Future Hope column, January 2, 2011

By Ted Glick

“The financial elites have flourished in recent decades to a great extent because they have had
government on their side, with the politicians working diligently to ensure that rules, regulations
and tax policies established an environment in which the elites could thrive. For ordinary
Americans, it has been a different story, with jobs shipped overseas by the millions and wages
remaining stagnant, with labor unions under constant assault and labor standards weakened, with
the safety net shredded and the message sent out to workers everywhere: You’re on your own.”

-Bob Herbert, “A Recovery for Some,” N.Y. Times, 11/14/09

For those who are upset about the Republican victories two months ago, it would be good to
reflect on these words of Bob Herbert. The truth is that whether it was Reagan, Bush, Bush 2,
Clinton or Obama in the White House, whether Republicans or Democrats controlled the Senate
or the House, things have gotten worse for most people in the United States over the last 30
years.

When Reagan came into office, the average corporate CEO made 42 times as much as the
average worker. Today it’s more like 350 times as much. This is obscene.

For climate activists, we should not forget what happened, or what didn’t happen, with Obama
in the White House and Democrats with huge majorities in the House and Senate. There was
a complete failure of efforts to put a price on carbon, to enact policies that would drive the
urgently needed shift away from dependence on coal and oil to the prioritizing of renewables,
energy conservation and efficiency.

This year the big focus will be on the Environmental Protection Agency. Republican and some
Democratic members of Congress will be doing all that they can to defang the EPA, to prevent
it from moving forward with the regulation of stationary sources of carbon emissions and other
pollutants. Environmental and climate groups have been working for months and will continue
to do so to support and push the EPA to do its job, and to support and push Obama to cover the
EPA’s back.

I wish I had confidence that Obama was prepared to do that. My belief is that he is going to
need direct, constant and steady pressure to resist the fossil fuel interests and their enablers in
Congress. Perhaps the fact that he will have to be gearing up for his 2012 Presidential re-election
campaign, spending more time out of Washington interacting with the people, will strengthen
his resolve on this and many other issues, particularly if climate and progressive activists in the
places where he comes get organized to let him know what we think and feel.

It would be good if he did what he should have done after his election in 2008–use his
Presidential “bully pulpit” to mobilize the grassroots behind a genuine change agenda. But this

is wishful thinking. It’s wishful thinking because Obama has demonstrated over and over again
that, despite his 2008 campaign rhetoric, the “change” he had in mind had nothing to do with a
change as far as who is really in power, running the show, benefiting from government policies.

Bob Herbert has it right.

For the last two years progressive activists have mainly put their energies into trying to get the
Democrats to use their control of the federal government to enact progressive policies. For many
of us, we’ve been turned off by most of the results, a mixed bag at best. Often, the legislation
was weak and seriously compromised by corporate interests. The financial elite who came
close to plunging us into a full-scale depression are back on top with their big bonuses and huge
fortunes. There’s been absolutely no accountability, not even a serious investigation into what
they did. With the exception of Bernie Madoff and perhaps a few other lesser fish, none of them
have been prosecuted.

It’s like the torture that went on during the Bush/Cheney war years. No accountability, no
prosecutions, let’s all just forget about it and move on. And the wars continue.

In 2011 we’re going to have to stand up and go toe-to-toe as necessary with the revitalized
climate crisis deniers, the straight-up corporate enablers, the scapegoaters of immigrants,
teachers and public employees, those who want to privatize and weaken Medicare and Social
Security.

As importantly, we have to get back to basics. Lots of us are doing grassroots organizing already;
we need to keep that going, strengthen and expand it. We need to keep building the networks
across issue lines that will make possible the emergence, hopefully this year, of a “united
progressives” movement and alliance. We need a popular, issue-oriented third force that
makes possible the political and social changes needed by so many of our peoples and by our
threatened ecosystem. We need mass movements that are visible, that are out in the streets, that
are engaging in civil disobedience to drive home the urgency of our demands, that shake up the
system and give hope to those in need and those who understand the depth and interrelationship
of our many crises.

We’ve learned–some of us have been reminded once again–that, in the words of Frederick
Douglas in 1857, “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.
Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice
and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with
either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of
those whom they oppress.”

Ted Glick has been a climate activist since 2003 and a progressive activist since 1968. Past
writings and more information can be found at http://www.tedglick.com.