Personal political thought and organizing

I randomly stumbled on this blog entry "How to Think About Politics" by Ryan McCarl which I found interesting and worth posting, especially this excerpt:

Question yourself, your ideology, your vocabulary, and the beliefs behind your beliefs. And also question every overt and covert political statement, every candidate’s speech, every newspaper opinion column, every dinner-table rant, every historical narrative, and even every piece of art or literature. Politics touches everything and everything touches politics. Cultivate your awareness of the political dimension of the world, a dimension that is often hidden beneath the surface of things.

I agree with the author to a certain extent that critical thinking and self-education are important to developing one's political thought. What I believe he's missing is when political thought translate into action. It's great that you continually self-educate yourself on political issues ( I do regularly) but politics aren't simply an individual intellectual exercise. Local, state and federal politics effect our lives in numerous ways. We as citizens must be involved in shaping them towards our common good through organizing and activism or else only the big money interests will dominate our government and its policies. Thus one's political views are irrelevant if you don't do anything about them. It won't matter what you'd like to see happen, if you aren't willing to not only do something about it but reaching out to and motivating others as well to get involved. This is the essence of organizing, bringing people together around shared issues and mobilizing them, and the key to putting political thought into action.

Social movements and "reclaiming public values"

I found this article Reclaiming Public Values in the Age of Casino Capitalism by Henry Giroux really interesting. It speaks to the cultural challenges in the US facing progressive climate justice/green jobs, health care, economic justice/ financial reform activism that have sprouted in recent years in their efforts to create larger social movements. This part was especially poignant:

At this time of national crisis, we need to recognize that the current economic recession cannot be understood apart from the crisis of democracy itself. It is all the more crucial, therefore, to recognize in a post Gilded Age moment that those public spaces that traditionally have offered forums for debating norms, critically engaging ideas, making private issues public and evaluating judgments are disappearing under the juggernaut of free-market values, corporate power and intense lobbying pressure on the part of the country's most powerful financial institutions. Schools, universities, the media, and other aspects of the cultural education apparatus are being increasingly privatized or corporatized and removed from the discourse of the public good. Consequently, it becomes all the more crucial for educators, parents, social movements, and others to raise fundamental questions about what it means to revitalize a politics and ethics that takes seriously "such values as citizen participation, the public good, political obligation, social governance, and community."[2] The call for a revitalized politics grounded in an effective democracy substantively challenges the dystopian practices of the new culture of fear and neoliberalism - with their all-consuming emphasis on insecurity, market relations, commercialization, privatization and the creation of a worldwide economy of part-time workers - against their utopian promises. Such an intervention confronts Americans with the problem as well as challenge of developing those public spheres - such as the media, higher education, and other cultural institutions - that provide the conditions for creating citizens who are capable of exercising their freedoms, competent to question the basic assumptions that govern political life and skilled enough to participate in developing social movements that will enable them to shape the basic social, political and economic orders that govern their lives.

Soldier resistance of escalation in Afghanistan

Dahr Jamail, an independent reporter whose been following resistance and dissent within the US military, reports that an organization called MarchForward! composed of veterans and active duty members of the US military has responded to Obama's planned escalation by calling on US soldiers to refuse deployment:

"March Forward! calls on all service members to refuse orders to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq," reads a press release from the group from December 3. "We offer our unconditional support and solidarity. Join us in the fight to ensure that no more soldiers or civilians lose their lives in these criminal wars."

It seems the unpopular nature of escalation in Afghanistan is not enough to sway the Obama administration from its present course. Others within the US military have expressed similar dissatisfaction with the plan as called for by General McCrystal who believe that it would only strengthen the Afghan insurgency. The only way things might change is if soldiers themselves refuse to fight. A soldier driven anti-war movement would be critical to stopping US imperial foreign policy as it was during the Vietnam War.