by Rigorous Intuition » Sat Jul 01, 2006 6:47 pm
The Coup's Boots Riley is interviewed in the summer issue of <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.lipmagazine.org/">LiP Magazine</a><!--EZCODE LINK END-->. I don't think it's online - or I hope not, because I've just rekeyed it - but the man speaks the truth:<br><br><br>It's about a system that allows exploitation of people, and a government that facilitates that exploitation. And so no matter who you are - <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>you could elect me president tomorrow, and even if I don't get assassinated, I would not be able to stop the wheels of the machinery.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> Elected officials are puppets, so you can only elect a puppet. And a puppet can, at the most, go limp. Puppets can't affect their puppeteers. And Al Gore, if he had won, well, his family owns [a substantial number of shares in] Occidental Oil, and he wouldn've gone to war, too. He might have done it differently, and we would have had less of an antiwar protest, because there are many people who would have been fooled by that.<br><br>I know that everybody isn't exactly the same. Jeb Bush might be a little different from George Bush. And John Kerry might be a little bit different from George Bush, too - a little <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>more</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> different. But is that difference enough. No, it's not enough for me.<br><br>As long as we don't look at how things work in the system and understand that these basic things won't change until we work against the system, then we won't get what we want. And I'm not saying that the only thing to fight for is revolution and nothing before that. I think there are a lot of things that are worth fighting for before that - higher wages, better housing conditions, medical care for everyone, things that are not necessarily revolution, but can be revolutionary in the sense of building a movement that wins those things.<br><br>Ending the war - building a movement that could end the war - would be a revolutionary act. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Unfortunately, again, we got duped, and we had an antiwar movement that was growing really big, but then foundations, and leaders of organizations, changed their focus from ending the war to electing Kerry. We came out of there with a lot less of an antiwar movement, trying to elect someone who wasn't going to end the war in the first place.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>So my point is this: You can make any politician do what you want if you have a big movement going on. But you can have the most progressive politician and no movement going on, and nothing will change. Affirmative action came during a time when, you know, people like Nixon were in office, and it wasn't because people got together and voted, and things like that. It was because [those in power] were scared of people doing direct action and stopping industry from moving.<br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v226/JeffWells/subalbum1/partymusic_original.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
