Here is an excellent essay that addresses an issue that has come to concern me more and more: the apathy of Americans, our passive acceptance of what is happening to our country.
Why Aren't Americans Fighting Back?
E. DOUGLAS KIHN
EXTRACT:
The Current Crisis and Today's Fightbacks
The last four decades have witnessed the first-ever generalized stagnation of wages and benefits for working people in this country, as well as the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the world, from middle and low income Americans to the billionaire gamblers, bankers, industrialists, and their hirelings. According to Mother Jones, from 1979 to the present, the productivity of American capitalism grew over 80 percent, while US wages only grew around 12 percent.
The share of US wealth held by half of American households plummeted in 2010 to 1.1 percent, while the top 10 percent's share was 74.5 percent. And according to the British aid agency Oxfam, the 2012 income alone of the 100 wealthiest families in the world was enough to end global poverty four times over!
EXTRACT (List Only):
1. Lack of class consciousness.
2. The bad taste left in the collective mouth by the Stalinist experiment.
3. Fossilized, bureaucratic unions.
4. Capitalist electoral politics.
5. Arbitrary divisions of the proletariat.
6. The capitalist propaganda machine.
7. The American security state.
Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Truthout on Seven Obstacles to 99% Getting Organized”
