Surviving Capitalism (Not) : What's More Important For Black Leadership? Turning Off Fox News? Or Stopping the President's Cat Food Commission?

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, September 3, 2010

What's More Important For Black Leadership? Turning Off Fox News? Or Stopping the President's Cat Food Commission?

by Bruce A. Dixon from Black Agenda Report.

Rev. Al Sharpton and the NAACP's Ben Jealous, along with most of the old black political class want us to think the most important thing happening is their ongoing clown fight with Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. The newer crowd of tech-savvy, social-network-aware types around Color of Change think the most key and crucial thing to do is to make airports, bus and train stations Turn Off Fox News. They're both wrong. The real action is someplace else.

While the right-wing garners all the media hoopla, Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility & Reform is quietly going about its business of preparing plans to slash Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.