Progressives have been blessed in the past two years with three
\nsignificant opportunities to change the fundamentals of American
\nsociety. We’ve already blown the first and are missing the second and
\nthird.<\/p>\n
The first, of course, was the economic meltdown. What a moment that
\ncould have been for progressives in Congress or the White House to
\nchallenge the ideology of “leave it to the marketplace” or “leave it to
\nthe states” to work things out. Imagine if President Obama had told
\nWall Street and the Republicans, “OK, lets test your theories right now
\n— lets just let the marketplace work its wonders as the banks fail.”
\nAnd had they pleaded for relief, it should have been given on condition
\nthat they enthusiastically and simultaneously back and help implement a
\nsingle payer health care plan, the creation of a national bank to fund
\nno-interest loans to people on the verge of losing their homes from
\ndeceptive mortgage loan offers and to fund socially useful and
\nenvironmentally sound new projects to offset unemployment, the funding
\nof a massive new WPA-style full employment program to make sure that
\neveryone who wants to work can and can use their talents in ways that
\nare societally useful, and to encourage small businesses, and the
\ncreation of a whole new set of laws restricting banking and investment
\ncompany operations to make them respond to the needs of the society and
\nnot just to the profit motivations of their investors. Well, that
\nchance was blown.<\/p>\n
The second opportunity is now being blown by the Obama
\nAdministration: the Gulf Oil spill. Here is a moment in which the logic
\nof capitalist exploitation of the planet is exposed for everyone to see.<\/p>\n
The President should be calling this a national emergency as serious
\nas that of 9\/11, and should declare a war on those who are destroying
\nthe environment. He should call for a special session of Congress and
\nask for emergency powers to suspend any corporate activity here or
\nabroad that threatens the planet Earth, under his war powers and as a
\nmanifestation of his sworn obligation to protect and defend the United
\nStates.<\/p>\n
Obama should explain to the American people that we are literally
\nliving through what environmentalist Paul Wapner calls “the end of
\nnature” unless we change the fundamentals of how we organize our global
\neconomy and our relationship to the planet. Instead of seeing Earth as a
\nresource for human exploitation, we need to think of Earth as our very
\nbodies, and the damage we do to it similarly to what we might be doing
\nif we were cutting off limbs from our bodies. We need to cultivate in
\nourselves and each other the capacity to respond to the universe with
\nawe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of All
\nThat Is.<\/p>\n
That conception should be matched by environmental policies aimed at
\ncutting carbon emissions to 350 in the next ten years, scrapping
\n“pollute and trade” for a powerful carbon tax, the creation of a
\nnational environmental board which must verify that every product made
\nor sold in the US is produced, marketed, and sold in an environmentally
\nsound way with an ES (environmentally sound sticker), the elimination
\nof all trade agreements that favor the US at the expense of local
\nfarmers around the world, the use of the armies of the US as part of a
\nUN Force with the mandate to prevent the destruction of rain forest and
\nother environmentally vital parts of the globe, and the implementation
\nof a Global Marshall Plan to eliminate the extremes of poverty and
\nhunger that contribute to some of the poor being willing to destroy the
\nplanet just so that they can (quite reasonably) feed their own
\nfamilies.<\/p>\n
The third opportunity remains: the decision of the Supreme Court in
\nits Citizens United ruling to overturn constraints on corporate
\ndonations to candidates for office. The right wing majority on the court
\nboldly proclaimed that corporations are persons, persons’ speech is
\nprotected by the first Amendment, and spending money is a form of
\nspeech.<\/p>\n
Over 80% of US voters oppose that decision and understand that its
\nimplementation is likely to end the last vestiges of democratic openness
\nin American society and replace it with corporate advertising
\nmanipulation of our consciousness.<\/p>\n
The process of undermining democracy and control of elections by the
\ncorporation and elites of wealth and power was already quite advanced
\nbefore this recent Supreme Court decision, so if we confine our
\nattention to overthrowing Citizens United we will not thereby restore
\nreal democracy in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, most progressive and liberal groups are following this
\nmistaken path. Correctly understanding that any legislation on the
\nissue of democracy for ordinary people and not for corporations is
\nlikely to be overturned by the right-wing court we have at the moment.
\nBut then they propose narrowly framed amendments to the constitution
\nthat would do little more than return us to the status quo ante.<\/p>\n
For that reason, we at Tikkun and our educational arm The Network of
\nSpiritual Progressives will be putting forward a new approach. We are
\ninviting secular progressives and liberals to join with spiritual or
\nreligious liberals and progressives at a Strategy Conference in
\nWashington, D.C. June 11-13 to develop a coherent strategy for the Obama
\nyears ahead. And a central part of that strategy is a campaign for the
\nESRA: Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S.
\nConstitution.<\/p>\n
The first Article, the Pro-Democracy Clause, of the ESRA proclaims
\nthat protection of freedom of speech only applies to human beings nor
\nshall money be considered a form of speech. It then goes on to regulate
\nthe expenditure of money in elections and to fund national elections,
\nprohibit anyone from buying time or space in the media during the three
\nmonths before the election but mandates major media to provide equal and
\nfree time to major candidates, and other steps to ensure that
\ndifferentials in money will no longer be a factor in determining how
\nmuch of a candidate’s message is communicated to voters.<\/p>\n
The second Article is the Corporate Environmental and Social
\nResponsibility Clause.<\/p>\n
This would require corporations with incomes of over $100 million per
\nyear (not smaller companies or “mom and pop” stores) must get a new
\ncorporate charter every five years which will only be granted to those
\nthat can demonstrate a satisfactory history of environmental and social
\nresponsibility (toward its workers and toward the communities in which
\nit functions) to a jury of ordinary citizens chosen at random (because
\nwe already know that regulatory agencies become dominated by
\nrepresentatives of the very corporations that are supposed to be
\nregulating). Along with corporate management, employee groups and
\nstakeholder groups from wherever that corporation or its products reach
\nwould present their information about the level of corporate
\nenvironmental and social responsibility.<\/p>\n
A “Positive Requirement to enhance human community and environmental
\nsustainability constitutes Article three. Most notable in this Article
\nis that it requires of any school that receives federal support that
\nthey teach the skills and capacities necessary to develop a caring
\nsociety manifesting love, generosity,kindness, joy celebration,
\nthanksgiving, forgiveness, non-violence, rational and scientific
\nthinking, awe and wonder at the universe, and the recognition that our
\nwell-being depends on the well-being of everyone on the planet and the
\nwell-being of the Earth itself. It further mandates the teaching of all
\nknowledge and skills required to assure that all students can contribute
\nto the implementation of policies that enhance the long-term
\nsustainability of Earth.<\/p>\n
It will take just as long to get the shorter more narrowly framed
\nattempts to overthrow Citizens United as it will this broader ESRA
\nversion. Yet in the actual struggle for change, the ESRA goes far deeper
\nand is far more likely to stir the enthusiasm of the American people
\nand the activists necessary to carry a campaign for Constitutional
\nreform to every corner of the country. What Obama should have learned
\nduring the fight for health care reform — that the full weight of
\ncorporate power gets mobilized just as heavily for moderate reform as it
\nwould for a more appealing broader and deeper reform. And the broader
\nreform, precisely because it spells out what we are seeking, is much
\nmore likely to generate popular support and to educate people along the
\nway to a vision of a different, more democratic and more environmentally
\nresponsible, society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Progressives have been blessed in the past two years with three significant opportunities to change the fundamentals of American society. We’ve already blown the first and are missing the second and third. The first, of course, was the economic meltdown. What a moment that could have been for progressives in Congress or the White House…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,9],"tags":[368,123,468,467],"class_list":["post-637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poverty","category-religion-in-the-public-square","tag-congress","tag-financial-crisis","tag-politics-news","tag-progressive-movement"],"yoast_head":"\n