people. During the Vietnam War, direct resistance to the war was
quite significant, and it was a cost that the government had to pay.
If elections are just something in which some portion of the
population goes and pushes a button every couple of years, they
don’t matter. But if the citizens organize to press a position, and
pressure their representatives about it, elections can matter.
Members of the House of Representatives can be influenced
much more easily than senators, and senators somewhat more easily
than the president, who is usually immune. When you get to that
level, policy is decided almost totally by the wealthy and powerful
people who own and manage the country.
But you can organize on a scale that will influence
representatives. You can get them to come to your homes to be
yelled at by a group of neighbors, or you can sit in at their offices—
whatever works in the circumstances. It can make a difference—
often an important one.
You can also do your own research. Don’t just rely on the
conventional history books and political science texts—go back to
specialist monographs and to original sources: National Security
Memoranda and similar documents. Most good libraries have
reference departments where you can find them.
It does require a bit of effort. Most of the material is junk, and
you have to read a ton of stuff before you find anything good. There
are guides that give you hints about where to look, and sometimes
you’ll find references in secondary sources that look intriguing.
Often they’re misinterpreted, but they suggest places to search.
It’s no big mystery, and it’s not intellectually difficult. It involves
some work, but anybody can do it as a spare-time job. And the
results of that research can change people’s minds. Real research is
always a collective activity, and its results can make a large
contribution to changing consciousness, increasing insight and
understanding, and leading to constructive action.
The struggle continues
The struggle for freedom is never over. The people of the Third
World need our sympathetic understanding and, much more than