Five Borough Report June 2003
Supplement
Bill Moyers’ Call to Action
Democratic presidential candidates were handed a dream audience of
1,000 "ready-for-action" labor, civil rights, peace and economic
justice campaigners at the Take Back America conference organized in
Washington last week by the Campaign for America's Future. And the 2004
contenders grabbed for it, delivering some of the better speeches of a
campaign that remains rhetorically -- and directionally -- challenged. But
it was a non-candidate who won the hearts and minds of the crowd with a
"Cross of Gold" speech for the 21st century.
Recalling the populism and old-school progressivism of the era in
which William Jennings Bryan stirred the Democratic National Convention of
1896 to enter into the great struggle between privilege and democracy --
and to spontaneously nominate the young Nebraskan for president --
journalist and former presidential aide Bill Moyers delivered a call to
arms against "government of, by and for the ruling corporate
class."
Condemning "the unholy alliance between government and
wealth" and the compassionate conservative spin that tries to make
"the rape of America sound like a consensual date," Moyers
charged that "rightwing wrecking crews" assembled by the Bush
Administration and its Congressional allies were out to bankrupt
government. Then, he said, they would privatize public services in order to
enrich the corporate interests that fund campaigns and provide golden
parachutes to pliable politicians. If unchecked, Moyers warned, the result
of these machinations will be the dismantling of "every last brick of
the social contract."
"I think this is a deliberate, intentional destruction of the
United States of America," said Moyers, as he called for the
progressives gathered in Washington -- and for their allies across the
United States -- to organize not merely in defense of social and economic
justice but in order to preserve democracy itself. Paraphrasing the words
of Abraham Lincoln as the 16th president rallied the nation to battle
against slavery, Moyers declared, "our nation can no more survive as
half democracy and half oligarchy than it could survive half slave and half
free."
There was little doubt that the crowd of activists from across the
country would have nominated Moyers by acclamation when he finished a
remarkable address in which he challenged not just the policies of the Bush
Administration but the failures of Democratic leaders in Congress to
effectively challenge the president and his minions. In the face of what he
described as "a radical assault" on American values by those who
seek to redistribute wealth upward from the many to a wealthy few, Moyers
said he could not understand why "the Democrats are afraid to be
branded class warriors in a war the other side started and is winning."
Several of the Democratic presidential contenders who addressed the
crowd after Moyers picked up pieces of his argument. Former US Senator
Carol Moseley Braun actually quoted William Jennings Bryan, while North
Carolina Senator John Edwards and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry tried --
with about as much success as Al Gore in 2000 -- to sound populist. Former
House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt promised not to be
"Bush-lite," and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean drew warm
applause when he said the way for Democrats to get elected "is not to
be like Republicans, but to stand up against them and fight."
Ultimately, however, only the Rev. Al Sharpton and Congressional
Progressive Caucus co-chair Dennis Kucinich came close to matching the fury
and the passion of the crowd.
Kucinich, who earned nine standing ovations for his antiwar and
anti-corporate free trade rhetoric, probably did more to advance his
candidacy than any of the other contenders. But he never got to the place
Moyers reached with a speech that legal scholar Jamie Raskin described as
one of the most "amazing and spellbinding" addresses he had ever
heard. Author and activist Frances Moore Lappe said she was close to tears
as she thanked Moyers for providing precisely the mixture of perspective
and hope that progressives need as they prepare to challenge the right in
2004.
That, Moyers explained, was the point of his address, which
reflected on White House political czar Karl Rove's oft-stated admiration
for Mark Hanna, the Ohio political boss who managed the campaigns and the
presidency of conservative Republican William McKinley. It was McKinley who
beat Bryan in 1896 and -- with Hanna's help -- fashioned a White House that
served the interests of the corporate trusts.
Comparing the excesses of Hanna and Rove, and McKinley and Bush,
Moyers said "the social dislocations and the meanness" of the
19th century were being renewed by a new generation of politicians who,
like their predecessors, seek to strangle the spirit of the American revolution
"in the hard grip of the ruling class."
To break that grip, Moyers said, progressives of today must learn
from the revolutionaries and reformers of old. Recalling the progressive
movement that rose up in the first years of the 20th century to preserve a
"balance between wealth and commonwealth," and the successes of
the New Dealers who turned progressive ideals into national policy, Moyers
told the crowd to "get back in the fight." "Hear me!"
he cried. "Allow yourself that conceit to believe that the flame of democracy
will never go out as long as there is one candle in your hand."
While others were campaigning last week, Moyers was tending the
flame of democracy. In doing so, he unwittingly made himself the candle
holder-in-chief for those who seek to spark a new progressive era.
Moyers' full address can be found at www.ourfuture.org/document.cfm?documentID=962
--
John Nichols, The Nation, June 6, 2003
June 2003
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