GRITtv: F Word: Van Jones’ Resignation Should be a Wake up Call
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GRITtv: F Word: Van Jones’ Resignation Should be a Wake up Call
From the audacity of compromise – on healthcare, war, you name it – to what GRITtv guest Tim Wise calls the audacity of capitulation, it’s hard for progressives to kick off the season on such a sour note. But that's just where the Van Jones story leaves many of us. As a partly on-target Wall Street Journal editorial put it, “How bitter it must be to discover that the Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck, who drove the debate about Mr. Jones, counts for more at this White House than Mr. [David] Sirota.” Sirota’s been one of Van Jones’ defenders, and Obama’s critics, this week. Painful, yes. Bitter, let’s hope not. Bitter’s what you get when bad stuff sits and ferments. Angry is what you get when you become determined to change the conditions that ticked you off. Nine months into the Obama administration, hopeful acquiescence has gotten progressives nowhere. The public option in healthcare–already a compromise–is in trouble. And on the economy, the best informed economists believe the market upturn’s about to fizzle out. The economy simply cannot recover without a strong consumer, but consumers as a whole are poorly paid and deeply in debt. And now their home values – if homes they have – have taken a hit. If the recent meetings of the G20 are anything to go by, there’ll be no direct action about that from this government. They’re so besotted with trickle-down, they can’t feel the disaster leaking up. Which takes us back to the Van Jones story. Is it morally wrong for the gap between rich and poor to be at its largest ever – you bet. But it’s also not smart to have our politics driven by plutocrats who are at best out of touch and driven by their own narrow self-interest. That, not political favorites, is the reason for real grassrootsers to serve in government. As Firedoglake’s Jane Hamsher says, the silence of powerful liberals so far into this administration leaves the Glenn Becks of the world, “in the perfect position to harvest discontent.” And, I’d add, to racialize it in ways that rip our country apart. That, not bitterness, is the reason for progressives and their allies to get their act together. In 1934, in San Francisco, unions organized a four-day general strike. Seventy four years later, also in San Francisco, a conference of Next Generation leaders is meeting – under the banner Momentum. And that's what we need – momentum -- on every front. But momentum requires more than attitude. It requires mass with velocity. And of course, media. More from us, tomorrow.
Blip | September 8, 2009
