I have not seen such consistent thought as I have lately that there is an overwhelming desire to see America fall echoed by so many! Yet we fail to rise up and say “stop!” Americans are proud people, I don’t know why so few speak up! We are watching her melt away like a candle burning in the night! We sit and watch as if it is some scary fictional movie with relatively no emotion whatsoever!
We dress in the morning, begin our workday and shuffle off to the grind with little thought around us of what is going on! Maybe we do have thoughts but the easiest path may be that of non resistance! Maybe we gave become complacent, settling for mediocre! Perhaps that is it!
I try to make sense of the struggle to remain free in an open society that has given the world the standard which they all want to imitate! The greatest place on Earth is seeing some wrinkles, perhaps fading as she reaches a prime age! Can we live out the extent of our lives in such short time? Have we simply grown tired and are willing to relinquish our rights to a sinister plot? Do we dare reach out to stop it or do we blend in with the scenery and adopt the attitude we are defeated?
Read carefully the words of a prophet? Madman? Or both? He had a vision of an America that would eventually surrender her rights and he expressed it below! What are you duties? What is your skill that may save your self or your country? System down! We have but one republic, let’s try to save her! Your choice, your America!
There’s another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families – more than seventy million people – whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don’t encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let’s not let it happen by default.
Saul Alinsky
Excerpt from Rules for Radicals
Socialist!
Bradley County News Network 