We are “underground,” and why I think that’s good.

[HereSince1628]

We don’t take credit, though we deserve much, and we don’t usually get noticed, unless someone is telling us we are too radical, too loud, too aggressive, or if one of “our’s” makes a blunder.

So now, after the election, shouldn’t we come out in the open and angrily call for our share? Nope, we've still got a job we are very good at down below.

Political balance tilts like a teeter-totter over the center. When looking to explain that balance the power folks look around to see who’s sitting where on the teeter-totter and how heavy they are. They all know that the center of a close balance can be shifted by a very small change. And these pundits and operatives that play the political game mostly for recognition are pointing out that they’ve spotted some shift at the center. Employing the best of post hoc proctor hoc reasoning they claim it was conservative democrats, independents, and moderate republicans that shifted to the left and swung the election.

On the surface--up above the board of the teeter-totter--that facile analysis seems reasonable if not probable. But it is hardly the truth.

If they’d bother to look UNDER the teeter-totter, they’d notice the huge weight of bloggers and activists hung out there on the left. If that weight was missing, the movement at the center never would have been enough to change the balance.

Over the past 6 years the subversives of this below-board/underground movement have slowly but steadily tipped the balance. In 2005 Cindy Sheehan her supporters (many from here on DU) Code Pink, the ACLU, and other organizations had a better sense of where the country had strayed and where our future lay than the high profile pundits and politicians. Early on, subversives like Andy did the work and coughed up the funds, and many volunteers burned themselves out to bring everyone’s attention the voter fraud and vote suppression plaguing the nation. Thousands of posters did surveillance on the world's news stories, and kept us weeks ahead of critical stories, of which many never got covered in the US. Of course, up above board in the gentle world of the networks and Washingtion DC our "tin-foilery" was an unwelcome distraction and drew fire and wrath.

But activist leaders like Cindy Sheehan and volunteers like most of us in the vast collective of the underground went on. One ounce at a time, countering every weight the rightwing added to encumber the progress of the nation. The commited subterranean base organized, established websites and populated websites, attended protests and vigils, built the viewership for KO, the listenership for Air America, the readership for Krugman, Dowd, and Ivans, and a myriad of bloggers. We cheered on John Conyers and sent flowers to politicians and journalists, generated endless stream of LTTE’s, bumper stickers, t-shirts, and emails and arguments with relatives, friends, neighbors and co-workers that actually accrued into the weight hanging under the political balance. Only God knows how many minds we changed, how many votes we recruited or how many useful talking points the bloggers and denizens of the bulletin boards and chat rooms generated that were picked up by speech and editorial writers.

But by September it was pretty clear, the balance was significantly shifted.

So. WE WON. The underground did the grunt work that made this shift of power in Washington possible. But we remain as ever, too radical to be acknowledged, too radical to have our agenda openly enacted by the politicians and party operatives who want to look like they are actually in control. Should we be pissed off? Only if we struggled for recognition rather than the Cause.

The balance up top is still dynamic. It needs our weight hanging out-of-sight not to keep it where it is but to move it still a smidgen more so that the balance shifts to a place where the politicians and pundits can think THEY worked the nation into the right place to take action to enact accountability, resolve the constitutional crisis, and turn the country back into a place where its citizens and the world see our nation not as an imperial juggernaut through the 21st century, but as a model of human progress worthy of emulation.

There’s still a lot of work to be done. And as ever, it will be done subversively, by you, me and our fellow troglidites.

We are the Underground.

We make things happen.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. K&R

Superbly written!

Thank you........

We are the Underground.

We make things happen.

Absolutely right!


:patriot: