in the Form of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh as well as a host of wanna-be's get wide exposure almost anytime of the day or night with not even the most feeble voice in rebuttal. If a reporter of conscience decides to rise up out of the bog, then the cry of "Liberal Media Bias" is sounded throughout the realm. The truly ironic part is that there is no liberal media. Any small peep of a voice is drown in a sea of corporate funded competition. So whats a good lefty Liberal to do?

We have lost the language. There has been a mildly Orwellian effort to eliminate or discredit certain words in our language. Words like "struggle" and "revolution" have been relegated to the dust bin of verbal history as linguistic relics of a bygone age. The word "liberal" has been vilified to the point that it is now an effective hit tool in political campaigns. Although individuals have spoken out, as a movement we have sat on our hands and let this happen.

It is clear that there must be an artistic, linguistic and spiritual revolution before there can be political and social change. We must take back the vocabulary of revolution and make it comprehensible for working people and instill a sense of community and belonging. We must realize, as a culture that we are more then the some of our parts and of our material desires.

We can start by working to convince people that the working class is not dead. Just because we don't work in factories anymore doesn't mean that we are no longer blue collar. American workers are amongst the most productive and hard working in the world. We take shorter vacations and work longer hours then anybody else in the industrialized world. We are also among the most undeserved in terms of social assistance. Benefits are constantly under attack and the health care system is completely dysfunctional. Child care is prohibitively expensive if it is available at all. Public transportation and education are always the first vitims of the budget ax. War and prisons are the last. Our kids are recruited heavily for military service then are criminally neglected when they come back. If that isn't "working class" then I don't know what is. We carry the weight and we get a smaller and smaller slice of the economic pie. A quick look at the ever widening gap between rich and poor bears this out. CEOs are rewarded for failure and hourly workers are used brutally until they are laid off without even so much as a goodbye kiss.

Another challenge is the perception that success is based on material wealth. This is a very convenient paradigm for business interests but is not sustainable and is killing the planet and deadening the spirit. Materialism is addictive as any drug. The more we get, the more we want. As with any addiction, we develop tunnel vision. The pursuit of the next "fix" overides all else. Where addiciton lives, wisdom dies. Unfortunately, the more we want, the bigger the profits of huge corporations so they spend huge sums of money and hire armies of marketing and PR specialists to encourage this voracious appetite for "stuff". We are herded into subdivisions in huge automobiles and isolate in front of television or anyone of a myriad of other electronic devices. We are bombarded by a constant stream of messages that order us to consume as much and as fast as possible. We miss the joy of a hawk on the wing or the smile of a child or the feel of a lovers hair because we are engrossed in "Dancing With The Stars" and wondering how we will make the payments on our SUVs. People and community are the greatest joys that creation has to offer and we have forgotten that.

This begs the question: How do we fight such a formidable propaganda machine? The answer is that we don't fight, we create. Never has the artist been more important to the struggle. We have lost control of the story and we must strive to get it back. Art is the institutional memory of a movement and the artist is it's keeper. It is through the "Poetical Expression" that Connolly espouses that the culture of revolution is created. As progressives, I think it is pretty safe to say that we will never get airtime on Fox and frankly, not much more then lip service from PBS. (which the right is trying to kill anyway). The good news is that if we create the art, it will get out. It will be seen and read by somebody who may share it with somebody else.

We heal through art and that includes the artist as well. Through art, we fight despair. Through the creation of beauty we promote peace. Through the promotion of peace, we create compassion. If we have compassion, as a culture, then the rest falls into place. History is full of examples of this. The greatest victory the "Right" has achieved for itself is to equate compassion with weakness in the minds of people. If we have compassion for each other and we have sincere love for all beings, then the need for material wealth disappears. If we take and use only what we need, we can devote the rest of our time and energy to spiritual growth and health.

Without a doubt, this is swimming up stream. We all have challenges to face in this area. We are preconditioned by years of corporate propaganda to want, want, want, regardless of need. I as much as anybody. This is a struggle that cannot be won alone. We need each other, as artists, as citizens and as a community. Art is communication and is easily within our grasp to use. Poetry, writing, painting, sculpture, music, anything that creates beauty lets us "Smile on our bother and everybody gets together to try and love one another right now". Being a hippie is not naivete but an expression of hope.

Peace.