Most of the protesters in these demonstrations were either affected directly (students at universities and draft-age men) or indirectly (the parents of draftable men). Back then, we always felt that the rest of the US was either apathetic or outright hostile to strikes and protests. Later, I was in several union strikes and it was the same story. Even in the 60s, it was curious how uninvolved most people were.
Near the end of the war more people started publicly protesting, people who had no personal stake in it, who weren’t going to be called on to go to war. The students had eventually led the rest of the country to reject the war. Finally, the war was over and many things suddenly began to change for the better. And what did everyone do?
They all disappeared. Life became about “Me” in the 70s and protests a quaint memory. Where’d they all go?
Well now comes an interesting piece by Zbignew Zhingh analyzing why we are so apathetic here in the Cradle of Democracy, democracy founded on violent protest and revolution.
A perplexed European asked me a question: Why, she asked, have there been no general strikes in America to end its aggression in the Middle East? Why, she asked, are Americans so unwilling to force their government do what must be done?
These are not new questions. Everyone with an inkling of history and a modest awareness of international news realizes that Americans, completely contrary to the foundation myth of the American Revolution, are incredibly docile. It stings, however, when someone from the outside points out an obvious weakness.
Citizens of other industrialized countries are able to organize national actions to achieve common goals. Americans at the university, labor, middle class and working class levels, however, seem to be utterly impotent and thoroughly disorganized in any long-term, coordinated endeavor that extends beyond electoral politics. We literally struggle to organize coordinated national events.
A general strike is one of the most powerful tools of non-violent civil disobedience. In a general strike all work stops, businesses shut down, consumers do not spend money, teachers and students stay away from school, employees call in sick, lawyers do not try cases, assembly line workers do not assemble, teamsters park their rigs, pilots do not fly, doctors practice only emergency medicine, and commerce grinds to a halt. General strikes are not violent, but they cause tremendous economic hurt. When properly coordinated and prepared, they are very persuasive. General strikes have toppled governments, such as in Argentina, and they have prevented the implementation of anti-labor legislation, most notably in France and in Italy.
Some argue that Americans are simply too economically comfortable to participate in any political action more strenuous that penciling an X on a ballot. That cannot be the answer. Indeed, the notion that Americans live better than everyone else is part of our national mythology. Although many Americans reside in spacious (and heavily mortgaged) houses and, by incurring massive debt, own lots of “stuff”, citizens of several European industrialized nations live, on average, healthier, more secure lives and work far fewer hours than most Americans. Certain Asian countries are not far behind. Notwithstanding their better living conditions, Germans, French, Italians and Spaniards, for example, are still more willing to take concerted political action than are Americans.
Zingh attributes this curious American defect to one thing: the legacy of slavery and the fear of unemployment. That is exactly why no one but those directly at risk was protesting in the 60s and why there is not much happening now.
In the nation’s first hundred years, slavery was a mechanism for controlling “free labor”. After emancipation, freed slaves (though hardly free in any real sense of the term) were used as a cheap labor reserve that both in the South and in the North was manipulated to hold back wages all across the industrial horizon, from Black to White. By inciting White workers to extreme racial animus against Black “competitors”, business interests succeeded in preventing the creation of a unified labor front that could have benefited everyone.
Subsequently, poor European immigrants, women and children have been exploited in the United States for the same reason and in the same way, just as were immigrant laborers imported from China and the Philippines during the industrial expansion of the late 19th Century. The entire American immigration policy of the 19th Century was an effort to control wages by bringing in cheap labor from overseas, much as “globalized” labor is used today.
Add to the mix the use of religion to shunt people away from protesting and striking for changes and benefits.
Religion holds the greatest sway over the least politically thoughtful peoples. This is not an accident. The particular flavor of religion that dominates in the United States generally preaches doctrines of pacifism, obedience to authority and a focus on rewards in a life after death. It promotes a culture of minimal secular resistance and maximal secular resignation.
We have so little job security here and our public benefits are so flimsy. If you lose your job you lose your health care, paid days off and all the other perks (if any) you receive only if you stay employed. Best to just shut up and get back to work. Oh, and make sure you go to Church and pray to God you don’t lose your job and miss the mortgage payment.
It’s a troubling perspective. Without more of a cohesive social safety net that is not punitive or over-bureaucratized, most people are too insecure to think politically. Thus, political action has been severely curtailed in this country. But, like other countries (Argentina, Bolivia, the US during the Depression), if things get so bad there is little left to lose, people will wake up.
[The pic for this article is a shot of protesters — in France — protesting a measure, due to go into effect in April, that will make it easier to hire and fire young people at a time when the youth unemployment rate averages 23 percent.]
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