Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Ron Krupp, an author and gardener from South Burlington.
In late August, I had the opportunity to visit my good friend of 45 years, Buford W. Posey. I met Buford when I came to Vermont in 1966 to attend the Antioch-Putney Graduate School of Education. Posey was born in Philadelphia, Miss., in Neshoba County. He was the first white member of the NAACP in the South and the civil rights worker who exposed the murder of Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman. The three young men were there to register voters in Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964. Buford worked at Highlander Center near Knoxville, Tenn., where the director, Miles Horton, trained the civil rights workers, including Martin Luther King, in the concept of non-violence.
Buford told me in all his 86 years, he had never seen the country in such a dire economic state. He said we need a non-violent revolution for economic equity, jobs and health care. Buford said we need a new party to counteract the corruption and rampant greed so pervasive in our fair land and that he was ready to march in his wheel chair to support the new movement for change.
Many people I speak to are either cynical or feeling despondent about the future. It’s clear that evil will triumph over good if we’re complacent. Everyone needs to get involved, from workers, teachers, seniors and veterans to people of all colors, stripes and parties — progressives and others from the left and right who are alienated from the current political system.
One thing’s for sure. This is the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. If the working/middle class are to be saved, we need to create millions of good-paying jobs by retraining and education, by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels through sustainable energy solutions. We’ve lost millions of jobs through unfair trade practices — one million through NAFTA and 2 million with China. We need to export products not jobs. Close to 25 million Americans cannot find work. They’re either unemployed or underemployed. If they had a job, they could support their families, pay their fair share of taxes and invest in their local communities.
What else do we need to turn things around? We need to reverse the warming of our planet. If we got out of Iraq and Afghanistan, taxed the rich and corporations at a fair rate and transformed our trade policies, we could begin to pay off our national deficit and eventually eat into the national debt. At the same time, we need to finance political campaigns with public funds. Otherwise, the good old boys network will continue and our country will continue to decline. Why not add on term limits for politicians as a bonus.
Labor Day has passed and the people need to protest — not take part in a parade. Let’s begin the movement for The New Party in Burlington and have it spread as a grassroots movement from small cities and towns to the larger urban areas — through social networking.
This land is your land.
P.S. The song “We Shall Overcome” was found in a file cabinet at Highlander Center by the wife of Miles Horton. Can’t remember her name. It was an old labor song. Some of the words were changed and Pete Seeger made it famous.
