Waiting for the perfect storm (of protest)

By SKIP MENDLER

Forces of nature: the shifting of the plates in the earth’s crust, the changing of the leaves, the lines of migrating birds that will soon fill our skies.

As I write these words, two other forces of nature are on the move. The powerful winds of Hurricane Rita are swirling inland—and across the country, multitudes of protesters are streaming towards Washington, DC and other major cities to demand a withdrawal of our military presence in Iraq.

George W. Bush should be paying more attention to both these phenomena—not just to their short-term effects, but also to their long-term causes. To be fair, President Bush is paying a bit more attention to this fortnight’s hurricane than to the last, but he’s still not paying enough attention for him to change his policies about petrochemicals, energy consumption or global climate change. The protesters probably won’t change his policies about Iraq or the “War on Terror” either.

While the effects of Rita will be immediate and visible, the effects of the other may not be felt for years, but they will be felt eventually.

It may seem that the granite and marble of Washington will absorb the force of this weekend’s protests without flinching, much more than the wooden frame houses of the Gulf Coast will withstand Rita. Nonetheless I think this protest, moreso than previous ones, may add to the undermining of the foundations of certain institutions that already show signs of extensive internal rot—and help hasten their eventual (dare I say “inevitable”?) collapse.

What does a protest movement have to do with forces of nature? I think back to 1989 and the seemingly sudden disappearance of the repressive governments of Eastern Europe in the face of a spontaneous and widespread upwelling of “people power.” It was as though, like those migratory birds, the people of those countries had suddenly come to the common and inarguable realization that the time had come to move—not from one place to another, but from one way of life to another. Such a realization happens when it becomes obvious that the present way simply doesn’t work anymore.

I suspect that, as columnist David Brooks has recently suggested, we are soon to come upon such a moment ourselves. Dissatisfaction is growing, not only with the policies of the Bush regime, but with the intrinsic and increasing imbalances within our entire system of social organization. Awareness is growing among the people of America that our problems—social, economic, environmental, political and even spiritual—go beyond mere questions of which faction of our ruling class happens to be in charge at one moment or another. They are more fundamental than that.

As Martin Luther King observed so many years ago in his speech “Beyond Vietnam,” what is needed is a revolution of values. That revolution does not take place in the streets, but rather in the individual human heart, with the questioning of our unconscious, basic assumptions about our relationships to our neighbors and our planet, and the willingness to accept more responsibility for those relationships.

Once that revolution has started, no one will be able to stop it, I believe, any more than one can stop a hurricane, an earthquake or the natural force urging birds to migrate.

Like them, it is a force of nature. But this perfect storm of protest, when it comes, will not leave a trail of destruction and grief. It will be a constructive force, one that assembles, connects and reinforces—one that houses, feeds and clothes. Because in the aftermath of these terribly destructive storms we have weathered, storms of war and injustice, greed and willful ignorance, that is simply what has to be done.

If you’d like a copy of Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech or David Brooks’ column, “The Bursting Point,” email smendler@care2.com and I will send you the links.

Skip Mendler is a resident of Honesdale, PA. His column, “Peace and Justice Files,” is published bi-weekly by The River Reporter.