Society. I should say said anti union sentiment in the United States among elites is so strong that the fundamental couper of labor rights the basic principle in the International Labor organization is the rate of Free Association which would mean the right to form unions u. S. Has never ratified. But i think the us may be alone among major sides in every space. Its considered so far out of the spectrum of american politics it literally has never been considered. Her number the us has a law on her of our own labor history his. Society. Had been very strong about the 1920 s. Period not unlike today. Who was virtually crushed. By the mincer is a beacon to reconstruct. Truth a dozen or is felt he himself was rather sympathetic to progressive legislation that would be in the benefit of the general population but he had to somehow get it passed so he informed labor leaders and others forced me to do it. What he meant is it going to help demonstrate were going to protest develop the labor movement. When the packers pressures fish and ill be able can through the legislation you i am not for a were. Killed last definition number live a day and hour which many as a freebie blow well being gradually read your mind in endless. Friendly deal. I prefer that broad definition. So there was a kind of combination of the a sympathetic government and by the mid thirtys very substantial but bitter activism. There were industrial action there were sit down strikes which were very frightening 2. 100 ships. Have to recognize a sit down straight is just one step before saying we dont need bushes we can run this by yourselves. And business was told to read the Business Press say in the late thirtys they were talking about the. The hazard facing industrialists and the rising political power of the masses which has to be repressed things were on hold during the 2nd world war but immediately after the 2nd world war the business offensive began in force. Test partly as a. Tourist start any quality in labor management. The mccarthyism was used for a massive corporate propaganda offensives to attack union. Increased sharply during the reagan years and reagan pretty much told the Business World if you want to illegally break urbanizing efforts and strikes go ahead they are in violation of the law and if they do not report for work within 48 hours they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated to continue to the ninetys and of course with george w. Bush went through the roof by now less than 7 percent of private Sector Workers have unions. The effect is that the usual counterforce to an offensive or highly class conscious Business Class is dissolved. If youre in a position of power you want to maintain class consciousness for yourself but a limited everywhere else you know back to the 19th century in the early days of the Industrial Revolution in the United States working people were very conscious of this they in fact overwhelmingly regarded that wage labor as not very different from slavery to the different only in that it was temporary effect of such a popular idea that was a slogan of the republican party. Well that was a very sharp class consciousness in the interests of power and privilege its good to drive those ideas out of peoples heads you dont want them to know that theyre an oppressed class so this is one of the few societies magicks dont talk about class in fact the National Class is very simple who gives the orders who follows and that basically defines class its more nuanced and complex but thats basically it. The Public Relations industry the Advertising Industry which is dedicated to creating consumers its a phenomenon developed in the freest countries in britain and the United States and the reason is pretty clear it became clear by a say a century ago that it was not going to be so easy to control the population by force too much freedom and one. Labor going to ising parliamentary labor parties in many countries women started to get the french as and so on she had to have other means of controlling people and it was understood and expressed they have to control them by control of. Beliefs and attitudes well one of the best ways to control people in terms of attitudes is what the great political economists theyre stunned blind called fabricating consumers. If you can fabricate want to. Make obtaining things that are just about within your reach the essence of life theyre going to be trapped into becoming a consumers. And you read the Business Press say 920 s. It talks about the need to direct people to the superficial things of life like fashionable consumption and that will keep them out of our hair. You find this doctrine all through progressive intellectual thought but Walter Lippmann the major progress of intellectual of the 20th century. He wrote famous progressive essays on democracy in which his view was exactly that the public must be put in their place so that the responsible men can make decisions without interference from the be willed and heard. There to be spectators not participants then you get a properly functioning democracy straight back to madison on to the polls memory and so on and the Advertising Industry just exploded. With with this as its goal fabricating consumers. And its done with great sophistication. Many whilst down. As one of the last known while very singular. Whom are aware of the kind. Of the ideal is which actually seemed to did. Were lets see teenage girls they have a free set or afternoon well go walking in a Shopping Mall not the library or somewhere else. The idea is to try to control everyone to turn the whole society into the perfect system. Perfect system would be a society based on a diet of pair the pair is you and your Television Set or maybe now you in the internet. In which that presents you with would. The proper life would be with trying to gauge a change and you spend your time and effort to gaining those things which you dont need you dont want maybe to throw away. But thats the measure of a decent life. What we see is in say advertising on television if youve ever taken an economics course you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices well if we had a system like that a market system in a Television Ad would consist of say General Motors putting up information saying heres what we have for sale as im outta an ad for a car is an ad for occurs in football hero you know an actress in the car doing some crazy thing like going up a mountain or something the point is to create uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices thats what advertising is all about. And when the same institutions p. R. System runs elections they do it the same way. They want to create an uninformed electorate which will make irrational truisms go off against their own interests and we see it every time one of these extravaganzas take place. Right after the election. President obama won an award from the Advertising Industry for the best Marketing Campaign and was reported here if you go to the international Business Press executives were euphoric they said weve been selling candidates marketing candidates like you know toothpaste ever since reagan and this is the greatest achievement we have i dont usually agree with therapy. And but when she mocks the much she calls the hopi changey stuff shes right 1st of all obama didnt really promise anything thats mostly illusion you go back to the Campaign Rhetoric and take a look at it has very little discussion of policy issues and for very good reason because Public Opinion on policy is sharply disconnected from what the 2 Party Leadership and their financial backers want. Poesy even more and more is focused on the private interests that fund the campaigns. With the public being marginalized. What politicians do something to. Put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. So when you want to be president or injury. Or somehow want to. Have to go right to the press as a white woman for 3 in the morning cant be good. Im interested always in the waters in the house. I sit. In the troubled 19 seventies a group of killers rampage street thugs of Northern Ireland that was coordinated loyalist attacks protecting only catholic population in belfast tens of thousands were forced to flee their homes and what was striking to put these attacks was that the are you see the Police Actually took part in the attacks so instead of preventing them they were active participants in the burning of full streets in belfast at the time more than a 100 innocent civilians with blood as the review can seniors found out more i was surprised about the extent and of the currents which the collusion was involved in some of those cases the killers would later be named the glenna were getting i think it went to the very very top i think it is for all the water where all the patients you thought was going on and give the go ahead. The world is driven by shaped by the person who they are spread. The dares thinks. We dare to ask. One of the leading political scientists martin guillens came out with a study of the relation between Public Attitudes and that would mostly what he shows is that about 70 percent of the population has no way of influencing. But they might as well be and some other country. And the population knows. What its led to is a population that angry frustrated and hates institutions. And its not acting constructively to try to respond to this. There is Popular Mobilization and activism but in very self destructive directions. Taking the form of unfocused bangar attacks on one another and on vulnerable targets thats what happens in cases like this. It is corrosive of social relations but thats the point the point is to make people to hate and fear each other and look at only for themselves and dont do anything for anyone else. One place you see it strikingly is on april 15th. April 15th as a kind of a measure that. If they are taxes of how democratic a society is a Different League if a society is really democratic april 15th would be a day of celebration its a day when the population gets together decides to fund the programs and activities that they have formulated agreed upon which could be better than the situation celebrated the way it is needed state its a day of mourning its a day in which some alien power you know has nothing do with you is coming down to steal your hard earned money and you do everything you can they keep from doing. That is a kind of a measure of the extent to which at least in popular consciousness democracy is actually functioning. Not her attractive picture. Be the tendencies that weve been describing within American Society unless theyre reverse its going to be an extremely ugly society im a society thats based on adam smiths final maxim you know all for myself nothing for anyone else. Aside in which normal human instincts an emotion of sympathy so theyre e. B. To a sport in which theyre going driven out. That society so ugly i dont even know whod want to live in it i wouldnt want my children to. Give the society is based on control by private wealth it will reflect the values that in fact does reflect. A value that is green and the desire to maximize personal gain at the expense of others and any society has made a Small Society based on that principle is ugly but it can survive a Global Society based on that principle is headed for massive destruction. And i dont think were smart enough to design in any detail what a perfectly just and free society would be like i think we can give some guidelines and more significant we could ask how we can progress in that direction. John dewey the the leading social philosopher in the late 20th century he argued that until that all institutions production commerce. Media unless theyre all under participatory democratic control we will not have a functioning democratic society. As he put it policy will be the shadow cast by business over a society. Thats centrally true. Where there are structures of authority domination and hire somebody gives the orders somebody takes them as they are not selfjustifying who they have to justify themselves and their burden to prove to me. Will if you take a close look usually you find they cant justify themselves if they cant we ought to be dismantling. Trying to expand the domain of for. Doma just display dismantling that form of Illegitimate Authority and in fact progress over the years well thankfully recognize as progress has been just that the way things change is because lots of people are working all the time and you know theyre working in their communities in their workplace or wherever they happen to be and theyre building up the basis for Popular Movements which are going to make changes and thats the way everything has ever happened in history. Takes a freedom of speech. One of the real achievements of American Society its the 1st in the world in that its not in the bill of rights on the on the constitution and freedom of speech issues began to come to the Supreme Court in the early 20th century. The major contributions came in the 1960 s. One of the leading ones was a case involving the Civil Rights Movement well but then you had a mass Popular Movement which was demanding rights. Refusing to back down and in that context the Supreme Court did establish a pretty High Standard freedom of speech or it takes a womens right women also began identifying oppressive structures refusing to accept them or hed go their people to join with them well thats her right to return. To trouville extent if also spent a lot of my life in activism into that doesnt show up publicly but you know i should not terribly good at it and not the greatest organizer i think that we can see quite clearly some very very serious defect was an area. Which are going to have to be corrected by operating out of the right that is commonly accepted i think were going to have to find new ways but it has. Been the activists or people who have created the rights that we enjoy. They arent carrying out cosies based on information that theyre receiving but also contributing to the understanding remembers are separate processes. Have agreed to try to do things you learn you learn but with the world its like that feeds back to the understanding of how to go on. And theres huge opportunities it is a very free Society Still the freest world. Government is very limited capacity to coerce corporate business may try to coerce but there are mechanisms. So theres a lot to be done if people organize struggle for the right susan have done best and you can win many victories. I am. A. Close friend for many years later howard zinn. To put it in his words that what matters is the countless small deeds of unknown people who lay the basis for the significant events that enter history. Theres a ones who have done things in the past the angelus do it future. Group. The per. Group. Group. Exist. All right the eggs. In. Blue. In. Her. New. York city. And. One of the things that i started to realize is that the noise in my head as it me i started to practice. Organizing my it was a wrong what i wanted my life to be up even when it conflicted with my internal annoyance so you know why are you i wrote a book but in my head im not smart enough people like me dont write books. But what i held myself to it was the action and i started to notice that i could coexist with that while still living a life that went beyond that. I had a spiritual experience. And i had the little girl that died in the fire sent there collins. Is a 5 year old son or looking for a kidney reaching. 54 years old and 21 years on go through a lot of. Crime i didnt commit. Violence to that he was innocent doesnt read to do list of nobody but. You know the. Trial was pretty much a farce. They are having a golden commute for the trial. Nobody. Coffee coffee not at all you want part of it all. For something. I knew she was in there and i knew exactly what i was doing. People life. Sometimes theres no explanation. So what weve got to do is identify the threats that we have its crazy confrontation let it be an arms race in. Spearing Dramatic Development only personally im going to resist i dont see how that strategy will be successful very critical. To sit down and talk. Oh you know. Me. Maybe. Slams washington sanctions on russia its not stream to Gas Pipelines germany saying its crossed a crucial line against its nato allies and it comes as an angry reaction as well binding the sanctions interference in domestic affairs. The u. S. Court rules that american spy agencies can collect data on citizens without a warrant if done by accident. And a man has been sentenced to 16 years in jail off to stealing and burning. For me. Whether the time of the crime 16 years for offending probably one of the most privileged groups in america when it came to poor