Hightower Lowdown

When I lived in Washington, DC, in the 1970s, I got a call from a friend of mine who worked for the Congressional Research Service--a legislative agency that digs up facts, prepares briefing papers, and otherwise does research on any topic requested by members of Congress.

My friend could barely speak, because he was hooting, howling, and guffawing over a research question he'd just received. It was from the office of Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, the aloof and patrician Texas Democrat who was known on Capitol Hill primarily as a faithful emissary for Wall Street interests. At the time, Bentsen was contemplating a run for the presidency, and apparently he was searching for a suitable political identity. "What is a populist?" read the research query. "The senator thinks he might be one."

Uh...no sir, you are not.

Bentsen was closer to being "The Man in the Moon" than he was to being a populist. Yet, he was hardly alone in trying to cloak himself as "The People's Champion" while remaining faithful to the plutocratic powers. These days, there's a whole flock of politicos and pundits doing this--from Sarah Palin to Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich to Glenn Beck.

They are abetted by a media establishment that carelessly (and lazily) misapplies the populist label to anyone who claims to be a maverick and tends to bark a lot. Although the targets they're usually barking at are poor people, teachers, minorities, unions, liberals, protestors, environmentalists, gays, immigrants, or other demonized groups that generally reside far outside the center of the power structure--the barkers are indiscriminately tagged as populist voices.

First of all, populism is not a style, nor is it a synonym for "popular outrage." It is a historically grounded political doctrine (and movement) that supports ordinary folks in their ongoing democratic fight against the moneyed elites. [ read more ]

After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, "I feel good about voting for him." Ms. Jones, of Cedar Creek, Texas (a town just south of Austin), is African-American, and what gives her vote some historic punch is that she's 109 years old. Her father was a slave. Her mother was born right after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She's been through it all--Jim Crow segregation, women's suffrage, the Great Depression, the poll tax, FDR, the civil-rights movement, desegregation, 13 years of George W (five as guv, eight as prez), and now: Barack Obama. This last change fills her with joy, she says.

Me, too. As you Lowdowners know, I'm wary about how progressive (much less how populist) Obama's presidency will be, but--come on, let's wallow in the moment, let's greet the historic symbolism of his election with all the glee that it deserves, and let's take energy from the hope that he presents to us.

I had my own moment of reflection shortly after Election Day. I was rummaging through some old personal papers and came across a small document from 1964. I was a junior in college that year and had just turned 21, making me eligible to vote for the first time. This little slip of paper, issued to me by the county election office, was my Certificate of Exemption From Poll Tax.

Yes, as late as '64, Texas still made people pay to vote. First-time voters were given an exemption from the tax, which I recall being about $5. That was real money in those days. The levy was intended to deter poor people, especially blacks and Mexican-Americans, from joining the democratic process. It was successful.

The poll tax, which ended in 1966, was a mirror of the time. Growing up in Denison, Texas, my school years were totally segregated--from kindergarten through my high-school graduation in 1961. The southern youth of my day were raised on the Big Lie that somehow or other racial separation was "normal." The first time I sat next to a black kid in a classroom was when I went off to college at North Texas State in '61 --and he was from my home town of Denison! I was face to face with the Lie, and that jolting reality drew me into civil-rights activism, which later moved me into antiwar activism, which later moved me... well, here I am.

And here we all are, standing in a better place than we came from. The thing we can celebrate is not solely that Obama's going into the Oval Office, but that so many people over so many years worked so hard, enduring so many ups and downs, to get to this day. [ read more ]

SUSAN DEMARCO AND I WANT TO GIVE YOU LOWDOWNERS A SPECIAL PREVIEW of our new book, for it personalizes the positive grassroots message that the Lowdown keeps hammering. Titled Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, our book encourages people to break away from conventional wisdom and live their progressive values. We've written it by telling stories of more than 50 individuals and groups all across the country that are showing the way for all of us.

These are commonsense people who are choosing to buck the system and make their escape from the given order in such areas as business, politics, health care, food, banking, and religion. None are Einsteins, heirs to Rockefeller fortunes, or people who just got lucky. They're regular Americans who've decided to exit the corporate interstate, define success for themselves, and do exactly what the established powers want you to believe can't be done--forge new paths toward richer lives, happiness... and a better world.

The institutions of power use everything from the lure of money to punitive threats to keep us hitched to their plows, but the wonderful thing about Americans is that we have a healthy rebellious streak and the freedom to make choices. The kinds of rebels you'll read about in our book are the great hope and true leaders of America. Here are excerpts from the stories of just a few of these folks. [ read more ]