In my constant travels and talks throughout
our country, I find that something big
is happening at America’s grassroots that
the media power centers are either missing,
misreading, or plain ignoring:
Democracy is breaking out!
From coast to coast, in just about every place that
has a zip code, there’s a rising assertion of a truly
American, democratic patriotism that has nothing to
do with Osama bin Laden. What I see, especially in
America's newly activist and idealistic young people
.is an enduring, positive patriotism of ordinary
folks doing the essential work of citizenship, organizing
to take on the power structure (local and
global) that’s running roughshod over them. In hundreds
of communities in every region of the country,
people are questioning authority, confronting the
corporate order, and challenging both the conventional
wisdom and the complacency of the elites.
These outbreaks of unauthorized democracy are
widespread, well-informed, largely successful, truly
inspirational, immensely important and, therefore,
almost entirely ignored by the establishment media.
It takes bifocals to read America today, one lens for
reading the close-up, official version of
what is happening, and another for
lifting our heads and
looking out to see an entirely different reality.
Despite a decade of steady hype about .the best
of times,. the experience of a majority of Americans
is that the workplace is indeed leaner and meaner,
reducing workers to disposable cogs; politics is a
money game in which people don’t matter; the
marketplace is bullied by a handful of monopolistic
conglomerates that manipulate everything from
prices to the very DNA of the food supply; the ethic
of the Common Good is trashed and elitism is celebrated;
the essential American ideal of self-government
is being brazenly usurped by assorted world trade
scams that enthrone global corporate rulers;
and the lofty goal of creating a democratic republic
is shoved aside by the powerful few who prefer
empire to democracy. [ read more ]
What the hell's happening here? Why is my bank in the tank? And my house and job? And my retirement money? Even my state's teetering on the brink of broke! Who did this to us? Fair questions, but we're not getting honest answers. 
