8/9/2019 Agitator for Council
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This May 18th let's celebrate the agitators that founded this
Country!
Are you an agitator? You know, one of those people who won't
leave well enough alone, who's alwaysquestioning authority and
trying to stir things up.
If so, the Powers That Be detest you -- you ... you ...
"agitator!" They spit the term out as a pejorative tobrand anyone
who dares to challenge the established order. "Oh," they scoff,
"our people didn't mind livingnext to that toxic waste dump until
those environmental agitators got them upset." Corporate
chieftainsroutinely wail that "our workers were perfectly happy
until those union agitators started messing with their
minds."
In each case, the message is that America would be a fine
country if only we could get rid of those peskytroublemakers who
get the hoi polloi agitated about one thing or another.
Bovine excrement. Were it not for agitators, we wouldn't even
have an America. The Fourth of July would bejust another hot day,
we'd be singing "God Save the Queen," and our government officials
would be wearingwhite-powdered wigs.
Agitators created America, and it's their feisty spirit and
outright rebelliousness that we celebrate on ournational holiday. I
don't merely refer to the Founders, either. Thomas Jefferson,
George Washington, JamesMadison, Ben Franklin and the rest
certainly were derring-do agitators when they wrote the Declaration
ofIndependence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, creating
the framework for a democratic republic. Butthey didn't actually
create much democracy. In the first presidential election, only 4
percent of the peoplewere even eligible to vote. No women allowed,
no African Americans, no American Indians and no one who
was landless.
So, on the Fourth, it's neither the documents of democracy that
we celebrate nor the authors of thedocuments. Rather, it's the
intervening two-plus centuries of ordinary American agitators who
have struggledmightily against formidable odds to democratize those
documents.
America's great rebellion didn't end with the British surrender
at Yorktown. It was only getting started -- andthe rebellion has
moved through such great forces of agitation as the abolitionists
and suffragists, SojournerTruth and Frederick Douglass, the
Populists and the Wobblies, Fighting Bob La Follette and Huey Long,
theSquare Deal and New Deal, Mother Jones and Woodie Guthrie,
Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader, MartinLuther King Jr. and Cesar
Chavez -- and on into today's continuing fight for economic
fairness, social justiceand equal opportunity for all.
Without agitators battling in politics, on the job, in the
marketplace, for the environment, on Wall Street, ineducation, for
civil liberties and rights, and all across our society, democratic
progress doesn't just stall, it
falls back.
The Powers That Be -- especially America's overarching corporate
and political forces (often the same) --give lip service to
democracy, but tend toward plutocracy, autocracy and kleptocracy.
They prefer (and oftendemand) that We the People be passive
consumers of their economic and political policies. Don't rock
theboat, stay in your place, go along to get along -- be quiet,
they urge.
Be quiet? Holy Thomas Paine! How could freedom-loving,
democratic citizens shrink into quietude,especially when the Powers
That Be feel so entitled to run roughshod over us? Even a dead fish
can go withthe flow. We've got to be livelier than that.
July Fourth is a time to enjoy fireworks, flags, hotdogs,
ballgames and such -- but it's also a time toremember who we are:
agitators!
May 18
th
decides who will make the right decisions with your money while
keeping the city safe from thecorruption that has plagued Lexington
for years. If need beIll agitate, but Ill get things done.
It's not easy to stand against powerful interests. Sometimes
it's lonely, and you get to feeling like the guyB.B. King sings
about: "No one likes you but your momma, and she might be jiving
you, too." It's not easy,but having those who dare to stand up is
essential if our country is ever to achieve our ideals of
fairness,
justice and opportunity for all.
And when the establishment derisively assails you as an
agitator, remember this: The agitator is the centerpost in the
washing machine that gets the dirt out.
Christopher Hignite Vote for me on May 18 and Ill keep agitating
until local government comes clean!
