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The Basis of the Struggle Robert M. La Follette july 31, 1909 Here is the basis of the struggle in America: There are those, high in power and strong in intellect, many of them, who do not believe that the evils we su¤er come from social maladjustments. They think the poor man, or the criminal, or the ignorant, or the weak, the architect of his own fortune. They can thread the slum or inspect the tenement with a sincere belief that these people are so situated by reason of inevitable evils, or of their own fault or failure, and not because of misdirected social forces which are capable of correction by an aroused democracy. They regard the industrial situation in America as, on the whole, about what it should be. They look upon the huge accumulations of capital and huger accumulations of power which we call the trusts as agencies of men who rule because on the whole they are best Wtted for the rulership. They may not be religious men, but they fervently believe that the obscure and indigent should follow the text of the ritual which bids us to be content in that sphere to which Providence has called us, and they regard as a Divine recognition of an immutable condition the passage which said of Judea of old, “The poor ye have always with you.” Such men and such statesmen do not exactly believe that whatever is, is right, but they believe fully in the game as it is played, in the huge percentage that it gives to the “house,” the system of chances that divides the wealth of the nation into two piles, one of which is the spoil of the very few who get it in immense lots, and the other the pittances of the very many who get it in pitifully small portions. They believe that the game should be played “on the square” but that any other game than this princemaking , pauper-creating game of monopoly and exploitation is possible they do not for a moment believe. There is another plane of thought into which some have entered. It holds up a vision of a society redeemed by true democracy. It believes in a time when monopoly shall be no more, and labor and capital, no longer at war, shall cooperate to the wiping out of involuntary and undeserved poverty in an era of industrial equality and social peace. 355 Believers in this may not be very religious either, but they thrill to the divine democracy of the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount. They believe in the changing of the rules of the game. They seek to eliminate the percentage that goes to the nonproductive “house” and to make production a sure thing for all, open to all hands on equal terms, wherein wealth shall go to the producers in proportions Wxed by their individual contribution to production. In short, these have the vision of a society redeemed by the institutional application of the principles of Jesus, of Je¤erson, of Lincoln. Toward a Manifest New Destiny June Jordan february 1992 I have worked here, inside this country, and I have kept my eyes open, everlastingly. What I see today does not support a media-concocted controversy where my life or the lives of African Americans, Native Americans, Chicano Americans, Latin Americans, and Asian Americans amount to arguable fringe or freak components of some theoretical netherland. We have become the many peoples of this nation—nothing less than that. I do not accept that we, American peoples of color, signify anything optional or dubious or marginal or exotic or anything in any way less valuable, less necessary, less sacred, than white America. I do not perceive current issues of public education as issues of politically correct or incorrect curriculum. In a straight line back to James Baldwin who, twenty-eight years ago, begged us, black folks, to rescue ourselves by wrestling white people out of the madness of their megalomania and delusion, I see every root argument about public education turning upon deWnitions of sanity and insanity. Shall we submit to ceaseless lies, fantastic misinformation, and fantastic omissions? Shall we agree to the erasure of our beleaguered, heterogeneous truth? Shall we embrace traditions of insanity and lose ourselves and the whole real world? Or shall we defend and engage the multifoliate, overwhelming, and ultimately inescapable actual life that our myriad and disparate histories imply? In America, in a democracy...

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