Wisconsin solidarity.

• Author: Paris, Chris
• Position: Letters to the Editor - Letter to the editor

I have been deeply moved for well over a month by the courage of seventy thousand Wisconsin citizens who have protested, and I was momentarily rallied by Matthew Rothschild's Editor's Note, "Suddenly, Solidarity" in the April issue. But his last line, "This is, at last, solidarity" rang terribly hollow for me.

For a long time, almost from the outset of the Obama Administration, I've witnessed a terrible lack of solidarity among millions of like-minded Americans, we who are terribly concerned by the corporate plutocracy that is running roughshod over our rights, social justice, freedom, and human dignity.

Why haven't we risen up in peaceful protest? Where is nationwide unified defiance? It's as if our American culture is in some sort of free fall of ennui and lassitude.

When the corporate plutocrats on Capitol Hill moved to repeal our progressive health care legislation, why didn't we immediately converge on Washington?

Blogs don't do it. Letters to our august Congresspeople don't do it. They defer real action. We desperately need to organize.

Let's get right down to it: Barack Obama was elected because the nation was in desperate need of progressive reform. But we, the rabble, abandoned him, and expected him to do it all by himself. By electing him, we set him up to be crucified by our abandonment. Who shall we...