Confront The Sock Puppets, Or The Puppetmasters?

Inside, Outside

If you want to end genocide by Israel in Gaza or other forms of state-sponsored violence, where best to apply pressure? Answers differ from place to place and especially from generation to generation here in the U.S. 

Disrupt the White House correspondents dinner? Met Gala? Halls of Congress? Biden and other genocidal clowns' fundraisers and speaking engagements? Boomers who thought they were living under a representative form of government tend to favor these. They just can't get over the convictions of their youth that the constitution means something.

Pro-Palestine Harvard graduates lead a walkout of the University's commencement ceremonies. By Jina H. Choe  Source: Harvard Crimson

Chevron investors meeting? Universities with money in Israel bonds? Corporate war profiteers at home and at work? Gen Z and millennials tend to favor these types of targets. They believe their government is captured by big money so their conclusion is: follow the money. 

They're probably too young to remember Frank Zappa's pithy summation, but are nonetheless guided by it: Politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.

Without the tongue in cheek of Zappa, the seriously insightful views of Shahid Bolsen on Middle Nation have been stuck in my craw since viewing this video a couple of weeks ago. It's worth listening to his whole 15 minute talk about how the genocide in Gaza is the thread that is being pulled to unravel Western "civilization", but the specific part of his analysis I keep thinking about is this:

[Student] protesters are focusing on the private sector, they're focusing on businesses, on investments, on financial partnerships, on funding. They're not focusing on politicians. You're supposed to direct all of your outrage and all of your anger and all of your grievances and all of your opposition at the decoys, at the effigies, at the fake representatives of power, the expendable puppet politicians dangled in front of you by the real private sector ruling class. 

So it's unforgivable that those protesters have torn down the curtain around real existing power and exposed the fallacy of democracy. Those protesters have started a fire that's going to burn straight through the whole system.

I have lots of friends who think the a good application of their energy is to call their congresspeople and demand a meeting with low ranking functionaries, or to call their offices on the phone to voice concerns. I used to be among this group but I have given up unless I occasionally stumble over my senator out in public and have a chance to charge him with genocide.

Passing ceasefire resolutions at the local level is also attractive to many. Passing divestment resolutions is also a path, as when the Representative Assembly of my state's teachers union directs the MEA to instruct our pension fund to divest from "any corporation, state-owned entity, or financial product identified as being complicit in the violation of the human rights guaranteed to Palestinian civilians under international law.”

Others think working to elect better candidates, especially non-corporate sponsored candidates like Dr. Jill Stein, are the best use of their time and resources. (I am not even going to consider the claim that electing Democrats and then pushing them left is anything more than an elaborate ruse to waste time. Ditto keyboard warriors who think posting and retweeting is meaningful political action.) Electoral politics is incredibly labor intensive because the game is so rigged by corporate parties in power who control things like ballot access to exclude 3rd parties and independent candidates.

Between the barricades at the main gate, looking at Raytheon in the distance [in El Segundo, Calif.] Source: website, crimethinc.com

Folks like those in Palestine Action or locals waging the "Stop Arming Genocide" campaign feel that throwing a spanner in the works of the war machine is the best thing to do. Disrupting their work, costing them money, or screwing up their public relations celebration events as when General Dynamics "christens" war ships to great fanfare.

Of course some of these efforts overlap. If we block the road at a warship celebration, we can be certain that our state's governor and all our congressional delegation will be there, too.

How much of your comfort are you willing to forego to act in the face of ongoing genocide? If I showed you a picture of a 7 month old in Gaza who died of starvation this week, would that change you? 

I have limited time left on this planet. I'm determined to make the most of it. I don't need it to feel good, I need it to be effective. How about you?