Revolt bubbling along

What is the correlation, if any, of income disparity to rebellion, revolution, insurgency and civil society unrest? We can look at a map of the world by color-coded representations of income inequality (Gini coefficient) and say--what? That it is a factor, but not the dispositive variable.

China and the US have more income inequality than the other northern temperate nations, from Canada to Kazakhstan (and Australia). Indeed, China and the US are more unequal, internally, than India, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan or Algeria, never mind northern and western Europe. Clearly, this factor is only one contributory cause of social upheaval, not the one that decides the fate of a nation.

Still, dissatisfaction is increasing alongside poverty, homelessness and foreclosures and unemployment in the US. Looking at the list of how the most well off 10 percent of a nation's populace by income compares with the poorest 10 percent by income, the US is very unequal, and in fact places right between Nepal and Cote d'Ivore, two nations experiencing violent revolution very recently. Increasing nonviolence trainings and education is a prescribed inoculant from now on.

Banana Republicans

There is one budget in our federal spending that is devoted to preparing to commit violence and actually committing violence against humans, the Earth, and all the things we humans have built. That would be the Pentagon.

There is one budget in our federal spending that accounts, year in and year out, for about half the discretionary spending authorized by Congress. No other federal budget comes close to the size of this whopper. That would be, yes, the Pentagon budget.

There is one budget in our federal spending that is rarely discussed in mainstream media. That would be, as we all know, the Pentagon budget.

Why is this? Why do all the other, life-enhancing, budgets--health care, education, environmental protection, housing, etc.--why are they responsible for our deficit? Why is Planned Parenthood slashed when it's time to institute austerity measures? Why is the United States Institute of Peace--a budget of microscopic significance that arguably could save this nation $trillions by avoiding wars--why is that budget suddenly the one to eliminate in order to tighten our belts?

Meanwhile, corporate robber barons living larger and larger flaunt their riches while middle class workers sink into poverty, widening the income gap in the US to banana republic levels not seen since the Great Depression.

Ah, we say, well, what can we do about it? We cannot just shoot the rich. We cannot defeat the US military if it wants all our money.

No, we cannot, nor should we, shoot the rich. But we can begin to even the playing field without shooting or threatening to shoot anyone. And we can defeat the US military even though it (and especially its contractors, such as the weaponeers) wants all our money. Think of what other people with far less power (we might think) have done with nonviolence in the past few years. A partial list:

• In 2011, in Tunisia, the people finally stopped allowing this.
• In 2011, in Egypt, they rose up.
• In 2005, in Ukraine, the people saved their democracy.
• In 2000, in Serbia, the people toppled their warmonger leader.
• From 1989-1991, Eastern and Central Europe arose and ended the Warsaw Pact domination of their societies and then ended the brutal empire of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union itself.
• In 1986, in the Philippines, the people evicted the US, stopped a civil war, and saved their democracy.

This is but a small beginning list of what nonviolent people power has done. Are we so sedated in the US that we cannot manage a wee bit of an uprising when it's needed? Those in need are in the minority for the moment. But if we could one time organize those who are already impacted, including homeless or in foreclosure, uninsured, underemployed and unemployed (the estimated 20 percent or more of adults as calculated by rogue economist John Williams), plus those who are getting closer to the line of disastrous consequence daily, plus those who might just care about others, we might have a movement with clout. We can reverse this trend toward militarized protection of the tiny number of elite at the expense of the rest of us, but we have to want it, we have to work together, and we have to commit to nonviolence (this is not a philosophical commitment to pacifism, as you may easily discern by looking at the button list above, but rather a strategic commitment to a method of conflict management that works). If those factors ever line up, the war profiteers will fall and the rest of us will rise. If we wait for them to make the decision--whoops, they already made it, and we are living the result. Only we can change this.

The gini is out of the bottle

Since 1998, the Gini index for the United States has risen to 0.47, the worst among industrialized nations (Ohmer & DeMasi, 2009, p. 36).

The Gini coefficient is essentially a number between 0 (perfect income equality) and 1 (one person has all the income). How is this related to nonviolence?

No justice, no peace.

Civil society is not happy when Poortowns are the norm with gated enclaves of Richistan.

Is the Gini coefficient the sole index of civil society activity toward upheaval? Of course not. Impoverished people who believe they have no chance of success will suffer much more silently.

Income gaps are not nearly as important if the lower income strata still have relatively comfortable lives.

The Gini coefficient does not measure the social safety net, which can at least protect the lowest income stratum from complete catastrophe.

Nevertheless, the index is important and connected to everything else. So the news of the home foreclosure epidemic only fueled unhappiness in civil society in the US as it built, and now that some of the beneficiaries of the massive bailout largess have declared a moratorium on further foreclosures for a time, one might think the Obama administration might be relieved and even try to claim some credit (Finally, it seems they are listening to me!).

But no, even as his own party is increasingly calling for a government-ordered moratorium on home foreclosures, and as the Republicans are rising to defend foreclosures, and as the Ds are about to take a severe spanking and slip into minority-party status and out of congressional leadership for at least two years, the Obama spokespeople are taking a murky, nuanced, cheesy and slippery approach, guaranteed, once again, to provide comfort to corporations and their Republican lawbots while sending victims of the war system-induced recession into worse hopelessness and despair. Smooth!

At what point, we wonder, will civil society really engage in this? The Tea Party is answering that from their side and their factions are more or less ready to rise up, more or less violently. The point is not to freak out about that, it is to realize that, if we believe that civil society is ready to rise up in substantial numbers, our work as nonviolent activists is to harness that toward nonviolence. As it is, the hatemongers and gun-toters are making great strides, leading us toward a demagoguery from the far right or a fascist suppression from the government. Nice choice!

Those who hope the uprising will use nonviolence are those who hope for safety for their families and friends. Those who jump in and help still have a chance to steer the justifiable rage toward a positive process. We may not achieve a Gini of 0--perfect equality--and we may not stop all the violence, but it is really time to reach out and help civil society realize that nonviolence is how we can most successfully change the game.

References

Ohmer, Mary L. & DeMasi, Karen (2009). Consensus organizing: A community development workbook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.