Obama’s deeds don’t always match his words. Thus, he is a hypocrite and worse: a corporate stooge, the commander and chief of the prison industrial complex, and a war criminal. This is the sort of judgment one hears from the left. It seems this was the ground of Cornel West’s recent expression of self-righteous anger. And this, I believe, is all the result of a lack of understanding about the relationship between politics as a vocation and the art of protest.

In my last post, I expressed my indignation, my criticism of West and this sort of criticism (not for the first time, and certainly not the last). It is with the same concern that I have regretted the lost opportunities of Occupy Wall Street, which had real prospects to expand its influence, but fled instead, for the most part, into utopian fantasies and irrelevance. In Weber’s terms OWS activists chose completely the ethics of ultimate ends and fled responsibility, the articulation of the dreams over consequential actions. For me personally, the saddest manifestation of this was in the events of Occupy New School and its aftermath. Students and colleagues posturing to express themselves, to reveal their sober judgment of the realistic or their credentials as true radicals had little or nothing to do with the important ideas and actions of OWS, centered on the concerns of the 99% and the call for equality and a decent life for the 99%.

But my hope springs eternal. Perhaps with Obama’s new inauguration the protesters will get it.

A friend on my Facebook page summed up the problem. “It’s really difficult to be on the left of the current White House in the US nowadays.” Apparently hard, I think, because both easy full-throated opposition and full-throated support don’t make sense. Binary opposition is off the table. Struggles for public visibility of political concerns and consequential action are the order of the day. It’s difficult but far from impossible. Politicians will do their jobs, well or poorly, but so will social protesters. The key to successful protest, it seems to me, is that it responds to public opinion, pushing it forward, as it pushes forward politicians.

Take, for example, the problem of guns and gun violence in America today. Look at the recent demonstration in Washington, as depicted in Jo Freeman’s photos accompanying this text. I think of this demonstration as a case study of a sound answer to the classic question: “What is to be done?” Make visible and embody the progressive agenda, coordinate when possible with potential real change in public opinion and the laws of the land.

For a long time when it came to guns, there was a paradox. While most of the population favored reasonable gun control, those who opposed this were much more willing to vote on the issue, and they were well organized through the leadership of the National Rifle Association and its corporate patrons in the gun industry.

And things got worse. Slowly, this paradox shifted. Being more active, visible and consequential at the polls, gun advocates changed hearts and minds. The absence of serious opposition to their position (the Democrats, including Obama became all but silent on the issue of gun violence) let the pro gun position to prevail. Public opinion shifted from a concern about gun violence toward a concern about gun rights.

But now, there is a chance to turn the tide again. The President has played a leading role. Obama clearly is against the gun culture with its cult of violence. His forceful response to the Newtown massacre demonstrates this. Although he says he supports the individual’s gun rights and the Supreme Court’s recent reading of the Second Amendment, I, along with the NRA, have my doubts as to whether he is completely sincere about this. His is a political calculation, which the demonstrators don’t and shouldn’t accept.

But, nonetheless, the time seems right and Obama realizes that the nation was as shocked as he was by Newtown. He is clearly pushing to put gun control again on the agenda, now cleverly packaged as gun safety. He is calculating, political, searching to do the possible, and if he fails legislatively, he still seeks to push forward a change in public concern.

Of course, the push back was quick in coming. Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association spouted his convoluted fact free arguments almost immediately and continues doing so, “manhandling facts and logic” at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, as it was put in the Washington Post. Pro gun advocates are rallying nationwide. State legislators are even preparing state laws that would criminalize the enforcement of federal gun safety laws within their borders.

Clearly, meaningful gun control legislation is far from assured. The politicians must argue the issue, but the public demand for change of gun culture and gun violence is even more important. The demand must be visibly present, as in the D.C. demonstration, pushing in a progressive direction, supporting the politicians when they can, being critical when they must.

I imagine similar demonstrations in the coming months on immigration, drone warfare and on issues that assure that the promises of the Obama’s Inaugural Address are moved forward. Closing the gap between Obama’s words and his practice is not only his responsibility.

I wonder if Cornell West ever has second thoughts.

At a “Poverty in America” forum held at George Washington University on January 17^th, West forcefully criticized Barack Obama for taking his oath of office at his second inauguration on Martin King Jr.’s bible. See below for a clip of West’s remarks.

West was sure and authoritative, as a self appointed spokesman for the oppressed, in the name of the oppressed, and their great leader, Martin Luther King Jr.:

“You don’t play with Martin Luther King, Jr. and you don’t play with his people. By his people, I mean people of good conscience, fundamentally good people committed to peace and truth and justice, especially the Black tradition that produced it.

All of the blood, sweat and tears that went into producing a Martin Luther King, Jr. generated a brother of such high decency and dignity that you don’t use his prophetic fire for a moment of presidential pageantry without understanding the challenge he represents to all of those in power regardless of what color they are.

The righteous indignation of a Martin Luther King, Jr. becomes a moment of political calculation. And that makes my blood boil. Why? Because Martin Luther King, Jr. died…he died…for the three crimes against humanity that he was wrestling with. Jim Crow, traumatizing, terrorizing, stigmatizing Black people. Lynching, not just ‘segregation’ as the press likes to talk about.

Second: Carpet bombing in Vietnam killing innocent people, especially innocent children, those are war crimes that Martin Luther King , Jr. was willing to die for. And thirdly, was poverty of all colors, he said it is a crime against humanity for the richest nation in the world to have so many of it’s precious children of all colors living in poverty and especially on the chocolate side of the nation, and on Indian reservations and Brown barrios and yellow slices and Black ghettos — we call them hoods now, but ghettos then.”

In great fury, West concluded to enthusiastic applause:

“When Barack Obama attempts to use that rich tradition of Frederick Douglas and Ida B. Wells-Barnett? Use the tradition of A. Phillip Randolph? Use the tradition of Rabbi Joshua Heschel? Use the tradition of Tom Hayden and so many others struggling to produce that voice that pushed Martin in the direction that it did? I get upset.”

Other speakers on the panel included Newt Gingrich and Jeffrey Sachs. Travis Smiley moderated. It must have been a great show, typical of a West performance.

I saw the video before the inauguration and Obama’s second inaugural address, tipped off by an approving Facebook friend. I thought immediately that the performance was appalling, a clear example of what I find most problematic in political life. West confuses his interpretation of the King legacy with the truth. He and his approving audience hold one interpretation. Surely, there are others. But the vehemence of West’s conclusion, his absolute assurance that he holds the truth, doesn’t allow for this.

I happen to disagree with West’s reading of King, and I was moved by the fact that Obama took his oath on King’s and Lincoln’s bibles. I see great powerful symbolism in this, a political leader commits himself to the legacy of the predecessor he most admires, and he commits himself to the legacy of the social movement leader he most admires, Martin Luther King Jr., who pushed Lincoln’s legacy most forcefully in the direction of civil rights and social justice. I was outraged that West, in effect, dismissed this reading, which I think is at least as powerful as his. But generally because I judge West’s theatrics to be a playful sideshow, I didn’t feel compelled to write about it. I listen to and read West regularly, often disagree. So it goes.

Yet now, after observing and thinking deliberately about inauguration, and Obama’s address, I feel compelled to speak up, because an important issue is involved, concerning the relationship between official power and the power of criticism, between the power of the state and the power of social movements, between Obama and his critics on the left.

It turns out that Obama gave a full-throated progressive speech. He pushed forward his long term project of moving the center left, of shifting political commonsense. He used the power of the presidential bully pulpit at the event in which that pulpit it most powerful. He used a supreme opportunity, the high holiday of America’s civil religion, to identify himself and the American public with the legacy of King and the civil rights movement, linking that legacy with the women and gay rights movements,

“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.”

Obama also spoke precisely against an over militarized state: “We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.” And he centered himself and the nation on the issue of equality, opening with reflections on the Declaration of Independence and going on later asserting:

“We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship.  We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.”

Obama, in effect, spoke to the legacies of King according to West, doing so as the significant political leader, statesman, that he is. Yet, perhaps West or the critical reader will note that the words are not always followed by deeds. I agree, but by uttering the words Obama sets clear and identifiable grounds for critical judgment of state action. He, in fact, is legitimating the criticism.

Political leaders, social movement leaders and public intellectuals play different roles. All are necessary. I wonder why so many on the left don’t get this. Perhaps Brother Cornell, as he might have me call him, is having second thoughts.

I hope so because I think that Obama is a great, though far from perfect, president, who promises much more, and that it should be the role of his critics to push him to do so. Talk of the middle class should be accompanied by clearly addressing the problems of poverty in America. Transforming American foreign policy, recognizing the normative and practical limits of military force (to be examined in detail in a future “in depth” post), needs to include a public examination of drone warfare, setting clear limits. The beautiful and challenging words of the inaugural address on climate change have to be followed my meaningful legislation and changes in policy.

My hope for the left: to paraphrase the great union leader Joe Hill (“don’t mourn organize”): don’t perform, seriously criticize and demonstrate. In this way, as Obama pushes the center left, which he clearly did in his first term and in his second inaugural address, he can be pushed further.

By the way, this is how I understand the success of the activism of Occupy Wall Street, and spectacularly the success of LGBT movement in the first term, culminating in the powerful words in the inaugural address:

“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law  –- (applause) — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.  (Applause.)”

Obama wouldn’t have said this, he wouldn’t have understood it, without a powerful social movement pushing him. With this in mind, in tomorrow’s post, we will publish a report on the protests in Washington at the time of the inauguration.

The other day someone working for the mainstream media (MSM) seemed to be undecided about how exactly they should disparage a burgeoning movement. First the hypertext link on MSNBC’s website read, “Protesters want to tame Wall Street’s wild ways, but they’re a little wild themselves.” Later in the day it read, “Wall Street protesters spread murky message.” In both cases, clicking on the link would reveal the title of the article, “Familiar refrain: Wall Street protest lacks leaders, clear message,” with the opening lines, “It’s messy. It’s disorganized. At times, the message is all but incoherent.” With the accompanying photos focusing on the disheveled belongings of the protesters scattered about their home base, Liberty Park, the theme was that the seeming lack of organization and consensus of the “Wall Street Protesters” was analogous to the dysfunctional state of American political discourse. Being unsympathetic, skeptical, or even cynical, reporters do find what they’re looking for. Yet such a jaundiced look at the protests, as is typical of much of the media’s coverage, misses something strikingly obvious: what has largely faded in the rest of the country is still alive in Liberty Park– hope and change.

Last week, a young couple from Virginia Beach paid a visit to the park with their two children, one about five or six years old, the other not older than three. They met a young man who was writing a message on a cardboard to protest corporate malfeasance. The couple asked him to explain to their eldest daughter what it was he was protesting about. The young man smiled, and looked at the girl, who shyly averted his glance.  “So basically, a few people have a lot of power, and they’re using that power to take advantage of everybody else.” At that point, the girl began to give the young man her undivided attention.  “You know, it’s like a bully, we’ve all had plenty of bullies in our lives, and they think of different ways to better their position. And what we have is just that, on a larger scale, going on with the ruling class.” He paused and smiled as the girl’s attention seemed to be waning and then sped up his voice as he finished his explanation, at that point perhaps addressing her parents more than her: “And they’re using the socio-economic infra-structure of this company [sic.]to do that.” The girl’s eyes wandered about the park. Still smiling, and probably in jest, the young man adds, “She looks like she totally got it.”

I cannot say that a description such as this necessarily typifies the movement. If I wanted to emulate the MSM, I would say that the vignette was the protest in a tea cup: the girl being the uncomprehending MSM, not ready or willing to receive a message, which is actually being delivered loud and clear. However, the protest is certainly more than the sum of its parts. A closer look reveals that the lack of hierarchy and permanent leadership does not denote disorganization. (In this way, it resembles the protests in North Africa and the Middle East, including Israel.) A lack of a single unified message does not indicate no message at all. The movement is a work in progress; leadership, structure, and consensus are emerging from the bottom up.

The movement has already formed a number of committees which address the needs of the protesters; one of the most recent is a “Let’s Talk it Out Committee” which has the goal of providing counsel for those protesters that are mentally or emotionally stressed. There are also working groups that address concerns such as medical care, sanitation, and community outreach. Then there is the “General Assembly,” a kind of “free-market” of ideas if you will, which has definite procedural rules, and consists of anyone who wishes to have their voice heard. In fact, even one of its most disorganized aspects, its online Chat Room, has rather strict rules: no ideology or political candidates are to become the topic of discussion. The participants want the movement to grow, and realize that in order for that to happen, the movement must be inclusive and without ideological rigidity. Even the police are considered part of “the 99%,” which perhaps more than anything else, is representative of their message: if you make under $250,000 a year and feel your representatives have been bought by elite interests, we are you.

On the sidewalk near Broadway is the “Welcoming Committee.” A few nights ago, I talked to a young women, wearing a shirt that said “I’m here because I love this country,” that had been camping out in the park 24/7. She complained that a local news outlet claimed that the numbers of protesters was “dwindling,” but she was happy to report that they were actually increasing, and that that morning she had woken up surrounded by several hundred others. When I asked her what she thought about the criticism that they are “leaderless,” she told me that when numbers are large there will naturally need to be leaders, but the structure of the movement was “organic” and different leaders took the reins in different situations.

Recently, Cornel West briefly took the reins of leadership, and addressed the General Assembly before they began their discussion.  “There is a sweet spirit in this place,” he began, but stopped as the rest of the assembly repeated his words, as is the procedure when someone addresses them.  “I hope you can feel the love and inspiration…” Again the refrain.  “… as those strong and everyday people…” This time the crowd isn’t so sure about what was said,  and a little laughter can be heard before the crowd tries to repeat what West said, but all that is clear is “everyday people.” West continued, “…take a stand with great courage and passion.

The rest of his speech, minus the refrains, went like this:

“Because we oppose the greed of Wall Street oligarchs, and corporate plutocrats, we free the democratic juices of this country and all the places around the world. I am so blessed to be a part of this. You had me spiritually break dancing all the way here.  Cause when you bring folks together, people of all colors, and all cultures, all genders, all sexual orientations, the elite will tremble in their boots.  And we will send the message, that this is the US fold, responding to the Arab Spring.  And it’s going to hit Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Arizona, and then on to Detroit. To Appalachia, and to people on reservations for our red brothers and sisters. Martin Luther King Junior will smile from the grave as we move step by step to what he called a revolution- don’t be afraid to say revolution- a transfer of power from the oligarchs to ordinary citizens, for the poor children of all colors, the orphans and the widows, the elderly, and the working folk. We can end the prisoner-industrial complex, the military industrial complex, the Wall Street Oligarchy complex, the corporate media multiplex. I want to thank you.  It’s a blessing to be a small part of this magnificent gathering. This is the General Assembly consecrated by your witness and your body and your mind.”

The refrain this time is drowned out by the cheers of the crowd.

He left and then someone else briefly took the reign of leadership, but with the disclaimer, “Just because there are facilitators, doesn’t mean that they are leaders. We’re in this together, we want to work it out.”

The idea is that the people should lead. In Liberty Park that idea has actually become reality.