[Crossposted from the Real History Blog]
Last night, through the Los Angeles Film Festival, I saw a documentary called Jonestown: the Life and Death of Peoples Temple, by Stanley Nelson. What started for some as a noble ideal of equality and justice for all turned into a nightmare. They found themselves living in a police state of the mind so strong that parents encouraged their kids to drink poisoned Kool-aid. The original faith in their leader turned to fear and even loathing, and yet, they did not feel they could escape his grip. The few that tried had guns trained on them, reminding them that life as they sought it was not an option.
While watching, I wondered, as did many in the audience, how did they let it get so far? Originally, the church was simply one of the few that had all the joy of a black gospel service but with the interracial twist that many found so enticing. People who had lives of little joined a community that promised, and for a time delivered, lives of plenty. Healthcare was readily available. All the food you needed. Shelter. Love. Community. For many, People’s Temple was a socialist Utopia, the likes of which they had never seen in their lives.
At the end of the screening, some of the survivors, members of People’s Temple who were not at the compound in Guyana that day, took questions from the audience. One person asked, “How could you not see that Jim Jones was crazy?”
And then it hit me.
We are all living in Jonestown now.
As one of survivors said, the craziness came upon them so slowly that they didn’t see the signs. One is reminded of the proverbial frog in the pot of boiling water, that doesn’t leap out because the heat is upped so gradually he boils to death. (This appears to be an urban legend, but the image is too valuable not to use.)
Here we sit, as our freedoms are stripped from us one by one, including our right to privacy, or unwarranted search and seizure, rights which are violated when our phone records, email records, and bank records are snooped indiscriminately, or worse, for political revenge. We sat by and watched as George Bush stole Al Gore’s victory and claimed the Presidential mantle for himself. We sat by as the government told us they had no idea someone would fly a plane into a building (even though such scenarios had been widely discussed and pictured in defense department literature). We sat by as we saw a false case being built for war in Iraq. Some of us marched, but what good did that do? After marching, we went back to consume the goods produced by our sick society and tuned out, because to do otherwise was too painful.
And then another election stolen from the voters. Republicans in Nevada threw out Democratic voter registrations. Straight party votes in New Mexico weren’t counted. Voter Rolls were purged in several states. And then, Ohio. We sat by, and kept drinking our Kool-aid, living in the nightmare described by the late, great comedian Bill Hicks: Go back to sleep, America. Your government is in control. You are free, to do as we tell you.
So who are we to judge anything about what others did at Jonestown? Who are the real crazies? The ones who chose for themselves a better life, not knowing how high a price they would have to pay, or those of us who, by our inaction, choose an increasingly worse life, marked by the loss of rights, the rise to power of those who cannot separate fact from fiction, and our own unwillingness to remove our fingers from keyboards long enough to work for the ideals for which people once readily gave their lives. It’s crazy. Our leaders are crazy. We’re crazy, for accepting all of this.
But what options do we have? Well, that’s where the other documentary I saw recently, Maquilapolis, comes in. Sunday morning, for free, thanks to the Los Angeles Film Festival, I had the privilege and heartbreak of watching the stories of several women who live just across the border of America, in Tijuana, working in the Maquiladoras – factories for Sanyo, Panasonic, and other household brands you’d recognize. These factories exist at the border for one reason only: to take advantage of cheap labor, unhampered by labor and environmental regulations. Through payoffs to the Mexican government, the multinationals have persuaded the Mexican government to allow their citizens to be used for slave-wage labor in these outposts of humanity. (Some of these companies are now relocating to Indonesia, were labor, and presumably government payoffs, cost even less.)
Onscreen, we watch how the companies take advantage of rains to dump their toxic sludge into the community, where it rushes down the unpaved roads and paths of the community, an overly beautiful word for homes made from discarded garage doors, things we throw away, in America. Our garbage is their protection, their only protection, from the elements. Wires hang into puddles, electrocuting children who play there while they’re parents are scrambling to bring food home for them. The lovely river, which used to be a place where people vacationed and camped, is now a cesspool of filth they try hard to avoid coming into contact with.
So who are the people who work in these factories? They are incredibly smart people, predominantly women, who never had the opportunity to go to school, who have had children dumped on them by absent men, who originally came to the Maquiladoras because they offered some wages when there were no jobs elsewhere. These women tell their children not to touch the ball being kicked around in the street, because it has rolled through the toxic sludge and contact will produce open sores on their body. They display rashes on their arms and faces from contact with chemicals. At work, the women get dehydrated, because the employers won’t let them drink water, or go to the bathroom, during their shift. They breathe lead at work because no one has their back and the corporate owners know only one God: Profit. Cleaning up the lead reduces profit. So it’s simply not done.
So what have these women done? They have formed a group to educate the others among them of the law, of their rights, to try to press for the accountability their elected officials should be demanding on their behalf.
One woman was just amazing. She was very young – maybe early twenties. She already had three children to tend. She took care of the children by day, and then worked all night. Sometimes she wouldn’t get any sleep. When her company folded up and left town, she checked her employment contract and noted that, according to the agreement, they owed her two weeks pay. The company simply refused to pay. She pressed. She couldn’t afford a lawyer. She became her own advocate, studying the law, learning, working with others in her community. She tried to work the legal system, only to find all the people in it drew money from the corporations she was trying to fight. Still, she pressed on. The company started paying attention. Through their lawyers, they tried to settle for half what they owed her. They fought this case hard because they feared this would set a precedent. The woman fought just as hard, for exactly the same reason. No, she said. This is what you owe. After three years, she had finally gotten the system to hold the company accountable, and the company finally paid up. They even threw in a little extra.
What a lesson.
She was not brainwashed into feeling powerless. She was not drinking the Kool-aid offered to her at every turn. She knew what was right, and would not stop until justice was served. And once she got her share, she started teaching others in their community about how they too could stand up for themselves.
If the poorest, most desperate among our fellow men and women can work for their rights, how is it that we, who are not in danger of losing our livelihood, who don’t necessarily have mouths we can’t afford to feed, do not have time to fight for our rights? We should be the ones looking out for the less fortunate. We should be the ones ensuring our elections mean something, and that elected people really work on our behalf to ensure the enforcement of laws, and to guarantee our rights. We are not holding each other, or the system, accountable. And as a result, it is failing us right and left.
Which brings me to the final point here today. We need many more people working on election protection. Every county and township needs people willing to hold their election officials accountable to whatever laws exist. We need people well-versed in the laws, who can go to the person in charge of vote counting (the county registrar, e.g.). This is not hard work, but it does require some time and effort. Others need to press for new laws to protect our vote.
It’s really this simple: We must have a voter-verified paper record, and that paper record must be audited, before we can claim to know the outcome of any election. We all need to get very educated between now and November so we can hold people’s feet to the fire.
I don’t know who won in 2004. To change the popular vote from a Bush victory to a Kerry victory would have taken a very small number of changes in every large county in the nation, or an even smaller number of changes in more places. Given that people are always trying to game the system, from the lowliest elected office up, it’s not hard to imagine that happened.
This fall, I want to know who wins. I don’t want to be like the people in Jonestown. I want to be like that woman in Maquiopolis, taking nothing for granted, demanding that the system be accountable to the law.
Will you join with me? Isn’t our vote worth some portion of your time, this year, while it may yet make a difference? Or will you just follow Bush to Irantown or wherever he’s going to drag us next?
If ever there was a time to make a stand, it’s now. We may not get another chance. What are you willing to do for your country?
I’d love to hear your thoughts re all of this.
After I posted this, I saw this in Robert Parry’s Consortium News mailing:
Madness indeed.
Fascinating, thought-provoking diary, Lisa; thanks!
Despite the revelations in Suskind’s book, am I the only one who finds him kind of smarmy? His NY subway tale sure got shot down quickly. The 1% doctrine, though, is one that NEEDS to be talked about! Scary stuff. Suskind was on Chris Matthews yesterday, & CM ket pushing w/ something like: ‘I’ve read your book, & I don’t even see 1% there (on Iraq possessing WMD).’
The cult analogy gets even more interesting in light of one of Parry’s other pet themes: The Bush family connection to the Rev Sun Myung Moon (most recent piece being 6/14/06). There are times I wonder if we’re not all participating in some mass Ghost Dance.
We watched the Argentinian film, The Official Story last night, which has a great scene depicting the powerful urge towards denial. The protaganist, talking with a friend recently returned from exile in Venezuela, wonders if the Disappeared might not have simply gone off somewhere without telling anyone (like her friend had — the tale of her torure before fleeing only comes out later). It’s a reminder of how,living the comfortable life, it’s a human tendencey to find the ‘reasonable,’ non-threatening, non-critical explanation of events.
The full-on assault on the economic well-being & civil rights of the American people is like a beam of light we, through the media, can only see after it has passed through a prism, broken into individual components, incidnts, whose bright shiny colors distract from the devasting light white. (Jonathan Turley had a great piece in Sun’s LA Times, called something like “Connecting the Dots’ that looks at the various domestic spying revelations as a parting out of Poindexter’s TIA program.)
(Thanks for the pointer to the Maquiladoras film.)
I’m sorry I missed that story – I actually bought the Sunday Times while out – a rare occurrence. Was scanning. Ugh – have to go find that.
I find this particularly scary on so many levels:
Until we get past that, I don’t have a lot of hope for humanity’s survival. You can’t fix a problem you refuse to admit exists…
Thanks, as always for the thoughtful commentary, Arcturus.
CommonDreams reprinted it.
I loved the film “Enemy of the State” which brought the concept of TIA home to people in a way they could “see” and understand.
I remember the first year I saw cell towers going up all over the place. It occured to me then, my gosh, they’ll know where we are at all times. Even if we’re not on a call. I noticed many more surveillance cameras on freeways, in stores. I hated having to get that discount card at the market – they’ll know what we eat, how much we spend, and again, where we are. Every time I use a credit card. The film “Conspiracy Theory” showed how a book could trigger an alarm in the system.
I showed an email blasting program to some Germans, who were shocked at how much personal information we are allowed to track in this country. They learned the hard way how horrible that is, and passed incredibly strict laws prohibiting the collection and, more importantly, collation of information across sources. I hope we don’t have to learn their lesson, but it sure seems we’re heading down a similar path.
& Germans. Strange synchronicity — see the time-stamp on the Mumia quotes below π
Great minds think alike? That is pretty wild! LOL!
It operates on so many levels, reflected in Gore’s movie title, and the Domenici nuclear waste propsal today.
And it’s an equal opportunity phenomenon; from an interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal:
& later:
I wished I could give you 100’x 100 4’s fro this diary,Lisa. However, I recommend it with all my heart and soul. hugs…
Wow! Thanks so much Brenda. And I’m savoring that hug and sending one back atcha.
Quoted by the wonderful Joe Bageant regarding the slow onset of Naziism in Germany. In Bageant’s essay Carpooling With Adolph Eichmann”
What no one seemed to notice. . . was the ever widening gap. . .between the government and the people. . . And it became always wider. . . the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway . . . Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about . . .and kept us so busy with continuous changes and `crises’ and so fascinated . . . by the machinations of the `national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. . . Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, `regretted,’ that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these `little measures’. . . must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. . . .Each act. . . is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone. . . you don’t want to `go out of your way to make trouble.’ . . .But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. . . .You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father. . . could never have imagined.
And there it is, friends.
There it is.
Right in front of your eyes.
Scared yet?
I am.
AG
That is why conspiracy theory is so valuable. It allows the mind to connect the dots – sometimes wrongly, but sometimes correctly – to envision a darker scenario.
That’s also why all powers that be are so threatened by conspiracy theory – Governments, Media, Blogmasters – because conspiracy theory is an act of radically independent thought. It’s standing out and saying I will not blindly follow. I will not just accept what you say as gospel. I challenge that. I challenge YOU. People get threatened by that, no more so than when they are, in fact, part of a conspiracy! π
No longer conspiracy theory.
Conspiracy FACT.
On the evidence.
AG
Just like this diary that never got looked at or recommended but was a great reference to a theory and facts.
Deep in the diary there is the time line to 9/11 and so well written. Conspiracy????, I do not think so.
A terrific act of thinking and writing, and of synthesis–you can probably tell I’m a fan of that.
The problem that several comments allude to is implicit in the story of the woman who fought: it took a long time, so it took a lot of fortitude and courage. We who are so comfortable, and yet so beset with demands that must be addressed right away, find it very very difficult to sustain the fight.
In many ways, it’s only sane. What did she give up to get that small victory? Was it worth it? To her it was. To many people, it wouldn’t be. They would concentrate on making a better life for themselves, and who could blame them?
I saw the activism of the 60s weaken in the early 1970s for several connected reasons: it was getting dangerous, and many had doubts about their leaders, so the risk was maybe not worth it if they didn’t trust where the movement was going; but primarily for the 60s young, it was because it was time to start their lives, make babies and get a life.
By now it’s clearer how meaningful political activity can be integrated in an ongoing life, and there are so many more choices of what to do to help make a better future for all.
Still, if we recognize how bad things are getting, we might have to face how dangerous and difficult it might be to stand up to it. That’s a determination everyone must make, personally and as a family and community. But it’s time for more people to really think about it.
Since I’m blathering on, I’ll add that I think this is one of the reasons that people got so angry over Kerry losing–angrier than his campaign really justified. I think it’s partly because if he had become President, the pressure on us, and on each of us, would be lessened. I heard the desperation in voices of people around the country I called for the campaign–they needed someone to stop Bush. But Kerry didn’t do it, though someday he may get credit for what he did and what he’s doing now. So it’s back in all our laps. And it’s difficult.
I don’t discount the role or the need for leadership. We do need it. And I’m in no way trying to guilt trip anyone. Most people here probably do more than I. But I do think this is a factor in why we don’t see. We don’t see because it’s too painful to look, and if we look, it’s painful to do something about it.
There’s a book called something like, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. I feel your pain here, and want to say something similar. Feel the pain and act anyway.
It IS tough. It IS so frustrating. And you’re right. Had Kerry won, many of us would have turned back to our lives and trusted that the problems were in good hands.
But they’re not, and we are the only ones who are awake enough to do something about it.
Ignorance really is bliss. Lack of responsibility is bliss. It sucks to be aware, to be honest. Because with awareness does come a certain responsibility.
Re the fear of standing up, the sooner people stand up and the more vocal they are, the less likely they will be the target. The longer you wait, the harder it might get.
For donate to a voter protection/advocacy group-but I am going to do that anyway π
There was a great diary on here yesterday that listed a bunch, but I have not quickly found it and have to get back to work…anybody know which diary I am talking about?
Great diary as usual, RHL. I hope especially to see the second one of these days before too long.
Good point – money does help.
And the diary you are referring to was probably this one, from Steven D.
Thanks Lisa. And for those who need a quick reference map (like yours truly) the one at Verified Voting is a dandy.