Paul Street on Why it Matters Today This is the conclusion of Part ONE of the talk by Paul Street, an independent radical-democratic policy researcher, teacher, journalist, historian, and author of seven books. In this talk, that he gave at the Open University of the Left in Chicago in March 2019, he offered arguments and proof that the US constitution is not the sacred document protecting the “Peoples Rights”, but on the contrary is authoritarian and anti-democratic by design.
After a summary from Part ONE the topics in this part TWO range from problems with impeachment, the Supreme Court decisions equating money with speech and with the Democratic Party neo-liberal tendencies. Conversely the formation of a third party is also made near impossible under the restriction of the constitution.
However Paul Street says that electoral politics, constitutional interventions, congressional investigations and Muller reports are not the only or even the leading politics that matter. He ends with an enthusiastic endorsement of what can be done. Among his recommendations: Take to the streets, go on strike, occupy workplaces, idle capital, besiege corporate headquarters, protest corporate media, prevent pipelines and ecocide. Form grassroots movements, defend immigrant, provide sanctuary, oppose the racist police, learn from the Yellow Vests in France and the Extinction Rebellion in England, engage in civil disobedience, make movements fun again, hold workshops to show what capital and industry are doing to a livable ecology, – people are doing this.
But, Paul Street concludes, we should also be calling for a new national government and a new national charter.
Paul Street’s essays and commentaries have appeared in a wide variety of media such as CounterPunch, Truthdig, Black Agenda Report, the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and CNN to name only a few. And he is the author of seven books.
Credit for the recording goes to Dale Lehman of WZRD Radio in Chicago.
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