BOB NOWLAN SPEECH–UWEC
PROGRESSIVE STUDENT ASSOCIATION AND SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE–UWEC RALLY
FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE, 10/26/06
I am delighted to
be here today. I’ve been actively involved, virtually
continuously, in activist work on behalf of progressive causes for over
40 years now, ever since my parents brought me to participate in many
actions and protests in support of Black Civil Rights, in opposition to
the Vietnam War, and on behalf of giving material substance to the
1960s ‘War on Poverty’ and in aiding the material emancipation of the
all-too-often ignored and forgotten ‘Other America’. And
I’ve identified as a socialist--as well as been actively involved in
socialist organizations and activism--for over thirty years now too,
ever since Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas became my childhood
heroes. The particular struggles I’ve participated in
during the course of all these years I see as part of a much larger,
ongoing struggle for peace and justice, in which I am very glad to
participate in whatever way I can, whenever and wherever and however I
can, and which I find always worthwhile, as a process, as a movement,
even despite temporary setbacks and failures. And no matter how
big or small the turnout. We always pick up, keep going, press
forward, and derive strength and inspiration from what those who came
before us brought to bear–and we likewise seek to contribute the same
kind of legacy to those who come after us.
In recent years
I’ve heard a lot on the right about ‘values’, and too often I’ve heard
talk throughout mainstream American political culture that the right is
stronger on, and more interested and invested in values than liberals,
progressives, and others on the left. I think that’s
ridiculous! Absolutely so! I’ve been a person of very
strong and committed values all of my life, and so have all of my many
comrades in many progressive and socialist struggles. In
fact, I think we maintain the clear advantage in values–because ours
are considerably more truly enabling and considerably far more vitally
empowering than theirs. I wouldn’t trade any of my values
for any of theirs, ever! I thought I’d just share with you
today some of what I believe are key progressive values, and also key
socialist ones as well:
1. Progressives
believe that we are all ultimately deeply interconnected, that
the public good should always come before private gain, that we should
work together to take care of each other, that we should work together
to make a better future for those who come after us, and that we have a
responsibility to do so for those who will succeed us.
2.
Progressives believe we maintain a responsibility to serve as
genuine stewards in relation to our larger natural environment while
progressives at the same time respect and value the ‘wisdom’ of nature
as well as all the ‘wisdom’ of what nature has created and provided.
3. Progressives
respect and value the wisdom of genuinely popular, or folk, cultures,
subcultures, and their customs and traditions as well as their
achievements and contributions; progressives support and defend the
right of the oppressed and exploited to fight back against their
exploiters and oppressors; and progressives seek to assist the
relatively disprivileged and disempowered in raising themselves up
through their own efforts.
4. Progressives
believe in genuine, substantive, materially concrete expression of
fairness and equality for all, and progressives sincerely,
actively care for those who are relatively disprivileged and
disempowered.
5. Progressives
believe in working actively to overcome exploitative and oppressive
disparities in social wealth, social privilege, and social power.
6. Progressives
believe in the inherent dignity, worth, and natural equality of all
people, regardless of race, ethnicity, or nationality.
7. Progressives
believe in the inherent dignity, worth, and natural equality of all
people, regardless of sex or gender.
8. Progressives
believe in the inherent dignity, worth, and natural equality of all
people, regardless of sexual orientation.
9. Progressives
believe in the inherent dignity, worth, and natural equality of all
people, regardless of age or of physical and mental ability.
10. Progressives
respect and value the contribution of labor, and of laborers, in
producing and reproducing social wealth; progressives reject, oppose,
and seek to overcome exploitative and oppressive forms of class
difference, and hierarchy, especially that realized through the
exploitation of labor, and the private ownership and control of the
means, processes, and ends of social wealth; and progressives are
ultimately, in essence, anti-capitalist and pro-socialist.
11. Progressives
believe in social responsibility and accountability–and especially in
holding those who exploit, and oppress, as well as those who maintain
complicity with exploitation and oppression responsible, and
accountable, for this wrong, while progressives simultaneously believe
in active civic participation, in citizens taking responsibility for
our own government, for governing ourselves, and for making government
truly the people’s servant and truly serve the people’s interest.
12. Progressives
believe that genuine community requires that everyone within the
community enjoy the freedom to realize their full human potential, and
progressives believe that realization of our full human potential as
members of a genuine community is in fact only possible for each and
every one of us when freedoms can actually be exercised and
opportunities are in fact available.
13. Progressives
fight against social alienation, and especially against the forces and
conditions which generate this alienation, while progressives at the
same time reject, oppose, and seek to overcome cynicism, apathy,
disengagement, and despair.
14. Progressives
reject, oppose, and seek to overcome selfish individualism, and
progressives reject, oppose, and seek to overcome the commercial
cooptation of human culture and the commoditization of human social
relations.
15. Progressives
reject, oppose, and seek to overcome reification and
compartmenalization in thought and action, and progressives likewise
reject, oppose, and seek to overcome desensitization, callous
indifference and lack of concern for others, as well as processes of
‘othering, and especially ‘abjectification’, in general.
16. Progressives
strongly oppose militarism and imperialism– economic, political, and
cultural.
17. Progressives
strongly oppose fascism, neo-fascism, proto-fascism, and post-fascism,
in all varieties, as well as all other forms of genuine
totalitarianism.
18.
Progressives commit themselves toward working actively to advance the
causes of human emancipation, collective equality, social justice,
ecological sustainability, and a peaceful world.
19. Progressives
believe that real social progress ultimately requires real social
transformation–and not mere social reformation.
20. Progressives
believe in the value, and indeed necessity, of forceful, creative,
determined, persistent, and even at times relentless engagement in
questioning, challenging, critiquing, resisting, rebelling, and
revolting versus established power and authority in order to advance
progressive ends and serve progressive interests.