STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

America’s greatest wasted resource is its youth. The obvious corruption in government that three decades of college students have grown up with have led to a political cynicism in this group that rivals that of their parents, who lived through the changes in our government that they are still struggling to understand if they have not given up trying. College students are making tremendous efforts to prepare for a future that is increasingly uncertain, yet most have dismissed the value of spending time in protesting a government and society that has largely abandoned the children of the shrinking middle class and the growing numbers of the poor.

As a result of such fatalism, only a small number of college students are engaged in the political process, mostly in the form of education and protests, neither of which gain much attention in today’s distracted society. In 2008 they enthusiastically supported candidate Obama, only to discover that their parents seemed to be right in dismissing all politicians as liars. Obama has kept very few of the promises he made to average Americans, while clearly keeping promises to corporate interests arrived at behind closed doors as he solicited support for his presidential campaign.

As the fascists who control the US government advance toward their goal of privatizing every government function for their personal profit, the ability to acquire an advanced education has increasingly become a privilege rather than the right that Jefferson argued it must be if the American experiment in democracy is to succeed. As college becomes increasingly inaccessible to our youth they are left with few choices. With jobs being shipped overseas by the millions, many fall victim to the job recruiters from the US military. In effect, they are economic conscripts of international corporate terrorists.

During the Vietnam War students were much more attuned to the effects of war on their future. For ten years, an entire generation of young men faced the prospect of being drafted to fight in a pointless corporate war. The women who faced the loss of their loved ones were affected as well. For those of us not yet of age, the future did not look promising and those of us who understood what was at stake joined the opposition in any way that we could.

The peace movement in the 60s and early 70s grew despite the lack of the critical organizing tool of the internet. Only the cynic would argue that the fact that the corporate media publicized both the war and the protests allowed the movement to grow. In truth, the reasons the movement proved unstoppable were that those involved were determined to achieve victory in spite of the obvious corruption of the US government that declared war on them. That generation was not indoctrinated in the belief that democracy was dead. They knew that their entire generation had been made pawns in the war for corporate Empire and that only their combined efforts at resistance couldend the war.  They were willing to fight to assure that the hope for democracy in America would live on.

Students for a Democratic Society was formed to help organize the members of the resistance to fascism in that day. Like all organizations it had its growing pains in terms of crises in identity and leadership. Those involved persevered and over time, SDS became a leader in the peace movement. It became a leader in promoting the idea that the war was only a symptom of the disease of fascism. Leaders in the fight for the rights of women, African-Americans, Native Americans and gays stood shoulder to shoulder in defense of the right of each of us to liberty and justice.

The only way to engage the youth of the US is to give them reason to hope that they can become part of the struggle to end fascism and war in our lifetime. If those of us old enough to remember the victories of the past can use modern networking tools to get our peers away from their computers and out in the streets, we may be able to inspire a new generation of students to work for a democratic society.

Every generation must have its own leaders. Those who have been in the vanguard of the fight for the last several decades must allow new leaders to emerge from every generation if they are truly more interested in the cause than in self-promotion. There are many young men and women prepared to take up the fight. It is our duty to educate them about our successes and our failures so that they may look at them with fresh eyes and find ways to use this knowledge to mold a 21^st century strategy to wage asymmetric warfare against fascism and war.

It is our youth who will live to see the ultimate effects of the effort to create a democracy in the US from the fascist horror that it has become. We cannot leave them to their fate just because most have come to accept that justice and democracy are dead. It took generations for the fascists to create this illusion and the spell cannot be broken overnight. Good parents understand that children mature only when they understand that as adults they will be responsible for their own future and ultimately, for the future of their own children. This happens when they are given responsibility and when they have had good role models to emulate.

If students get out on the street with petitions calling on their members of Congress to introduce a constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood and support any candidate who will, they may yet have reason to hope that they will live in a democratic society in their lifetime.

LEADERSHIP WITHOUT LEADERS

Every one of you devoted friends should consider himself the only person in the entire world who is wearing the luminous crown of divine teachings and the only one who holds in his hands the life-giving banner of the Cause of Baha'u'llah for the world of humanity; so that he may strive, with a firm resolution, unflinching determination, steadfast steps and hopeful heart, to tread his undeviating path in the chosen highway of God and, with a brilliant countenance and head held high, continue with an unwavering attitude to focus his radiant gaze on the golden horizon of the Cause of God.

With those words, the administrative order of Iran's long-oppressed Baha'i religious minority tried to prepare its membership for another bloody era in 1980. The earliest days of the Baha'i Faith in its native land had seen 20,000 martyrs, with practically every leader killed or exiled, by the time its age of martytrdom was declared over in the early part of the 20th Century. The restoration of Persia's monarchy had brought a new wave of oppression; Tehran's Baha'i temple was razed with official ceremony; but this bought them no credibility with the ayatollahs now leading the popular revolution.

It is impossible to overstate the intensely democratic form that Baha'i elections take. No one can mention any names, trade any horses, or advocate for any position. Wherever nine or more Baha'is live in any community, they gather once a year to pray and write names on secret ballots. Taking as many rounds as necessary, the assembly chooses a chairperson, a treasurer, and a secretary. Writings and prayer between ballots exhort each adult Baha'i to name the worthiest ones among them for the post in question. It can, indeed usually does, require much more time than your average voting experience in America.

The entire Baha'i administrative order mirrors this process of consensus. Baha'i organization subverts the ordinary lines of political geography: "clusters" of assemblies form communities. Regions overlap states. Alaska has its own "National Spiritual Assembly;" so do Sicily and Puerto Rico. Members of the highest international council -- the Universal House of Justice -- are elected regularly in much the same manner and mode as local assemblies. There are no clerics, and no administrative class. Merit is the order of a sober selection.

Before 1980 was over, all nine Baha'is in that photograph had been arrested and disappeared, never to be seen again. With astounding courage, the Baha'is of Iran immediately re-elected another National Spiritual Assembly. They, too, were arrested and executed -- and a third immediately elected in its place.

That assembly disbanded itself after the revolutionary government passed a law making Baha'i assemblies illegal. It was one of several repressive acts by the regime: Baha'is were denied state education, government jobs, or civic recognition of marriage. Baha'is in Iran resisted by not resisting. For the next three decades, Baha'is would see the heightened oppression of the revolution muted by the Iran-Iraq War, relaxed in the thermidor of Khatami's presidency, and returned to official policy in the Ahmadinejad years. By this time, an entirely informal -- and web-based! -- Baha'i education system had sprung up, and a highly-organized informal system to replace the assembly. From June of 2010:

NEW YORK — The trial of seven Baha'i leaders imprisoned for more than two years in Iran seems to have come to a conclusion after three days of successive court hearings.
The seven appeared in Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran on the morning of Saturday, 12 June and returned to Evin Prison shortly after noon.

All seven were convicted last August and sentenced to 20 years in prison for "establishment of an illegal administration." Calling themselves asyaran ("friends"), this simple coordinating group had committed the crime of providing basic community functions, like burial services and counseling. These convictions are ironic, as Baha'is created these informal arrangements to stay in compliance with the laws. Baha'i scriptures actually tell them to obey their national authority -- and they had been.

Yet even this repression has failed to end the Baha'i Faith in Iran. Indeed, it has obtained the opposite effect, kindling sympathy as the regime's popular support crumbles. Every Baha'i hanged, murdered, or imprisoned becomes a martyr of peaceful resistance instead of a warning to others. Every innovation by the state has engendered equal or greater innovation by the Baha'is, who continue to put their best and brightest forward without fear.

Linchpin of Progress

The tea party astroturfing has been an attempt to imitate progressive activism. But when was the last time you saw an act of civil disobedience at a tea party?

No matter how hard they try, corporate shills can't steal this act. Their useful idiots will inevitably wind up stomping a woman's head.

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