Being at Berkeley….
by Oxydoodle
Being a plea for those on the March 4th listserv to do something prior to January 10th

“For Obama’s beguiling aura of promise to be stripped away so unceremoniously has left me feeling as if we, as a country, might have missed the last flight out.” — Orville Schell is the Director of the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations, where he leads a project on climate change and the Tibetan Plateau. He is former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, the author of many books on China, and a frequent traveler in his various journalistic pursuits. [Boldface italics mine.]

“He ain’t my president.” — Etta James

Being at Berkeley, everyone can do something to get the well-intentioned, well-educated, highly experienced Orville Schell to attend the Coordinating Committee rendezvous at International House on Sunday. Contact a former colleague of his? Get in touch with his base at Nation? And so on, and so on, and so on.

If you do reach him, and he says that he’ll attend, make sure that you ask him to bring some friends along. And if you can’t reach him… well, YOU bring some friends along. Or acquaintances. Or people who disagree with you violently. Anyone. For most people, there’s no need to be waltzing into the game room alone.

Orville Schell had his “The Melting of America” posted on ZNet today. The bit about Obama’s “beguiling aura of promise” made me want to write to you. [Pause.] If O.S. hadn’t embraced the false hope projected by B.O. during the “historic” campaign, perhaps he would have been able to invest his heartbeats in a more promising direction. And, then, maybe he wouldn’t have wasted time delineating what’s so obviously wrong with so-called America. In my fantasy, I have him so occupied with turning himself inside out to make something positive happen — above and beyond documenting — that he’s too busy to… lament, etc. [Not being the activist equivalent of O.J.S. or body odor.]

Just so, one and all reading the March 4th listserv — seeing this — might do well to get butts in gear following a new paradigm. Not just get ready to attend another useless meeting, slated to go nowhere. Not just go all the way to the game room to have some kind of emotional catharsis.

This is important. No hyperbole, the whole world is depending on you… on Sunday. You can see it from the depressing report from O.S., and feel it from his attitudinal set. No, you turn yourself inside out and INVENT a solution. [Pause.] At least take A STEP in a healthy direction in solidarity. For trips which take us through a review of the morgue that is America and the world these days… go nowhere but down.

Get down, if you will, with George Galloway’s Democracy Now! blah blah:

“I must tell you, Juan, as someone who, myself, on my radio shows and TV shows and so on, campaigned for the election of Barack Obama, tried very hard to persuade people on the left that they were making a kind of utopian mistake in not supporting Obama, there is a tremendous bitter disappointment here in Palestine, and indeed wider than that, at the role that President Obama is currently playing, or rather not playing.”

It’s from another heartbreaking ZNet posting.

Again, what the hell is someone who’s been around the block doing supporting Obama & Co.? I mean there was clarity on who he was during his campaign. And there were alternatives.

Damn it! The people attending on January 10th must NOT make the same mistake in their space. False hope has no place. There are alternatives to being on automatic. You do not have to reduce yourselves to bootless cries. Or have your guts subjected to taser guns, your head bashed in by a baton. You do NOT have to be hauled off to the hoosegow. You MUST NOT play martyr. The powers that be — your sworn enemies — love that scenario. You can be more creative. (1)

When I talk about getting Willie Nelson, Green Day, Gift of Gab, Bonnie Raitt, Playing for Change’s Keb’ Mo’, Rage Against the Machine, Jackson Browne et al. to the UC-Berkeley campus on March 4th… I’m not out of my mind. (2) No, it will be easier to accomplish that in solidarity with you than it would be to get the powers that be to feel an ounce of compassion for your collective plight. I AM out of mind with blood passion to make our wishes come true.

I ask one and all — Non-academic labor, faculty, staff, (certainly the) students, supporters of all — to rise up in revolutionary fervor, and do something which is modeled on a… new model of behavior.

I’m ready to share some ideas with you in person, in confidence. Meaning, in private. For, as with all wars, the element of surprise counts for something.

Will we find that we have a deeper reason for being at Berkeley?

Footnotes:
(1) Saul Landau’s call for us to take to the streets notwithstanding.
(2) No, Bono, please as per http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/01/bonos-bad-ideas/. On a side (but related) note, did Pearl Jam actually sign an exclusive deal with Best Buy to carry their product? Whatever the case, there are “indiscretions” and then there are indiscretions.

Blessings in deep solidarity,
The Ox
tosca.2010[at]yahoo.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAPM8YRGPuY (Paolo Nutini)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN5fMpMoP38 (Etta James)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7UWIPd3QBI (John Fogerty)
http://www.playingforchange.com/episodes/3/One_Love (In the spirit of the Bob Marley’s best)
P.S. Hey, the people planning to attend the shebang at Cal-Poly Pomona’s bookstore can contact me too. I see at least one single element being embraced in common statewide.