Street theater
Dawn Majors/Post-Dispatch
Several hundred citizens, virtually all of them of mid- to late-middle age, showed up at Bernard Middle School in Mehlville Thursday evening. Judging by their behavior, their object was to display their scorn and shout down U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-St. Louis.
Mr. Carnahan had organized a forum on health care and services for the elderly. He lined up a series of speakers to discuss various aspects of the issue. The protesters, though, were intent on chanting slogans and raising a ruckus displaying their opposition to health care reform legislation pending in Congress.
The shouting was just a tactic. The strategy was to win the attention of the media by using a small cast of highly motivated actors to create an impression of widespread public outrage over health care reform.
Similar demonstrations have been playing out at “town hall” meetings across the nation. The tone has been loud and hostile. Chanting and heckling have rattled speakers. In response, advocates of health care reform have been turning out at the meetings to meet the challenge. In Mehlville, the whole mess descended into anger and violence.
There’s irony in this. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s early career as a “community organizer” in Chicago became a running punch line for political conservatives.
Who could forget the dripping sarcasm of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani when, at the Republican National Convention, they mocked community organizers?
A wiser — and more successful — agitator from the right knew better. Longtime conservative author and activist Phyllis Schlafly of St. Louis noted that “community organizing” is what Mr. Obama “used so successfully to defeat the Clinton machine plus the Republican Party in a dramatic one-two punch never before seen in politics.”
She suggested that writings of the late Saul Alinsky, author of “Rules for Radicals” and father of the community organizing practices that Mr. Obama taught and practiced, deserve a place “on your must-read list if you want to understand much of contemporary politics.”
“Alinsky didn’t want just talkers,” Ms. Schlafly wrote. “He wanted radicals who were prepared to take bold action to organize the discontented, precipitate crisis, grab power and transform society.”
Angry conservatives — cheered and supported by industry-sponsored groups and political operatives — hope to defeat health care reform by replicating the most aggressive of tactics they ridiculed so heartily.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., will hold a health care town hall meeting Tuesday in Hillsboro. One planned for University City was canceled. Ms. McCaskill says that she hopes that “Missouri good manners will rule the day.”
“There are legitimate concerns about health care reform and the status quo, and we ought to be able to have a discussion about both,” she said.
Local activists, as they look ahead, should consider one of Saul Alinsky’s cardinal rules that has to do with the potentially short shelf life of militant street theater.
“A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag,” he wrote.
People who use rude interruption and desperate anger as their principal outlet for community activism can expect to lose public sympathy quickly. Indeed, they may find themselves out in the cold, having forfeited by their conduct any claim to participate in the conversation.
Utterly astounding. Not one mention of the use of left-wing thugs beating American citizens who dared to exercise their right of free speech.
You couldn’t bring yourselves to possibly believe that there are actually people out there who do not support this President’s designs on health care. They just *had* to be supported by industry-supported groups and political operatives.
Your blatant partisanship is wearing thin.
Even with a blue print in hand for effective community organizing, these “Right Wingers” will screw it up and it will not have the same successful effect as Obama’s actions because the these anti-healthcare and anti-Obama people have misunderstood be radicals for displaying crazy irrational behavior. They will never figure it out even when all the directions in their hands. (lol).
Plus, such an effort must be genuine, passionate but also rational and birth from good will and good conscience to be truly successful based on truth and not deceit.
This Movement will not have any real effect in the end because it lacks ALL these necessary components because it is based on deceit, misinformation, and not good will. Their lies and deceit will once again be exposed just as they were during the Obama campaign where all their deceit and intentional misinformation will be exposed and where they will lose even greater respect and will lose the confidence of even more people than they already have. You will also see more and more people leaving the Republican Party even officials because of all the sickness within it.
It is entertaining watching those pundits on Fox News and Conservative radio thinking that this Movement is really making them headways.
Corections above:
… these anti-healthcare and anti-Obama people have misunderstood [being] radicals [as] displaying crazy irrational behavior.
How interesting that the Post didn’t see fit to comment on the union members present at the Carnahan Town Hall meeting who were implicated in assaulting attendees. They also didn’t comment when candidate Obama urged his supporters to “get in people’s faces” to make their point, or a member of the President’s staff suggesting they should “hit back harder” at opponents. And we’re still waiting for the Post to comment on the Administration’s asking proponents to snitch to the White House on those who are fighting the Democrat proposal.
Every aggrieved group in the US that demonstrates or threatens public order in support of liberal causes gets a pass from the mainstream media. But when the President stands and proclaims that he doesn’t care what the public thinks about his health care reform, we’re supposed to sit down, shut up, and hand over our wallets and our individual rights. Meanwhile, the liberal lapdogs at the Post can be counted on to libel average Americans who are exercising their Constitutional rights and opposing government tyranny.
“The shouting was just a tactic. The strategy was to win the attention of the media by using a small cast of highly motivated actors to create an impression of widespread public outrage over health care reform.”
Simply outrageous and condescending to any one who opposes Obamacare.
The shouting is to get the attention of congress critters who have forgotten they work for US, not for a party. Polls indicate that a majority of Americans DONT WANT a government take over of health care.
“In Mehlville, the whole mess descended into anger and violence.”
The violence was wholly perpertrated by SEIU union goons.
I earlier read pretty much the same ediotrial by the SEIU.
http://www.seiu.org/2009/08/stop-the-violence-at-health-care-town-halls.php
SEIU and the Post-Dispatch editorial board — two peas in the same pod ??
To all the big government socialists out there. Health care reform started out as a way to help 47 million uninsured Americans (which is a lie in its own right) and then morphed into a complete government take over of all health care in order to morph, yet again, into your ultimate goal of single payer. (And please do not lie bout this either, listen to barney Frank if you do not believe me.) You bet people are mad. To expect the American people to do nothing while you rob them of their freedom is the height of arrogance.
Liberal socialists have a long history of lying or obfuscating about their true objectives. For example, what the heck does the empty slogan, “hope and change mean?” It means whatever the listener wants it to mean without being specific about anything. Now that liberal socialists have revealed their true agenda, they are going to reap a whirlwind at the polls next November. Goodbye Harry & Nancy and dreams of socialist utpoia fantasy. What is so sad is that instead of accepting defeat, the socialists will smear, denegrate and beat their fellow Americans who reject their big government path. This country is in for a rough couple of years until we purge of government of these corrupt, inept socialists.
> People who use rude interruption and desperate anger as their
> principal outlet for community activism
1. ACORN
2. Code Pink
3. Act Up
4. Cindy Sheehan
DWalker, This newspaper wouldn’t be so desperately trying to discredit conservatives if their movement wasn’t making headway.