Subject: Speech at UWEC Progressive Student Association/Socialist Alternative UWEC Rally, March, and Rally for Peace and Justice, 10/26/06 Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 16:45:27 -0500 Message-ID: <BDD0A3EABE40F04A8C7200805EDE5A6A0488D719@PEPSI.uwec.edu> From: "Nowlan, Robert A." <RANOWLAN@uwec.edu>
Since a number of you couldn't make it today I'm appending a copy of my
speech at today's event, for your information; I encourage Ryan
Milbrath, head of Socialist Alternative here at UWEC, to do the same
with his highly compelling speech as well.
In solidarity,
Bob Nowlan
***************
BOB NOWLAN SPEECH AT UWEC PROGRESSIVE STUDENT ASSOCIATION AND SOCIALIST
ALTERNATIVE-UWEC RALLY FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE, 10/26/06
I am delighted to be here today. I've been actively involved, virtually
continuously, in activist work on behalf of progressive causes for over
40 years now, ever since my parents brought me to participate in many
actions and protests in support of Black Civil Rights, in opposition to
the Vietnam War, and on behalf of giving material substance to the 1960s
'War on Poverty' and in aiding the material emancipation of the
all-too-often ignored and forgotten 'Other America'. And I've identified
as a socialist--as well as been actively involved in socialist
organizations and activism--for over thirty years now too, ever since
Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas became my childhood heroes. The particular
struggles I've participated in during the course of all these years I
see as part of a much larger, ongoing struggle for peace and justice, in
which I am very glad to participate in whatever way I can, whenever and
wherever and however I can, and which I find always worthwhile, as a
process, as a movement, even despite temporary setbacks and failures.
And no matter how big or small the turnout. We always pick up, keep
going, press forward, and derive strength and inspiration from what
those who came before us brought to bear-and we likewise seek to
contribute the same kind of legacy to those who come after us.
In recent years I've heard a lot on the right about 'values', and too
often I've heard talk as well throughout mainstream American political
culture that the right is stronger on, and more interested and invested
in values than liberals, progressives, and others on the left. Well, I
think that's ridiculous! Absolutely so! I've been a person of very
strong and committed values all of my life, and so have all of my many
comrades in many progressive and socialist struggles. In fact, I think
we maintain the clear advantage in values-because ours are considerably
more truly enabling and considerably far more vitally empowering than
theirs. I wouldn't trade any of my values for any of theirs, ever! I
thought I'd just share with you today some of what I believe are key
progressive values, and also key socialist ones as well:
1. Progressives believe that we are all ultimately deeply
interconnected, that the public good should always come before private
gain, that we should work together to take care of each other, that we
should work together to make a better future for those who come after
us, and that we have a responsibility to do so for those who will
succeed us.
2. Progressives believe we maintain a responsibility to serve as genuine
stewards in relation to our larger natural environment while
progressives at the same time respect and value the 'wisdom' of nature
as well as all the 'wisdom' of what nature has created and provided.
3. Progressives respect and value the wisdom of genuinely popular, or
folk, cultures, subcultures, and their customs and traditions as well as
their achievements and contributions; progressives support and defend
the right of the oppressed and exploited to fight back against their
exploiters and oppressors; and progressives seek to assist the
relatively disprivileged and disempowered in raising themselves up
through their own efforts.
4. Progressives believe in genuine, substantive, materially concrete
expression of fairness and equality for all, and progressives sincerely,
actively care for those who are relatively disprivileged and
disempowered.
5. Progressives believe in working actively to overcome exploitative and
oppressive disparities in social wealth, social privilege, and social
power.
6. Progressives believe in the inherent dignity, worth, and natural
equality of all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, or nationality.
7. Progressives believe in the inherent dignity, worth, and natural
equality of all people, regardless of sex or gender.
8. Progressives believe in the inherent dignity, worth, and natural
equality of all people, regardless of sexual orientation.
9. Progressives believe in the inherent dignity, worth, and natural
equality of all people, regardless of age or of physical and mental
ability.
10. Progressives respect and value the contribution of labor, and of
laborers, in producing and reproducing social wealth; progressives
reject, oppose, and seek to overcome exploitative and oppressive forms
of class difference, and hierarchy, especially that realized through the
exploitation of labor, and the private ownership and control of the
means, processes, and ends of social wealth; and progressives are
ultimately, in essence, anti-capitalist and pro-socialist.
11. Progressives believe in social responsibility and accountability-and
especially in holding those who exploit, and oppress, as well as those
who maintain complicity with exploitation and oppression responsible,
and accountable, for this wrong, while progressives simultaneously
believe in active civic participation, in citizens taking responsibility
for our own government, for governing ourselves, and for making
government truly the people's servant and truly serve the people's
interest.
12. Progressives believe that genuine community requires that everyone
within the community enjoy the freedom to realize their full human
potential, and progressives believe that realization of our full human
potential as members of a genuine community is in fact only possible for
each and every one of us when freedoms can actually be exercised and
opportunities are in fact available.
13. Progressives fight against social alienation, and especially against
the forces and conditions which generate this alienation, while
progressives at the same time reject, oppose, and seek to overcome
cynicism, apathy, disengagement, and despair.
14. Progressives reject, oppose, and seek to overcome selfish
individualism, and progressives reject, oppose, and seek to overcome the
commercial cooptation of human culture and the commoditization of human
social relations.
15. Progressives reject, oppose, and seek to overcome reification and
compartmentalization in thought and action, and progressives likewise
reject, oppose, and seek to overcome desensitization, callous
indifference and lack of concern for others, as well as processes of
'othering', and especially 'abjectification', in general.
16. Progressives strongly oppose militarism and imperialism- economic,
political, and cultural.
17. Progressives strongly oppose fascism, neo-fascism, proto-fascism,
and post-fascism, in all varieties, as well as all other forms of
genuine totalitarianism.
18. Progressives commit themselves toward working actively to advance
the causes of human emancipation, collective equality, social justice,
ecological sustainability, and a peaceful world.
19. Progressives believe that real social progress ultimately requires
real social transformation-and not mere social reformation.
20. Progressives believe in the value, and indeed necessity, of
forceful, creative, determined, persistent, and even at times relentless
engagement in questioning, challenging, critiquing, resisting,
rebelling, and revolting versus established power and authority in order
to advance progressive ends and serve progressive interests.
***************
Anywhere,
any place or road,
There was you.
So I came back.
The Blood Knot -- by Athol Fugard