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As I read Chris Hedges latest, “A Victory for Us All” aloud on the show this morning, I was reminded -yet again- of the classic “I’m not dead yet” scene from Monty Python & The Holy Grail. (For a brief moment, I even regretted ripping up a pocket copy of the US Constitution on my show this morning, after recounting the story about activist being arrested in Chicago and the distinct possibility that they may have been set up and charged as domestic terrorists.)
As Hedges so beautifully explains,
U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest, in a 68-page opinion, ruled Wednesday that Section 1021 of the NDAA was unconstitutional. It was a stunning and monumental victory. With her ruling she returned us to a country where—as it was before Obama signed this act into law Dec. 31—the government cannot strip a U.S. citizen of due process or use the military to arrest him or her and then hold him or her in military prison indefinitely. She categorically rejected the government’s claims that the plaintiffs did not have the standing to bring the case to trial because none of us had been indefinitely detained, that lack of imminent enforcement against us meant there was no need for an injunction and that the NDAA simply codified what had previously been set down in the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force Act. The ruling was a huge victory for the protection of free speech. Judge Forrest struck down language in the law that she said gave the government the ability to incarcerate people based on what they said or wrote. Maybe the ruling won’t last. Maybe it will be overturned. But we and other Americans are freer today than we were a week ago. And there is something in this.
So, no, we’re not dead yet. But we can’t stop fighting because, as Hedges concludes
It is not going to get better. The climate crisis alone will assure that. The corporate state knows what is coming. Globalization is breaking down. Our natural resources are being depleted. Economic and political upheavals are inevitable. And our corporate rulers are preparing a world of masters and serfs, a world where repression will be our daily diet, a world of hunger and riots, a world of brutal control and a world where our spirits must be broken. We have to stop asking what is reasonable or practical, what the Democratic Party or the government can do for us, what will work or not work. We must refuse now to make any concessions, large or small. We must remember that the lesser of two evils is still evil. We must no longer let illusions pacify us. Hell is truth seen too late. In large and small ways we are called to resist, resist, resist, as we race heedlessly into the abyss.
So I will continue to report on the unreported (by the corporate media), and speaking with people on the front lines of the fight for democracy. This morning, I did speak with PunkBoyinSF, a citizen journalist from the San Francisco Bay area, from Chicago where he’s been for the NATO protests. He told us of police raids and the militaristic manner in which protesters and activists are now treated. For more of his coverage of what went on in Chicago, as well as the latest on the Occupy movement in the San Francisco Bay area, visit punkboyinsf.org.
Tomorrow, we’ll continue our series of conversations about the occupy movement with Jesse LaGreca!
Because we need joy, love and some pleasurable diversions in life, I spoke with author W. Bruce Cameron about his new book, A Dog’s Journey. It’s the sequel to the equally delightful A Dog’s Purpose. If you’re a dog person, as am I, you should read these books.
If it’s Tuesday, it’s a visit with The Political Carnival’s GottaLaff. Today, we talked about these stories and more: