Now what?
We need to build a grassroots progressive movement -- wide, deep and strong enough to fight the right and challenge the corporate center of the Democratic Party.

The stakes are too high and crises too extreme to accept “moderate” accommodation to unending war, regressive taxation, massive unemployment, routine foreclosures and environmental destruction.

A common formula to avoid is what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the paralysis of analysis.” Profuse theory + scant practice = immobilization.

It’s not enough to denounce what’s wrong or to share visionary blueprints. Day in and out, we’ve got to organize for effective and drastic social change, in all walks of life and with a vast array of activism.

Yes, electioneering is just one kind of vital political activity. But government power is extremely important. By now, we should have learned too much to succumb to the despairing claim that elections aren’t worth the bother.

Vermont has elected a governor pledged to make the state truly green by shutting its decrepit, leaking nuclear plant.  And the town closest to that reactor has voted to take it by eminent domain if necessary, a step unprecedented in world history.

In reaction, the nuke’s owner (Entergy) has turned tail and put the plant up for sale.  (So far, no bidders).

In direct opposition, this post-election week has been marked by radioactive crowing from a dark age industry demanding massive government loan guarantees from “free market” Congressional Republicans.  Armed with oceans of unaccountable corporate/billionaire cash, Karl Rove’s new nuclear GOP wants to dump Adam Smith and pump public billions into a failed industry that cannot compete.

They industry continually points to France’s industry as a model.  But it’s mute to the fact that France’s leaky, error-prone nukes are owned, operated and regulated (sortof) by the French government.  A national socialist prototype, the EDF/Areva edifice---like its counterpart in Japan---would melt and die in an open market.

Now that California’s Prop. 15 has been defeated, the bottom line remains, in the words of author/activist Harvey Wasserman: “The simple truth about America's marijuana prohibition: Any law that allows the easy incarceration of any citizen any time those in power want to do it is the ultimate enemy of democracy. With 800,000 annual arrests over an herb used by tens of millions of Americans, it is the cornerstone of a police state.”

A few weeks before the midterm election, I blogged an open letter to Barack Obama, and a journalist friend faxed a copy directly to the president. Excerpt: “It seems that the theme emanating from the White House is ‘Eat, Pray, Be Disappointed.’ And yet, whenever I do feel disappointed, I always realize that the alternative was John McCain, with Sarah Palin just one Halloween ‘Boo!’ away from the presidency, and then I always feel a sense of relief. But you promised to end the raids on medical marijuana dispensaries. They haven’t stopped…