By Jim Harney

David Barsamian:
"At the talks you give to American audiences, you often are asked the question, 'What should I do?'"

Chomsky:
"Only by American audiences. I'm never asked this in the third world. When you go to Turkey or Colombia or Brazil, they don't ask you, "What should I do?" They tell you what they're doing. When I went to Porto Alegre, Brazil, for the World Social Forum, I met with some landless campesinos, and they didn't ask me what they should do; they told me what they were doing. These are poor, oppressed people, living under horrendous conditions, and they would never dream of asking you what they should do. It's only in highly privileged cultures like ours that people ask this question. We have every option open to us, and have none of the problems that are faced by intellectuals in Turkey or campesinos in Brazil. We can do anything. But people here are trained to believe that there are easy answers, and it doesn't work that way. If you want to do something, you have to be dedicated and committed to it day after day. Educational programs, organizing, activism. That's the way things change. You want a magic key, so you can go back to watching television tomorrow? It doesn't exist. ... You aren't supposed to learn that dedicated, committed effort can bring about significant changes of consciousness and understanding. That's a very dangerous idea, and therefore it's been wiped out of history."

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Chomsky makes sense: and it’s one of the reasons why it is important to border cross in every way possible by traveling to the outposts of the empire; but more importantly thinking from the perspective of those on the bottom. They have much to teach us, like illustrating to us what systemic violence does in all its nudity. It’s one of the reasons why the means of communication rarely show us the faces of those impoverished by financial capital.

Those on the bottom of the planet know what they have to do because they’re proximate to death; many of the poor of the world are pushed off the land and are now living in cities where grueling poverty has become commonplace. In some places in Africa according to a program on CSPAN today – Worldwatch 2007 where panelists spoke about urbanization, the grueling poverty, about human beings defecating in plastic bags and then throwing them on top of roofs: they’re called "flying toilets". Brazilian landless peasants face death in their struggle to live on the land; no wonder they have strategies and analysis about the world that leads them to action and they don’t have to ask what to do. Now they’re right in the face of Lula, the President, because of his ethanol deal with Bush - a deal crafted with the mega wealthy in mind -the peasants know this and they’re resisting.

The disenfranchised of the planet know the terror of what some call globalization; others might say the hegemony of the market over our lives; others might say "savage capitalism" and it might not be off the mark to even to say "imperialism" that has become more brutal than ever imagined before.

But the point Chomsky makes is that some are refusing to go down without a fight and refuse to accept a system that doesn’t allow them to live and die as they choose. And that is precisely why Eduardo Galeano says "collectivities of hope" thrive in Latin America. There is a rupture going on there so profound that the great colossus to the north is frightened out of its wits. Experiments in "democracy-on-the-spot" are taking place which means that new cultures clash with the dominant one; no wonder the CIA considers indigenous people throughout Latin America the greatest threat to US control and power in the area. Yes, it’s back to Chomsky’s remark: those who hold up an economic pyramid that allows for one percent of the US population to control 33 percent of the wealth of the US and perhaps half the wealth of the world is a place that they refuse to tolerate any longer. The impoverished living in "emerging markets", that lovely euphemism for poor countries, and a phrase developed with the elite in mind so that it is acceptable to investors who with their cursors comb cyberspace for a place to utilize their new financial instruments created on Wall Street that make them mega-rich.

The humiliated of the planet wouldn’t tolerate something that can go virtually unnoticed in the US, when a President by the name of George W. Bush can say, "If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator." And with statements like that in mind, Hugo Chávez is considered a dictator and the US media goes along with it, refusing to show the poor of Venezuela once considered rejects of the market and if anything troublemakers that had to be contained when they got uppity and came out of the slums into the streets of downtown Caracas in the late eighties in protest of belt-tightening measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund: government forces murdered hundreds. The government was a "democratic" one, yet it took its cues from people from away, as we say up here Maine. The US supported the government. Good governance meant to be aligned with the fundamentals of the market; the role of government is to serve the interests of transnational corporations and with the victory of financial capital over industrial capital it’s now banks and brokerage firms who carry the weight and muscle of the capitalist system and create the havoc and wealth.

Venezuelans aren’t asking the question: what do we do? The oil rich country, contrary to other spots on the planet where "black gold" means blood and violence, supports the poor - even the impoverished in Maine and Massachusetts get assistance from Venezuelan owned Citgo. It’s an unheard of political posture in our own country: oil barons got $6 billion in tax write-offs - none of it got to the poor, never mind the unheard of profits. Meanwhile, in Venezuela over thirty percent of the state owned oil company profits go to the poor to satisfy health, food, education and employment needs.

What a blessing that Venezuelans aren’t asking those in the north what to do - if they did they wouldn’t be taking the lead in opening up new ways to invest oil wealth that now gets to the poor throughout Latin America and the US. Venezuela is moving away from dependence on the dollar as are other resource rich Latin American countries. One of the reasons for the hope in Latin America is that much of the FDI, foreign direct investment, is coming from the region itself to the tune of about 35%. They’re doing this because models imposed upon them by the US have meant humiliation and death, brought about situations where parents bury their children, where populations live on $2 a day, where for decades as one Venezuelan told me, he had no idea that there was even any oil in the country; now the wealth touches his life and the lives of others who work on a cooperative farm with him subsidized by the government. Speculative capital isn’t a priority in a vision that imagines "Socialism for the 21st Century". Money is meant to be invested in something concrete that produces jobs, food, homes, health facilities and education. "Money wasn’t made to create interest in a bank," said Chávez in his Sunday conversation with the people on the program Olá Presidente, Hello President, "it’s meant to be used in society for the benefit of people."

Much more to be said, but Rob Herbert has a point when he says "Democracy is a breeze during good times. It’s when the storms are raging that citizenship is put to the test. And there’s a hell of a wind blowing right now."

Exciting times we live in. Let’s take our lead from the poor - stop asking what to do and get out there and do what needs doing. We might then feel the breeze of democracy blowing, and we’ll feel the difference and see it in our relationships with one another as everyone begins to stand tall and take delight in the presence of others reinventing the world they live in and doing it with the excluded of the planet in mind.