Law Professor Bill Quigley, who teaches at Loyola University, in New Orleans published this beautiful essay a few days ago. The Alaska Progressive review found it quite moving, and is in complete agreement with everything he's laid out here.
BILL QUIGLEY FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1967
ne. Human rights must be taken absolutely seriously. Every single person is entitled to dignity and human rights. No application needed. No exclusions at all. This is our highest priority.Two. We must radically reinvent contemporary democracy. Current systems are deeply corrupt and not responsive to the needs of people. Representatives chosen by money and influence govern by money and influence. This is unacceptable. Direct democracy by the people is now technologically possible and should be the rule. Communities must be protected whenever they advocate for self-determination, self-development and human rights. Dissent is essential to democracy; we pledge to help it flourish.
Three. Corporations are not people and are not entitled to human rights. Amend the US Constitution so it is clear corporations do not have constitutional or human rights. We the people must cut them down to size and so democracy can regulate their size, scope and actions.
Four. Leave the rest of the world alone. Cut US military spending by 75 percent and bring all troops outside the US home now. Defense of the US is a human right. Global offense and global police force by US military are not. Eliminate all nuclear and chemical and biological weapons. Stop allowing scare tactics to build up the national security forces at home. Stop the myth that the US is somehow special or exceptional and is entitled to act differently than all other nations. The US must re-join the global family of nations as a respectful partner. USA is one of many nations in the world. We must start acting like it.
Five. Property rights, privilege, and money-making are not as important as human rights. When current property and privilege arrangements are not just they must yield to the demands of human rights. Money-making can only be allowed when human rights are respected. Exploitation is unacceptable. There are national and global poverty lines. We must establish national and global excess lines so that people and businesses with extra houses, cars, luxuries, and incomes share much more to help everyone else be able to exercise their basic human rights to shelter, food, education and healthcare. If that disrupts current property, privilege and money-making, so be it.
Six. Defend our earth. Stop pollution, stop pipelines, stop new interstates, and stop destroying the land, sea, and air by extracting resources from them. Rebuild what we have destroyed. If corporations will not stop voluntarily, people must stop them. The very existence of life is at stake.
Seven. Dramatically expand public spaces and reverse the privatization of public services. Quality public education, health and safety for all must be provided by transparent accountable public systems. Starving the state is a recipe for destroying social and economic human rights for everyone but the rich.
Eight. Pull the criminal legal prison system up and out by its roots and start over. Cease the criminalization of drugs, immigrants, poor people and people of color. We are all entitled to be safe but the current system makes us less so and ruins millions of lives. Start over.
Nine. The US was created based on two original crimes that must be confessed and made right. Reparations are owed to Native Americans because their land was stolen and they were uprooted and slaughtered. Reparations are owed to African Americans because they were kidnapped, enslaved and abused. The US has profited widely from these injustices and must make amends.
Ten. Everyone who wants to work should have the right to work and earn a living wage. Any workers who want to organize and advocate for change in solidarity with others must be absolutely protected from recriminations from their employer and from their government.
Finally, if those in government and those in power do not help the people do what is right, people seeking change must together exercise our human rights and bring about these changes directly. Dr. King and millions of others lived and worked for a radical revolution of values. We will as well. We respect the human rights and human dignity of others and work for a world where love and wisdom and solidarity and respect prevail. We expect those for whom the current unjust system works just fine will object and oppose and accuse people seeking dramatic change of being divisive and worse. That is to be expected because that is what happens to all groups which work for serious social change. Despite that, people will continue to go forward with determination and purpose to bring about a radical revolution of values in the USA.
Bill Quigley is Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach Bill at quigley77@gmail.com.
These are the basic aims we support and work for, here at the Alaska Progressive Review. There are a few countries still in existence, that have the highest standards of living, highest life expectancies, most educated populace, most generous national healthcare systems, and employment benefits (minimum wages, vacation, parental leave, etc...). The Nordic countries, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. And, countries which we feel quite attracted to, because of their similar environment and climate, to ours, here in South-Central Alaska. How were they able to develop these countries in which every worker, no matter how new or uneducated, receives a month vacation every year. With minimum wages that are actually liveable, albeit simply. Where if you are unemployed and jobs scarce or non-existent, benefits don't run out, while training for other vocations can be undertaken. Where national health care programmes profide all citizens the best quality and quantity necessary of the most modern health care, without causing people to become bankrupt, even those with insurance, as happens frequently in the U.S.
How did the people of these countries do it? After all, they weren't always this way, at the top of all the World's countries in most measures of quality of life. This article explains how they did, quite some time ago, before World War II, in the 1920s and 1930s.
How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’
While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.
A march in Ådalen, Sweden, in
1931.
Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in
charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the
leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and
successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university
education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a
matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians,
the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the
latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.”
Neither country is a utopia, as readers of the crime novels by Stieg Larsson,
Kurt Wallender and Jo Nesbro will know. Critical left-wing authors such as these
try to push Sweden and Norway to continue on the path toward more fully just
societies. However, as an American activist who first encountered Norway as a
student in 1959 and learned some of its language and culture, the achievements I
found amazed me. I remember, for example, bicycling for hours through a small
industrial city, looking in vain for substandard housing. Sometimes resisting
the evidence of my eyes, I made up stories that “accounted for” the differences
I saw: “small country,” “homogeneous,” “a value consensus.” I finally gave up
imposing my frameworks on these countries and learned the real reason: their own
histories.
Then I began to learn that the Swedes and Norwegians paid a price for their
standards of living through nonviolent struggle. There was a time when
Scandinavian workers didn’t expect that the electoral arena could deliver the
change they believed in. They realized that, with the 1 percent in charge,
electoral “democracy” was stacked against them, so nonviolent direct action was
needed to exert the power for change.
In both countries, the troops were called out to
defend the 1 percent; people died. Award-winning Swedish filmmaker Bo Widerberg
told the Swedish story vividly in Ådalen 31, which depicts the strikers
killed in 1931 and the sparking of a nationwide general strike. (You can read
more about this case in an entry by Max Rennebohm in the Global Nonviolent Action Database.)
The Norwegians had a harder time organizing a cohesive people’s movement
because Norway’s small population—about three million—was spread out over a
territory the size of Britain. People were divided by mountains and fjords, and
they spoke regional dialects in isolated valleys. In the nineteenth century,
Norway was ruled by Denmark and then by Sweden; in the context of Europe
Norwegians were the “country rubes,” of little consequence. Not until 1905 did
Norway finally become independent.
When workers formed unions in the early 1900s, they generally turned to
Marxism, organizing for revolution as well as immediate gains. They were
overjoyed by the overthrow of the czar in Russia, and the Norwegian Labor Party
joined the Communist International organized by Lenin. Labor didn’t stay long,
however. One way in which most Norwegians parted ways with Leninist strategy was
on the role of violence: Norwegians wanted to win their revolution through
collective nonviolent struggle, along with establishing co-ops and using the
electoral arena.
In the 1920s strikes increased in intensity. The town of Hammerfest formed a
commune in 1921, led by workers councils; the army intervened to crush it. The
workers’ response verged toward a national general strike. The employers, backed
by the state, beat back that strike, but workers erupted again in the
ironworkers’ strike of 1923–24.
The Norwegian 1 percent decided not to rely simply on the army; in 1926 they
formed a social movement called the Patriotic League, recruiting mainly from the
middle class. By the 1930s, the League included as many as 100,000 people for
armed protection of strike breakers—this in a country of only 3 million!
The Labor Party, in the meantime, opened its membership to anyone, whether or
not in a unionized workplace. Middle-class Marxists and some reformers joined
the party. Many rural farm workers joined the Labor Party, as well as some small
landholders. Labor leadership understood that in a protracted struggle, constant
outreach and organizing was needed to a nonviolent campaign. In the midst of the
growing polarization, Norway’s workers launched another wave of strikes and
boycotts in 1928.
The Depression hit bottom in 1931. More people were jobless there than in any
other Nordic country. Unlike in the U.S., the Norwegian union movement kept the
people thrown out of work as members, even though they couldn’t pay dues. This
decision paid off in mass mobilizations. When the employers’ federation locked
employees out of the factories to try to force a reduction of wages, the workers
fought back with massive demonstrations.
Many people then found that their mortgages were in jeopardy. (Sound
familiar?) The Depression continued, and farmers were unable to keep up payment
on their debts. As turbulence hit the rural sector, crowds gathered nonviolently
to prevent the eviction of families from their farms. The Agrarian Party, which
included larger farmers and had previously been allied with the Conservative
Party, began to distance itself from the 1 percent; some could see that the
ability of the few to rule the many was in doubt.
By 1935, Norway was on the brink. The Conservative-led government was losing
legitimacy daily; the 1 percent became increasingly desperate as militancy grew
among workers and farmers. A complete overthrow might be just a couple years
away, radical workers thought. However, the misery of the poor became more
urgent daily, and the Labor Party felt increasing pressure from its members to
alleviate their suffering, which it could do only if it took charge of the
government in a compromise agreement with the other side.
This it did. In a compromise that allowed owners to
retain the right to own and manage their firms, Labor in 1935 took the reins of
government in coalition with the Agrarian Party. They expanded the economy and
started public works projects to head toward a policy of full employment that
became the keystone of Norwegian economic policy. Labor’s success and the
continued militancy of workers enabled steady inroads against the privileges of
the 1 percent, to the point that majority ownership of all large firms was taken
by the public interest. (There is an entry on this case as well at the Global Nonviolent Action Database.)
The 1 percent thereby lost its historic power to dominate the economy and
society. Not until three decades later could the Conservatives return to a
governing coalition, having by then accepted the new rules of the game,
including a high degree of public ownership of the means of production,
extremely progressive taxation, strong business regulation for the public good
and the virtual abolition of poverty. When Conservatives eventually tried a
fling with neoliberal policies, the economy generated a bubble and headed for
disaster. (Sound familiar?)
Labor stepped in, seized the three largest banks, fired the top management,
left the stockholders without a dime and refused to bail out any of the smaller
banks. The well-purged Norwegian financial sector was not one of those
countries that lurched into crisis in 2008; carefully regulated and much of it
publicly owned, the sector was solid.
Although Norwegians may not tell you about this the first time you meet them,
the fact remains that their society’s high level of freedom and broadly-shared
prosperity began when workers and farmers, along with middle class allies, waged
a nonviolent struggle that empowered the people to govern for the common
good.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
