Protest: The Courage to Disagree, An Essay
“When everybody agrees, when people are unanimous, how does one dare to dissent? By what right?”
- James Taggart
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Whether it was marching on Washington to end the Viet Nam War, or leading a student uprising to close Villanova University in protest of the US invasion of Cambodia, or marching with farm workers in protest of pesticides or with actors in front of the Federal Building in West Los Angeles to ban the aerial spraying of malathion, or protesting with religious freedom advocates in France, I have a warm place in my heart for peaceful protest and peaceful civil disobedience as instruments of political and social change. Clearly, protest by definition indicates normal civil, legal, political channels have not been successful or skillfully employed, or both. But when these channels for change are blocked, curtailed, corrupted or subverted – taking to the streets can become a powerful, potent and last ditch attempt at justice and change. Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Gandhi, Mandela are modern day examples; as are, hopefully, the recent events in Egypt and Tunisia. I believe today this could be more important than any time in history. And unlike in Myanmar where Buddhist monks protesting for human rights and the release of Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Aung San Suu Kyi, were shot, killed and brutalized, or in Libya and Syria where brave souls are dying in the streets for freedom at the hands of their own governments, in America we can still protest and at worst meet the business-end of a fire hose or endure the unpleasant body odors of an evening in jail. Unfortunately though, I don’t believe fire hoses or jails are why we are seeing an erosion of this valuable tool of freedom and human rights. Being shunned by people we mistakenly think of as friends, a compulsion to be liked, to be agreeable are closer to the truth. Joan of Arc, Madam Curie, Isaac Newton, Michelangelo, Columbus, Leonardo da Vinci, Gertrude Stein, Helen Keller, Anne Frank, Pythagoras all disagreed; and, they all changed the world. When called for, if we don’t have the courage to protest to disagree, we shake hands with the Dark Side – a darkness that embraces apathy.
A Breakfast with Champions
A few years ago, I was in a small, private breakfast meeting. There were two US Senators, three world- renowned environmental scientists, a movie star, Cesar Chavez and no cameras or reporters. We bantered around the breakfast table discussing global warming, pollution, rainforests, et al. Finally, one Senator looked at Cesar Chavez, who had sat the entire time - serene, intently listening and saying nothing. “Cesar, you’ve been at this stuff longer than any of us, what do you have to say?” What followed for me was nothing short of a modern-day oracle. Cesar very quietly and methodically began to tell us how he and the United Farm Workers had known for years how to effect social change with boycott. They knew to pick a generic product, not a name-brand product, as it provides a broader target. (note: this is illuminating when we look at recent gasoline protests or boycotts against price gouging at the pumps. These targeted a brand, i.e. Exxon. And they didn’t work – people simply bought gasoline from another dealer.) They knew from years of data, no matter what rejections, insults, antics and complaints, when they hit a 4% market reduction of the target, the opposition would come to the table. For them, it wasn’t opinion, guess-work, it was fact - at 4% they show up “to talk.”
They targeted grapes for a few reasons. Grapes are generic. Grapes are one of the most chemically, pesticide treated of all crops, having as many as 15 pesticides, fungicides, herbicides sprayed on them. This was a major concern because at the time farm workers were often not even permitted to leave the fields when pesticides were sprayed as this cost money and lost production time. “Farm workers” were often women with small children on their backs – there was no child care. The boycott garnered national empathy and support. Civil rights leaders, Bobby Kennedy, others joined in. Marches, sit-in’s ensued. And in the end, the United Farm Workers were born, beginning with some initial benefits, minimum wages and other protections.
What Cesar taught was that one man, with the courage to disagree and with the intelligence, conviction and perseverance to inspire others in a just cause, using protest and boycott, could make a difference and tangibly change the world.
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison Where Are You?
When Boris Yeltsin stood on the top of a tank in Red Square with the courage to disagree, we witnessed the fall of Communism and the rise of a democratic movement in Russia.
When Ronald Reagan wouldn’t blink in his support of the “Star Wars” defense system – checkmate the U.S.S.R and the wall came tumbling down, without ever really building the defense system.
When Bostonians refused to pay taxes without representation and threw tea into the harbor in protest, the beginnings of a new, free nation were ignited.
When women across America marched and protested for decades and finally in 1920 won the right to vote.
When two men on an early December morning in 1903 defied the prevailing wisdom that “something heavier than air will never fly” and launched their airplane at Kitty Hawk.
The courage to disagree knows no political or economic boundaries. A CEO refusing to sell an unsafe product or take or give a bribe, a student refusing to cheat on a test knowing others who do will score higher, a Labor leader who refuses to vilify management and encourages productivity for a fair wage, a politician who refuses to exchange money for his vote against what he/she knows is the best for the greatest number – these have the courage to disagree.
Whether you agree with them or not, the recent rise of the Tea Party in the United States exemplifies how protest can shape a political discussion when seemingly no one’s listening. A country that has seen two, separate, back-to-back Administrations spend our country to the brink of credit collapse has finally heard the word, “no.” We can argue what one Administration spent money on was different than the other. How one was more “justified” than the other. But the question remains: how can our government, any government, that’s power and money come from the people and their businesses (poor and rich alike), have the audacity to tell us how they will spend our money; and once that is exhausted that they will borrow or print more? That’s theft. That’s looting.
A recent news report detailed how the SEC without bid or outside approval, leased an office building they didn’t need and largely sits empty and will cost $557,000,000. No one’s been fired. Didn’t the SEC miss Bernie Madoff? The mortgage swindles? How would you react if you gave your child an allowance and at school to curry favor and approval of classmates they rang up an extra $1000 on your Visa card? This same practice of embezzlement has been euphemized and called “earmarks.” Members of Congress simply spend money to curry favor or advantage without approval.
I might not share the ultra-cynical view of government with some members of the Tea Party, but I must give them credit for disagreeing, for raising questions of fiscal responsibility when our Congress has demonstrated none. I don’t think it requires a Harvard economist or Georgetown Scholar on International Policy to determine that the trillions of dollars we have spent in the last ten years for war might just have something to do with our economic situation, notwithstanding the Wall Street mortgage crooks. If our economy, as our leaders are quick to say, is all about “confidence,” what does killing, bombing, torturing do to our national morale, psyche or confidence?
I am glad our President had the courage to disagree with some of his own advisors and bring Osama bin Laden to justice. But Afghanistan? Really? A country whose economic claim to fame is that it’s the world’s largest producer of heroin? We have spent billions of dollars and countless American lives to “protect” a country that makes its living by destroying lives. We are paying to destroy ourselves? If we had gotten bin Laden, torched the Afghan poppy fields and provided them seeds and plows wouldn’t that have been less expensive and more effective help?
The idea of taxes to provide for a government that protects our country, its borders, provides order, laws, justice, free-trade and civil rights is an idea to which no one I know objects. But when government has grown in the self-delusion that it can function as a business, it’s no longer a government. A business either makes money or it no longer exists. It either rewards production and inventiveness or it falls victim to a competitor. If it cheats, bribes, lies it might have a temporary “success,” but ultimately, it fails. Government trying to emulate business has no reason to make money or profit, it simply goes more into debt or prints more money. It can’t reward production, only mediocrity. It wastes money. The growing public revulsion toward taxes seems more about a dissatisfaction with government’s pretense that it’s a business, rather than just being a government. A factory worker, a business owner, a housewife have more sense about how to spend their money than a bureaucrat dolling out pieces of a pie he has never earned.
Protest starts with the courage to disagree. Not contrarianism, but the courage, when needed, to not run with the pack or follow the herd. It is not “being safe.” It is focused and thoughtful to be successful. Its enemy is peer pressure. If protest turns violent, by its very definition, it loses all legitimacy - the expression of individual conscience mutating into mob-think and becoming itself, what it has most resisted.
I Don’t Want It, You Can Have It
My day of reckoning came not long after the breakfast meeting with Cesar Chavez. I was in a conference room with twenty other board members (actors, directors, writers, attorneys) of an environmental organization. Waste Management, Inc. was offering our group a six figure donation/grant. They had hired a friend of the Executive Director to pitch it. There was virtually unanimous agreement to accept. The words of Cesar Chavez haunted me. I took a deep breath and objected. The faces of my friends and fellow board members gaped. This was a lot of money. We could do a lot of good. I had a Greenpeace Report on Waste Management, Inc. citing their numerous waste sites with documented, environmental contaminations. While I thought it was important for the company to support environmental causes, and they were free to do so, the money would be better spent cleaning up some of their sites or compensating nearby residents. Further, that the practice of “green-washing” (polluters taking out ads or commercials with green hills and propaganda on how environmentally conscious they were – sound familiar? – think “BP Oil Spill in the Gulf”) was not something I thought many of our high profile actors would be happy about being associated with at this time. The vote was unanimous – we didn’t take the money. It said a lot about the quality and integrity of the people on the Board.
I wasn’t courageous. I was simply bolstered by the example of a simple, great man at a breakfast table. But what I learned from this - and I think it is something all of us, each in our own way and in our own circumstances has to deal with – I was uncomfortable having to disagree. I had to disagree with some of the best known people in the entertainment industry whom I admired professionally. What bothered me was that it bothered me to disagree. If I, or others for that matter, let this discomfort govern our actions, aspirations and what is true for us, the only zenith of accomplishment ever attained would be the sum aggregate of group agreement. A nice word for that would be mediocrity; the more honest ones – the cowardice of being safe. In the 18th Century Alexis de Tocqueville observed this phenomenon in his celebrated Democracy in America – he called it the “tyranny of the majority.”
In the end, I garnered some respect, not the least of which was my own. Most importantly, I protected my artist friends from being unwittingly used and manipulated in a way that could have impugned their honest care and commitment to the environment.
Follow the Money
“We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
The simple fact is this is not 200 years ago when a Congressional or even a Presidential candidate strung some money together and often on a shoe string and the back of a horse went town to town asking for votes. There was no television, no telephones, no radio, no Internet, no talking-head pundits, no immense lobbies, no Political Action Committees and no mega-corporations. The occasional newspaper was limited to a major city. Yet the basic framework for elections today is essentially the same.
Do we honestly think that the average citizen has a fair chance of influencing a Presidential election or platform when corporations spend a billion dollars or more in a Presidential election while television networks demand and collect tens of millions of dollars for candidates to even get recognized or heard? There is no longer even the pretense of a level playing field or a democratic process, it’s an economic one. And while each one of us can make a difference we do not possess the ultimate trump card – the Super Political Action Committees funded by the military industrial complex. The deck is stacked and we know it, whether clearly or intuitively, we know it. Ask a friend or the average person on the street: “The system’s rigged,” “I don’t vote anymore, there’s no point,” “They’re all a bunch of crooks.”
I remember, years ago, spending some time with Congressman Joseph Kennedy and his two incredible sons. We were in Florida, went out on speed boats, etc. Midst all this, Joe had to attend a fundraising event at a local private home. I went and will never forget when Joe leaned over to me and said, “I hate it. I spend more time having to raise money than doing the work I was elected to do.” And Joe was a Kennedy. How does your local barber run for Congress? And if by happenstance they get in where and who do they go to raise money for re-election? The answer: the military industrial complex.
Whether we agree with him or not, President Obama, the candidate, struck this basic chord when he launched a grassroots campaign over the Internet for small, individual citizen support. This resonated across America – finally, a candidate who was not beholden to vested interests and large corporate money and influence – he was beholden to an average voter who donated $10, $25. The individual suddenly had a voice and millions of Americans responded. But if we believe President Obama is not financially influenced by Wall Street, by big business, by Unions we are truly naïve. His own party depends, solicits, demands and gets financial support from large corporations and unions. And how successful can any President be without the support of his own party? So our President today is doing black-tie fundraising dinners at $10,000 a seat.
When Arnold Schwarzenegger in his first term tried to balance the California budget by looking at public employees’ and teachers’ pensions and retirement plans – he was politically vilified and crucified by these same groups who receive job protection unrelated to performance and with pension/retirement packages and medical benefits that most life-long business executives can only envy. Do we think President Obama didn’t notice? You want an honest glimpse into this tangled web in the area of public education – see Academy Award winning, Davis Guggenheim’s film: Waiting for Superman. While praised, Guggenheim was also attacked and vilified. Guggenheim had the courage to disagree.
It is time to level the playing field and publicly fund all State and Federal elections and permit no other money directly or indirectly to flow into needy hands. No corporate money to shill groups, political action committees, parties to spend directly or indirectly on election campaigns or disguised as “issue advertising” to fund a candidate. Our vote would suddenly, magically morph into something more important than the dollar. Will our leaders (Democrats and Republicans) have the courage to disagree and pass a campaign finance reform law that favors the people, all people, and their vote over vested interests?
Dazed and Confused or Just Plain Drugged
When almost every other commercial on network television today is for a prescription drug and these same networks receive hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenues from the pharmaceutical industry, do we honestly think they will ever mount a critical look at this industry on a sustained basis? Do we naively think the talking heads, talk show hosts, medical experts, editors they trot out on your tube are not influenced? Yet how many times do we find out a drug people have paid for and taken for years, isn’t safe: Vioxx, Plaxil, Zoloft………
How can virtually every antidepressant drug advertised today for depression have as one of its potential side-effects, suicide? Isn’t this tantamount to giving a loaded gun to a child? We hear now, after years of prescription writing, that this same class of drugs can cause birth defects in babies whose mothers took them when pregnant. How many babies suffered this fate before we found this out? How many network commercials, news shows or commentaries have you seen on this? Me? None. I found out from personal injury attorneys trolling for clients on TV commercials.
For sure, we will hear how these “help people who are already at risk,” and “the FDA approved and medical organizations endorse these” but simple logic defies these “reasonable men” and their money-motivated arguments.
“I think they come up with the pill before they come up with the disease. Did anyone have restless syndrome before they had a pill for it?
- Bill Maher, April 2009
About fifty years ago there were some 30 or so published “mental illnesses.” We know them: depression, psychosis, mania, schizophrenia, etc. Today, it’s over 300 and rising. Are we just that much crazier? I don’t think so. Every time you make up a new illness, there’s a drug waiting in the wings to treat it. We are seeing normal human emotions classified as mental illnesses accompanied with its drug of choice. “Worry” – I thought that was got me out bed in the morning to work. “PMS” (premenstrual syndrome) – I thought that was a hormonal imbalance in some women that I kept away from once a month.
ADD (attention deficit disorder) - this “mental illness” was voted into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association in 1984. The sum total of science that went into this proceeding was a hand vote. I kid you not, a vote of hands and voila – a new mental illness was created. So how do they diagnose it? They came up with symptoms like: forgets things, goes to one activity before completing an earlier one, is given to periods of high energy followed by fatigue, interrupts someone before finished speaking – that’s about every four-year old I’ve ever met; and frankly, most adults I know. So are we all mentally ill? In 1998 a conference at the National Institutes of Health on ADD concluded there was no objective test for ADD. You have a cold or pneumonia? Your doctor doesn’t guess or raise a hand, he listens to your lungs, does a chest x-ray – there is an objective test, as there is for a tumor, anemia or for that matter if your car needs a valve job. Yet as many as 30% of children in some school districts are diagnosed with ADD and placed on dangerous drugs with potentially horrendous side effects, including suicide -for a disease that doesn’t exist. Did you know that schools receive about $4700 per kid, per year, for every child diagnosed with ADD from government as Special Ed money? And you know who pays for it? We do. And we wonder about deficits and the cost of health care.
I’ve raised four children. I like to think I have done a descent job, not a perfect job, but a descent job. So I am the last one as a parent to say a child never has a learning or behavioral problem. I certainly did. What I am saying, in total disagreement with the drug and psychiatric cartels, is its not ADD or ADHD. They don’t exist. Maybe the child needs a tutor, needs his diet checked, or needs to be checked for allergies; maybe they need counseling or study help, maybe they need a kick in the butt or a combination of all these– but they don’t need to be needlessly, dangerously drugged. I know that might be disagreeable to some parents. One major Washington think tank reported the problem with Ritalin is that “it works.” Sure it does in a sick kind of way, it’s essentially speed. But as parents, do we abnegate parenting, nurturing and responsibility for a quick fix, an SAT score, a “competitive edge” and risk grievous harm to our children – so a drug company can make money? Do we teach our young children: You got a problem? Take this drug. Then, later when teenagers with pimples and hormones raging: Got a problem? Shy? Rejected? Get drunk. Smoke pot. Got a problem? Take a drug.
Matt Lauer, Where Are You?
Has drugging our kids become today’s substitute for parenting? When Tom Cruise had the courage to disagree on The Today Show and tell Matt Lauer he was wrong, glib and he did not know what he was talking about when it came to drugging kids, he was right. Cruise was blunt, but he was right. Matt countered that he knew families where drugs like Ritalin helped. The inference one could draw was that Cruise was blocking help for some kids. Nonsense. Any chemist will tell you it is virtually impossible in a chemical assay to differentiate between Ritalin, methamphetamines and cocaine. Look them up on the Drug Enforcement Agency’s website www.DEA.gov -their potential side effects are not similar but virtually identical, including addiction, psychosis and now suicide. Ask the smartest people in the room – kids. Kids have it right – they call Ritalin, “kiddie coke.” It’s crushed snorted and bought from grade-schoolers by teenagers to get high. So, why do “some kids seem to do better” in school on these drugs? They are on speed for God’s sake. But look at the side effects. I want to believe that Matt Lauer is sincerely concerned about children’s well being. I want to believe he has the courage to disagree too.
I remember watching The Today Show interview and thinking, “Is this going to start a campaign to discredit Tom Cruise?” Am I paranoid? No. Well, maybe about losing my hair. Do I see a conspiracy every time I go thru a drive-thru window and get mustard instead of ketchup on my sandwich? No. But I had just seen the biggest movie star in film history draw a line in the sand – and on the other side of that line was a 700 billion dollar drug industry. I started asking myself:
Would an industry that spends millions of dollars to lobby against U.S. Senior Citizens purchasing prescription drugs in Canada for less money stand idly by and do nothing?
What if the millions of parents who saw this interview started asking the question that had long been percolating in their minds: Does my kid really need these drugs?
Does NBC/Universal, Viacom make more profit from their movies or drug commercials?
It seemed logical that the gloves would come off. But how? They couldn’t attack Cruise for his movies – they were loved by too many. They couldn’t discredit his legendary work-ethic, his creative genius as a producer or actor –these were self-evident and documented. He was a loving dad with great kids, no scandals, a bona-fide contributor to his industry and many charities. How?
Then Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah’s couch. He jumped on Oprah’s couch because he was in love had nothing to do with Tom’s state of mind – other than he was like any enthusiastic guy in love. I’ve never spoken to Tom Cruise on this, nor do I represent him in anyway. But in my opinion, this simple act of affection and enthusiasm was painted by a dark few as offish. Why? Well, possibly Occam’s Razor has it right - the simplest answer is often correct: If you can’t discredit an honest, hard-working, self-made, beloved man then make him guilty for what he is – enthusiastic. How? Well, you couldn’t do it with a frontal attack – it would never work – too loved, too liked, too admired. But a whisper campaign - planned, orchestrated, unrelenting and executed might. A raised eyebrow at lunch from one executive to another, strategic phone calls, pressure or a derisive comment to an advertizing executive. It doesn’t matter, just keep it up long enough, tell the lie enough times and some people will begin to believe it. Not that I think Tom Cruise cares or has missed a beat, but could a multi-billion drug industry be so diabolical and self-serving so as to pressure a whisper campaign of rumors and innuendos to discredit a single person? Why? Because Tom Cruise had the courage to disagree.
Who would of thought? Of course, this never happens, right?
Remember Watergate, where a well-funded Republican Committee to Re-Elect President Richard Nixon spent millions in slush fund money to discredit, plant false stories and perform a wide variety of “dirty tricks” to discredit their opposition. And who found this out? Not the FBI, not the Justice Department, not elected officials, not a network news anchor. Not even the majority of established news media - who were reluctant to look. No, two newbie journalists did, Woodward and Bernstein, supported by a firebrand editor, Ben Bradley, who had the courage to disagree and who most assuredly were all called along the way “conspiracy nuts.”
The Willie Horton ads that wrongly maligned Governor Dukasis when he was leading in his bid for President. The “Swift-boaters” attack on a war hero, John Kerry. Same playbook.
Who Killed JFK?
Oliver Stone is at times maligned for what is shaded as left-wing political stands and a penchant for conspiracy theories. I don’t know who shot JFK. But what I do know is Stone was correct and courageous in at least asking the questions. How did a single “magic bullet” cause seven wounds? Who stood to gain from JFKs death? Why? Where did our dead President’s brain go (someone lost it so it could not be examined)? Stone examines the influence of money and the military industrial complex. He correctly states the “organizing principle for any government rests in its ability to wage war.” Barry Levinson, Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro captured the same point satirically in Wag the Dog. I don’t look at Stone as a conspiracy nut. That dog don’t hunt – just another dirty trick. Whether I agree with him or not, I look at Oliver Stone first as a real, red-blooded American - a patriot with the courage to ask the questions, challenge the establishment and protest perceived injustices. The courage to disagree.
Come Gather My Children and Please Lend a Hand
Protest and its cousin, boycott, are the great equalizers. There is only one thing more powerful than money to an elected leader - votes. And all we have to do, as my friend Cesar Chavez suggested, is to cost them 4%. 4% of their votes and they’ll come to the table. Ask the Tea Party when they hit 4%.
Grab a protest sign – there’s plenty of work to do:
Wall Street - take 4% of all our savings accounts, cash, CD’s, money markets, mutual funds out of the banks and out of Wall Street and place them in government securities, gold, municipal bonds, or under our beds until the banks agree to refinance the mortgages of every eligible American’s home at its present fair market value, with no fees or penalties. These crooks made fortunes by falsely manipulating home values up, selling the paper – and then had the taxpayer bail them out when it all crumbled and turned around on the same taxpayer and seized their home by foreclosure. Are you kidding me? It really is that crazy. We want the ones culpable to be identified, charged, tried and if convicted sent to jail along with any government officials who colluded with them.
Drug Companies -insist that drug companies sell only drugs that are first proven to be safe and effective. When the side effects are worse than what the drug is suppose to be treating – tell them, “Not good enough. Go back to your labs and use good old American ingenuity and solve the problem.” Divest all drug company stocks in 401 K’s, mutual funds, stock portfolios and financial instruments until they agree. Demand the FDA act to protect public health and not as the Human Resource Department for drug companies.
Oil Companies - until we no longer import an ounce of foreign oil from OPEC and we boom our economy, create jobs and lead the world by actually building an alternative, green energy industry and economy, we divest our 401K’s, mutual funds, stock portfolios of oil company stocks until they commit the majority of new energy production investments and research into alternative energies. If they don’t, we invest in new, alternative energy companies.
Elections –insist on real, honest to goodness election, campaign finance reform - where all state and federal elections are publicly funded and all corporate, political action committees, union campaign money directly or indirectly is eliminated, taken out of all elections.
Human Trafficking – our Federal government spends more on light bulbs in a year than it does to stop human trafficking (slavery) in this country. We have more slaves living in the United States today than before the Civil War. In the land of the free and the home of the brave and the sentinel of human freedom this is unconscionable. We don’t vote for any politician who does not agree to stop this plague before a dollar of foreign aid is approved.
Today, perhaps more than ever, the unbridled influence of corporate money and its unholy alliance with big government hold the fabric of our socio-political lives in its cross hairs. It is time for Americans to unite in large numbers and take to the streets, carry protest signs and boycott to actually affect change. The system is rigged. We are at best naïve and at worst in apathy if we think the status quo will change. There is just too much money, too much corporate greed, vested interest and too much big government entrenched in the system. There is nothing wrong with money and profits well- earned. They’ve made America great. But when used to manipulate, influence an “old boys” network, curry unearned political/economic favors, write unjust laws and regulations while covertly smearing the opposition they lose value and credibility. The leaders we elect in hope of positive change no longer work for us, no matter their lip-service or stump speeches. As they lather us with condescending assurances, they are forced out of what they perceive as political survival to answer, not to us, but to the banker, the oil trader, the union, the drug company who pay them for unearned favors. It’s degrading. It’s degrading, I am sure, to the majority of public servants who started out with the honest desire to help, to serve and to dedicate themselves to public service. It’s degrading to us. It’s a bidding war we will never win. It’s time we use the proven tools that will free our leaders from those who look at them as paid lap dogs. We protest. We boycott. I can assure you of this – it will work. We only need 4%.