We are Ungovernable
An anarchist protest of the Presidential Inauguration
The recent economic crisis has shown us what happens when a small group of wealthy individuals is able to make decisions with long-lasting consequences for the welfare of the American people. Bankers and investors single-mindedly pursued the accumulation of short-term profits, ignoring the devastating effects their behavior could have on the general economy. Now we are preparing to handover the country’s welfare to another small group of wealthy of individuals: the Obama administration. They have consistently and without reservations supported President Bush’s bailout project, and plan to fork over more public money to the same institutions that started the crisis in the first place.
These are bad decisions. They put the welfare of businesses above the welfare of the American people. Businesses do well by slashing wages and cutting jobs in an endless struggle to meet the bottom line, and in doing so screwing over the mass of workers who produce the majority of their wealth. And yet they are also the main provider of employment and healthcare in this country. It is therefore understandable why our government has seen the rejuvenation of the private sector as the key ingredient to improving the welfare of everyday Americans.
This is a protest in support of a different solution: anarchism.
Anarchism is a political movement made up of people obsessed with public accountability. Anarchists…
(1) … believe decisions concerning the production and distribution of goods and services should be made democratically. Our current system, capitalism, puts the majority of our country’s resources in the hands of a few wealthy individuals who have no vested interest in the well-being of the great majority of Americans. As we have seen with the economic crisis, eventually the whole nation suffers. Rather than strap businesses with taxes and regulations to limit their most grievous behavior, anarchists believe we should scrap capitalism altogether and substitute a set of democratic enterprises.
(2) … applaud what little accountability our government has and demand more. But when anarchists talk about democracy they are not referring to our current form of representative democracy, where the people elect officials to make public decisions for them. Anarchists stand for direct democracy, where public decisions are entrusted to the assembly of all individuals who chose to participate. And for anarchists, all decisions affecting the general populace are public.
The anarchist solution can be summarized in this way: let the people decide, and their interests will be guaranteed. Unlike our Founding Fathers, who in the words of James Madison, designed a government to protect “the minority of the opulent against the majority”, anarchists think the American people possess the ability to make sound decisions down to the very foundations of our society. If you believe that government “of the people, by the people, for the people” means more than a choice between two parties every four years, come out in support of real democracy.
We are holding a planning session for the protest on Saturday, January 3rd at 6 PM. Please come– we need your input!
Location
7310 Columbia Ave
Apt 3
College Park, MD 20740
By Metro
Take the Green Line to College Park Station. Make a right at the station exit and head through the tunnel. The building is on the first street parallel to the train line and is directly across from the station.
Anarchy Library 